Three Queens & A King

Fun with Grandpa

2011-10-25T17:57:00.001-07:00

The girls are blessed with 3 grandpas and this past Sat. we spent the day with one of the grandpas at the balloon rally. We had a great time with grandpa!

Ellie is enjoying the view from dads shoulders

Emily was in awe of the balloons

The girls and I enjoying the launch

The girls LOVED LOVED the trampolines.

The night launch was beautiful!

I used to go to the balloon rally growing up so it was so cool to experience this with Ellie and Emily!

Halloween Lunches

2011-10-23T05:19:00.001-07:00

I have had fun making the girls Halloween themed food this week.

Lunch was a sand "witch”, white chocolate strawberry ghost, pretzel stick witches brooms and mummy juice. All of these ideas came from Pinterest.

(Picture won’t flip for me…..again)

PB&J mummy roll ups, pumpkin tangerine and snap pea crisp witches fingers.

Homeschool Fieldtrip

2011-10-14T05:45:00.001-07:00

A local corn maize was having homeschool day recently so we joined some friends for a day of fun. They broke us up into two groups: 4 and under and K-5th grade. I went with Emily’s group so I didn’t get a lot of pics of Ellie until we met up at the playground. Emily got to plant corn

Go on a hayride, visit the chickens, collect wooden eggs (she had no idea they weren’t real),

practice milking a cow

feed the goats, collect fake veggies and once she turned in and sorted all of her eggs, fruits and veggies they paid her $2 and she was able to go pick out a pumkin for $2. It was such a cute process!!

Ellie’s group went to a small lecture all about corn and the farm, went through the big corn maize, went on a hay ride and finished up with the animals. After we were done we played on their really cool playground. The tree house was the biggest hit.

I wanted to get a picture of the girls together….just one….but it seems impossible to get both of the girls to look at the camera and smile at the same time and this is what I kept getting:

I think I will appreciate these goof ball pictures more in the years to come!! Man, I love these cuties!!!!!

Halloween Sensory Bin

2011-10-12T05:31:00.001-07:00

I just finished making our newest sensory bin and I hope the girls enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Here is what is in it:

Black beans

Little witches pots

Orange pom poms

Little plastic bugs

Glow sticks

Ghost erasers

Little plastic Halloween to toys

Wooden Halloween figures

Three Weeks Down

2011-09-25T19:47:00.001-07:00

We just finished up our third week of school and I can’t believe how fast it is going by! I haven’t taken a lot of pictures other than of Emily on the first day (because Chris was actually taking them) and of some of our book and art activities.

The first week we worked on the letter A. Here is Emily with a few of her activities. Most of the activities were printed from Kidssoup. She worked on making an A with playdough, matching different color A’s, tracing the letter, coloring things that start with A, putting together a puzzle, and gluing on words that start with the letter A.

We read the book And Rain Makes Applesauce and made umbrellas with cupcake liners and yarn on cardstock and drew applesauce rain on the pictures.

Their favorite activity of course was making acorns. I saw this idea on Pinterest. You take Hershey Kisses and add a mini vanilla wafer and top it off with a peanut butter chip on the top. We used icing for the glue. .

We enjoyed our acorns while watching our letter A movie…The Apple Dumpling Gang. Lets just say they were not that impressed with the movie:)

On the 2nd week we worked on the letter B and what is more fun than blowing bubbles. I filled up cups with water and food coloring and added straws. I let the girls blow bubbles in their cup onto water color paper. This was a big hit because they are normally not able to blow bubbles with their drinks.

This wraps up the first 2 weeks of school. I was very happy with how well the girls have gotten back into the groove of school. Yes, we have had some not so great moments but I feel so blessed to stay home and teach my girls!!!!

Circle Time

2011-09-21T19:18:00.001-07:00

Circle time is one of my favorite parts of our school day because it is something we all do together and I am not trying to split my time. It is a time for us to be silly but still learning together.

I have a list of possible activities to cover during circle time but we don’t do all of them everyday. I just pick and choose what works for us that day. Here is the list:

Pledge of allegiance, letter of the week, sign language, number of the week, songs with instruments, rhymes, show and tell, poem, read a book or short story, word wall, 100’s chart, skip counting, praying, calendar time, learning our phone number and address, reviewing states and capitals that we are learning, bible verses, frontier girls promise, Veritas cards, and feeding Rita (I will explain that in a minute).

Most of the things we are covering in circle time are posted on the wall but anything that is not hanging up is in a box that I keep on our circle time table. The box holds all of our poems, stories, Veritas cards, flash cards and any extras. The little trash can with the eyeballs is Rita. The girls feed Rita most days during circle time. If we are working on the number two then they might feed her 2 marbles and if we are working with the letter C then they feed her things that make the “C” sound. I mainly started using Rita for Emily but Ellie loves her just as much!

I made a notebook for all of our stories and have them categorized by season so I can easily find stories that are applicable for a topic we are working on. (sorry the pictures are side ways but they wouldn’t stay turned!)

One of my favorite things we do I found on Mrs.. Lee’s Kindergarten blog. I will read a story and I will ask them to tell me the title, theme, characters, setting, problem, and solution. I wrote each of those things on sentence strips and put magnets on the back so whenever we are going to use them I just put them on the magnetic dry erase board and I write the answers on the board.

That pretty much sums up our circle time:)

My Frontier Girls

2011-09-18T18:45:00.001-07:00

Both girls are doing Frontier Girls this year and I am so happy that we have found a home school troop and both girls can do it together. They just earned their fire safety badge and are working on their etiquette badge.

Our School Room

2011-09-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

I don’t think I have ever posted pictures of our school room before and since a wonderful friend recently helped me rearrange some things it I thought it would be a good time to share pics.

Here is our circle time area. Our circle time area is to the right when you walk in the room and behind the door is our calendar, family mailboxes and school rules. We use the little mail boxes to put their allowance in and write notes to each other.

In the middle of the room we have our school table and up against the wall is Emily’s workboxes. Ellie is using a notebook instead of a workbox that you can see on the back of her purple chair. I will talk more about how Ellie is using her school notebook in another post.

In one of the dormers there is a cabinet that holds the curriculum that doesn’t get used as often and the baskets on top hold the curriculum that we use on a daily basis.

Also, in this dormer is our animal wall from Road Trip USA and our Mystery of History time line.

In the other dormer we have our foam alphabet that we are working on. All of the foam letter ideas came from Totally Tots.

My friend had the great idea of putting all of our books in file crates so the girls can easily flip through them. So they run along the back wall of the room. This has been such a huge hit! They aren’t in alphabetical order but all of the A’s are together and B’s are together etc.

This large Ikea shelf holds most of our games, Holiday books and manipulatives.

Our art shelf is tucked behind our chair but it wasn’t quite big enough to hold everything so there is a SMALL closet right beside it so I put a shoe holder on the back to help hold our loose items.

On our longest wall we have a sofa and chair because this is also the room where we watch TV and I have a craft nook in the corner but it was too messy to photograph:)

Sensory Bin

2011-09-07T18:28:00.001-07:00

I love making the girls sensory bins and there are so many awesome ideas in blog land so I decided to make at least one a month and maybe 2. This month I decided to make a cutting sensory bin. I filled the tub with:

scissors
craft and hole punches
beads
tissue paper
scrapbook paper
foam
straws
thin cardboard strips
paper in all different shapes
paint samples

It is definitely not a “pretty” box but it has been very popular. I am not sure who is enjoying it more. Next week I am going to add glue and pipe cleaners.

Family Spa Night

2011-09-06T18:31:00.001-07:00

We try to plan a family night once a month that is different and fun and this month it was spa night. It has been our favorite so far. We set up three stations: facial, pedicure and manicure.

For the facial station we set up a lawn chair (b/c we are classy like that) and set up a little table with homemade facemask, cucumbers, lotion, body spray, lip gloss and a pan with warm water.

For the manicure station we set up nail polish, fingernail files, lotion, pan of warm water for soaking and body spray.

For the pedicure station we set up the same as above except in the foot tub we put a body sponge and soap.

We started the night off by getting into our pj’s and sipping pink lemon-aide.

We read a cute little book that came with the spa kit called Spa-di-da. Chris and I took the girls through each station first so they could know what to do when it was our turn. At the beginning of each station we sprayed the girls with body spray to help them relax (Ellie’s idea). We played classical music in the background to help set the mood:)They were so cute and into the whole thing. After Ellie’s facial she said that her skinning was soft and glowing:) We acted like the girls were our clients and they did the same for us.

For the facial mask we used 1/4 cup of oatmeal, 2 T of warm water and a dollop of yogurt. It didn’t smell that great but they didn’t seem to mind.

I love the times when we all really enjoy the moment we are in. No whining, no grumpies, no complaining and not thinking about what I should be cleaning or my to do list. Just appreciating being together!! This was one of those nights and I loved it!!

1st Day of School

2011-09-05T18:10:00.001-07:00

We had our first day of school today!! Ellie is officially a 1st grader and Emily is in Pre-K. We had a lot planned today and the girls were so excited! We started our morning off with new outfits and taking pictures. I printed their signs from here.

Chris made one of their favorite breakfasts, egg cups and cinnamon fries and the girls each got to open up a bag of new school supplies. Their favorite things were the stapler and gel pens.

After breakfast we packed their lunch and headed upstairs to start school about 9:00. I don’t let them eat upstairs very often so they were happy about that! School went really good. I worked with Ellie and Chris worked with Emily. Ellie had a little bit of a melt down at the end when we were playing a game but other than that it was a success.

We were done with school right at noon and the girls ate lunch and had some down time. I called the girls down about an hour later for Sundae school. Ellie thought we were doing our family bible study and Emily was just confused on why were were doing school again. Both girls were happy to find this:

I saw the idea here and new that I wanted to incorporate it as part of our first day excitement.

After we enjoyed our root beer floats and sundaes we set up for our family night. We are trying to do this once a month and this month we were going to have a family spa day. It was my favorite part of the day. I will post more on that later.

We finished off the day with a carpet picnic and the movie Tangled. Now I am pooped but I think the first day of school was a big success:)

Where Has The Summer Gone

2011-08-31T18:24:00.001-07:00

I didn’t mean to take most of the summer off from blogging but I guess life happens and blogging got put on the back burner. This summer has gone by faster than most and I can’t believe fall is in just a little over a month. I am so ready:) So what have we been up to this summer? We have been sick A LOT!!!! I was sick for a month but two rounds of antibiotics and lots of homemade chicken stock and I am finally better. Both girls have been sick off and on as well and Chris has got another cold. I am not sure what is going on but I am praying that the worst of it is over!!! We did manage to do fun stuff as well.

Ellie went to sleep away camp for a 1/2 week and she loved it!!!! What is not to love about 3 nights and 4 days of swimming, lake activities, games, horseback riding, camp fires and the list goes on and on. She can’t wait to go back next year.

Both girls took swim lessons and got to go to music camp. Ellie was so excited because she had a speaking part and got to sing a duet.

We went on a family camping trip to one of the Jellystone Parks (Yogi Bear Campground) and had a blast! It was the first time we camped for 2 nights. There was so much to do at the campground and there was a creek right by our camp site that the girls had fun playing in.

That about wraps it up. We are starting school on Labor Day so I have spent the last few weeks tweaking our school room and put the finishing touches on our curriculum. I will be posting about school and our school room soon!

Curriculum 2011-2012

2011-07-13T15:12:00.001-07:00

In May I attended our big homeschool conference and got most of what we needed for the upcoming school year.Ellie is finishing up Kindergarten and will be starting 1st grade at the beginning of Sept. Emily is over half way done with Raising Rock Star Preschool and will continue working on preschool activities throughout next year. Here is what the girls will be doing

Ellie 1st Grade: (Workboxes Monday-Wed)

Handwriting – A Reason for Handwriting Book B (she will actually be doing this 4x/week)

Reading – Just reading lots and lots to each other.

Spelling – All About Spelling 1

Math – Continue with Math Mammoth. I love that I have found something that she is happy with. I liked MUS but she did not like it at all!!

History – Mystery of History, MOH audio book and MOH coloring sheets

Language Lessons for Little Ones 3

Phonics – Continue with Explode the Code

Piano – Kinderbach (I think)

Art - Artistic Pursuits and Themes to Remember

Critical Thinking – We have several of these books that I will incorporate off and on

Emily Preschool: (Workboxes M-W) because she wants to do the same thing as big sister.

I am filling Emily’s workboxes with games, puzzles, and hands on activities. I have a membership to Kidssoup and ABC Twiggle so I will be giving her printouts and crafts based off a letter a week. I am also going to start her with Handwriting Without Tears Preschool Book. Both girls will be doing a book and a craft a couple of times a week based off the letter that we are working on. I already have most of these planned out.

Thursday – as a family we are doing Confessions of a Homeschoolers Road Trip State Study. You can read more about what we are doing here. Instead of breaking it up a little each day we are doing a state in one day but stretching it out into multiple Thursdays if needed.

Friday – Ellie is taking a science class every other Friday but we will all do science together on the weeks she is not in class.

Both girls start Frontier Girls and AWANA in Sept. as well.

Fun at the Beach

2011-07-07T19:34:00.001-07:00

Here are a few pictures from our beach trip.

Enjoying the sand Fun at the aquarium

I think she spilled more ice cream then she ate

Ellie found a baby frog

Vacation Activity Bag

2011-06-29T16:56:00.001-07:00

We recently got back from the beach and we had such a great time. The older the girls get the more fun we seem to have. It is just so nice to have the uninterrupted family time!! Every year I pack a bag of new activities for the girls to do when we are just relaxing at the beach house. Sometimes the activities last 20 min. and sometimes 1 min. You just never know but this year the girls spent lots of time with the items I brought. Here is what our vacation activity bag consisted of:

Uno Moo: My sister bought this for the girls and it was a big hit

Spot It: A fun game for any age. Each card has a picture that matches a picture on another card. The first one to spot the match keeps the card.

Melissa & Doug Make a Face: This was the biggest hit of all. They both spent so much time playing with this. I will be buying this again for sure!

The rest of the items were found in the $ section at the craft store/

Beach Stickers with Markers to make a picture scene

Paper Dolls

3D Mosaic Animals – I thought they would love this but it wasn’t a big hit

Sun Catchers to paint

Peel and Stick Sand Art – always a hit

New Bubbles

Books of course :)

What do you take with you on vacation to keep the kids busy during down time?

Nourishing Traditions

2011-06-16T19:11:00.001-07:00

Remember a few posts back when I said that I was taking a six week cooking class based on the book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon? You don’t?? Oh well that is OK! Well I recently finished the class and it was so great. Here is a brief overview of the class:

Week 1 – Cultured dairies Week 2 –Fermented fruits and veggies

Week 3- Homemade broth Week 4- Soaking Grains

Week 5- Sugars, Oils and Fats Week 6- Trip to Earthfare, Beverages

First let me back up. Last year about this time I started doing some research on eating healthier because I have always been a low fat eater and I ate pretty healthy or so I thought but I really thought for my age I should just feel better in general. Throughout my research I kept running across information on eating real whole foods. I didn’t know a lot but I knew that I was interested and I poured over Passionate Homemaking and Heavenly Homemakers blogs and watching Food Inc. Some of the ideas seemed very foreign to me. Making most things from scratch and cutting out processed foods seemed like a smart idea but eating full fat foods seemed a little crazy. Then I was introduced to the book Nourishing Traditions and everything it said made so much since to me until I got to the recipes! I was basically like huh????? I didn’t have a clue how to really get started so I just started trying to make snacks from scratch and switch to mostly organics. After a few months the only thing I had to show for my “hard work” and research was an additional 7lbs. I slowly crept back to my old way of life and had slowly started to lose the extra weight that I gained. I still knew that I wanted to make changes but I still didn’t have a clue at how to do it. I happened to see that a class was getting ready to be offered based on Nourishing Traditions just down the street from me. I was so excited and talked a friend into taking it with me. I can’t tell you how great this class was and I am so excited/nervous to start making these changes again. Before when I made changes I was pretty much just eating lots of homemade whole wheat baked goods but that was about it. Now I have lots of new goals and I have already started making some changes. Here are the changes I have made so far:

Switched to raw milk (Emily LOVES this milk)

Switched to coconut oil and dumped canola and vegetable oil

Buying very few processed foods

Buying mostly organic

Buying only grass-fed beef, free-range organic eggs and organic chicken (which we eat a lot less of now b/c it is expensive)

Switched from sugar to Sucanat

Soaking most of my grains – you can read more about that here

I still have a long long way and truthfully I know just enough to know what not to do and not enough of what I should do but I am so excited about this journey. I will share my successes and failures off and on. I will also soon share my “to do soon” list of new things I plan to try making.

More Horses

2011-06-12T14:26:00.001-07:00

The girls have been fortunate enough lately to ride horses several times between birthday parties and Ellie’s day at horse camp. They have loved every minute of it!!

Looky What I Got

2011-05-30T18:28:00.001-07:00

Look what my wonderful hubby surprised me with for my birthday!!!!!!

This is not just any blender but it is the Vita-Mix that I have been drooling over for a little over a year! I LOVE it and I have several recipes that I will be trying soon and if I don’t ruin them I will share them with you:)

State Study

2011-05-29T08:26:00.001-07:00

The girls and I are going to continue to do school through the summer but it is going to be very light. Ellie will continue with a little writing and math and a lot of reading and Emily will wrap up Raising Rock Stars Preschool lessons but together we are going to start our State Study. I am so excited and have had a lot of fun planning:) I bought Confessions of a Homeschoolers Road Trip USA curriculum for the main part but I am changing and adding a few things. I am using The Little Man In the Map

which is such a great book using rhyme and visual clues to help you remember the states and locations. I am also using this atlas that is recommended in Road Trip USA.

We are going to start with the Midwest states which ties into the pioneer theme from the Little House on the Prairie books we are enjoying right now. I got the girls each a passport book with the 50 state flag stickers from Rainbow Resources

and this cool map for them to color each time we finish a state.

I also bought the girls each a Dover Coloring Book of the State Flowers and Birds to color.

Other than a few books from the library and a few puzzles that I have collected over the years I will get the rest of the information from Road Trip USA. Each state has fun facts, great recipes and craft ideas! Our plan is for both girls to make a big notebook of our activities so they can go back and look at all of the fun stuff we did.

First stop…….Minnesota!

Woodworking

2011-05-15T17:33:00.001-07:00

Chris wanted to do some sort of class with the girls once a week since he doesn’t get to be a part of our morning school activities. He was thinking about doing science but decided on woodworking. The girls were so excited!!! Chris took them to the hardware store and they each got a tool box and their own set of tools:

Hammer, screwdrivers, screws, nails, pliers, safety glasses, tape measure, and a level

The first few weeks they talked about each of the tools, tool safety and how to properly use them. They were very interested in this but Emily was a little disappointed that she couldn’t use her tools anytime she wanted. Can you imagine…..I would have holes all in the walls, gauges in the floor and who knows what else.

The first project they have been working on is a fairy house to keep outside. It is coming along quite nicely! Ellie is getting really good with her tools. The other day her Leapster batteries died so she went and got her screwdriver and replaced the batteries and didn’t need any help except explaining which way to put the batteries in. I love that he is teaching them life skills!

What’s Happening??

2011-05-09T16:25:00.001-07:00

It has been a very busy couple of weeks at our house so I thought I would just do a random post of some of the things that we have been up too.

Chris turned 40! That means that we have officially been together for half of his life:) I had a wonderful day of adventure planned for the two of us including kayaking, zip lining etc. but it rained all day on his birthday and was unseasonably cold but we didn’t let it ruin our day. We regrouped and spent a wonderful relaxing day together. He really is the most amazing, loving, giving person and I am not just saying that because he will probably read this:) Happy Birthday babe!

We had a crazy Easter! Just kidding….It was a wonderful day! The weather was gorgeous and we were able to spend the day with family. I have to say though that I remember spending the entire day hiding and finding eggs with my siblings when I was younger. We would take turns hiding eggs over and over but my girls just don’t do that. They looked for eggs twice and were done.

The girls spent a wonderful weekend with their dad at Grandpa’s which means……. I was home alone. This doesn’t happen often but when it does I take advantage of it! It was such a great weekend of shopping, eating, a little exercise, pedicure/manicure and lots of sleeping but I was so ready to see the girls and Chris! It is great to have a break but even better to get to see everyone after 2 1/2 days of down time.

We recently went to Great Wolf Lodge and had such an awesome time!!! I couldn’t believe how big the water park was for an indoor water facility. I love that you can swim a little and then head to your room for a break and a snack and then walk back downstairs and swim some more. The lodge gave a great great rate for homeschoolers and I really hope they will do that again because we would love to go back! Can you believe that I didn’t bring my camera?? I’m good like that:)

A friend and I are taking a cooking class based on the book Nourishing Traditions. We just finished our 2nd class out of 6. I have already learned so much! I will be writing more on this soon!

I am in school planning mode (aren’t I always) because I will be going to a Homeschool Convention soon. I am going to be purchasing Ellie’s curriculum for 1st grade and a preschool program for Emily because she will be done with RRSP by this fall.

OK if anyone is still reading that just about wraps up our last couple of weeks!

Snakes

2011-04-19T06:16:00.001-07:00

My mom is petrified of snakes and I do mean petrified!!!! I don’t like them one bit either. They make my skin crawl and give me major ebee jeebee’s (what? that is a word) but I am no where near as scared of them as my mom is. I have tried very hard not to show my fear of snakes around the girls especially since we can’t seem to go outside without seeing one:( Unfortunately, Ellie has had several run ins and is actually more scared them I am. Once she was riding her bike at the greenway and a snake ran across the path in front of her. Next thing I know she is off her bike and running towards us and screaming like a crazy person. More recently we were at the museum and she wouldn’t even walk down the aisle with the snakes in it.

Emily on the other hand doesn’t seem the least bit phased by them. We have talked about how we shouldn’t pick up anything insect/animal that we find outside (except for caterpillars, ladybugs etc.) but I guess she didn’t realize snakes were included in this because the other day she picked up a snake in the front yard like it was no big deal. All she said was “Ewww, snake.” Luckily it was a brown snake and it was dead and thank goodness my poor mom wasn’t here!!!!! The really funny this is she can see a little ant on the ground and run and scream like it the scariest thing in the world. Go figure!

Spring/Easter Sensory Tub

2011-04-16T07:45:00.001-07:00

Our space tub was such a HUGE hit that I really wanted to make one for Spring and Easter. Here is what I came up with:

Here is what I put in it:

Dried beans

Miniature clay pots

Basket for birds nest

A few plastic bugs

Large plastic egg and small plastic eggs from the $ Tree

Little fuzzy chicks. I got these last year after Easter for 75% off at the grocery store

Little foam bird from the $ Tree

I have scoops, bowls, tongs etc. that they will use too but I usually just set those beside the bin.

Space

2011-04-14T09:02:00.001-07:00

We finished up our 3 weeks of space last week. I think we all really enjoyed it. It is crazy how much I am learning along with the girls! I won’t show you all of our activities but I will show you the girls favorites.

Of course they loved doing the phases of the moon with Oreo cookies and eating them afterwards! This idea and printable came from Spell Out Loud.

We made a big moon to hang on the wall with homemade puffy paint by mixing shaving cream and glue together. I got the idea from No Time For Flashcards. This was very messy which means Emily loved it!

We cut out stars and moon using our homemade play dough. This is usually a hit or miss but luckily it was a hit!

I set out stamps and stencils with a few sheets of paper but Ellie wanted to make a book. I love it when they take initiative. She wanted to narrate and illustrate it but I had to do all of the writing.

Pin Punching the constellations from here.

This is another fun activity from Spell Out Loud. You toss M&M’s on a piece of paper and wherever they land you make a little star, connect the dots and name your constellation. Oh and than eat the M&M’s of course!

A few of our other favorites I did not get a picture of were:

Film Canister Constellation

NASA’s website for kids

Eating astronaut ice cream

and the hands down favorite - Visiting the planetarium!

Tea Time

2011-04-04T16:49:00.001-07:00

I had grand plans for Friday. The girls and I were going to stay home and play, bake and have a tea party. It was going to be a great day but than life happened and we all woke up grumpy! Chores were not being done with a happy heart so more chores were added and tears started flowing. After all of the drama I didn’t want to play anymore which caused more tears. Luckily, we still had our tea party and that was the highlight of the day. We gathered up a big stack of books, set the table and enjoyed a good hour or more of books, giggles and tea. I know that our table and our tea parties aren’t the least bit fancy but the girls think they are and even though we have these parties often they always get excited! Thank goodness for tea parties!!

Ellie is 6!

2011-03-30T16:46:00.001-07:00

During all of our sick madness Ellie turned 6! Luckily, I was the only one sick on her birthday. I still can’t believe she is 6. It seems like she was just born yesterday yet it is hard for me to remember her when she was an infant. She truly has the kindest heart and is an amazing big sister!!!! She loves jokes and pranks but is scared of her own shadow. She is ever so cautious but has never met a stranger. For some reason this was an emotional birthday for me. She just seems to have grown up so much over night and I might have cried a time or two. I am so incredibly blessed to have the family that I do. Here is a little walk down memory lane.

A few days old

1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

3rd Birthday

4th Birthday

5th Birthday

6th Birthday

I’m Still Here

2011-03-27T16:33:00.001-07:00

I know it has been awhile since I posted but it has been a crazy 2 1/2 weeks here. Ellie had a cold, Emily had the flu, I caught the flu which turned into a sinus infection and ear infection, and then Emily caught a virus or something that gave us a scare on top of another cold. Thank the Lord that my awesome hubby took over and took such good care of us on top of taking over most of the household responsibilities during that time!!! I am feeling back to normal and other then a little bit of a runny nose Emily is better too!! Emily was mostly feeling better Friday except for her cold so I was able to get away for the weekend. I have had a girls weekend planned for a few weeks and I thought that I was going to have to cancel but I am so grateful I didn’t because I had a BLAST!!!! I went to the mountains for a Christian women’s retreat with these two beautiful ladies.

It was cold but luckily the rain held off until Sat. night and it didn’t interfere with most of our activities. We started off our weekend with a big bonfire, smores and The Neighbors blue grass band! The next day we tried the rock climbing wall and I went down a zip line for the first time which was so awesome!!!! I know you can’t tell but that is me on the left. We also did this rope pulley swing thing where they pull you up in your harness and you pull the cord. You free fall for just a little bit and then swing in your harness. It was really cool. We also walked some and took a great yoga class and let me just tell you the food was wonderful!!! I probably gained weight because the food was so good. There was a Proverbs 31 speaker there also who gave lectures on our spiritual treasures. She spoke several times and she truly was a gifted speaker! We just might have fit in a nap or two! To finish off our weekend we went to the barn and helped feed the horses, brush and walk them and did a little bareback riding. This was much harder then I thought it would be. It was great to try it but next time I will take a saddle:) It was a much needed weekend away and I feel rejuvenated ~~for at least a few hours~~.

Sun, Moon and Stars

2011-03-08T17:19:00.001-08:00

This week I had planned to start our study on space and I had so many fun things planned! Unfortunately Emily got the flu so school had to be put on hold until next week. I found so many awesome printables, ideas ect. that we are actually going to spend the next 3 weeks on space. Week 1: Stars, Moon and Sun

Week 2: Planets

Week 3: Astronauts

To go with our space theme I made a sensory tub for the girls to play with. I got my inspiration from Counting Coconuts and 1+1+1=1. They both made awesome space bins!! I hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed filling it.

Here is what I put in it:

Aquarium rocks, glow in the dark stars, black pom poms, black pipe cleaners, star beads, tube of planets (I got these at Toys R Us), glass beads, marbles, and some other glass pieces that have a smooth edge (all from the $ tree). I am going to also add something new each week they play with it. This week I am going to let them play as is. Next week I am going to add some spoons and scoops etc. and the week we study astronauts I am going to add these space astronauts and rockets.

Here are the books we are using this week:

and What Do You Know About The Sun? by Carmen Bredeson

I will post more as we go along and work on our activities!

Giddy Up!

2011-03-04T12:07:00.001-08:00

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

2011-02-22T08:16:00.001-08:00

The girls are memorizing : Even a Child is known by his deeds Proverbs 20:11 in school this week and we checked out a great book at the library to go with the verse!!!

It talks about how everyone has an invisible bucket they carry around and when you do kind things, act nicely ect. you are a bucket filler and you fill other peoples bucket but if you are rude, don’t use manners, bully etc. you are a bucket dipper and are dipping out of others buckets.

We all love the book and have read it multiple times. I saw this great post on making a bucket dipping chart and filling a real bucket for a class so I might modify it and do something like that with the girls. This theme also goes along great with my friend Teresa’s blog post that you can read here! We are going to work really hard to be bucket fillers this week!

Have you filled a bucket today??

Look What We Won

2011-02-20T17:25:00.001-08:00

We love the Madeline books so we were super excited to win this book

from FlipFlops & Applesauce. We love it as much as we thought we would:) Thanks FlipFlops & Applesauce!!!

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

2011-02-16T17:12:00.001-08:00

Tuesday we got to go with some homeschool friends to the Krispy Kreme Doughnut factory! It was really cool to see how it all works and we learned quite a bit. What was the best part…..eating fresh doughnuts right off the line:)

Silly Mouth

2011-02-08T17:43:00.001-08:00

Chris and I started putting Valentine notes and treats in the girls Valentines bags (I made Emily’s Sunday) on Monday. We wrote them each a poem and put a sucker in each bag. I added these cute foam cutouts, lips and a moustache, to the girls sucker. I saw the idea on Family Fun. It was so simple to make and looked so darn cute!

Emily’s School Week

2011-02-07T17:34:00.001-08:00

~Emily is 37 months old~

We had a great week of Raising Rock Stars Preschool last week. Emily worked on

Letter: I

Number: 4

Sight Word: can

Shape: rectangle

Color: red

Bible Verse: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13

This is the 4th week in a row she has memorized her bible verse! To go along with the verse we read about David and Goliath in our Jesus Storybook Bible and also a single storybook we have about David and Goliath. We also watched Veggie Tales Dave and the Giant Pickle.

She played a color game from the Dollar Tree and sorting bears by color

Practicing writing the letter I

Rectangle dot marker page

Tracing different lines and the letter V for Valentines that I printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Pin punching the letter I (her favorite activity) also printed from CoaH. Coloring her strong man activity Here is the finished strong man with the bible verse. She colored it, I cut it out and she glued it on the paper. I really let her take the lead with this so that is why his legs are crossed. Who knows, maybe she thought he needed to go potty:)

Coloring her bible verse

Playing with Valentines window clings and window markers

I didn’t get pictures of all of the activities we did last week but we did do all of the RRSP activities. This is the first week she cut her bible verse out without me holding one side of the paper. Go here to find out more about Raising Rock Stars Preschool.

The Circus

2011-02-06T15:24:00.001-08:00

My sister, Rhonda, surprised us last weekend with tickets to the circus! How awesome is that?? We had a blast!!! The girls loved it and so did we.

Ellie with Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Allan

Emily enjoying her slushy

The circus in action

Momma and Ellie with a blue mouth

Thank you Aunt Rhonda for such a wonderful day!!! We love you!!

Emily’s Drawing

2011-02-04T04:27:00.001-08:00

Emily likes to stand at the easel and draw dogs, cats and princesses. Her pictures are usually scribbles on the page and then she will want us to come check out her beautiful picture. The other day I was ~~on the computer~~ cleaning and she was at the easel and she wanted me to look at the princess she drew. I was surprised to see she drew her first little person!

See…. Isn’t that a beautiful princess?

Valentine Chair Pouches

2011-02-03T07:11:00.001-08:00

I have loved the Valentine chair pouches ever since I saw them in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog a few years ago but I didn’t want to pay the hefty price. I think they were around $40 plus shipping or something like like. I was very excited when I saw this tutorial at Our Scoop blog recently. I started making it last night and just finished it this morning. I love it!!! I want to keep them out until Valentines so Chris and I can write sweet little notes to the girls each day and put their little Valentines present in it on Valentines.

Here is a picture of the lining below.

One down…..one to go!

Random

2011-01-26T17:27:00.001-08:00

OK this is just a random post of this and that!

First – I babysat all day on Sunday and when I came home I walked into this

Yes, that is a 4x4x12 in the living room! The girls were so excited and had the best day with dad. They played circus and the beam was the tight rope. Along with a tight rope walker they had a lion tamer (Emily with a stuffed animal lion tied to her), a juggler and I can’t remember what else. Believe it or not this beam is still in the living room (tonight is the last night) because the girls have had tons and tons of fun on it! There is talk of the beam coming back out this weekend along with the cotton candy maker and clown face paint so we can have a family circus. Anybody want to come to our house this weekend? What, no takers????

Ellie saw a boat valentine holder in Family Fun magazine and of course she said we had to have it to hold our family valentines (the boat was in the middle of her table on her Valentine plans). It is basically an O.J. bottle with card board taped to the front. There is a section cut out in the back to stick the valentines in and is covered with construction paper. Once I helped her cover it she decorated it all on her own and then made all of us Valentines and stuck in the back. She was very proud!

My last bit of randomness is that we are still trucking along in school but I have not taken any pictures the last 2 weeks. I have been very slack!!! Emily is doing great with Raising Rock Stars and we just finished up the letter H week. Ellie is still moving along as well. She is still working on handwriting, math, and reading but we are just finishing up our winter activities, most of which I printed from here, so we can move into our ~~chocolate~~ Valentines activities!

My Party Planner

2011-01-20T14:09:00.001-08:00

I am pretty sure I have mentioned on here before that Ellie loves to plan and have parties. It is no lie when I say that we have at least 2-3 parties a week. It can be anywhere from a tea party to a stuffed animal party to a triangle party. You name it we have had it! For one of her gifts awhile back we gave her a big box with plates, napkins, streamers, plastic cups and silverware, gift bags, tablecloths etc. in it and called it her party box and she uses it all of the time. It isn’t surprising that she wants us to have a family Valentine’s party on Valentine’s day. So I go in to check on her last night assuming that she was asleep and I find her propped up in bed. She had an office organizer type thing, that zips open on her lap and holds a tablet on one side and pen and notes on the other, sitting on her lap and the Valentine’s Family Fun magazine beside her. She was flipping through the magazine for the 100th time and drawing out all of the ideas she wants to include for our party. She said that she couldn’t wait to share her plans with us in the morning. I could not help but to smile. I love this girl!!!

Workbooks

2011-01-18T15:55:00.001-08:00

I have always loved workbooks! Ellie has never been a fan until recently and Emily LOVES them. Anytime she is done with her workboxes she says that she better get out her workbook. We have several favorites. Kumon of course, who doesn’t love those, but we have found several that we love just as much.

Gakken is very similar to Kumon but the girls love the pictures and stickers in them. There are several different ones but I think Let’s Create is our favorite.

A friend also introduced us to the Mead workbooks. Snip It is my favorite. Each page has areas where you peel off the paper to make it sticky and than you use the paper you cut from the back to put on the sticky picture.

Other Mead workbooks we like are Color Bound, Idea Builder, and Ellie’s favorite, Shape Builder.

Do your kids like workbooks? If so, what is their favorite?

Chocolate

2011-01-12T18:12:00.001-08:00

I LOVE Chocolate!!! I love all sweets but anything chocolate is my favorite. Both of the girls have taken in my footsteps and have a love for all things sweet. So what better way to spend the couple weeks before Valentines Day learning all about chocolate. I ordered this

Download N Go Chocolate Challenge. It is 94 pages of all things Chocolate for only $7.95. We will learn where chocolate comes from, how it is made, types of chocolate, the science of chocolate and much more. Some of the information is a little too old for them (for grades K-4th) but I think we will get to use a lot of it! I am sure there will be some taste tasting as well:)

Popsicle Stick Game

2011-01-11T12:13:00.001-08:00

I saw this sight word game using popsicle sticks awhile back on Activity Mom and I finally made it for the the girls. All you do it write sight words on popsicle sticks, stick them in a cup and take turns pulling out the sticks and reading the word. If you read it correctly you get to keep the stick. Whoever has the most sticks at the end of the game wins. I changed it a little because I wanted Emily to be able to play too. I put sight words on one side of Ellie’s sticks and a black dot on the other side. On Emily’s sticks I put letters on one side and a red dot on the other. Ellie only picked sticks with black dots and Emily with red. This was a great way to review and took no time to make!

Playing in the Leaves

2011-01-09T09:14:00.001-08:00

I was looking back at pictures recently and found these of when we were playing in the leaves at Thanksgiving time. Chris is going to get me but I couldn’t help but share some of these pictures. We had a ball that day!

The ones below are my favorites. We stuffed as many leaves as we could in their shirts!

Tortilla Snowflake

2011-01-08T04:36:00.001-08:00

In school this week we talked a lot about winter and used the awesome printables from Musings of Me! Ellie cut out these snowflakes from tortilla shells for our snacks like the ones found here. We brushed on melted butter and sprinkled on cinnamon/sugar. Yummy!

Emily’s 1st Week of Raising Rock Stars Preschool

2011-01-05T18:40:00.001-08:00

After having several weeks off from school we started back to school Monday. Both girls were so excited, which just melts my heart because it is inevitable that one day they will complain about it. Emily started the Raising Rock Stars (I highly recommend this program) and it has gone great this week ~~except for a few tantrums~~. I was really unsure on how I would juggle both girls needing so much help and it has definitely been harder on me but I have made a conscious effort and prayed about being patient. I also have gone over our class rules before school each day and have been very firm about keeping the rules!

Here is the board we are using for circle time. It is just a foam board that I pinned to our hanging felt board. I set it up just like Carisa did. It has all of the below on it plus the song we are working on for the week(This Little Light of Mine) and an application sheet on how to let our light shine throughout our day.

Letter: L l

Number:1

Shape: Circle

Sight Word: See

Color: Yellow

Bible Verse: Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

Each day we watched her inactive slide show that is for members only for RRSP. Anything on the computer is a huge hit.

She colored this candle with her verse on it. I cut it out and she glued it to to the page.

She cut out her verse ~~and almost my finger~~ and taped it together. She is showing me how long it is. This is the one thing we did that made me want to scream and we used about a half a roll of scotch tape. She loved it…….me? not so much:)

I worked with her a lot with the Rock Star activities so that is all of the pictures I have of those activities but she colored her bible verse, practiced writing the letter L, read her little beginning reader book which she memorized and could read to me today! She was beyond proud. Here are some of the other activities she worked on:

Not sure why this picture is coming in side ways but she made a foam lion with the letter L. It was very hard for me not to interject when she was putting the feet on wrong and the tail on the wrong side but I bit my tongue and let her do it her way. You can find all of the alphabet foam letter crafts here. Colored Linked together these little plastic people. There arms connect together and are great for patterning. I found them at a local $ store.Put stickers on the page Put her patterning cards in order Matched bottle cap letters to our names

Put the discs in the right cup based on color

Putting the ladybugs in order by size. I printed these from here.

My proudest moment this week is when she was able to say her bible verse. It is really long and I never thought she could do it. I have to say it with her but she knows it and that makes for a proud mama!!!

Christmas Favorites

2011-01-03T18:45:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share some of the girls favorite Christmas gifts this year! All of their favorites except for Pick and Draw came from family members but of coarse Emily’s least favorite gift, which was actually a birthday present, came from Chris and I….go figure! Here is their list of favorites.

I ordered Pick and Draw after seeing it on several blogs and we are not disappointed! It is so fun! You can read more about it here

Emily got this sofa and now she has one just like Ellie. She loved it so much she slept in it for 2 nights! We have Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom which they love and they love this game just as much! This is a great learning cash register. My only complaint is the drawer opens so forcefully that the coins pop out. It still has so many great features that we can use for school and play!

They love their new bikes! Emily got a 12” Pinkalicious which is her first big girl bike and she can ride like a pro already. Ellie got an 18” Barbie bike.We had Guess Who but Guess Who Extra is so much better! We have played this game A LOT! Ellie wanted a cotton candy maker so bad and it did not disappoint!

This wooden food has been a huge hit with Emily. We have eaten lots of wooden food around here. Good thing it is zero calories!!!

Emily’s least favorite gift…..

Baby Alive. She is the cute doll that laughs, cries, sucks on a bottle, and all sorts of things. I thought she would LOVE it! When she opened it she seemed excited until I opened my big mouth and said that she peeps and poops too! Well that did it! She wanted nothing else to do with her and asked Chris not to open the box. I think I will put her away for awhile:)

What were your kids favorite gifts?

The New Year

2011-01-02T06:00:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everybody! 2010 was a great year,for the most part, and I pray 2011 will be even better! I love this time of year when the hustle and bustle is over (although I love the holidays too)and I can refocus on school, personal goals and just being with my family. We spent New Years Eve with wonderful friends and I spent New Years Day with one of my beautiful sisters! Every year we meet on New Years Day at the coffee shop and update our new calendars over a cup of Joe, make up new menu plans, go out to lunch and hit a movie. It is a great way to spend New Years Day!

I have also spent this week planning for our next 8 weeks of school. As always I am really excited about some new changes. Not a lot is changing for Ellie except I am adding in Story of the World and First Language Lessons. A lot is changing for Emily. I am starting Raising Rock Stars Preschool with her. I really think she is going to love it! It is such a great bible based curriculum created by Carisa at 1+1+1=1. I know everything will not go as planned but I am looking forward to getting started.

What do you did on New Years and what are your plans for the upcoming year?

Emily turns 3!!

2010-12-29T07:20:00.001-08:00

My baby turned 3 yesterday!!! I can’t believe how time is flying by. She had a wonderful day even though she woke up with a cold! 1 day old

1st Birthday

she had just turned 2 – I walked in and she was wearing Ellie’s goggles and giving her dolls a bath

Now she is 3!

My how she has grown!! We LOVE YOU so much Emily!!!!

And The Winner Is……

2010-12-27T04:41:00.001-08:00

Teresa! Thanks for entering and I will get the CD to you ASAP! I hope you love it as much as we do.

I was going to take pictures of Ellie drawing the winner but my camera lens got busted yesterday….sniff…..sniff!

My First Giveaway

2010-12-18T18:09:00.001-08:00

I have never had a giveaway on my blog and what better time to have one than Christmas! I recently ordered another Seeds Family Worship CD – Vol. 5 The Power of Encouragement and once again we LOVE it!!! These CD’s are so good and another great thing about them is they send you two…one for you and one to share and I want to share mine with one of you guys. If you haven’t heard of these CD’s you can read what I wrote about our first one here but basically it is scripture set to music. The music is so catchy and I love listening to music the whole family can enjoy! It is so cool to hear the girls singing scripture:) and truthfully it is a great way for me to memorize scripture too.

How to enter:

1. Just leave a comment letting me know that you would like to win the CD

2. Give yourself another entry if you are a follower (leave a separate comment letting me know you are follower)

I will randomly draw a winner on Dec. 23rd. If you don’t win I still recommend you order your own copy. Can you tell I really love these CD’s :)

Snowmen

2010-12-12T11:11:00.001-08:00

I could not pass up surprising the girls with these cute snowmen for breakfast when I saw the idea here.

I just stacked 3 mini powdered donuts, added pretzels for arms, icing for eyes and buttons and a candy corn for a nose. I made the top hats out of construction paper by following the directions on The Idea Room blog.

Cranberry Thanksgiving

2010-12-08T15:03:00.001-08:00

For some reason I can’t seem to post about the books we do in Five In A Row in a timely fashion! A few weeks ago we rowed Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin. I LOVED this book and we had a lot of fun with it! Here is what we did:

One of the messages in the book was don’t judge a book by its cover. To really illustrate this to the girls I wrapped three boxes in pretty wrapping paper and inside I put a little note that said I LOVE YOU and for the fourth gift I wrapped up a piece of candy in waded up paper. Of course the pretty presents went first and Emily cried a little because she got stuck with the ugly one. Of course once she opened it the other girls really wished they had picked that one. I let them all have a piece of candy of course but I thought it was a good lesson!

We made the cranberry bread recipe from the book. The girls did a great job taking turns mixing all of the ingredients. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the finished product but we were too busy eating it:) We also made homemade butter, by shaking heavy cream for a long time, to ~~slather~~ spread on the bread. The girls like shaking the cream but they didn’t want to do it long.

Made turkey cookies

Talked about our favorite Thanksgiving food

Listened to We Gather Together on you tube many times

Did some experiments from here on cranberries:

touch them
smell them
see if they floated
see if they bounce
squish them
taste them (you can see how sour they were by Ellie’s expression)

We went to this website to see what a cranberry bog looks like and find out how and where cranberries are grown

Color by number turkey printout from 1+1+1=1

The last thing we did was a turkey craft from Michael’s but it was a little challenging so we let them glue it to construction paper instead.

That about wraps up Cranberry Thanksgiving!

Christmas Tree

2010-12-07T19:09:00.001-08:00

We read The Berenstain Bears Christmas Tree

and then the girls made their own edible trees using sugar cones with green icing, sprinkles and candy. Check out Emily’s tongue action.

Snowman

2010-12-04T13:31:00.001-08:00

For one of our advent activities this week we read The Biggest, Best Snowman. It is about a girl who is little and always told by her family she is too small to do anything. With the help of her forest friends she builds the biggest best snowman ever and her family realizes she can do things.

After the book the girls made a snowman picture. I drew a snowman on blue cardstock and they used a glue stick all over the snowman. They added buttons, eyes, carrot noses and then poured salt all over the snowman and shook off the excess. Then Ellie used a marker to draw arms and a hat. They turned out really cute!

Afterwards we enjoyed snow cones (their favorite part of course)

Advent Activities

2010-11-29T16:38:00.001-08:00

Since we will be starting our advent calendar soon I wanted to share the activities we will be doing. A lot of these are the same as last year but I put in some new ones too!

1. Go see the singing bears

2. Go see Santa

3. Read Mr. Cookie Baker and make and decorate Christmas cookies

4. Read Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and make reindeer suckers to give to some of our neighbors

5. Read The Gingerbread Man and decorate paper gingerbread men with paint, glitter, buttons etc.

6. Read One Winter’s Day and the girls each pick out something to donate (it goes with the theme of the book)

7. Read The Berenstein Bears Christmas Tree and make Christmas trees from sugar ice cream cones

8. Read Gingerbread Baby and decorate gingerbread houses

9. Read Rudolph Shines Again and make reindeer cupcakes from Family Fun magazine

10. Read The Littlest Angel and go see The Littlest Angel play at the Children’s theatre

11. Read Dear Santa and write letters to Santa

12. Read the Biggest, Best Snowman and make a snow man art craft and eat a snow cone

13. Read If You Take A Mouse To The Movies and take the girls to the movies

14. Read The Story of Christmas and go see The Live Nativity at church

15. Paint ornaments

16. Take the girls to Santa’s Bag. Basically the girls take some of their money (anywhere from 25 cents to $5) and they get to shop for people in a little store with elf helpers

17. Play Silver Bell Game (memory game using Hershey Kisses)

18. Make frozen hot chocolate

19. Read Christmas books by the Christmas tree in our sleeping bags at bedtime

20. Have breakfast for dinner in our PJ’s

21. Christmas movie night

22. Make gingerbread playdoh

23. Make cookies to leave out for Santa

24. Go to the Christmas play at church

25. Christmas day!!

I love Katherine Marie Photography’s advent calendar ideas! All of her advent activities are Random Acts of Christmas Kindness. Although we are not doing this in our calendar (maybe next year) I am going to use some of her ideas to incorporate into our Christmas season!

Jesse Tree

2010-11-23T04:11:00.001-08:00

I have wanted to have a Jesse tree for the last couple of years but couldn’t seem to get it all together before Christmas. For those who aren’t familiar with the Jesse Tree it is a great way to countdown to Jesus’ birth (a type of advent). The name Jesse Tree comes from Isaiah 11:1 "A shoot will spring forth from the stump of Jesse, and branch out from his roots." and the tree represents Jesus’ family tree.

So here is how it works: everyday you read a bible story and hang an ornament that coordinates with the story on the tree. The stories start at creation and go through Jesus’ birth. I have found some great links to ideas, bible verses and printable ornaments. This year I am going to print the ornaments but I want to start collecting real ornaments and making some as well. This is going to be a new tradition for us that I am really excited about! As for the tree, we are are using a little tree we have had for a few years. Here are the links I used:

Simple Mom: a great overview of the Jesse tree and ideas for ornaments and tree

Confessions of a Homeschooler: Links to free printable ornaments and devotions

Our Jesse Tree: she has great pictures of her ornaments

Passionate Homemaking: tons of great ideas

Tired, Need Sleep: lots of great ideas and I love her idea on also having the girls add a piece of yarn each night to the manger so when Christmas day arrives the manger will be nice and soft for baby Jesus

I would love to know if you have a Jesse tree!

Tooth Pillow

2010-11-20T18:01:00.001-08:00

Ellie lost her first tooth a few weeks ago and she already has another one that is loose! My baby is growing up! Anyway, she put her tooth under her pillow and let me tell you the tooth fairy had a terrible time finding it!!! I decided to make it easier on the tooth fairy by making this cute little tooth pillow so she can put her tooth in the little pocket (the tooth’s mouth)and hang it on her bed post. I found the tutorial for this little guy here. I am so grateful for all of the bloggers who take time to make tutorials:)

Turkey Shirts

2010-11-20T17:32:00.001-08:00

A friend and I recently got together and made our girls turkey shirts for Thanksgiving. They turned out really cute! We just freezer paper stenciled a turkey on the front of their shirts and back of a turkey on the back of their shirts! Doing freezer paper stencils is such a fun and easy was to make cute shirts! If you want to know how to make your own freezer stencil shirts you can read the instructions here.

Thanksgiving Ideas

2010-11-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

Before I start posting about our Thanksgiving crafts and snacks that we are doing this year I thought I would re-post about some of our favorite activities from last year.

Rice Krispy turkeys

Turkey Cookies
Watercolor coffee filter turkeys

Madeline

2010-11-08T16:57:00.001-08:00

The last book that we rowed with our friends was Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. Madeline is about a young girl who lives in a boarding school in France. She has to have an emergency appendectomy and all of her friends get to visit her in the hospital. It is such a great book and we had a lot of fun with our activities. Here are the things we did:

Read Madeline

Played Madeline's house board gameWorked on symmetry by having the girls finish the rest of the pictures. I got this idea and most of our activities from Five In A Row's website under the message board. There are so many great ideas on there!They colored a Madeline picture that I printed from herepainted Madeline hats that I made out of plates. I got the idea from here but I used Styrofoam and the paint just peeled right off. Oops!
Some of the other activities that we did were:

Watched a Madeline movie, watched this hospital tour on You Tube (over and over), played doctor, made crepes which surprisingly the girls didn't love, and read Big and Busy Body book. This is a fun interactive book that we read quite often! The girls favorite activity was building the Eiffel Tower out of wafer cookies. I copied the idea from this post on Walking By the Way blog. She has wonderful FIAR ideas!! I started helping the girls build the tower but it kept falling. Luckily, dad came to the rescue and the girls were SO proud!!! Not proud enough not to devour it though:)

Halloween

2010-11-03T18:10:00.001-07:00

We go to the library about every two weeks and when we get back we always have a tea party with our new books. The girls look so forward to this and so do I! Since it was going to be the last day to read our Halloween books before I pack them away we decided to have a tea party after lunch with our books and instead of tea I put dry ice in green punch to make a "special potion".
Soon after it was time for trick or treating. Ellie was a queen and Emily was a princess. I love this picture because Emily just noticed Ellie's hot pink eye shadow and told Ellie how beautiful it wasto which Ellie responded by giving her a kiss. It was so sweet especially since they were just fighting 5 minutes before! I just can't believe I actually captured pictures of it!

Tot School

2010-11-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

~Emily is 34 months old~

Emily's 1st week back to Tot School after taking a few weeks off went great! Here is what she was up to:

Matching Pumpkin Faces

I think I printed this from here but I can't remember for sure:(

Acorn sizing printed from here. I didn't think she would be able to do this correctly but she did fantastic!

We all made toilet paper monsters. I got the idea from No Time For Flashcards.

Read lots of books

Tracing shapes

Drawing in her workbook (Still one of her favorite activities)

Adding letters to our coconut tree

Using pattern blocks

Stacking and knocking down our Curious George blocks

and making peg castles

That wraps up our week!

I'm Back

2010-10-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

I have had computer problems so I haven't been able to be on the computer much but we have been keeping busy as always! We started back to school after taking a few weeks off and although we all enjoyed the break we were all excited about starting back. I haven't made many changes to our curriculum but I have added themes back into our school weeks. Ellie is still trucking along with:

Explode the Code - Book 1

Math U See Primer

Happy Phonics - Still one of Ellie's favorites

Handwriting Without Tears

Learn to Read 100 Easy Lessons - Ellie's reading is really taking off

Five In A Row - I will blog soon about the last book we rowed

Our themes we will be working on the next 8 weeks are:

finishing up Halloween, scarecrows, turkeys, the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, Thanksgiving and Christmas

I am also making circle time a priority because we slowly stopped incorporating it. I got motivated after reading this post by My Montessori Journey. The girls LOVE circle time so I don't know why I let it fall to the way side.

Home From the Mountains

2010-10-18T17:13:00.001-07:00

We just got back from a wonderful trip to the mountains with my sister and her family! We were there for 4 days and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect!! We had such a great time and other than a few sleeping issues with Emily I wouldn’t have a changed a thing:)

How To Make An Apple Pie and See The World

2010-10-08T17:46:00.001-07:00

Several weeks ago we started Five In A Row. It is such a great and fun curriculum where they have picked good quality books and you do several activities like math, geography, art etc. using the theme of the book. The Five In A Row curriculum has great ideas but I also love to supplement with Home School Share and Five In A Row’s Forum. Several weeks ago we rowed How To Make An Apple Pie and See The World with our friends. I also incorporated some activities with our workboxes the next week. How To Make An Apple Pie is about a girl who wants to make an apple pie and so she travels the world to pick up different ingredients.

Here is what we did:

Read the story

Found the different countries on the globe

Listened to an apple felt story (basically I told the story and they put the pieces on the board)

Apple Tasting. I made a chart with 4 different types of apples listed and a yes and no column. Each of the girls tasted the apples and came and marked whether or not they liked the apple. Then they each ate one! They loved this!

We painted apples that I traced on a brown paper bag (both front and back), cut them out, stapled the pieces together and stuffed them with toilet paper. I can’t remember where I got this idea. Sorry!

Made apples out of paper plates by cutting pieces of red construction paper and gluing it and then adding a stem and leaf. I got the idea from My Montessori Journey.

Colored flags from each of the countries that she visited in the book. I printed them from Homeschool Share. We are keeping everything in a binder.

We made mini apple pies. Basically we took crescent roll dough, put a dollop of apple pie filling in the center, baked them and topped with ice cream.

We weighed, measured and answered questions about apples. We filled out the results on this sheet:

We cut out pictures of new vocabulary words from the book and glued them by the words. I printed the pictures from Homeschool Share. I didn’t know how much Ellie was paying attention to the new words but she asked me to coax Emily to go back to bed one day. I was so proud:)

We went apple picking and had so much fun not to mention we brought home a ton of apples. I made cinnamon applesauce, unsweetened apple sauce, mini apple pies, apple chips, and apple butter. We also munched on quite a few.

After each book we will put a mark on our world map showing where we visited. Even though we visited a lot of different places we put our first mark on Vermont, where the girl in the story picked up the apples.

Edible Acorns

2010-10-07T16:51:00.001-07:00

The girls and I made edible acorns for our family bible study night. They were so easy, so cute and so yummy! The best part is we had fun making them. I found the idea on the Family Fun website. All you do is put chocolate icing on the top of a doughnut hole than roll the icing in crushed pretzels and add a small little pretzel on the top. Poor Emily didn’t actually get to taste hers because she wouldn’t eat her veggies at dinner but we enjoyed them.

Tot School

2010-10-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

~Emily is 34 months old~

We had such a great week of school this week. Emily loved adding in some fall activities!

Hammering golf tees into egg carton

Playing with wiki sticks

Using dropper to put water into tray (she didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought she would)

Spooning acorns and pumpkins into pumpkin ice tray and putting stickers on paper

Playing with plastic shapes and painting Halloween picture

Making a scarecrow to match the picture. She loved this activity!! I printed it from Kidssoup. It is a paid membership but worth every penny.

That pretty much wraps up our 6th week of school!

Countdown to Halloween

2010-10-01T05:56:00.001-07:00

Our family just loves fall and all of the fun activities that happen during this time of year like fall festivals, going to the pumpkin patch, the leaves changing colors, the fair and of course trick or treating. This year I thought it would be fun this year to make a calendar to countdown to Halloween. I loved the one I saw here so I made my own version. I took little colored envelopes I found in the teacher section of the Dollar Tree and glued them to black poster board and added cut outs, stickers etc. to decorate them. I will put a long black slip of paper in each one of our activity for the day.

Some of my ideas so far:

Paint a pumpkin, make goop, go to pumpkin patch, carve pumpkin, go to the zoo, family Halloween/dress up party, make candy apples, various Halloween/Fall crafts, walking in the woods, Halloween movie night, the fair, and that is about all I have for now. I plan on getting all of the slips of paper filled out and put in this afternoon. What fun things do you have planned for October?

Wisdom From A 5 Year Old

2010-09-24T14:16:00.001-07:00

This was our conversation in the car while running a few ~~quick~~ errands that end up taking twice as long as I thought. I had not planned on going inside anywhere so I just wore what I was cleaning in… shorts with a paint stain and a t-shirt. Not to mention that my hair looked lovely!!

Ellie: Mom I am hungry!! We have been running errands forever.

Me: I will stop and grab you guys lunch and you can eat it in the car.

Ellie: Can we please eat it there so I don’t spill any of my food.

Me: No, because I am wearing grubby clothes and my hair is a mess.

Ellie: Mom, it is not what you look like on the outside but how you are on the inside that counts. Remember you shouldn’t care what others think.

OK seriously….what do you say to that??

Me: You are absolutely right!

Why didn’t I just say we don’t have time!!!

Having School Here There and Everywhere

2010-09-19T15:56:00.001-07:00

In the past two weeks we have done school on schedule but we haven’t done school in our school room very much! We had a day that was a little cooler so I just took our workbox system outside and we sat at the patio table and did our work. Emily enjoyed this even more then Ellie because I let her make a mess with her activities and boy did she ever. Instead of reading our books on the sofa like normal we read and ate our snack in our swing set playhouse. I am not going to lie….I enjoy the soft sofa way more then the hard wood floor but the girls love it!

Several times in the last few weeks we have loaded up my backpack with school books and the girls and I have headed to the mall Barnes & Noble for school (yes, I look like a dork walking around the mall with a loaded backpack). When we get there both girls pick out ~~ridiculously~~ big stacks of books and while they are working I read to them and if there is work Ellie needs to really concentrate on I will help her and then we will take a break and read books after. It is also a great incentive to have the play area to go to if we get our work done in time. I use the play area for PE:) So where else do you do school?

Kindergarten with Ellie

2010-09-15T10:26:00.001-07:00

We are into our 4th week of school and it is going really well. Having the first 6 weeks planned out has been wonderful. I have tweaked a few things along the way but we have stuck to it for the most part. So here how everything is going:

Math U See Primer- Still really easy at this point but will be getting a little more challenging soon

Explode the Code – Going pretty good. The work is easy for her but she doesn’t love all the writing involved.

Happy Phonics – She still loves this and looks forward to playing the games.

My Father’s World 1st grade– We are taking this very slow but it is going really well. We are all enjoying the bible portion of it.

Artistic Pursuits – I love this and Ellie likes it but just not as much as me:)

Handwriting Without Tears – This is a great great program but this is where we butt heads. She wants to write her way and doesn’t want me to help her and doesn’t enjoy writing during school but loves writing on her own.

Five In A Row – I will do separate posts on our FIAR activities.

Teach Reading 100 Easy Lessons - Ellie hated this when we started several months ago so I put it up and about a month later she said she wanted to give it another chance. I was shocked because I hadn’t even mentioned it. Anyway, we started it back and she actually seems to look forward to it. We don’t do it during school time but right before rest time and it only takes 10 min. It is working great and her reading is taking off!

More then anything we read lots and lots of books!!

We have had two bad school days but we have brushed them off and started fresh the next day!! I am so blessed to be able to homeschool my girls!

Tot School

2010-09-13T17:02:00.001-07:00

~32 months~

Here is what we did last week in tot school ~~wearing only our big girl panties~~:

Lots of puzzles and coloring books

Transferring pom poms and putting marbles on golf tees

Lots of doodling on workbook pages and building with pegs

Putting stickers on paper

Emily only did school one day last week so it was a pretty laid back week.

Bible Study

2010-09-09T19:07:00.001-07:00

Tuesday night has become our family bible study night. We have done bible studies as a family before but only sporadically so it is nice knowing that we have a scheduled night. We are using Leading Little One’s to God. I am really enjoying it and I love hearing the girls answer the questions. You just never know what they are going to come up with. Every Tuesday I put a dessert recipe in Ellie’s workbox for us to all make together to eat during our bible study. The first week we made these yummy brownies and last week we made these cute sunflower cookies from Makes and Takes.

We iced sugar cookies that I bought from the bakery with yellow frosting, put candy corn around the edge and chocolate chips in the middle. They look like owl eye’s when they are side by side !

Seeds Family Worship

2010-09-04T18:50:00.001-07:00

I read about the Seeds Family Worship CD’s several months ago on Homeschool Creations blog and I bookmarked it. Well the other day I finally went to You Tube and listened to some of the songs and I really liked them so I ordered the CD Seeds of Courage. Can I just tell you how much I love love that CD!! The best part is the girls love it too. Basically it is scripture set to contemporary music. You can read more about Seeds Family Worship on Homeschool Creations review. Also, Homeschool Creations has a discount code so you can get 20% off! There are five CD’s total and I can’t wait to order the other four! I recommend going to You Tube and listening for yourself.

New Look

2010-08-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

I have a new look!! Have you noticed? OK technically I don't have a new look but my blog does! I wish I could tell you how I did it but I didn't do it... my very dear friend did and she tells you how in this post. Thanks Katy!!!

Tot School

2010-08-29T14:05:00.001-07:00

~Emily is 32 weeks old~

After taking about a month off from school we started back this past week. The girls were very excited and so was I knowing that I had 6 weeks planned:) I added an extra activity for Emily so instead of having 3 boxes to choose from each day she has 4. Here is what Emily did this week:

Magnetic Pom Pom’s. I can’t remember where I printed these sheets from!! I thought I printed them from Home Grown Hearts but I can’t find them but I will keep looking!

Window Clings (Both girls love these)

Match the small picture to the large picture using a magnifying glass. She loved this activity!!! I printed it from here.

Playing with Handwriting Without Tears letter pieces– She made roads to drive her cars on.

Color Wonder

Putting noodles in a cheese shaker

Playing Candyland – This continues to be one of her favorite games!

Color Matching file folder game printed at Confessions Of A Homeschooler

Pouring Water

AquaDoodle Mat

The big hit of the week was finding alphabet puzzle pieces in the rice. I got the idea from here.

Eye Spy Bottle that she played with for all of one second!

All in all it was a great first week of school! To see more tot school ideas visit 1+1+1=1.

Every Cowgirl Needs A Horse

2010-08-28T17:18:00.001-07:00

The girls and I recently checked out Every Cowgirl Needs A Horse from the library. We LOVED this book. It is so cute and funny and the girls and I read it over and over and over again. It is about a little girl who wants to be a cowgirl and asks for a horse for her birthday. On the day of her birthday she puts on her cowgirl gear and does all of her cowgirl chores while waiting to see if she gets a horse. Instead of a horse she gets a bike that she pretends is a horse. It is such a cute story!!

Ok this is not book related but I have to share a few things that the girls have said and done this past week:

Me:Ellie, go ahead and get your last chore done

Ellie:Now I know how Cinderella felt!

I was sick one day this week so Chris and the girls went to the store for some ginger ale. Both girls come running in and told me they have a surprise for me. They were so excited!!!! Know what the surprise was….coupons they had found. They know me so well!!

Homemade Bagels

2010-08-19T17:42:00.001-07:00

I have been wanting to make homemade bagels ever since I saw this recipe on Passionate Homemaking. I finally made them this weekend and they were so so yummy!!! I really wanted to try to blueberry but I knew the girls would love the cinnamon sugar ones. Everyone loved them but they were a little bit of a pain to make. Hopefully next time will be a little easier and faster. The main problem I had was that it took for ever for the dough to rise! Anyway here they are:

Luckily they tasted sooo much better then they looked:)

School Plans for 2010-2011

2010-08-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have been in major school planning mode for the last week or so and have almost the first 6 weeks of school planned. My goal is when we start school at the end of August to have 6 weeks planned for both girls including circle time. I want everything printed, pages tagged or whatever needs to be done so I can easily fill our workboxes each night. Here is our school plan:
Ellie:
My Father's World 1st grade - I never thought I would use an all in one curriculum but I really like this curriculum, especially the bible section. I am going to supplement the reading with:

Happy Phonics - Ellie has loved this. It is all games and lots of fun!

Explode the Code
we will also be using
Math U See Primer

Artistic Pursuits

We will also be reading lots of books! I always include 2-3 books in one of Ellie's boxes and this continues to be her favorite thing in her workboxes.

We will also supplement in with games, Handwritting Without Tears (that we were doing last year), lots of hands on activities and different printables from Kidssoup.com, Confessions of a Homeschooler, Prekinders,Teacher File Box and Making Learning Fun.

For Emily:

I still plan on doing tot school activities with her. In the past she has had 3 school boxes to choose from while Ellie was doing school but I am going to add in another box so she will have 4. Three of the boxes will be ones she can work on independently and the 4th box will be one for us to do together. Also anything that is in Ellie's workbox that has to do with a science experiment or craft I include enough materials for Emily to participate too.

Circle Time:

Circle time will pretty much stay the same but we are going to do Ellie's bible lesson during this time so Emily can be a party of it and I have added a pocket chart to our circle time board so I can include fun rhymes and poems.

Book Shelf

2010-07-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have loved the rain gutter shelves from the first time I saw them here. I planned on putting one by Ellie's bed so she could actually put books on the shelf after she reads them instead of letting them fall off the side of her bed. After seeing this post I decided it would be just as cute and much easier to just buy this picture shelf from IKEA. I just love all of the ideas I get from blog land!!

Alpaca Farm

2010-07-20T05:22:00.001-07:00

We recently visited an alpaca farm with some friends. Alpaca's look very similar to llama's and are pretty darn cute. Everybody had so much fun feeding and learning about them.

Cow Appreciation Day

2010-07-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

Chick-fil-a recently had a cow appreciation day where if you dress up like a cow you got a free kids meal. Chris took my little calves and they had a blast!!

Art Holder

2010-07-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

I saw the coolest art supply holder on Homeschool Creations blog and I knew that I wanted to make one for the girls. It was pretty cheap and super simple. I bought a lazy susan at Ikea for $7.99 and the little metal buckets at the Target dollar section. I hot glued magnets on the lazy susan which keeps the buckets from falling off when they spin it. I put it on the breakfast room table so the girls could color, draw, glue etc. while I am cooking dinner or just whenever.

4th of July Cake

2010-07-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

I made a candy cake for a 4th of July cookout we went too. It was so easy to make and very yummy! I got the idea from here and although her cake looks so much better then mine I was still happy with it. I just used a boxed cake mix and iced it with white icing. I lined the outside with KitKats and put red and blue M&M's on top. My travel cake plate broke so I had to put it on this busy tray which takes away from the cake but it was all I had!

Our Circle Time Board

2010-07-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

We have always done circle time but I loved the circle time board that I first saw here. I wanted to make one for us because I thought it would be fun but the girls have loved it more then I thought they would! So on our board we have:

Upper and lowercase letter we are working on and right beside it is a sign language picture of the letter

Shape of the week

Color of the week

Bible verse we are working on (verses from AWANA)

Skip counting chart that I printed from here

100's chart (we mark off a block each school day)

Letter activity cards that I printed from Homeschool Share to get the girls up and moving. I also found another set here to print once we go through all of the ones from Homeschool Share.

Laminated sentence strip. We write a sentence and we talk about how sentences start with capitol letters, have punctuation, how many words are in the sentence etc. The possibilities are endless. I got this idea from my wonderful teacher friend.

Number of the week

Today's weather

The letters, shapes, colors and numbers are laminated flash cards I was given and I just attach them with a Velcro dot. Our bible verses are on rings so I can easily review with them and everything else is attached with double sided tape. I still have several open spots for us to add to the board and I thought about jazzing it up and making it more colorful but I am happy with it for now.

During circle time we also have a calendar that we use to talk about days of the week and months of the year. I always try to incorporate songs, books or simple games. Circle time usually lasts about 15 min.

I got so much inspiration from here, here and here!

Carwash

2010-07-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Emily loved washing her car! I am not sure what she enjoyed more...filling the bucket with a whole bottle of soap or washing.

I had to throw in the picture of the girls playing superhero.

Yummy Breakfast or Lunch

2010-06-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe for savory bread pies on The Magic Onions blog awhile back and Chris made it for us recently. It was so yummy!! The girls really liked it, especially Ellie! In the recipe you cut the crust off so my very smart hubby didn't want them to go to waste so he dipped them in butter than a cinnamon/sugar mixture and toasted them to make breakfast fries. As you can imagine they didn't last long!

Vacation

2010-06-18T14:05:00.001-07:00

We spent last week at the beach it is was so nice to get away!! It was such a great break from the computer, chores, school, and work! The girls were so excited and I just love getting to spend quality time with them without thinking of all of the 100 other things I could be doing when we are at home. We spent lots of time at hanging out on the beach....mostly in the evenings when it was nice and cool

fishing at the pond

visiting the children's museum

and swimming at the pool....lots! Sorry no pics of me....I took a vacation from make-up and my hair straightener too so I will keep those lovely pics to myself:)

I am not sure if the if the girls enjoyed the actual beach more or the fact that we stayed up late almost every night and ate lots of ice cream but it was a great vacation!

Tot School

2010-06-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

~Emily is 29 months old~

Felt board fun Working in one of Ellie's Workbooks. She loves loves worksheets!

Gluing cheerios on an octopus

Transferring water with a sponge

Circling farm animals

Putting stickers on her paper

Digging for bugs and worms

We had a random but fun week of tot school!

Cheap school games

2010-05-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

I was recently inspired by this post from Mama Jenn's blog to make a new file folder game from bulletin board borders. I made a trip to the Dollar Tree and bought three sets of classroom border. Each packet had 14 sheets in it and each sheet of border has 8 different pictures on it. I took one set of pictures, cut them apart and glued them into a file folder and gave the other set to Emily to match. It was a very good activity for her because she could do it successfully but she had to study each picture a little to get it.For the rest of the sheets I am cutting them apart and using them for a memory game for Emily, Ellie and I to play together. For Ellie I plan on using them for patterning. So basically for $1 you have three different activities to do. You can't beat that!!

Ellie's School Activities - Farm

2010-05-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

We recently spent a week learning all about farms and farm animals. This has been one of our favorite studies. We read lots of great non-fiction books about the different types of farms, farm equipment and the animals but there favorite book was Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm. We read it everyday at circle time. The girls loved this book!!

We went to see some farm animals:
Can you see the chickens?

The girls were being very sweet to each other:)

Ellie worked on a farm puzzle:

Farm math worksheet (I can't remember where I printed this from)

Rhyming farm house from Kidssoup (such a great resource and well worth the money)

Egg Story Sequencing

I filled two tubs, one with clean water and one with chocolate pudding. I put plastic farm animals in the pudding and we acted out the Wishy Washy story. I got the idea from here. The girls loved this

and it quickly turned into them being the animals

Using these little chicks to do addition problems. This idea came from Kidssoup too.

Roll Mrs. Wishy Washy from Making Learning Fun

and using magnetic pom poms from Making Learning Fun

and how to draw a cow from Making Learning fun too.

It was a great week of school!

Tot School

2010-05-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

~Emily is 29 months old~

We had a pretty good week of tot school last week. Emily continues to love to do school with her big sister. Here are some of her activities from school last week.

Putting the checkers into the Connect Four.

Making letters with our How to build an A book. I made most of the letters and she named them but she was able to make a few of them.Matching the color of the bugs to the board.It is hard to tell from this picture but she is matching our counting bears to the matching color on the little twister board that came from a Wendy's kids meal.Using Popsicle sticks to color scratch Dora pictures. She didn't really like this much. I just don't think the colors are vibrant enough.She loves using her drawing board!!! After all of that hard work she is enjoying lunch outside with Ellie.

Letter B Activities

2010-05-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we worked on the letter B. We did mostly butterfly activities but we also did a few bird things. I didn't take many pictures but I did take a few of our favorite activities.

We made the Life Cycle of a Butterfly using noodles. We used an orzo noodle for the egg, spiral noodle for the caterpillar, jumbo noodle for the cocoon and bowtie noodle for the butterfly. I copied the idea from Muses of Megret.
We made a tissue paper butterfly like the one at Confessions of a Homeschooler. We also did many other of her B ideas but I just didn't get any pictures.

We made these paper plate bluebirds like the ones from My Montessori Journey. Ellie enjoyed this because she didn't need any help from me!

I wish I would have taken more pictures of our other activities but I will do better next time:)

Favorite Games

2010-05-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ellie and Emily both love to play games and I love that Emily is old enough to take turns and understand how to play for the most part. Here are some of our favorites.

What are some of your kids favorite games?

Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal

2010-05-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

I have been in major baking mode lately. I have tried several new recipes lately but nothing to write home about until I made this yummy oatmeal this morning that came from here! I really liked it especially with milk poured over top. Let me know if you try it!!

Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal
3 cups quick cooking oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
Mix all ingredients together and stir well. Spread in a greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. If you like it a little crunchy on top cook for a few minutes longer. Serve with warm milk poured over top. Enjoy!

Emily's Chores

2010-04-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Emily has wanted a chore pack like Ellie's for months. In the mornings when Ellie would clip on her pack Emily would ask where her chore pack was and I do mean every morning. Well this past weekend I finally made her one. She was so excited Monday morning. Honestly she was more excited then if it was time to open presents. She was running around squealing and showing us over and over. I only put one chore card in it each morning because she is too young to switch her cards around like Ellie does. Here chores are:
Monday: water plant
Tuesday :wipe down table after breakfast (she started doing this by standing in the chair and when I came back in the room she was on the table cleaning)

Wednesday: help mom load the washing machine

Thursday: dust the living room
Friday: help Ellie clean the playroom (I am sure I will spend this time refereeing all of their disputes)

She is so excited to be apart of our chore time and I hope it lasts:)

Spring

2010-04-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

We are enjoying Spring so much and spending lots of time outside. We took 2 weeks off from workboxes and have just spent lots of times with friends and playing. I have also taken a little break from blogging. It hasn't helped that Emily has mucked up the camera with mud so I can't take any pictures. I always want to add pictures to my post:) Anyway, hopefully I will get the camera back in working condition soon and we are starting back with our workboxes tomorrow.

In other news I ordered Happy Phonics a few weeks ago and I am so excited to get started. I think it will be so fun because it is just lots of games!! There is a lot of cutting and putting together but luckily I enjoy doing that sort of thing. I am also almost done with our circle time board that you are seeing all over the blogs. I will post about that soon!

Nature Bag

2010-04-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

The girls and I are going on quite a few nature walks lately and they always want to bring things home with us. I decided to make them an over the shoulder nature bag so I don't end up carrying all of their finds!! I followed this easy tutorial and it was really simple. I purchased a pair of cargo pants from Goodwill and cut a section of the leg off that included the cargo pocket. I stitched the bottom and hemmed the top and sewed ribbon for the strap and viola! We played with our friends recently in the woods and when we were in the car she pulled out several earthworms from the pocket. I was thinking of putting colored pencils in the pocket so we could sketch nature pictures.....silly me!!

Doesn't it go great with her PJ's???

Easter Weekend

2010-04-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

We had a great Easter weekend even if the girls over dosed on junk and were not on there best behavior (I am being nice). We spent some time at church enjoying crafts and an Easter egg hunt, we had fun dying eggs and getting dressed up (believe it or not my girls really think getting dressed up is fun) for church on Easter. I wanted to get some cute pictures of the girls in there Easter dresses but that is easier said then done!!! The first few turned out like this:

but then I got a few of these:

and I was happy! Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

Easter Activities

2010-03-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

We have had a lot of fun with our Easter activities at school this week. Here are some of the activities that we have done:

I love the resurrection eggs and I printed and laminated the story cards to go with them here

Draw the other side of the egg to match the first side

Sound eggs: Put two alike items in the eggs and match the sounds

Read Make Way For Ducklings. I love Robert McCloskey!!

Draw your own chick. I got this idea from here. Put the number eggs 1-30 in order. I printed these from here.

Finish the pattern eggs printed from here

Some of the other fun activities that we have done but I didn't get pictures of are:

Draw a bunny dice game

Match the eggs from Make and Takes

Made jelly bean jars from here

Easter worksheets from Teacher File Box

We still have one more day of activities to do and there are so many other activities that I wanted to do but we just ran out of time and I ran out of steam:)