Books of the Week – Dec. 19, 2009

Whew, I didn’t know if I’d get around to writing this post or not. (being as how I’m still on my “break”, hahahahahaha; I think I’m back, I just don’t want to actually say so for some reason.  Crazy girl.)
I have to tell you about one of our favorite Christmas books… Little Rabbit’s Christmas, by Harry Horse.
 
This is a book about a little rabbit who wants a red sled for Christmas.  He loves this sled.  Loves it.  And of course the Christmas Rabbit brings him his sled.  Little Rabbit suddenly feels very conflicted – he wants his friends to admire the sled, but he doesn’t want to share it.  He goes off where he can be alone with his sled, but that isn’t much fun either as there is no one to watch him sliding down the hill. 
Little Rabbit gets into a bit of trouble and ends up stuck in the snow with the red sled broken.  (M yelled “OH NO!” at this part, he was really into this book, hee hee.)  Little Rabbit’s friends are more generous than he, thankfully, and they help him out, fix his sled and even give it a new coat of paint.  Then they all enjoy sledding for the rest of the day… together.  Little Rabbit learns that the best things are even better when they are shared with friends. 
This book is fun to read, keeps M interested, and has so many good (yet subtle) lessons about friendship, sharing, helping, and how to handle one’s feelings appropriately.  There’s even a little lesson about listening to your mama when she tells you to wear your mittens. :)  Such a cute book and we all love it.  This is going on our “buy” list for sure.
For more book reviews, visit the link-up at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

I’m back… kinda, sorta. Well, ok – not really. ;)

Just wanted everyone to know the Art Box MckLinky will be up and running next Monday morning.  I know this is a busy time for everyone, and wanted to let you know early so you can write your Art Box posts if you want to, have the energy to do it, and some extra time on your hands, hee hee. :)

I’m scheduling out a Christmas-y Tot School post for Sunday, as well as a post for the other blog Monday morning.  But, Christmas on my husband’s side of the family is happening this weekend, so I won’t really be around much, and I’m not sure how great I’ll be about responding to emails and comments. 

Merry Christmas, Everyone… I hope you all have a wonderful and very blessed time with your families!!!

Real Life is Calling…

Screaming actually, for me to pull my nose away from the computer screen and pay attention to it. 

I’ve known for a while that I need to take a break, but was hoping to put it off until after the New Year; this is just such a fun time of year to be blogging. 

BUT, as it turns out my little break will have to begin now.  I don’t anticipate it lasting longer than a week or two, but we’ll see.  Blogging has been such a great creative outlet for me, as well as motivation to create fun activities to share with M (and you!).  I’m having so much fun and it really is a hobby that gives me energy for other things… most of the time.

Lately however, I’m finding less time to get anything done.  As you probably know, thanks to my many laments about this, M stopped napping a long time ago.  However, up until recently he was still having quiet/rest time.  Now he won’t do this unless I’m resting with him (which on one level is really, really great since I am tired most of the time, lol), but obviously if I am resting, I can’t be trying to get 100 things done in the half hour he’s down. 

At this time of year too, my husband isn’t as busy in the evenings (normally he has 1 to 2 meetings per week in the evenings – built in “me” time after M goes to bed), so that means I’m pretty much on call all the time.  What little free time I have right now needs to go towards other things.  I realized this today when some simple cleaning chores had me growling and grumpy, and taking it out on my sweet little boy.  I need time to work on some projects, get my priorities straightened out, and organize this house before it drives me nuts.  Seriously, I’m nervous about the influx of new *stuff* we’ll be bringing into our home in about 2 weeks!  I’m going to work on organizing toys and school supplies… out with the old to make room for the new.

I’ve recently received a few very kind and sweet emails from new readers… I’m so thrilled to hear from you!  This is the hardest part of taking a break – not getting to interact with all the wonderful people I’ve “met” in the blogging world.  If you are new here, rest assured I will be stopping by your sites to visit as soon as I can – I LOVE meeting new friends and reading new (to me) blogs.  And I will be back blogging up a storm here as soon as possible.  In the meantime, feel free to look around the archives!

How is it I can never say what I want to say in less than 5 paragraphs??  Anyway, I’m off to catch up on emails and my google reader before I switch off my beloved laptop.  ;)  Then onto real life…

Have a beautiful day! :)

Stringing Ornaments and Spelling Names (printable included!)

I found a  fun activity at kizclub.com, and tweaked it a bit for my own purposes…

Now one of M’s shelf activities for the week is this stringing and spelling activity.  I am working on helping him identify his name, so I created these ornaments from cardstock and then made a mini-picture of what his name should look like once the ornaments are strung together.
I also made one that spells Mommy and one that spells Daddy.  Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have all three hanging on the wall. :)

I traced my ornament template onto several pieces of colored cardstock, cut them out, added details and letters with a black marker, then laminated them.  I punched two holes at the top where the hanger would be for real ornaments, and put it all in a box with a needle and yarn.  M loved doing this, and loved that it was his name and his “special letters”! 
The printable I’ve created has the large ornament template as well as rows of smaller ornaments in color.  You can print these and cut them where you need to, then add the letters you want with a black marker.  I’ve included a page of black and white ones too if you want to color them in yourself or use different colors.  There are instructions on the first page of the .pdf file.  Click the image below to take a look and download:Have a beautiful day! :)

Music Time – Printable Christmas Song Pages!

I am making an effort to bring more music into our days. Several months ago I made a songbook for M using a simple 3-ring binder:
I found clipart to represent each song, which I put at the top of each page. I printed out about 25 songs to start with and since then I’ve added many more.


M has a small stash of instruments:
Some are homemade… we don’t claim to be very fancy here. :) He has a harmonica, jingle bells, tambourine, a shaker I made for him from a soda bottle with beads and buttons etc., a triangle, and a metal bowl with a wooden spoon that he uses for a drum. You can just imagine the music we make. ;) He loves to sit with the song book in front of him and hand out the instruments. He has become very good at knowing which song goes with which picture.
We sit around and play “music” (I use that word very, very loosely) and sing our songs every once in a while. However, it’s usually put away and we really don’t think of it very often. Of course when the songbook was brand new it was a different story, but now… well, it’s been neglected of late.

Christmas seems like the perfect time to bring it back out and make sure our home is music-filled! I’ve typed up some of our favorite Christmas carols, and will have the song book along with the instruments set out on M’s activity shelves for the rest of Advent and the Christmas season. They may well stay there permanently. :)

Click on the image below to download our Christmas pages and make your own song book!

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – December 7, 2009

 
In the art box last week:  chalk and black paper, black “scratch art” ornaments, stickers, cardboard spools (from ribbon), foam Christmas stickers, paint, scissors (regular and scalloped shaped), various papers, feathers, Christmas ribbon, cotton balls, glue, colored pencils.

Over the summer M was really into making collages, but for some reason he just hasn’t been interested lately.  I was happy to see the interest in collages flair up again, briefly, when he saw the pretty gold Christmas ribbon.  He cut it and used the scallop scrapbook scissors to cut some green paper and then, heavy on the glue, put it on black paper with some foam stickers.
Daddy came home while M was finishing this up and M could not be bothered with a kiss.  He said, “I’m decorating for Christmas, Daddy!!” :) 

He was very, very interested in the cardboard ribbon spools, and decided to see what kind of “tracks” they would make.  He asked for a saucer of red and blue paint and got busy: Finished painting: He was super-proud of this one, and it’s fun to see him experiment with things on his own.

Then he cut some paper into very small pieces and wanted to make a rainbow.  There was half a paper plate in the box, so I used that and drew some lines for him.  He got halfway through and stopped:

He really enjoyed the scratch art ornaments I found for him at Michael’s.  He had never done this before and thought it was really cool. :)  These will hang on our tree, when we get around to actually putting it up!

And then, it was back to painting.  That’s my boy.  Have you seen enough of M’s paintings yet?  If so, you’ll want to skip the rest of this, hee hee.  Here we go:
    
Let’s see what your kiddos did!  I love looking at all their fun art. :)  Link up below!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – December 6, 2009

M is 39 months old

 

This was a pretty easy and fun week for us.  I filled M’s shelves up with some Christmas-themed file folder games I made last year, a new puzzle, his ABC collage pages, and a couple of fun clothespin math activities.  We also had no less than 3 play dates and a day at our local community center’s creative play area.  And a big dinner at the in-laws to finish the week out.  Whew.  The busy season has begun I guess. :)

 

ABC Activities:

M can not get enough of cut and paste pages lately.  He is going through 2 letters per week in his ABC book and we’ll soon be done with the whole alphabet at this rate.  He always asks for his “cutting pages” first; I think he loves that he can do it completely on his own and has the routine down.  However, I’m not sure he’s really learning much about letter sounds from this activity, except when we take his book down and “read” it.  I’m thinking of starting up the letter lapbooks again after we finish our ABC book with the collages, because he really seemed to soak in a lot with the lapbook activities.   He’s still not interested in doing any letter crafts, so I’ll wait a while before trying that with him again.  Anyway… here are the collage pages he’s done in the past two weeks:

He also spent some time looking at the ABC Book and doing the tracing pages: See that tripod grasp?  He’s really come a long way with this lately.  I showed him how “real artists” hold their paintbrushes and told him it’s important to make those muscles really, really strong, and he totally got into it.  He always wants me to help him hold the paintbrush the right way and it’s carried over to activities like this!

 

We matched the capital letters on a gingerbread file folder game from here.  Next week this will be out again and we’ll match “baby” letters to the “mama” letters. When I made this I put magnets on the back of the letters and we do one half of the alphabet at a time on a cookie sheet.  We also take turns (I made a lot of mistakes that he had to correct ;) ), which makes it more fun and game-like for him.  He tells me a letter to find and then I have to find it and put it on the right spot, then I do the same for him.  If he is having trouble, it’s easy to tell him the color of the circle he needs, as a little help.

 

Counting

We played this fun clothespin counting game with Christmas tags, ribbons, and foam stickers:

And we counted lots of things throughout the week in our everyday normal routine.  He is really doing well with counting and I love seeing him light up when he really “gets” something!

 

Patterns

We played another file folder game from here.  In this one M had to match patterns to create mittens: The right side piece of each mitten attaches with velcro.  He did great with this, which I knew he would (he was able to do it last year), but I added in a step where he had to describe the design to me - “a green rectangle above a blue circle” – as he found each mitten to match.

 

We also played a mitten matching game from the November issue of our High Five magazine.  Each mitten has a multi-colored design on it.  We played this Memory-style with the cards face down:

 

And we made ABAB patterns with some cardstock Christmas lights I made, using clothespins and yarn to string them up:

 

Colors

M did some color mixing with water in jars: He’s been asking to make colored ice cubes lately, which was something we did quite often over the summer.  He wants to use them in his bath.  Seriously, this kid comes up with some funny (but fun!) ideas sometimes.  So I decided to add a color mixing lesson in.  He loves using pipettes, so this is always fun.   Then he had fun dripping the water onto paper towels:

 

We did another file folder game.  This one was from here (also made last year).  I made the stockings into pockets and M loved fitting the candy canes into the matching stocking. 

 

Fine Motor Skills

Several of the above activities involved the use of fine motor skills (almost all of them, actually), but I also surprised M with a new (Dollar Tree) Mickey Mouse Puzzle.  He’s been putting his 24 piece floor puzzle together with no problem lately, so I wanted to see how he’d do with a 25 piece small puzzle.  He had it done in no time – all by himself!  He knew to look for pieces that had a little bit of whatever image he was looking for, and didn’t need any help at all.  I’ve asked for some puzzles for him for Christmas from relatives, and I’m interested to see how he does with a 50 piece one.  Needless to say I have bought out all the 25 piece ones at Dollar Tree. :) 

 

Music

We sang a lot this week and played instruments.  I have a binder of songs that I’ve put together for M and he has a small bin of instruments.  It’s more noise than anything, but it’s a lot of fun and he loves it.  There are no pics; I’ll have to do a separate post about it sometime!

M received a guitar for his 3rd birthday and this is how he likes to play it: Hee hee.   He asked me to get it for him a lot this week, and loves experimenting with the different sounds he can make with it.  We also listened to a lot of Christmas music – grown up and kid kinds. ;)  I have to be diligent about playing cds in our home because since he was born I haven’t listened to much music.  We never listen to the radio and I feel like I am always craving peace and quiet.  It’s been nice to have music back in our day, it can do so much to brighten our moods!

Creative Play

M has been dying to build a maze lately, but wanted help.  So this is what we did Friday morning:

He’s helping the Christmas Angel from his nativity set find her way out here. :)

I hope you all had wonderful weeks with your tots!  Go here to see more tot school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – December 5, 2009

Christmas books this week – of course! :)  These are two favorites from last year that I put on hold for us two weeks ago so we could enjoy them again this year.  M was very happy to see these beloved books again!
Little Owl and the Star, by Mary Murphy
I think this book is perfect for very young toddlers, even babies.  The text is very simple and it evokes the feeling of expectation and joy well.  Little Owl has a “waiting feeling”, then comes a star and Little Owl follows it.  He finds baby Jesus and is filled with happiness when the baby smiles at him.  Then the star shines so bright it fills the world with light.  M still loves this book, even though it’s a bit simpler than the stories he is used to now.  I really recommend this one, it’s super-cute and sweet!

The Little Drummer Boy, by Katherine K. Davis
I have to admit, I’ve always loved this song.  And after reading  (er, singing) this book last Christmas, we have pretty much been singing it all year.  M loves the song as much as I do and while I normally am not a fan of books that are really just songs with illustrations, I LOVE this one.  I literally get chills in the last few pages.  
For more reviews, go to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Our First Week of Advent

I’ve been seeing so many great posts about Christmas crafts and Advent wreaths… so many good things out there!  M is still not really into crafting, but I did sneak a couple of things in, so thought I’d share with you how our Advent is going!
First off, here’s our Advent wreath, made totally from Dollar Tree finds (at one time in my life I would never have admitted this, now I’m proud of it.  Go figure!): It’s very simple… but we snazz it up a bit when Christmas arrives.  There are pretty iridescent red berries in the middle surrounding the white candle (which won’t be lit until Christmas Eve), which is sitting on a round mirror – it’s hard to see in the picture.  Also, each taper is in a star shaped holder which is also really hard to see.  Hm.  Just take my word for it, in real life it’s prettier than in this picture. ;)
Here’s our Jesse Tree so far: Yep, not a single ornament is actually on the tree.  I’m not sure why M has them in the “air” but I’m sure he has a good reason in that 3 year old brain of his.  Next year we might use a piece of felt shaped like a Christmas tree – ornaments on a Christmas tree is easier to understand, maybe??
Here’s the little box we use to hold his nightly treasures, as well as the little manger with it’s daily pieces of “hay”: He calls it “The Jesus box”, hee hee.  And checks it multiple times per day hoping some candy has magically appeared in it.  (He gets a chocolate kiss in it each evening.)
Also, the little tree we have on the fridge that he puts a sticker on each evening (sticker also “appears” in the Jesus box :) ): Obviously it is not big enough for 22 more stickers.  Someone judged wrong when she cut it out.  So, it should be interesting-looking by the time Advent is over.
Now, for the crafts…
Wrapping paper with glitter mixed into the paint: See the glitter?  I wish my camera could capture it better:
And, he’s been begging to do sand art, which I swore would never, ever again be done inside after our first time.  Well, he talked me into it and made these: He really had a lot of fun with both of these little projects, and well, it’s something Christmassy, just not the cute crafts I was hoping for. However, I am glad that we will have these to look back on as the things he wanted to do this year.
Have a beautiful day! :)

Christmas-Themed Math Activities

We’ve been doing some fun activities this first week of Advent and I thought I’d share a couple of them with you now in a bit more detail.  You’ll also see them in the weekly Tot School post.

We did a great clothespin counting activity.  I found these cute Christmas tags and ribbon at the Target dollar spot.  I wrote a number from 1 to 10 on the tags, then attached a length of ribbon to each one with a stapler.  I put some foam Christmas stickers on clothespins (you’ll need 55 clothespins total) and M clipped them to the ribbons, counting up to the number on each tag as he did so.  This great idea came from here, where it was done with an autumn theme.    He really stuck with this and did all 10 tags!  Why I don’t have a picture of that, I’m just not sure. :)  Crazy mommy-brain.

 

Next, a fun patterning activity with clothespins (again!) and cardstock Christmas lights.  I made a pattern, then traced it onto red, green, blue, and yellow cardstock.  I cut out the lights then added detail with a black marker. 

M and I strung the lights up on some yarn which was tacked into his flannel board, which is just flannel on a foam core board and comes in handy for things like this.

There are no action shots because we took turns holding the Christmas light and yarn together while the other person clipped on the clothespins.  M is really into patterns now that he’s got it all figured out.  He told me, “they’re taking turns!”  Um, why didn’t I think of that?  Weeks of trying to figure out how to help him understand patterns… I could’ve used that idea! 

We did a simple ABAB pattern as you can see.  I’m going to do this with him again next week and see how he does with an ABCABC pattern – I’m running with the taking turns idea.  I’m not sure if an AABB pattern would make sense at this point. 

Both of these activities were really enjoyed by M and I love that he was honing those fine-motor skills as well as learning a little math!

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Minds of Boys – continued…

{parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here}

I have finally finished the book I’ve been reading and blogging about – The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life, by Michael Gurian.  (Seriously, what happened to the days when I could finish a book like this in a week?  This took me over a month!)

More bullet points of things I want to remember from this book…

• 
  
  The brain needs the complex interaction of all 5 senses in order to grow its tissue fully.  Because of this, screen time, especially in early childhood, can be detrimental to brain development, even if the child is watching “educational” shows. (p. 112)

• 
  
  “for every hour of television watched per day, the incidence of ADD and ADHD increased by 10 percent.” – from research in 2004 by a brain researcher at Children’s Hospital in Seattle – Dr. Dimitri Christakis. (p. 112)

• 
  
  Water is important to the brain.  Being thirsty causes problems for learning because it increases cortisol levels, creating stress.  The cortisol can make it difficult for the brain to give attention to learning tasks.  Juice and other drinks are not enough; within 5 minutes of drinking plain water cortisol levels can decrease. (p. 119)

• 
  
  A lot of carbohydrates in breakfast can make a brain “groggy”.  Protein helps keep the brain in a state of alertness. (p. 120)

• 
  
  The male brain develops  many learning functions later than the female brain.  Therefore more boys experience stress and pressure to mature more quickly, as well as  failure in school at an early age.  This can label them as “difficult”, “learning-disabled”, or “a discipline problem” for their entire school career.  Personal failure as a 3 to 5 year old can lead to an undermotivated boy in later school years. (p. 246)

• 
  
  Music and music classes help “wake up the brain” and having a music time prior to lessons may help with learning. (p. 273)

This was a very enlightening and interesting book.  I did find that the author did not seem to encourage homeschooling as much as I had hoped.  He referred to it as more of a last-resort if traditional schooling just isn’t *working* for a particular boy.

I found all the brain research and the differences between the brains of boys and girls fascinating. 

This book definitely helped me come up with some new ideas for how to plan my time at home with M.   We’ll be incorporating more breaks into our “school” time together; I’ll be trying to find more creative and active ways to engage him; at this age self-esteem and a sense of confidence are what I’ll try to instill in him most, as well as a secure attachment to those who are here to support and love him; we’ll also be concentrating on having more FUN and developing a joyful enthusiasm for learning; more music will be coming up too!  In addition, I’ll be more careful about what he’s eating for breakfast and making sure he drinks plenty of water during the day.   This will be hard for my sugar-loving, meat-hating child, but we will take it all in baby-steps. ;)

Have a beautiful day and make sure your kids do too! :)

Yet another Bob the Builder activity…

I can practically hear everyone jumping up and down with excitement about this (that's me being sarcastic). ;) Well, M is loving these and so I keep going; he thinks his mommy is pretty cool right now, ha! Little does he know the really cool mommies have better things to do with their time. However, I do think this is the last one for a while. He may never get tired of Bob and his millions of work trucks, but I am. Just a little!

Anyway, let me show you the new *Bob the Builder – Counting and Comparing Flip Book*…
We had a little apple unit early in fall and one of the items we used was an apple counting book that I printed from Childcareland. M loved it! So, I used that idea and took it one step further by making this one into a split flip book. You can flip either side of the book, and then compare the amount of trucks. We’ll use this to talk about “more” and “less”.

The cover:
The inside:
The trucks are laminated and attach to the pages with velcro dots. I’ve placed the correct number of velcro dots on each page as an added help with counting and developing one-to-one correspondence.

After the counting is done, start flipping the pages and ask “which side has more trucks?” and “which side has less trucks?”. Discuss how 10 is a larger amount than 3, etc. I think there’s a lot we’ll be able to do with this!

Recently M was playing a number match game and someone (we had company over) asked him which number was the *biggest* number, and M just stared at the numbers with a blank look on his face. Bigger? Well, they (the numerals) pretty much all looked the same size to him. I realized that amount and size can be difficult concepts for a child, when referring to numbers. And then this book popped into my head and now here it is! :)

The .pdf file is available for download here or just click on the image at the top of this post!
Have a beautiful day! :)