Christmas Blessings

We spent the morning baking cookies for our neighbors. It was great fun and I love having fun with my girls.





We took a nice long bath and then delivered them to our neighbors. It was very cold outside so when we got back in we enjoyed a nice cup of hot chocolate.


Christmas Blessings everyone!

stArt - The runaway pancake

This week we read and listened to the book Marsupial Sue Presents "The Runaway Pancake" by John Lithgow. We did some gingerbread man activities this week and from my perspective this story has a similar storyline to the famous Gingerbread man story.

For the craft we simply painted a paper plate and added some googly eyes, a nose and a mouth. (I added some feet though the runaway pancake only rolled in the book.)


We also made some Puffy Oven Pancakes for dinner.



It was a great way to bring a fun story to life. The only down side is that once you have listened to the audio book you get the song stuck in your head.

Check out how others bring books to life at A Mommy's Adventure.

Preschool - Letters J and K

We had a very uneventful Jungle week so I am combining J and K. For Jungle week we did a very simple craft that I saw on Pocket full of Posies. We read lots of jungle books and did lots of puzzles but other than that nothing much.


This week for the letter K I used several printables from Making Learning fun. We painted this simple K is for Kite coloring page and then added popsicle sticks. After we were done with the craft I had the girls form letters with the sticks.



Emma woke up one day and asked if we could do school so we worked on this number tracing sheet.
This shape tracing sheet.


And this number matching sheet.



She was having such a good time that we continued to work on several other school type projects too.



We had a couple snow days, so I started a few of our Christmas ideas this week. We made some gingerbread playdough and a gingerbread man sticker craft. We had an afternoon where we focused on our stART activity this week as well.





We did some other alphabet kite matching upper and lower case letters. A kite magnet page and learned the song, Let's go fly a kite.

We continued our Jesse tree advent devotions in the evenings and read lots of books but none that matched the kite theme.

Thanks for reading! To find out about what others are doing in preschool at home check out Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

Wordless Wednesday - sisterly love

Lord, Bless my two daughters. Allow their hearts to remain steadfast in their love for You and for each other. Amen.

Never to young...

...to learn how to organize a closet. Our hall toy closet was in need of some rearranging today and I gave my oldest daughter the task. She did a great job.

Here are a few shots of her hard and diligent work.




I love my girls!

Advent Activities

I am excited about our advent activities this year. We are celebrating Advent with a Jesse Tree this year. The girls and I made a "mailbox" out of a paper bag and hung it on their wall. Each day they check their "mail" and I give them an ornament for our Jesse Tree. Being a paper crafter, I am making these myself but believe me when I say they are not elaborate.

I found inspiration for the Jesse tree here and she linked here for the devotions I decided to use. No pictures today of our first couple days but wanted to get the information out there for anyone who may want to do this before it is too late.

Blessings during this wonderful season!

Bible in 90 days

I just signed up for the challenge to read the Bible in 90 days. I am so excited and know that the challenge will be worth it.

I've read through the Bible several times and am looking forward to the spiritual renewal of reading the entire story of God in 90 days. There is so much to be said about taking time to read the Word of God everyday and I can't wait to dive into this challenge head first. Thanks for taking the time to read and if anyone else wants in on the challenge let me know. Blessings!

Family Night - Abundance

We have been hit or miss with our family nights more recently and I am ok with it because I have individual spiritual time with each of the girls to instruct and love on them.

With Thanksgiving next week I wanted to reinforce just how much we have to be grateful for and what an abundance of blessings God has given us.

We started the night by asking the girls to walk around the house and choose 5 of their favorite things, whatever they may be. The girls put their favorite things on the couch and we talked about whether or not that was all they had or if they had more. They obviously understood they have many more favorite things. I asked them to recall 5 things they had eaten that day and they each had more than 5 things to say. We talked about abundance and blessings and just how much we have to be thankful for.



We talked about Psalm 100:4 - Give thanks to Him, and praise His name! (memory verse) and how we can thank and praise God. We then used the idea of abundance to fill a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. God has given us so much and out of our abundance we want to give to others who don't have as much. The girls really enjoyed it and we had a good time.



We ended the evening coloring a cornucopia (horn of plenty) and we will write things we are thankful for everyday on this paper. God bless you and your families!


To find out how other families are teaching and instructing the next generation to know and love God check out Raising Rock Stars. Thanks for reading!

StArt - Nuts to you

This is our first StArt project although it is not the first time we've read a book and done an art project to match it.

We read the book Nuts to You! by Lois Ehlert.

First we went outside and picked up some acorns.



Then I printed out an acorn template and taped it to the bottom of a pan. I put some paint on the edges then plopped in a few acorn and let the girls tilt the pan back and forth to paint the acorn. (Similar art projects use marbles and probably work better.)


The acorns did not roll very well but the final product was still very cute.


For more StArt projects check out A Mommy's Adventures.

Preschool - Letter I

I is for Ice Cream and, lets face it, who doesn't like ice cream!

We had a great week of learning here. We started the week with this wonderful print out which I turned into an art project from Making Learning Fun. The girls wanted to keep decorating their papers and would have put sprinkles on every square inch (which they almost did.)



I really wanted to focus on numbers to solidify #1-10 identification.

I made some ice cream hopscotch cards. The girls called out the number as they jumped on them, then I switched them and they did it again so it wasn't just numerical order but also real identification.



I also used some foam puzzles and had the girls separate numbers from letters.



We stacked "Ice Cream Buckets"



We played "Ice Cream Shop" just for some imaginary fun.



We made an ice cream craft with melted crayons and wax paper.

We did this ice cream cone dot to dot and this ice cream counting/number match.


We read lots of books this week but really, none were specific to our ice cream theme. We did read a couple books in the Rainbow Magic Fairies series, The Party Fairies. Not my personal favorite or even a recommendation but it's what we did.

Lots of fun activities and some serious number review.

Thanks for reading.

To find out what other preschoolers are doing check out Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

Preschool - Letter H

I was delighted to be able to babysit for a friend this week and have a 19 month boy in our house for 3 days. I had such a great time but didn't get many shots of our preschool activities because of the extra little person around. Here is what we did anyway despite no pictures.

H is for horse this week. We had a lot of fun, games, activities and learning but I don't have many pictures to show for it.

We worked on a horse shoe H craft (cut a horseshoe shape out of a sponge) then read the book I Wonder Why Horses Wear Shoes.

We also read Barney's Horse by Syd Hoff. After reading this book we took turns taking our toy horse and clippity clopping around our big alphabet mat. When the horse stopped it marked a letter and then we took turns saying what letter it was and what sound it made. Great review of letters.

I set up 3 different stations to rotate through.

1. Lacing farm animals.
2. Alphabet foam puzzle and matching mother/child farm animals.
3. Using jewel manipulative to count on 1-12 counting cards (can't remember where I found these) and a foam # puzzle.

We read the following books:
A city horse by Anna Cicero
Breyer Stablemates - Penny
Disney Princess - A Pony for a Princess
Usborne - Horses&Ponies
Slide and Find on the Farm
My Little People Farm lift the flap book
And several My Little Pony books

In never fails that I tend to either have too many ideas to fit in a week or too few. I will probably make horse trail mix tonight or tomorrow for a special snack. Hope you are having fun learning at home too. Thanks for visiting!

To find out what other preschool kids are doing check out Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.


Fall acorn sorting and patterning.

Alphabet puzzle time. Both girls are great puzzlers!


Sisterly Love. I can't get enough of it.

Preschool - Letter G

G is for Geography this week. I had all intentions of doing these activities last week but fall ideas kept coming and I went with it. After putting this lesson off a little I was surprised that we actually did have enough to go on.


As soon as I saw this craft I knew I wanted to adapt it for this geography unit. Certainly not as cute as the original inspiration but it made the point. (Thanks Ramblings and adventures of a stay at home mom!)



Really my inspiration to teach G is for geography came from a desire to introduce global concepts to the girls. I didn't go all out but just did basic introductions to a number of continents, foods, cultures and the like.

We spend some time building "pyramids" and learning about Ancient Egypt. Our key word was ancient. Of course we had a lot of fun knocking them down as well since most things ancient are in ruins.


I let Emma discover the hidden message I left for her. Of course she loved seeing the letter G.


I made a play dough mat and some green and blue play dough. The most fun was that I let them mix the colors which is usually a big not allowed. We made earths and talked about the names of the continents.



We also had a lot of fun at a fall costume party with some good friends and although you often see my children in costumes on here I really liked this one.


Toys: We played with our vtech Fly and Learn Globe this week. I found this at my favorite thrift shop for $1. Serious bargain there.


Books we read:

I chose a variety of books that featured different cultures. We did NOT always talk in depth about the culture but rather introduced them to the fact that everyone is unique and God made us all.

1. Nine O'Clock Lullaby by Marilyn Singer
2. Abiyoyo (based on a South African lullaby and folk story - Pete Seeger)
3. New Shoes for Silvia by Johanna Hurwitz
4. The Empty Pot by Demi

I also got a few books from the dollar tree about states and capitals and an atlas.

The week as a whole went well and although I had much grander plans for it I can't call it any more than an introduction to the world around us. I enjoyed it and hope the girls retain at least a little bit of the info.

To check out what other preschoolers are learning at home visit Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

Family Night - Joseph part 2

Well, we continued part two of the story of Joseph last night. We didn't have family night last week because the girls were both sick and it just didn't happen, such is life sometimes.

As I said last time, I love the story of Joseph and as a family we were focusing on what we can learn about attitudes from the story. Though there are so many core values I think you can learn from this story we focused on attitude. We reviewed the story and read it again from the girls bible. We underlined words that described the different attitudes of the characters in the story and also talked about ones that were implied in the story. For instances the brothers were jealous, angry and lied to their father. Joeseph was patient, loving, respectful, obedient and forgiving.




I came up with an idea to use an Attitude Stoplight as the prop to learn from this week. We started family night with a rousing game of Red light Green light. The girls loved it as it is one of their favorite games. We correlated the red light to those attitudes and behaviors that we need to stop. (anger, jealousy, lying, complaining, WHINING, rudeness, etc.) Then we correlated the green light with attitudes that are good to continue in. (loving, patience, forgiving, respect, listening, obeying, etc.) The yellow light symbolized this, Slow down, think and choose green. I wrote the girls suggested red and green attitudes on the traffic light prop and will hang it in the house. My desire is to recommend they visit the stop light when their attitude needs adjusted. I call it the Red Zone. When directed to this Red Zone they will have time to think about how they can change their attitude from "red" to "green".

I am hoping this post at least makes some sense. Let me know if you adapt the idea for your house and how it works. Thanks for reading!

Check out here how other families are Raising Rock Stars!

Preschool - Letter F

Ah, my favorite season. I love fall and all that comes with it. We dove straight into letter F for fall last week and we had so many activities. Here are some of my favorites.


Investigating leaves with magnifying glass. We did not take time to write down our observations but it was still fun.





Art project found here. We used erasers to dip in the paint and simulate the indian corn.

Bean sorting. I had a leaf shaped veggie dish and it just so happened that it had three small sections and one large section. I put in three different beans and had her sort them. Great fine motor skills though she quickly became disinterested.


Gourd heads. I drilled holes in some acorn squashes and got out the Mr. Potato Head pieces and let them put them in the holes. Fun, fun, fun. Probably my favorite activity.



I made some play dough and put some spices in it so it smelled wonderful and the girls played and played.






I made an autumn sensory bin and the girls actually played with it a great deal. I was amazed to see both of them use their imaginations and play well independently.

Great week overall and reinforced just how much I love teaching my girls and spending time with them.

Thanks for reading!

To find out more preschool ideas check out HomeSchool Creations.