Fine Motor with Little Tikes

I am always looking for something to do with Arianna when i am trying ot make dinner.  She is usually hungry around that time and needs a small snack to get her through to dinner.

The other day I gave her an empty egg carton and some Apple Jacks.  She had to use her little fingers to pick out her snack.  This kept her busy for quite awhile.   

Lunch Time with LoLo

Everyday I ask Ariel what she wants for lunch.
Everyday she said, "I'll have what I oojally (usually) have.  You know what it is."

She likes apple slices or grapes, turkey sandwich, and a piece of floppy cheese.  She used to be okay with a slice of american cheese, but she has now discovered provolone.
Provolone is a little pricy for a 3 year old when I buy it in the package.  Today I got smart and had the deli slice it super thin for me.  I got a ton more slices and it was cheaper!


I let Ariel eat her lunch while she watches TV.  She is a pretty slow eater so this way she isn't at the table forever.  Plus its kinda of a special thing she gets to do when she is the only one eating lunch (Arianna us usually taking a nap at this time).

Basement After

Awhile ago I posted some pictures of our basement before.

My mom spent some time over here painting for me.  If I were to do it, it would get done in about 3 years. 

We have the walls painted and now I am working on things for the walls and other deocrations.

I decided to paint the walls a grey.  This looks more blue, but it is grey.  Either way I really like it.  It brightens up the basement so much - perfect for a playroom.

I LOVE pink and green (they are my girls life colors) so my dad came over and taped off stripes and my mom painted them.

This area looks a little cluttery, but what can you do?

I acutally took out the alphabet mat - a 1 year old just doesn't seem to want to keep it put together.

We also added a tall lamp behind the playhouse.

On the wall above the kitchen we have a sparkly butterfly picture that my mom got for me.  When I showed the girls, their mouths fell open.  They loved it!  I also hung a couple butterflies from the ceiling.

I found this paper garland on clearance at Target and new it would be perfect in the basement.

We also added one of those paper lanter lights above the book shelf.

I created a TV area for the girls.  We have tons of VHS tapes so we like to have a TV/VCR combo.  They are actually hard to find when you need one.  They also don't last very long when you do get one.  I have the TV on a shelf with cloth bins full of videos.  Behind the couch is a chest that my Grandpa built for me.  I am planning on making some cushions for it. 

 

Don't you love how bright and fun the basement is?

Fine Motor Fun

I like to do some fun things with Ariel when Annabelle is at school.
I picked up 2 boxes with lids and 2 big boxes of salt.
I dumped salt into each box.
I made some cards with shapes and doodles.
I gave Ariel a stick and had her makes the picture that was on the card.

I plan on having Annabelle practice her sight words in her box.

Annabelle

Annabelle is in Kindergarten at ZQuest in Zeeland.

I know my girl and I know that she learns quickly. 
I'm not being biased toward my own child.  I have seen a lot of children and a wide range of abilities when they start kindergarten. 
I have worked with Annabelle quite a bit before she went to school and I could tell that she caught on quickly to what I was teaching her.
Anyway, her class is made of up 25 kids in Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade.
She had been doing her reading group with the other kinders, but recently her teacher moved her up to a 1st grade group. 
I love that there is the opportunity to be challenged and not have to stay where most of the class is.
We were so proud of her so we got her a little present.

 

We don't plan on giving a present everytime the girls do something like this, but we do feel it is important to let them know we are proud of them for working hard and doing their best in school.  I am sure she would have been happy with a few M&M's, but she recently decided she loved panda bears and wanted to collect them.

Take a few minutes and let your child know you are proud of them.  If your child struggles, let them know are proud of them for not giving up.  If your child excels, let them know you love how hard they try.  There is always an excuse to let our kids know we are proud of them!

Kids of Integrity Review

Over the summer I did Kids of Integrity with my girls.
I found this program from Focus on the Family and thought it would be something fun for us to do.
I like to have a bit of structure in the summer.  We did our Bible Lesson every morning before we left the house to go anywhere.
I chose a lesson a week for the 11 weeks of summer that we had.
The lessons we did were:

Perseverance
Obedience
Forgiveness
Generosity
Honesty
Kindness
Courteous Communication
Patience
Courage
Respect

The website has different sections such as Memory Verse, Bible Story, Creative Discipline, Practical Suggestions, and a few others.

They give a lot of material for each trait.  It seems as though these lessons are geared more towards older kids, but the suggestions are easily adaptable for your own children. 

Some of the Bible stories were a little over the girls' heads, but I quite often would search it on youtube and find a cartoon of the story.  The girls really enjoyed this.

There is usually a science experiment to go along with the lesson.  This is fun hands on way to talk about the trait.

We did a memory verse every week.  I made large posters of the verse and hung them in the kitchen.  When we moved on to the next verse, I hung the poster in the garage so we could see them regularly.  The girls did a really good job learning the verses.  I offered a lot of verses to choose from.  Again, I had to modifiy some of the verses and make them a bit shorter for the girls.

I was very conscientious about talking about whatever trait we were focusing on whenever possible.  Even now that we are done with the lessons I can remind the girls of what we learned.

I love when hear the girls saying things like, "I can have courage to go upstairs by myself because Jesus is with me" or "Was I being kind when I shared?"  or "I used perseverance to try and bring the shopping cart upstairs, but I just can't get it"  or "Was I honest when I said I wrote on the wall?" 

I am going to try and go through the other traits that we didn't get to this summer throughout the next few months.

Take a look around the website and choose a trait you would like your kids to work on.  Pick a memory verse and post it in your house.  Choose a couple Bible stories, a craft, and maybe a hands on activity.  I bet your kids will look forward to the lessons as much as my girls did.  During the school year it may be hard to do a trait a week; choose one and focus on it for a month. 

I hope you give it a try with your kiddos.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Homework Help - 10 Partners

Has your child come home with some homework and there wasn't an explanation about how to do it?

Annabelle had her first actual math page for homework this week.
This page was pretty self explanatory, however I know more complicated things are coming. 
They aren't actually complicated, they just call things and do them differently than when I was in school.
Thank goodness I had two years of first grade math over the past two years ;)  I was able to be in my friend Colleen's class and actually am very thankful for seeing how math is taught these days.

Anyway, this post is about 10 Partners.  It can be adapted for any partner that you child is working on.  I think when we were in school we called them Turn Around Facts.

First find some bottle tops.  You will need 10 of them.

 

 Look for some stickers.  You need 20 total - 10 of each color/style.  Stick one color on the inside of the bottle tops and the other color on the outside.

 

 

I had Annabelle put them in a cup and then spill them out. 

 

Then separate the pinks from the blues.

 

In this example you have 7 pinks and 3 blues

So the break apart stick would go after the 7 on their math pages.

Once they write

7   +   3

They can write the partner

3   +   7

I had Annabelle dump them onto a tray so we could easily turn the tray upside down and see the partner.

Same thing here

6  +  4

4  +  6

On the math page the y will probably ask them to draw a break apart stick.  You could do this by lining up the bottle tops and then put a toothpick or spoon or anything you have after 4 circles.

 

I like this method for practicing Partners at home because it is very visual.  The kids see that they have 2 blue caps and 8 pink caps.  They know that they have 10 caps total so 2 and 8 equal 10.

 

I just keep the bottle caps in a baggy and will pull them out for a little practice sometimes or when she has a homework page that deals with partners.