Nursery Rhymes

During a recent DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) with Emma I pulled out a nursery rhyme book.  She loved it.  I used the nursery rhyme units on Totally Tots and Spell Out Loud as inspiration and am starting a nursery rhyme unit with Emma.  We are working on it two times a week

Here are a few pictures of our first 2 rhymes. 

Nursery Rhyme Notebook Cover Page

 

Baa Baa Black Sheep (paint and glitter)

4 cube farm animal puzzle

Working her way up to this 12 piece cube farm animal puzzle

Coloring Little Bo Peep rhyme page

Sheep foam craft

Searching for sheep

The happiness of finding!

She is loving it!  She loves learning and I am so glad for that.  We are doing some other farm related activities that I already had from previous farm units.  Most of the materials are too young for her but I am getting one last preschool use out of these activities before I retire them to someone else who could use them.

Here is the link to the site I printed the pages from.

Thanks for reading!

Valentine's Fun

Actually, a fever is getting in the way of the fun today but we had lots of fun leading up to today.

We began the month with a family night (yes, we still do those even if I don't post them) about emotions/feelings.  I downloaded this preschool lapbook from Carrissa at 1+1+1=1.  I just put all the emotions on a regular piece of poster board and we had fun discussing all the emotions/feelings.  I encouraged the girls to understand that none of these emotions are wrong in and of themselves but that what we do with them matters.  We practiced what we should do when we feel angry or frustrated and chose some constructive ways to deal with our emotions. 

I also reused the "love bug" from last year.  Throughout the month as I see the girls handling their emotions well they get to add a dot to the ladybug.  They have been doing well and just having this chart to look at helps them identify what they are feeling and put words to it.  I think we will keep it up longer than just this month.

We have also been counting down to Valentine's day with a countdown calendar that I made.  Same concept as my Advent calendar but with a different Valentine idea for each day.  I also printed out these cute love Bible verses from the Happy Home Fairy and we have been reading one each night at dinner.

My parents,  my sister and brother in law and their kids came over on Saturday.  We made a care package to send to my sister in Nevada.  We also played eskimo bingo with the kids.  They had so much fun just being together.  We ate lunch and decorated our own cupcakes for dessert.  Something as simple as that was a huge highlight for all the kids.  They thought it was great to spread, sprinkle and eat. 

The only picture I took all day.  "The Cousins" as we call them in our house.

We will end the today with a scavenger hunt for a very small present for each of the girls.  Fun for all!

So many posts.....

I have a long back log of posts on my computer and my camera.  I know I am not the only person who does this as I have seen several other people write "catch all" posts.  This is our last month in pictures and short stories.


After Christmas I stocked up on crafts for next years Advent countdown activities and some other discounted winter activities.  I have been saving the snowman and other winter crafts assuming we would have some snow days.  However with such unseasonably warm weather we only did this one activity, making a gingerbread house.  I am sure we will have a few more to do but if not we can save them for a fun winter day in the summer.

Busy hands making a gingerbread house on a snow day.

Sneaking a sample

Love her beautiful smile!

Finished product

As a family we love spending time together and we value just being home together.  By the world's standards we are depriving our kids by not putting them in tons of extra curricular activities and by taking them to all kinds of events.  We are ok with not living up to the worlds standards in these areas.  We do like to celebrate special occasions though and Lydia had an accomplishment worthy of a celebration.  We went to the local 50's diner and had lunch as a family.  

The girls really are becoming such great friends!

Sometimes I wish that as parents we could choose the moments when teachable opportunities arise.  One day, as we were coming home from running errands we noticed that the playground of a local school had trash thrown all around.  We assumed it was vandals because the garbage can was so heavy no animal could have pushed it over.  We had a teaching moment in the car about what we should do when we see something that needs to be done even if the timing is inconvinient.  Needless to say we dropped off some things at home and  went back to clean up the playground. 

In the end it really didn't take very long and the girls and I had a great feeling of accomplishment.  The opportunities to serve and help others don't always cross our paths at convenient times but it is important to do what we can anyway.  In our society so much of our lives is lived in the rush to get things done and to go from one place to another.  We often don't have time to see the needs around us let alone help out in any way.  I want my life and the life of our family to be different.  I want us to leave enough room in our lives to help out when there is a need and I want to always be praying for eyes to see the world around me as God sees it. 

Some trash needing picked up

Not an accident

Two girls eager to help our community even at the seemingly most inconvenient times

Thanks for reading.  Blessings!