Sunday School on Friday - A Net full of Fish

Last Friday we read the Bible story about the apostles who were out fishing but weren't catching anything. Jesus showed up and told them to cast their net onto the other side of the boat. The net was instantly so full of fish that they had trouble hauling it in! Again, we used our favorite little Bible for toddlers.

M is REALLY into fishing lately so this was a great story for him. He has never really been fishing, but he sure pretends to a lot. He fishes in the backyard with a stick, in the bathtub, at Grandpa's farm sitting in a wagon... he is a born fisherman.

For activities we played a fishing game that I made a long time ago. It's made from cardstock and has the letters of the alphabet on it. The "eyes" of the fish are metal grommets. The fishing pole is a wooden dowel with a string glued to it and a magnet glued to the end of the string. Once a fish is caught we name the color it is and the letter written on it.

We also did a craft with liquid watercolors. You can buy these at school supply stores, or simply make your own by mixing regular (washable!) tempera with a little water or liquid starch. We keep ours in a muffin tin and used plastic pipettes to drop the paints onto coffee filters and paper towels. I am so sorry I didn't get pictures of this part. Must've been a little too tired that day. The neat thing about watercolors on coffee filters, paper towels, and tissue paper is that one little drop will soak in and bleed out, making new colors as the paints mix on the paper.

After letting them dry, we (I) cut fish shapes out and using a needle and white thread we created this mobile for M's room. The picture doesn't really do it justice. It turned out really pretty. And, most importantly, it was a chance to be creative and have FUN!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking - Scheduling My Life Away - part 1

Ideas for this post have been floating around in my head for weeks. Before I even started a blog I was thinking of how I would write out all my thoughts about schedules, routines, and such. I love organizing - organizing space, organizing people, organizing time - I'm an organizer. Not that I am organized, but I seem to be perpetually organizing something.

Just like life, it's an on-going process of learning, re-doing, and trying something different, until you find what works.

It looks like a lot of bloggers are thinking about the same thing lately. I've read several just this week questioning how to fit everything into an already busy life. I think the fact that school is starting up soon for many families has spurred a lot of moms into action as they try to get a hold on how to manage their households and too-busy lives. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Actually, when summer began I had, oh, about a million plans for what we were going to do. We were going to go on field trips to museums, go to puppet shows in the park, to special events at the library, to prayer and play groups on every Monday and Wednesday every week, keep the house clean, keep the family fed (healthy food of course), do planned tot school activities several times a week, daily art projects, clean out the basement, etc. etc. etc.

And, somehow I also envisioned lazy days hanging out in the backyard, with nothing to do, as well as a perfectly-content-and-at-peace-mama who never lost her temper or sense of pure serenity, always patient and gentle and kind.

What was I thinking?!

It wasn't too long until those pretty pictures in my mind weren't so pretty anymore and were actually causing a whole lot of stress. And I was tired. T-I-R-E-D. Tired just from thinking about all of these plans, and wondering what was wrong with me - I only have one child! I know mothers who are on the go all the time with 4 or 5 children! How do they do it?

These questions swam around in my head one morning as I prayed for the energy just to get out of bed and maybe get the laundry done. My 2 year old came in the room and climbed up in bed with me wanting to play and snuggle. That's when I mumbled something about "Tired. Need sleep." (And so, a blog was born.)

My favorite, non-child-centered, blog is conversiondiary.com. The author, Jennifer, had this great post one day. In it she mentions finding out what restores your energy when you are feeling drained. Is it relaxing with friends, chatting, socializing? Or is it being alone, quietly working on some project or just thinking? If it's socializing, you are an extrovert. If it's quiet time alone, you are an introvert.

I, most certainly, am an introvert.

I've had to realize being on the go all the time is not healthy for me.

And I don't think it's necessary for a 2 year old to do everything available for them to do. If we are always doing special things, they aren't special any longer. He may decide it's the norm, and there we are - stuck trying to do bigger, better, more-special things.

A 2 year old needs a mother who is at peace within herself, so much more than he needs fun activities to do.

I started asking myself a few questions when planning our activities for each week:

• Will he have more fun going to this particular activity than he would just staying at home and playing?
  
  
• Is there anything extraordinarily important about this activity? (Is it a once in a lifetime opportunity? Is it a great chance to learn about something he's shown an interest in?)




• Do I feel that this would be an enjoyable outing for us and a chance to get out of the house (which we occasionally really, really need) or would preparing for it, messing with routines, missing naptime, etc. just bring a lot of stress into our lives?



• Do I feel I have to do this because others are doing it? (If that's how I'm feeling, and the only reason I'm contemplating doing something then it's a major red flag that I'd be happier not doing it. And Mama's happiness is what it's all about. Seriously.)

• Will the needs of the family as a whole still be easily met if we do this? This includes having basic housework and chores done, meals planned, laundry, etc. It's ok to plan time to do these daily things that must be done in order to keep a house running in a non-chaotic manner. It's ok if other things have to go in order to do these things. Taking care of my home and family should be a joy and a privilege, not something I do with my leftover time after running us all ragged.

They've made a difference, these questions. We've chosen to not do at least 5 things on our original summer activity list in the last 2 weeks. And it's been great. Homelife is under control. We've spent more time playing outside (and in Minnesota, we have to make the most of these warm days; they don't last very long!), more time on normal, every day fun things, and more time just plain being together.

I also want to talk about how I'm working on setting up my schedule in a way that takes into consideration my priorities, child development and child stress, as well as actual time-management for the things that must be done, but that will have to wait for part 2, and maybe part 3. :)

Have a beautiful, lazy summer day! :)

Art Time - Playing with Cars

This is by far M's favorite art activity. This is what he usually wants to do. I have to talk him into trying other things. It's a lot of fun, and we have a ton of paintings hanging around our home with tire tracks all over them. :)

We buy big rolls of freezer paper at the grocery store and use this for most of our art projects. The shiny side is great for fingerpainting (or anything else except watercolors), and the matte side is great for watercolors. It's much less expensive than craft paper rolls.

Tape a large piece of paper to your work surface. Let your child gather a few small cars, or anything with wheels; ones with some kind of tread make the best tracks, but the smooth ones are fun too.

We use a muffin tin with applesauce cups stuck inside for our paint tray. Grab the paint brushes and "plop" some paint on the paper. Here M is making "puddles":

Take the cars and run them through the paint.

Put more paint down, grab another car, run it through. Your little one will catch the hang of this very quickly, believe me.

In the end you have a pretty painting like this:

Then, more fun! Stick your child at the kitchen sink full of soapy water and let him wash all the cars, paintbrushes, etc. while you sit back and relax. Yes, it's messy. Yes, you'll probably end up really washing the cars and paintbrushes. Yes, water might get everywhere. Put a towel on the chair, on the floor, and anywhere else you want and let them explore and have fun. The plus side is a little mess = a lot of time entertaining themselves while you relax, fold the laundry, whatever. :)

Enjoy your messy art time! And have a beautiful day! :)

Setting up an Open-ended Art Area

I recently read a great post about open-ended art here. And setting up an area for M to create whatever he wants has been on my mind a lot lately. He's been painting and gluing since he was able to sit up by himself, so I'm not too worried about him making messes (and in the kitchen or outside the mess is pretty easy to clean up) but I'm not sure how to put it all together in our tiny home, or what should be included.

Right now he was a lap tray that we call his "desk" in a corner of the living room. Here he has a sketch pad of plain white paper, some coloring books (recent additions since he just started being interested in them), a bucket of crayons and colored pencils, some construction paper scraps, scissors, a glue stick, and a small container of the pieces he's cut up from the construction paper, as well as some stickers. He did make some collages at first, but he is not a big fan of the glue stick. He is a glue bottle kind of guy. Squeezing the glue is a huge part of the fun for him. Obviously that can't be done in the living room, or I might turn into the crazy-mama-who-yells. ;)

In the kitchen he has an art easel with a drawer. One side has a white board. We normally keep peices of newsprint up on that side, held in place with magnets. His markers are here, more stickers, chalk for the chalkboard on the other side, and more magnets. He makes several drawings here daily.


When he paints it's usually outside on his homemade easel, or inside at the table, doing something I've set up for him - open-ended or crafty. However, I like the idea of him being able to do it on his own whenever he wants. *But* I like the set up we have now because it works for us. So, I'm going to try having a container of other supplies - more paper, glue (in a bottle), less-messy paints like his do-a-dot painters and roll-on painters, tissue paper, scissors, etc. Having it in a container means I can set it out in the morning and he can do what he wants with it, then I can take it off at dinner time or whenever we don't want it out. I plan on trying this some time soon, hopefully one day this week if I can get myself organized in time.


I'd love to hear from anyone who has other suggestions for what to keep in our art container. Am I adding too much? Should I rotate items in some way? Do you have a place in your home where your children can create whenever they want? How is it set up in your home? Have you posted on your blog about this topic? If so, leave the link in the comments section - I'd love to read them!


We will still try to do (almost) daily art projects and may take part, once in a while, in this "open-ended art carnival" that a reader introduced me to.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Easy Way to Make Puzzles

When M was old enough to do basic, very easy, puzzles, I started trying to make them myself. I tried every suggestion I could find online - glue pictures to foam, to cereal boxes, foam core board, laminate them... and on and on and on.

Well, after a lot of experimenting I came up with this way and have been happily making these great, easy little puzzles ever since. I'm sure others make puzzles this way too, but I haven't seen it online. It literally takes about 5 minutes to do the main part. You do have to wait a while for the drying and flattening, but if you are in that much of a hurry why are you making your own puzzles??! ;)

You will need:

• Some newsprint, newspaper, or scrap paper to cover your work surface.
• Some decoupage glue.
• A foam paintbrush.
• Your picture. This can be clipart, a photo, a magazine picture, etc. The one shown here is from an online free coloring page that I copied into my paint program and colored, then printed. *If you are printing a picture out, it MUST be printed on glossy photo paper.* Anything else will smear with the glue.
• Some thin but sturdy cardboard from a food or cereal box - this one is from a box of crackers.

Paint a coat of glue onto the cardboard, stick the picture on, and paint a coat of glue over it. Done. :) Well, with the hard part anyway. If you are doing a small 4 x 6 like this one it will take you about 2 minutes, including set up. Sooo easy!

Next, put it somewhere to dry. I usually wait overnight, but you don't necessarily have to. Just wait till the glue is pretty much dry.

If it has bent a little as the glue dried, you can cover it with wax paper and set a heavy book on it for a day to flatten it back out.

Once it is lying flat like you want it, you can cut the excess cardboard off, draw your puzzle pieces on the back and cut them out:

And voila - a puzzle! I've made a lot of these, and they always turn out great.

Here's the first one I made (a little worse for wear), over 2 years ago. It is 8 1/2" x 11" and cut into 4 large pieces. I put magnets on the back and Tigger has been our fridge puzzle ever since. Every kid that comes into our house has to play with this - it's been a big hit!

Want a frame for your puzzle? For very small children, it's nice to have something they can set the pieces into. Make your puzzles with the thin cardboard described above, and use thicker corrugated cardboard for a frame. For example, if you are creating an 8x10 puzzle, cut an 8x10 rectangle out of a piece of corrugated cardboard. You may need to trim a tiny bit off of this to allow a little space for manipulation of the puzzle pieces. Then glue your frame to another piece of cardboard. The nice thing about this is if you are creating several puzzles the same size, you can use one frame for all of them.

Have some fun making puzzles. And have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School

Matthew is 34 months old

*I have to apologize again this week for our lack of modesty. No, M doesn't ALWAYS wear just underwear and a t-shirt. I do make him dress to go out or to the store. But at home inside this is what he wants, and I'm just not prepared to make a big deal out of it. *

Every day this week M has asked to "play school". He is just really into it lately. I know a big part of it is getting to spend one on one time with me... I have a hard time balancing all the things that need to be done in a day and I'm thankful for Tot School because it helps me schedule in time just for M. It's good for both of us!

This week we hunted for items for our nature basket. We have a tiny green apple that fell into our yard from the neighbor's tree, a bunch of oak leaves with tiny acorns in the middle, a rock that he dug up, a little mushroom, and a piece of bark:

We did a lot of drawing with sidewalk chalk. His drawing has really taken off in the last couple of weeks - it actually looks like what he says it is. This is so amazing to me. Here he drew a football and a fire engine:

I'm sorry I just can't remember whose blog I saw this on, but it was not my original idea - I made an old potato salad bucket into a piggy for him and he loves feeding it his pretend food. He makes all the appropriate piggy noises too. It's pretty funny to listen to. :)

We got the feltboard out after putting it away a month or two ago and then completely forgetting about it. It's a good thing because it was like having a new toy. We did the "5 Green and Speckled Frogs" song and he really got into making the frogs jump into the pool and then taking them off the board. We did this over and over again.

We sorted some color cards that I printed out and laminated from here. Each card has an object on it (ex. purple flower) and I made pockets on a file folder of the different colors. We took turns picking a card and then putting it in the right pocket. I've found making things into a game like this where we take turns, or close our eyes, or something along those lines, helps him become more interested in some activities.

We did some of these ABC puzzle cards that I got from the dollar store. He wasn't into this so much so it didn't last very long. He hasn't gotten the small letters figured out yet, and something about this frustrates him.

We used tongs to put these cute erasers into an ice cube tray.

Then we sorted them into 3 piles. He wanted to use the tongs for this too.

My favorite thing was something I didn't get a picture of. We had a nice rain shower on Tuesday and he wanted to open the window and raise the screen, and we put our hands out and felt the rain and talked about it. He loved this and so did I. :)

Hope you all had a great week too! For more Tot School posts visit 1+1+1=1.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday - David and Goliath

We had a lot of fun with this one! We read the story about David and Goliath in our Bible for toddlers.

Then, to help the story "stick" in M's mind we did some fun stuff with rocks.

We painted them:

Then put them in a little glass votive holder for a table centerpiece:

We also drew this on the patio:

And took turns tossing rocks into the squares and saying the numbers:

Whoever's rock landed in the square with the bigger number won. Simple, yet lots of fun for a 2 year old who normally isn't allowed to throw rocks!

I thought about drawing a giant and trying to hit him in the head (like David did to Goliath); but fortunately my brain kicked in just in time to realize that might not be a good idea, and might be pretty horrifying for a small child. Hee hee.

We did have a talk about how we normally don't throw rocks at people, but God told David it would be ok this ONE time because Goliath was so mean and David had to win so the people could be safe. We didn't mention death or anything very gory; neither did his little Bible, which is one of the reasons I love it so much!

For more ideas about Bible stories and activities to go with them for your young child, visit some of these sights:

Christianpreschoolprintables.com

DLTK-Bible.com

BibleStorySundays.com

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art time! Chalk and Paint

We have this wonderful, wonderful book - Scribble Art by Mary Ann Kohl.

It is full of great ideas for art. Most of it is open-ended art, focusing on the process not the product. That's hard for me sometimes; I do like me a good craft every now and then. :) However, I have seen with M that he seems to get the most enjoyment (and is occupied the longest, which is always a plus for the mama) with simple art. Painting, glueing, drawing, building, sculpting, etc. With no end product in mind, just the enjoyment of... art.

Today we tried a project in the book that we haven't tried before. It sounded really neat: dip colored chalk in white paint and draw on black paper. It is supposed to outline the chalk with white. Well, for the first time, I was disappointed by a suggestion in this book. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say maybe we just didn't do it correctly, or maybe M needs to be a bit older to have it turn out like it's supposed to.

He seemed to think he should paint with the chalk, instead of draw with it. So he didn't press down on it really, and not much chalk showed up on the paper.

Here is a picture of it finished and hanging up to dry:

I think we'll try something similar some other time - dipping chalk in water or liquid starch and drawing on black paper. The chalk by itself looked pretty on the paper, and getting it wet might enhance the color a bit.

I have to say, M's opinion was a bit different though - he loves his finished artwork and when it dries he wants to hang it in his room. :) And of course we will.

If you try this and it turns out better, let me know. I'd love to see some pictures!

Have a beautiful day (even if it doesn't turn out like you wanted)!

Tools for Tots - Weather Chart!

Update: I found some free weather clip art, added it to the chart the I made, and created a .pdf file that you can download here to make your own weather chart!



We've been learning about the different seasons a lot in the past few months. It naturally leads to talking about weather.

I found these little weather cards at Science A to Z under the weather unit link:
If you are interested in making these, they do have a free sample that you can sign up for. Otherwise they cost a little bit.

I simply laminated all the pieces and added magnets to the back of the small cards. We keep the chart taped to the fridge, and check to see what it looks like outside, then M picks the correct magnet to put on the chart. Very simple, easy to understand, and quick! And it makes him feel so proud! I'm not sure why exactly, but the why doesn't matter, does it? ;) (The masking tape is not the prettiest touch, I know. I don't know why I don't *see* these things until the picture is already taken.)
Enjoy! And have a beautiful (sunny!) day!

A "Dog" Craft (or... maybe some other animal...)

The first thing Saturday morning M wanted to do "art". I was a little bleary-eyed, but that was ok, you can't hold back a creative genius just because you are tired. ;)

So I asked him, "do you want to make a collage, do you want to paint, or do you want to draw with your markers?" I'm thinking, do I need to get out the glue, paint, what? M had a confused look on his face, and said, "No, Mommy, I want to make a DOG!" A dog? Well, that's a bit specific for a tired mama brain on a Saturday morning, isn't it? He normally isn't that specific in his art requests. Maybe we are entering the "crafty project" stage.

Anyway, the wheels slowly started turning in my head, and I came up with something that made him happy, but doesn't really look like any dog I've ever known. I'm not sure what it is. Anyway, it was fun, and that is what counts, right?

IF you want to make this same... um, creature... here's what you'll need:

paper bag, marker, scissors, paint in the color of your child's choice, something to paint with (we used a sponge), 2 googley eyes, glue, and 3 brads (if you want moving parts, and, honestly, who doesn't?). You'll also need a piece of cardstock or some heavy paper to glue the "dog" to.

1. Draw your dog parts on the paper bag - body, head, 4 legs/feet, tail, 2 ears:

2. Paint the dog parts with color of choice. M chose white. White didn't really go with the weiner type dog I had in my mind's eye and had already drawn on the paper bag; I was thinking more along the lines of brown, but he was not to be swayed. He knew what he wanted.

3. After the paint dries, cut out your pieces. The nice thing about painting on paper bags is that the paint soaks in and dries fairly quickly. You'll appreciate this if you have a child who is as impatient as mine is.

4. Glue the body of the dog onto your cardstock paper, then glue on the head, eyes, and feet as well.


6. Poke holes in the paper where you want the ears and tail to go, then poke a brad through each ear and the tail and then into the holes. Flip the paper over and open the brad prongs so they secure the pieces to the dog. (I'm so sorry I can't find the picture I took of this step, but you can see from the next couple of pictures where we attached the pieces with the brads.)

7. Use your marker to draw the nose and mouth. If you are a better artist than me (and you probably are) you could draw the head of the dog a little differently instead of using a plain old circle, and it might actually look like a dog when you are done! Imagine!

8. Tape it up and let your child "wag" the dog's tail and flop his ears around. What fun!

Enjoy! And have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School

(Matthew is 34 months)

My first Tot School post! I have read Carisa's blog daily for over a year now and it has been incredibly inspiring to me. I've been doing what she calls "tot school" with M for quite a long time, and one of the decision makers about whether or not to start my own blog was the fact that I was just so darn excited to be able to share what we do for our tot school time together.

Warning: my son has taken to wearing just his underwear around the house lately, so please excuse the lack of modesty. :)

We played with blocks a lot, building houses for his little action figures. He has really been into blocks lately, which I love to see.

We did these little wooden puzzles together:
We did our foam number puzzle. He hammers the numbers in while I tell him what they are. He really is not into numbers right now, so I keep trying to get him interested. Usually anything involving a hammer will catch his attention. We got this idea from Carisa, who does it with her tot with a foam ABC puzzle.
We worked with our Melissa and Doug Lacing Bead set. I tried showing him how to make a square, circle, square, circle pattern, but again... he was not all that interested. He did learn the word "cylinder" though!

We worked with our pattern blocks for a while. I have the magnetic kind and we put the pattern cards on a cookie sheet to do them. He stayed with this activity longer this time than he has in the past. He loved doing the helicopter, the robot, and the wagon. And he learned the word "rombus". It's so cute to hear him say words like "rombus" and "cylinder". :)

He stuck some car stickers on the little crate he keeps his matchbox-style cars in. I take the sticky part around the stickers off the page for him - it seems to help him get the stickers off a little more easily. Towards the end both he and I were covered in stickers. :)

We also played a lot of bingo. This is a picture of him playing it yet again with Daddy, giving me a break from all the bingo (we really have been playing it a lot). I printed the set out from this site, and we use buttons for markers. It's great for learning to take turns, counting, and to develop vocabulary.
That's it for this week. For more tot school ideas visit here!

Have a beautiful day! :)