What I want for Christmas – Confessions of a Mama-teacher ;)

I have a feeling a lot of moms out there who homeschool or do any sort of tot school or preschool at home with their kids are a lot like this (Dear God, please don’t let me be the only one)… I can’t think of a thing I want for myself for Christmas, but I could give you a list 5 pages long of things I’d love to have for M – toys that help him learn and develop many different skills while having fun.

I just love browsing through quality online toys this time of year; there are so many great things out there that would fit well with the activities I do with M. 

I thought I’d share some great deals with you on some fantastic things I’ve found… and it’s a great way for me to remember what’s on my wishlist when a little extra $$$ comes my way.  (Oh, Santa ??)

Take a look at all these lacing cards and lacing activities.  They  have every shape imaginable, even some that are dot-to-dots at the same time.  Isn’t that brilliant?  M would love the construction and tool ones.  And such great prices!!

And here is a group of ABC and phonics center kits.  There are so many possibilities with these.  There’s even a math center kit, a sequencing story kit, and several science kits that I need to keep in mind for a couple of years from now.  I am practically drooling, hee hee. :)

So, now that you know all this, send me presents!  OK, that is just a joke. ;)  Please don’t send me presents.  But do take a look around the site and the pages I’ve linked to.  You’ll be seeing me post about this site again, and you may just get a little present yourself sometime soon. ;)  For fun, let me know which item would be on your wishlist.

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – Dec. 21, 2009

In the Art Box last week (last two weeks actually): Christmas foam stickers, tempera paint, watercolors, glue, glitter glue, glitter, oil pastels, assorted ribbons, pom-poms, a pinecone, some cotton balls, a wooden toy train engine, various papers, scissors

On a recent trip to Walmart we saw a bunch of cute little wooden vehicles for just 88 cents a piece. I let M pick one and he chose a little train engine (I know, it looks like a bus to me too, but the “expert” says it’s a train engine). Into the art box it went, and it was the first thing he chose to work on. I am planning to go back and get all of them, he loved painting his own train!

(It has a special place on his dresser, and I couldn’t resist getting this shot of it in front of a picture of M and me when he was 12 months old.)

One afternoon, he was very busy cutting paper and gluing it; I wasn’t really paying attention, then realized he was gluing layers and layers of things together… not spread out on one page, but just scraps of paper piled up.

He was exceedingly proud of his little creation:

See the inside? There are cotton balls sandwiched in there along with all kinds of other little treasures. :)

A few weeks ago we made a baby owl using a pinecone and cotton to go with the book Owl Babies. (I should’ve posted about this, but never got around to it.) When M saw a pinecone in his box he decided he wanted to make a Mama owl! He asked me for a beak and some googley eyes, which I happily provided. They were not sticking on so he stuffed pom poms in the pinecone and then glued the eyes to them! He did this completely on his own. I thought it was absolutely genius, but I may be a little biased. ;)

Note the concentrating tongue in this picture:

The finished Mama Owl:

And the back:

I was told the large piece of green foam is her back and the small pieces of green foam are her feet. So, yeah, her feet are in back. I’m totally OK with that and still think he’s brilliant. ;)

For some reason I was feeling a little nutty and put glitter in his box. The kind you shake out all over everything. Everything, meaning EVERYTHING. He will not be getting glitter again any time soon.

Paintings (you knew they were coming, right?)…

With an empty thread spool:

With tempera paints and paintbrushes:

He is definitely going through some sort of single-color-all-over-the-paper phase, not sure what that’s all about…

Here, he was experimenting with the roller. He asked me for some red paint and some white paint and said he was going to “paint the whole paper red, then change it back into regular paper with the white paint”. I tried to keep a straight face and let him go for it. It didn’t quite work out like he hoped. ;)

And lastly, watercolors:

I’d love to see what your little artists have been creating! Link up below!

Have a beautiful day! :)

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