Sorry I’ve been MIA lately.  My email inbox is piling up, and so is a list of blog posts I want to write.  The hours in the mornings that I usually use for blogging have been sabotaged lately by sleepless nights due to M being sick for what seems like ages.  Poor little guy!  Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’m trying my best to get back on track; and if you are waiting for an email please be patient for just a little longer! :)

I appreciate you all so much!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Is Preschool Necessary? (part one)

Most of you know I don’t want to send M to preschool.  Intuitively, I want to keep him with me one more year – doing what we’ve been doing all along – hopefully helping him grow into a confident, capable boy with a caring heart.

I operate on intuition a lot.  This doesn’t mean logic and reason don’t come into play when I make decisions – they definitely do.  It just means that I am comfortable listening to my feelings and examining what my heart is telling me.  I have found that, quite often, my heart is picking up on easy-to-miss little things and whispering to me to pay attention!.

Intuition has “told” me of many engagements, new lives, even deaths, before I actually heard the news.  My family is never surprised when I know something before they tell me. 

Intuition told me to stay home with my new baby and let the world of work rush by without me; that what he really needed was for Mama to hold him and love him and know him, and that if I just did that everything else would fall into place.

Intuition had me at his side those first few weeks, loving him and bonding with him, hurrying to his side whenever he cried.  And intuition is what told me that in the natural course of things he wouldn’t always be so needy, and that at 6 months I would respond a tiny bit differently than at 6 weeks, and a bit more differently at a year, and so on.  I felt, quite often at that time, that I was being judged (although it could very well have just been those hormones!) for jumping up whenever he needed me.  When I began teaching him that he needed to be patient for mama and that mama would always come, but that sometimes learning to go to sleep is important too I would let him cry for a few minutes (never much though, to be honest).  And I distinctly remember seeing looks exchanged between people, as if to say – “wow, she’s finally learned!”  But the truth is, it was just intuition telling me that a baby at one year has different needs than a baby at 6 weeks.  It was a sense of his development and just knowing in my heart what he was ready for and what was best for our family.  I would still rush to a new baby as soon as possible if he cried!

Intuition is telling me, in a bit more than its usual whisper, that preschool is not right for M.  Not right now anyway.  Who knows, things may change by fall, I don’t know.  I do try to keep my mind open and pray that what is right and best for him is what ends up happening.  No matter how much I pray though, I keep coming back to the thought that as M’s mother, God has given me this gift of intuition to help me know what the right thing to do is.  As his mother, I understand and know him better than anyone else.  I am the primary advocate of his well-being, and it’s a job I don’t take lightly.

For his sake, as well as my own peace of mind, I want to take what I am feeling intuitively, and support it with reason.  There are a few factors that I want to explore and write about in relation to preschool:

• socialization, especially in light of the fact that he is naturally an introvert and can be a bit shy at times.
  
• academics – what is being taught in the preschool that we would send him to, and how this lines up with what he needs, wants, and is developmentally ready for, as well as what we want for him.
  
• the idea of “mothering” him too much – does he, at this age, need formal school time away from me?  If so, why? 
  

I’m trying to be so orderly about getting my thoughts put down on paper (cyber paper, that is), and it’s not an easy task for this jumbled up brain of mine. :)  Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll be able to write posts about all of these things.  Feedback is so very, very appreciated!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Crafty Science Experiment – Crystal Snowflakes

Winter has been around for a while, and M recently decided he needed something other than leaves hanging in front of his bedroom window (maybe I was in denial about the whole winter thing?).

I’ve seen this little project everywhere, so I’m sure it is new to no one except us.  I don’t know why we didn’t get around to doing it sooner.

It’s all about saturated solutions.  We used the following items:Borax, 5 pipecleaners, 2 dowels, food coloring, 5 glasses, measuring spoons, and a kettle for boiling the water.

First, boil some water.  We had a full kettle and used almost all of it to make 5 snowflakes.

While your water is boiling, form the pipecleaners into snowflakes.  We cut each snowflake into 3 sections, leaving one longer than the others (for hanging), and twisted them together in the middle, then pulled apart the six points of the snowflake.  Twist the long end around one of the dowels, then hang in a glass.  Make sure your snowflake is not touching the sides of the glass:
Next, I poured the boiling water into each glass, and M began measuring tablespoons of borax into them. (Note – borax can be harmful if swallowed, so make sure your child is able to do this without deciding to take a taste!).  He stirred until the borax dissolved, then added more until there was a bit that wouldn’t dissolve, making a saturated solution – yay! :)  I think it took about 3 tablespoons of borax for every cup or so of water.  We weren’t too exact, to be honest. ;)


We decided a little color would be nice, so M stirred in a bit of food coloring.  We added in a quick color-mixing review, and made one of them purple by using blue and red together.
Then we let all the little snowflakes hang out over night:
They stayed in their solution for about 18 hours total.  The following day, the glasses looked like this: Isn’t it beautiful?  I think it would be really neat to do this to a glass jar to make a pretty votive holder.  I hated washing all those pretty crystals off, but decided we do need drinking glasses after all.
The snowflakes turned out great!  Here are some of them:

We let them dry on a paper towel, then moved them all to a clean dowel rod and hung them in front of the window:

You can also do this with sugar or salt.  The main thing is making sure your water is saturated with whatever it is you are using.  If you use sugar, use a string instead of a pipe cleaner, and make rock candy!  (You could use a pipecleaner, but I’m thinking about the fuzz getting in my mouth – bleck!)

I’m linking this up to   Be sure to check it out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Art – Epiphany Stars and Corn Syrup Painting

Today is the 12th day of Christmas – are your little drummers drumming?  If they aren’t, I bet they will if you tell them they can. ;)  I’m sure mine will, although that’s only one drummer, not twelve.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be ok with it if I had twelve drummers!

Tomorrow is Epiphany, and we’ll be moving the wise men all the way to the stable, where they finally get to see the baby they’ve been looking for.  They will bring gifts, and I plan to have a little something (a very little $5.00 something) for them to give to M also.

We decided to make some stars to help celebrate, and I turned it into a full-fledged art project by introducing a technique we’ve never tried before – painting with corn syrup.  This was fun and I wished we’d tried it sooner.  It is not as messy as it sounds!

Here’s what you’ll need:Corn syrup, food coloring, small paint brushes, glitter, craft sticks, and stars cut from cardboard or cardstock.  And, because I just wouldn’t be me if I included all the supplies in the photo, we also used parchment paper, double-stick tape, scissors, and an ice cube tray.

First, pour a puddle of corn syrup onto one of the stars: 

Then use a craft stick to spread it out towards the points.  You want to cover the entire star:

Next, squeeze on a couple of drops of food coloring: 

And use the pointy end of a paintbrush to swirl the colors (you could use a toothpick or skewer for this too, obviously):

We loved watching the colors swirl around – so pretty!

Keep swirling out towards the points, until you have it just the way you want it.  We should have left it at that, because it was beautiful.  However, M was sure a little glitter would be great, and a little glitter probably would have been fine.  I think I liked it better before the glitter, but apparently I forgot to get a photo of that.  Here’s with glitter:

You can’t tell in the photo, but the corn syrup makes it very, very shiny – perfect for a star!  It almost leaves it looking like painted glass or ceramic.

Leave them to dry overnight.  Depending on your humidity level, drying could take a couple of days.  Our air is very dry these days, and it only took one night for our stars to dry.  They look just as shiny after they are dry, but are no longer sticky.

Next, we decided to try painting our cardboard stars with colored corn syrup and paint brushes instead of a craft stick.

I poured a little corn syrup into four wells of an ice cube tray, added some food coloring, and a tiny amount of glitter: 

We each painted one star (after watching, I just had to try this for myself – it was a lot of fun!):

Painting with the paint brushes left a much thinner layer of corn syrup, which meant less mess and a shorter drying time.  However, we weren’t able to achieve the swirling effect from earlier.  The swirling was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch.  When we do this again, we will paint plain corn syrup onto our paper, then drip on food coloring and swirl.  Hopefully that will mean a thinner layer of corn syrup, while still having the swirled look.

Our finished (painted) stars:

We have company coming over for dinner tonight, and one last evening enjoying the light of our Christmas tree.  We may watch The Little Drummer Boy, read Little Star, and sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  We’ll read the story of the Three Kings from M’s little Bible tomorrow and I have a little mosaic crown project set up for him (pictures of that later).

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

New Year – New Hopes, New Goals

This sweet praying angel is one of my favorite things to bring out at Christmas time.  She was given to me by a dear friend, and I imagine her prayers are my own, but she’s a bit more diligent about it than I am.  :)  Doesn’t she just seem so peaceful and trusting, even in the middle of unending supplication?  I may leave her out for all of 2011.

I know what she and I are praying for as this new year begins:  peace, grace, focus… and a little joy would be nice too. (A very little joy, wrapped up in a blanket, and looking an awful lot like a baby would certainly be nice, wouldn’t it? ;) This might take a miracle, but my sweet angel and I will continue to pray.)

I’m in the middle of drafting a post about the routine and rhythm we’ve developed over the past couple of months, so I won’t go into that too much here – but I do hope to use my time more wisely this year; and plan to set aside time on a regular basis to see what’s working, what needs to change, and whether or not my priorities are what they ought to be.

There are a few things I am going to work on, and I’m going to try to schedule most of these into my weekly calendar somehow:

• I need to find make time to exercise at least 3 times a week.
• Read daily to M (the snuggled-up kind of reading, not just bedtime stories or our chapter books at lunch).
• Prepare and actually do more activities pertaining to our faith.
• Organize about 5 areas of our home that really need it and are making me crazy.  Winter should be a great time to do this, but I’m trying to figure out how to do it and still have time for everything else…
• Make a decision about preschool this fall – I really thought we’d already made a decision (to not do preschool outside of home), but an enlightening conversation with family members over Christmas has turned it into a question again (ugh).
• Really sit down and form my thoughts about homeschooling (pros and cons) in a way that will help me explain, out loud, how I feel, and help others to understand. 
• In regards to preschool activities with M:
  • More reading of *good* books – I recently went through the book, Books Children Love: A Guide to the Best Children's Literature, and marked a bunch that sound enjoyable and are on M’s level.  The book was written to help Charlotte Mason followers find good literature for children instead of “twaddle”.  I found it very helpful, and found myself becoming more interested in Charlotte Mason and her ideas about education. 
  • Some book activities, hopefully, in relation to the above.  The planning of this, for one child, is a bit daunting for me.  We’ll see as we read, whether or not I can come up with activities.  (Yes, I know about Five in a Row, and should really look into it more.  I’m kind of stubborn when it comes to spending $$ on things I could do myself, and stubborn about planning activities that I know will appeal to M – he’s a custom-job kind of kid.)
  • More gross motor activities and exercise time with M twice a week.
  • More art (is that possible?) – meaning more looking at beautiful art, learning a tiny bit about various artists, art museum trips, more learning about various techniques, etc.  Books Children Love, was helpful in this area, and lists art books and the ages each one appeals to. 
  • More music – our first step in this is a fun local class once a week.  We may not make it to all the classes, as it falls on the same day that we do other things, but I’m looking forward to garnering good ideas from it when we are able to go.
  • More hands-on work with science, since this is M’s favorite thing. 
• In regards to blogging:
  • More posts about faith-related activities for preschoolers.
  • Posts about depression, especially post-partum depression – there’s a lot of good writing out there about this, and I’m sure I don’t have anything new to add to the conversation, but it’s just something I want to do as it seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge among people in my personal life.  It’s another “I’ll write it all out so I know how to explain it out loud” kind of thing.
  • A series of posts about homeschooling books I’ve read – there are 3 very good ones, in particular, that I want to make notes about.
• And, finally, after all of this, I want to work on an opportunity that has presented itself to make a little $$ from home, while working on something I love… again, it’s a matter of working out a time for this and scheduling it in.  I’ll keep you all informed about this as any progress is made, because it may be beneficial to a lot of homeschool mamas. :)

Whew.

Any plans on your part for the new year?  I’d love to hear about them!

I hope your 2011 is off to a wonderful start and that all your dreams for the year will come true. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all of you a very blessed and Merry Christmas!

Love,

Preschool Craft – happy little Christmas wreath :)

We are crafting up a storm here.  At least the last 2 projects I’ve posted about have been spur-of-the-moment type things, and this one was too.  I’m realizing that we have more time for this kind of thing when we don’t have any planned preschool activities going on.  It’s been so much fun, and freeing, that it’s causing me to re-think a lot of things right now.  But that will have to wait for another post. :)  (Which, if my track record for that kind of thing counts, means don’t hold your breath for another post, heh.)

My husband snipped a few messy branch tips off our tree and was going to put them in our composter, but I rescued them for craftiness instead. ;)

SUPPLIES for this sweet little wreath person:  snipped ends of pine branches (just a bunch of loose pine needles would work too), glue, green cardstock, googley eyes, pom pom, 1/2 of a red pipecleaner, 1/2 of a white pipecleaner, dyed macaroni, glitter glue, sequins, miscellaneous sparkly stuff (we used glitter foam snowflake stickers and some leftover glitter foam shapes from this project; other ideas are buttons, shiny ribbon, metallic paint pens… you get the idea).

First, cut a circle from your cardstock.  Depending on how many pine snips you have available, you may want a larger circle than ours; our circle’s diameter is about 5 1/2 inches.  You could also use a paper plate, and color or paint it green if you wish.

I drew a smaller circle for the face area, just to give M some idea of where to place the greenery for the wreath.

Next, glue on the facial features before anything else, this helps you get the sense of where you want the pine needles and decorations to go. M used half of a red pipecleaner for the mouth, a pom pom for the nose, large googley eyes, and macaroni pieces to make eyebrows and a moustache (this was totally his idea - I love it!).

Next, glue on the pine snips and needles!  Wherever you want them is where they should go. M felt free to let them go over the edge of the circle, and I like the bushy look of his little wreath guy.  Doesn’t he remind you of a sweet grandpa who has just woken up and needs a shave?  Or is that just me?  He totally reminds me of my beloved grandpa who would “whisker” me every morning. :)

Lastly, decorate your wreath person with all the sparkly, fun things!

M named him, “Mr. Moustache Wreath”, hee hee.  He was so proud of giving him a macaroni moustache!  We hung him up over our Advent calendar, and I love seeing his happy, and a bit crazy, little face all day long.

(I’m not sure why the pine needles look a bit brown in the pictures.  They were fresh, and don’t look brown at all in real life.  It must have something to do with the green cardstock.)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Melted Crayon Christmas Trees (or any other shape you’d like)

I know this is not an original idea; I think many moms have tried this at one time or another.  But I thought I’d write about it because it was just so much fun for M.  I first saw the idea several years ago in MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Scribble Art. 

M has been asking to melt crayons into shapes since we made heart crayons for Valentine’s Day.  This kid grabs onto an idea and does not let it go. 

10 months later I finally gave in.  :)

Actually, the real reason we haven’t done it is that I’ve only had heart shaped muffin tins (the silicone kind).  So when I saw some cute tree-shaped ones at Target I grabbed them and one day last week I gave M the good news (you could use cookie cutters, but I felt too lazy to go to all that work, lol).  Boy, was he ever excited.  He spent a good 10 minutes at the kitchen counter going through his bucket of crayons and picking out the ones he wanted to use. 

Like this:

Yep, just hanging there like a monkey, sorting crayons.  Did I mention he was excited?  (No, he wasn’t drinking the Coke in the background, that’s just for Mama, hee hee.)

After finding a variety of colors, with a good assortment of green shades, and peeling off all the papers, it was time to break the crayons up.  M came up with the hammer idea on his own.  Putting them in a plastic baggie first was my idea. ;)

He’s hammering them into tiny pieces in the photo below.  Hammering so hard his mouth is hanging open and you can’t really see the hammer because it’s moving so fast.  This may have been his favorite part:

We pulverized the greens first, and placed a layer of them in each mold:

Then the pretty colored ones were sprinkled on top:
You want these to be sort of thick, otherwise they may break when you pry them out of the molds.  We filled our molds up just a little less than halfway.

We put them in a 150 degree oven for 15 minutes, pulled them out, and as they started to harden, I poked a straw into them to create the hole for the ribbon.  Then we put them in the fridge to finish hardening and to loosen up a bit, for another 15 minutes. 

We popped them out of the molds (all the trunks broke off, darn it), tied on ribbons, and picked out one for each grandmother:

We colored with the rest for a while, and then hung them on our Christmas tree.  Aren’t they pretty?

Honestly, this was such an easy project for me – M did almost all the work, and loved every second of it, from finding the “right” crayons, peeling the papers off, and just about everything else.  All I did was put them in the oven and take them out.  Well, I tied the ribbons too.  But really, as easy as this was, I was surprised at the amount of pure happiness it gave him.  I definitely have to find more (cheap) shaped silicone muffin pans!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Book Review – Doers of the Word by Archbishop Timothy Dolan

Archbishop Dolan went from the peace and quiet of Wisconsin to the hustle and bustle of New York City.

In this book, he writes very eloquently about how he has found that God is present both in the stillness of meditation and in the busy-ness of every day life.   This idea really struck a chord with me as I struggle with finding quiet time to reflect and think (and, let’s be honest, sometimes just stare at the wall and wonder about 4 year old boys) in the middle of busy days.

The book is a set of meditations written over time by Dolan as he spent time in his private chapel.  They are short and written in an easy-going, humble, yet shepherdly sort of way, and contain insight and wisdom that I found very helpful in my life as a wife and mother.  He did not write specifically to one set of people, but his thoughts are relevant to just about anyone in any stage of life and living any vocation.

Each meditation ends with a prayer and then a small “blurb” about some tradition of the Church.  These were interesting, but sometimes seemed a bit odd in relation to the meditation just finished.

I enjoyed this book; the only thing I wished for was that some of the meditations were longer so that the idea in them could be more fully developed.  As it was, in keeping them short, some of them felt like what I call “fluff” – a feel-good type of writing that just about anyone could come up with.  Thankfully, most of them held something (or were a good starting point for my own thoughts) a bit more substantial.

You can purchase this book here.

I wrote this review of Doers of the Word for the Tiber River Blogger Review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods, your source for Oplatki and Advent Calendars. For more information and to purchase, please visit Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.
 
Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases.

I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.

Preschool Art / Craft – Melted Bead Christmas Ornaments

A few weeks ago, in a preschool post, I mentioned some great little suncatcher kits from Makit Bakit.  I remember making these when I was a kid, and they were so much fun.  These come in both boy and girl themes, which makes my art-loving boy very happy. 

You fill the sections of a metal suncatcher frame with the beads (I have M pinch them to transfer them to the frame – great fine motor work), then pop the whole thing into the oven for 20 minutes and they melt.  The result is a stained-glass-look suncatcher.  I think this kind is much, much prettier than the kind you paint.

a racecar M made recently 
(the black beads are not transparent,
and make it look a bit splotchy;
most kits don’t have the black beads)

Each package has more than enough plastic beads for the suncatcher that comes with it.  I’d love it if they had just packs of the beads available, but as far as I know, they don’t offer them apart from the suncatcher frames.

You know I can’t throw those extra beads away. :)  So we used them with mini cookie cutters to make ornaments.

Our extra beads: 

Line a pan with aluminum foil and place the cookie cutters on it.  Then begin filling them up with beads.  You want to have a layer that completely covers the foil at the bottom of each cookie cutter, with a small mound in the center that thins out towards the edges:

Pop them into a 375 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. 

You have to be quick with this next part.  As soon as they are out of the oven, they begin to cool off and get hard.  To make the hole for ribbon, I used a 1/8” dowel, coated with non-stick spray.  Stick it into the area of each ornament where you want the hole to be.  The first couple were pretty easy, then as they started to harden, I had to really twist the dowel to get it out.  I ended up putting half of the ornaments back into the oven to melt a bit and then made holes in them.

Peel the foil off the back, and pop them out of the cookie cutters.

They turned out pretty cute!

Strung onto ribbon, they’ll look so pretty on the tree or even hanging in a window.

Have a beautiful day! :)