You Drive Me Wild, Valentine!

Just tuck this in your back pocket for next year.

Amazon Prime add on stickers + Avery design and print online = You drive me wild, Valentine. 

Factor in that I didn't have to take four to the store in tundra weather and you have a winner, folks. 

Art Tackle Box - A Review

This year my husband and I decided to have a small Christmas with more focus on family and less focus on stuff.  That stuff seemed to pile up in the corner, spill out of the basement playroom (an entire basement dedicated to toys), and eventually spend more time in Toy Time-Out than being enjoyed. 

The kids were asked what they wanted and Ladybug, who loves artys crappsy kinds of activities, asked for a blue art tackle box or better known as the Lakeshore Arts & Crafts Supply Center.  Over the next few weeks I kept asking nagging because I wanted her to be really sure and she kept saying the same thing.  Really though this thing looked like my worst nightmare. 



Lakeshore Arts & Crafts Supply Center

Now, I was skeptical because:

A.  It had a lot of awesome supplies and those supplies would end up everywhere.  Remember that stuff that was in Toy Time-Out?  I was mentally adding the blue tackle box to the list. 

B.  I had a coupon for half-off. Was it too good to be true?

C.  I could only find reviews where the product had been supplied by Lakeshore and reviewed.  Now, I know that these reviews are suppose to be unbiased, but I wanted a review not associated with a coupon or Lakeshore.

I gave Santa the green light and now we are the proud owners of a blue art tackle box. 

 

We've had the blue tackle box for almost two months and it is used every single day.  My concern was the awesome supplies would be everywhere, but it seems the novelty of the small clear boxes helps keep her supplies organized. There is enough variety in supplies that it keeps all of them interested and creative. 

 

 

I would recommend to blue tackle box to any budding Martha Stewart.

 



Dropping the Ball

Do you know that awkward greeting when you've been meaning to talk to somebody for a long time and you keep putting it off?  Maybe time escaped you and then you kept putting off the shifty eyes and that bumbling, "Hey.."     Yeah, I know the feeling - Hey.

I would love to tell you that I rode off into the sunset, wine in hand, angelic kids signing sweet songs off to the tropics.  That's not what happened.  We are still in the tundra, but made the BIG move five minutes from our old house.  No more babies sleeping in the closet and no more Learning Room. 

We had a baby.  Our sweet June Bug was born on June 19th to complete our family.  Mister was not impressed with another sister, but he really is the best big brother to three sisters.



Is she not the sweetest? 

We are officially in crazy town putting our house on the market a month after June Bug was born, two in kindergarten, one in preschool, one in diapers and moving an entire house less than a week before Thanksgiving.  Now that I've started to regain my sanity, I'm ready to get back to some of the things I love and try new things. 

Rrrr, I'm Gonna Eat You - March Work

This month we have been talking about food chains and dinosaurs.  Honestly, I am not too interested in dinosaurs as a stand alone topic and neither is Ladybug, so to appeal to more than one person in this family I have attempted to combine the two.  

We started the month talking about herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and the dinosaurs that fit into each category.  The dinosaur toob has been a great resource for this month.

Each time I have introduced a dinosaur I have given a fact sheet and a coloring sheet from Enchanted Learning.

Match the carnivores with the picture and name.  Each dino has their name on the underside.  We also discussed features that made the carnivores alike.

We have also talked about the animals that are not extinct.

After Mister and Ladybug had a good grasp of what eats what we moved on to who eats who with food chains.

Simple Food Chains 

Apparently a cactus grows in the savanna.  Mister and Ladybug pick a producer and two consumers to make a food chain.

More Complex (Complete) Food Chains

Chose the pictures to make a food chain and label the omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore.  

Art

How to draw a dinosaur!

Math

Number writing practice because who doesn't love a white board?

Fill in the missing numbers on the dinosaur eggs.  This was defiantly a challenge activity for Mister and Ladybug.

Game for two

Literacy

Dinosaur egg sight words (Mister's word) .  Ladybug is reading Biscuit books (her choice) and Mister is reading sigh word readers.  

Sight Word Soup - This game is played like Scrabble Soup, but with sight words.  Each sight word is written on a card and a chip.  One person picks the top card and shows the sight word.  The players put in their spoon and scoop out sight words written on wooden circles and blank circles.  When they find the the sight word they call it out and put it on their board.  When the cards are all gone the person with the most wooden sight words wins.

Practical Life - Name Writing

The Wee One

Two of the things on her shelf

Sensory

Dino feet prints

Dinosaur eggs

March?  Not so much in the tundra, which is why we are still in our pajamas in some of these photos.  I mean it's hard to get out of them when the windchill is still hovering around 0.

C is for...

I have been feeling a little bit guilty because I haven't been as focused on letter sounds as I was with the twins.  She knows more than I thought, but it's no where near what the twins knew at her age.  Granted she knows more about numbers, one-to-one correspondence, and science than her siblings and her interest in letters and phonics has only recently emerged but that mommy guilt is an awful feeling.

We attempted letters in the fall when she first showed interest, but her enthusiasm was short lived so I backed off.  Now that we have started again we have covered CMAT with a focus on the sounds of the letters rather than the letter name.

Letter C

Powder Puff  Clouds

and a Cupcake

There are no more sprinkles left on her cupcake. Smelling leads to eating and eating leads to a bare cupcake.

Cloud Writing

I must remember to tape the handles in the future.  

Writing Practice

We have work to do on that grip!

Car Painting

Cookie Monster Counting

Cookie Eating for my my own Cookie Monster

These were 20 minute oatmeal and raisin cookies and if I could remember where I found them I would give you a link.  

Making Reading Relevant and Fun

One of my favorite parts about doing preschool with  my kiddos is being able to really customize their work. In a classroom of 20-28 it's terribly time consuming and takes a lot of dedication.  To those teachers that do teach to their students, I admire your work and thank you.

Anyway, Mister has had some setbacks in reading and we were both frusterated.  He wasn't enjoying his work and I truthfully I wasn't enjoying working with him.  There was something wrong with that picture because he is suppose to love school. The last thing I want to do is to turn his love for learning into a chore.

After some trial and error I found he loves to be an illustrator or author and illustrator.  In the three weeks we have been working on books, his reading has soared.  Ladybug has taken a renewed interest in learning new words and reading harder books.  The best part is these books are totally customizable.  Sometimes I have Mister and Ladybug add their own ideas, sometimes I have them practice writing a word, and sometimes I just have them illustrate their book.  Each time they create a book, they read it to my husband right before bed.

Working on sight words

Ladybug's book was about making cupcakes.

Mister's book is about his favorite things to do.  

There's More

I was looking over my blog and realized that in February I had a bad case of "Mommy Brain" because I didn't post some of the activities on our shelves.  The pictures were taken and uploaded, but they have sat unused.  So in an effort to play catch-up here are a few more left-overs.

Math

One-to-one correspondence - The Wee One put one heart on each of the stickers.

Mister and Ladybug covered their board with hearts and subtracted the number rolled.  The first person to clear his or her board was the winner.

Make a stamp pattern.

Art/Literacy

Mister and Ladybug folded their paper make a heart, traced the pattern, and cut it out.  They designed a valentine for a friend.  We also took dobbers and made designs on our paper using the doilies.

Word list created by the kiddos for their valentine cards

Practical Life

Cutting out hearts

After reading "It's Raining Hearts" they punched and glued their own hearts.

Valentine pony beads and pipe cleaner bracelets.

The Wee One Shelves

Another goodie from last year - It's Raining Hearts tree

Strawberry hauler for one-to-one correspondence

Okay, I think that's it...really.