Advent Calendar

So because our move was a complicated one, we lived with family for the entire month of December with our entire life in a storage unit . . . Including our Christmas decorations which included our advent calendar.  So I used what we did have (large pad of white paper, construction paper and a marker) and made this advent calendar with my daughter.  I cut out 24 rectangles with different colours and then my daughter made the pattern.  Once she was ready, I wrote on the back of each rectangle and then glued lightly the top of each card.  Every day, the kids ripped off the special activity and we were off.

For the most part, we stuck with Christmas themed activities like visiting Santa at the mall and eating a red and green supper.  We also wanted to use this as an opportunity for the kids to say goodbye to their old city and go places and see people that we knew they would miss, so we enjoyed some suppers with friends and swimming at the local swimming pool.

Here are a few other things that we did . . .

Wrote letters to Santa 

Made a gingerbread house

Decorated the Christmas tree

Went to Chuck E Cheese

Summer Vacations with Kids

Last summer we went on a really big family vacation.  The longest (and furthest from home) yet.  We were gone for 9 days and travelled a whopping 2000km (1242 miles), not including driving in and around cities and towns when we stopped through.  Pretty much we travelled from Vancouver to Winnipeg (or New York to Miami for an American perspective) in 9 days and we had a great time!  We took along a TON of stuff for the ride for the kids.  Dollar Store Toys, Colouring Books, Leapsters and even a DVD player which I can proudly say we used once.  For one hour.  That was it.

The trick was to split up the handout of the toys.  I bough something like 10 new toys for each of them from the Dollar Store and the plan was to hand one out a day when tensions were high - to keep them busy for a little while.  I only used 6 of those items, which I thought was great!

We also implemented a ticket system.  I bought the tickets from the Dollar Store and we had a stash with us in the front.  When the kids did something to be rewarded for (on the left of the binder), they would get a ticket.  They could save or spend their tickets (see the right side of the binder).

Behaviours We Watched For . . .

Listening

Hiking without whining

Finishing a BINGO sheet

Sleeping nicely in the tent/hotel

Helping around the campsite

Doing their homework

NO Crying

Being quiet in the car

Reading a book

And They Were Rewarded With . . .

Tatoos

Juice Box (otherwise it was water only)

Treats (otherwise it was healthy snacks only)

$1 (to spend at a gas station)

iPad time (which was cancelled once we learnt that the car would not charge the iPad.  We had to save our battery because it had all of our maps on it and we were camping with no electricity)

Every day the kids would get their pack of papers.  I organized each day inside a page protector.

The first page was always a map and at the bottom, I listed the highlights of that day.  We saved the best adventures for the end of our trip when we knew they would be sick of camping.  That was when the zoo, waterparks, county fairs and outdoor waterslides came in.

On Zoo day, there was a passport also tucked into their page protector.  I went to the zoo's website and found out what kinds of animals were at the zoo.  I then found Google Images of some of the animals, printed, taped and wrote down names.  As we walked through the zoo, the kids had to watch and check off (or in H's case, circle) all the animals they could find. 

Each day in the packet, both kids also had "homework".  They were just pages ripped out of old activity books or printed from online.  Super simple, a few pages to keep them busy at the beginning of each trip so mommy and daddy could figure out where we were headed.

Once they finished their 'homework', they worked on their BINGO sheets together.  By this time, mommy and daddy were on a highway and we were more able to help the kids with this task.  I made 9 different BINGO cards, putting in pictures of things that I knew we would see on that stretch of the trip.  For example, if you know you will be passing by a lake/river, find a picture of that and put it in.  There were some days we did NO highway driving, only city driving so those days had urban pictures.  There were some days we stayed two nights at a campsite, so I made a nature BINGO because we did NO driving.

Then at the end of the day, to calm everyone down (whether it was in the tent, at the picnic table or in the hotel room) the kids thought about their most favourite part of the day and they drew a journal entry.  I still have these and I can't wait to scrapbook them! 

And that was how I survived a REALLY long trip with my family.  No fighting.  No yelling.  No "I'M BORED" or "ARE WE THERE YET???"  Seriously.  I didn't hear it once.  I hope I have given you at least a little inspiration for your family vacation this summer!

Safe Travels!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Happy Easter!


Hope you are all enjoying the holiday with your family!

Cutting Grass

Do you need something for your preschooler to do outside while you work in the yard?  Something that practices fine motor and teaches your child how to use scissors?  Then get them to cut the grass!  My son was doing this too with his small scissors and using the scissors the correct way.  He laid down on his stomach and cut the grass that was poking up through the patio blocks.  My daughter insisted on using "adult" scissors which were too big for her hands, so she had to hold the scissors with two hands.  Either way, it kept them busy for about 30 minutes while I got a bunch of spring clean up done in the yard.  Yay for fun, skill practice and peace and quiet!

Spray the Letter

Check out this awesome blog for the original post of this idea!


It was hot last summer and my son was getting ready to start preschool in the fall.  His big sister has taught him so much, but just how much I never know because he is always surprising me.  I wanted to see how many uppercase letters he could recognize, so I made it into a game. 


With sidewalk chalk, I wrote all 26 uppercase letters on our fence.  I handed him a spray bottle (also great for small motor practice) and we did a little "test" together.  I would say, "Spray the 'H'" and he would find that letter and spray it.


There are many other variations that you could use with this same technique, depending on the age and skill level of your child.  Here are just a few ideas . . .

1. Use lowercase letters
2. Mix up the letters instead of putting them in alphabetical order
3. Mix up the letters and get your child to spray them IN alphabetical order
4. Draw lowercase letters on the fence and hold up the uppercase letter to see if they can match
5. Say the sound the letter makes instead of the letter
6. If your child is learning to spell, say the word you are practicing and they can spray the letters in the correct order (see bottom picture with my daughter)

Ideas for a Summer Bucket List

We had a great summer!  It was full of fun times at home, two family reunions, trips to visit friends, a big family vacation to Montana and a couple camping trips!

Last year we made a summer bucket list but because this was a busy summer as it was, we did not have a bucket list, we just lived!

Here are a few of the places we went, ideas that you can add to your summer bucket list.

Go to the zoo

Visits spray park

Take in the local fair

Go for a hike

Go camping (and collect wood for a campfire)

Go fishing or just take a trip on a boat (we don't own a boat so I never thought we would get a chance like this, but while camping you never know who you will run into that DOES have a boat!)

Meatball Subs

Ingredients:
10 COOKED Meatballs - homemade or store bought - your choice
2 Sub Buns
1 1/2 cups of Pizza Sauce/Spaghetti Sauce
1 cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese


Directions:

1. Cut the two sub buns open and lay all four halves onto a cookie sheet (I used our toaster oven and rack)
2. Spread the sauce evenly over all of the buns
3. Cut the meatballs into slices (I did three cuts per meatball to make them as flat as possible) and place the slices onto the sauce.
4. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the buns and place in the oven (toaster oven) on 350F for 15 minutes.

Sorry, we were in a rush that night so I forgot to take a picture, and the leftovers went over so well that I didn't have time to take pictures afterwards!

Daily Routine Prtinable

A while back, I created a Home Management Binder.  I have used it often for birthdays, phone numbers and other important school information, but I felt that something was missing.  When I stopped working out of the home and opened the Home Daycare, I knew that organization was going to be key to keep my home and business life separate - yet together.  Something that I was not used to.
So I created a simple schedule for the day so that I could get things done but still be with the kids - learning and having fun!  This is the main part of my printable and it includes times to do household chores, daycare fun, naptime, working out, meals and supper prep.
After the schedule, I made a simple cleaning plan.  A major weekly job PLUS a chore for myself and both of the kids.  Their jobs may include cleaning baseboards, cleaning sinks, collecting garbage, doing laundry or other simple tasks that are age appropriate.  Check out my technology time post to see a list of chores that are age appropriate.
On the second page for the day I have two open squares to make to do lists.  I should also mention that I don't print these pages off every week as I like to recycle.  Instead, I place all of these daily routines into page protectors which treats them like white boards.  Simple to erase at the end of the week.
Under the To Do squares, I have three empty squares for a quick menu.  Breakfast, Lunch and Supper.
And last but not least, I have lines to makes notes for myself about our evening plans.  Maybe we have a dinner date or soccer game or heaven forbid . . . a DATE NIGHT!  I mark it down here so that I don't forget what I have to do in the evenings after a hectic day at work!


If you would like the printables, go to this link and print them out for yourself.

Fun with Magnets

Super Science Fun!


There are two (learning) steps to this activity.  The first step is the fine motor work of cutting up the pipe cleaners.  This can be a hard and frustrating job for little ones because of the wire in the pipe cleaners, so it's better for older ones with more hand strength to do for the younger ones.

Next, place all of the cut up pipe cleaner pieces into a glass jar.  Give each child a magnet and let them explore with moving the magnet on the outside of the glass and then inside the glass.  Talk about WHY the pipe cleaner pieces are moving and then move the activity to all over the house by exploring what else is magnetic.  DON'T ALLOW MAGNETS NEAR ELECTRONICS OF ANY KIND.

Ham and Cheese Quiche

I'm sure this is also true in your home, but I often find that when I make something new and call it by it's real name (a good example being quiche), my kids are really quick to say "I don't LIKE that!".  But if I get creative and call it something that they are familiar with (for example, Egg Pie), they are SO excited and gobble it ALL up.   This was a HUGE hit!

Ingredients:

1 cup diced ham (precooked) - great to use up leftovers!

1 cup cheese (split in half)

4 eggs

1/2 cup finely chopped broccoli and/or cauliflower

1/2 cup flour

1 1/2 cups milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly grease a 9 inch pan.
2. Sprinkle in half of the cheese, ham and veggies all over the bottom of the pan.
3. In another bowl, combine the eggs and milk and whisk well.  Then add the flour and whisk REALLY well.  Once this mixture is smooth, pour it into the pan.
4. Sprinkle the other half of the cheese on top and bake for 35 minutes or until set.

Chalkboard Play

I love great deals, don't you??  I always watch Groupon and Living Social to get some great deals.  This chalkboard was one of them.  This was a great deal, you can find it full price now here on the Trend Matters website.  It's a decal, so when you are done with it, it SHOULD just peel right off.  I doubt that you would be able to use it again though.  I plan on keeping it on the wall for a long time, because I just don't know what it is going to do to the wall.  Worse case scenario, I have to repaint and possibly repair the wall.  Best case, it peels off and doesn't leave a mark!

I put it up on the weekend so that my kids could use it before daycare started back up on Monday, and they used it quite well!  Kept them busy playing school for about an hour.

Songs and Rhymes About Numbers

Here are a few of my favourite songs to teach little ones their numbers.

Five Little Monkeys

This song is best with actions. It helps to get the wiggles out. 

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

One little monkey jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

No little monkeys jumping on the bed

None fell off and bumped their head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

Put those monkeys straight to bed

Five Green and Speckled Frogs

Make some felt frogs and a log and you have a great felt story to share!

Five green and speckled frogs

Sat on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

Yum yum

One jumped in to the pool

Where it was nice and cool

Now there are four green speckled frogs

Glub glub

Four green and speckled frogs

Sat on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

Yum yum

One jumped in to the pool

Where it was nice and cool

Now there are three green speckled frogs

Glub glub

Three green and speckled frogs

Sat on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

Yum yum

One jumped in to the pool

Where it was nice and cool

Now there are two green speckled frogs

Glub glub

Two green and speckled frogs

Sat on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

Yum yum

One jumped in to the pool

Where it was nice and cool

Now there is one green speckled frog

Glub glub

One green and speckled frog

Sat on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

Yum yum

He jumped in to the pool

Where it was nice and cool

Now there are no green speckled frogs

Glub glub

Five Little Peas

Another fantastic song to get the children moving

Five little peas in a pea pod pressed (five children squat down in a row)

One grew two grew and so did all the rest (children stretch their arms up)

They grew and they grew and they did not stop

Until at last the pod did pop

One two three four five (children jump up one at a time)

Learning Fun

This week our focus was


White
Crescent
Kk
11

We used our chalkboard this week!  It's still a huge hit around here!  I printed letters snd numbers (shapes for the little boys) and they used paintbrushes dipped in water to paint over the chalk lines.  Great fine motor practice that's a LOT of fun!

A playlist if a couple videos we used for Spring!

Seasons Song and Five Little Ducks

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Qj7NSGwqn68q105dfIKqK0-kr-oJm3I

Learning About Spring

Welcome Spring!

We did lots of activities this week, however I didn't take many pictures because it was a little to chaotic this week with everyone being here full time!  Everyone was having adjustment periods - including me!

Here are a few activities that we did do!  Enjoy!

Gross Motor:  

Puddle Jumping: I cut some "puddles" out of blue construction paper and the boys jumped from puddle to puddle. First we jumped from one to one, the. We tried jumping further and skipping puddles in between.  A great way to jump and move in the house when you live places where Spring takes a LITTLE longer to arrive.

Intellectual:

Sequencing from seed to food.  I used a template for this from one of my books, however you could easily find pictures from the internet and make your own sequencing activity.

Art:

Flower Printing

I bought some fake flowers from the dollar store and they served three purposes.  

1. I used them as a decoration in a vase for my Easter display.

2. We sketched them one afternoon and drew some beautiful pictures.  Sorry there are no pictures for this activity.  It was a busy day with full time daycare in full gear.

3. I cut off a few petals and put out some paint for the boys to dip and dab (or smear) and they turned out really cute!

Puzzle Storage

Puzzles are a huge hit in our house!  We have SO many puzzles, I wouldn't even be exaggerating when I say we have around 50 puzzles - that would be a low number.  Most of the puzzle are kept in the daycare room for everyone to play with.  The boxes that the puzzles came in were falling apart, getting stepped on and the tape just wasn't holding up anymore.  I also had wooden puzzles that came with just a platform, so they didn't store well at all unless they were completed.

So with a little help from the Dollar Store (have I ever mentioned I love that place???) I finally organized our puzzles.  At first, I used baggies and put all of the pieces into those.  But I quickly found that the kids just couldn't close the baggies properly and the pieces always fell out. 

I found these pencil cases with zippers and knew they were the perfect solution!  On the backs of each of the puzzle pieces (if not already done) I wrote a  word/drew a shape so that if they were all dumped out together they would be easier to sort out in the end.

Once all of the puzzles were put in the pencil cases, they were placed into this basket by our quiet table so that they are easily accessible.  I love these cases because they are very compact as well.  It may not look like it, but there are three layers of pencil cases in this basket.

Cataloging Books

So how many KIDS books do you have in your house?  Do you know what they are?  Do you get frustrated in trying to find the right book when you are trying to teach something and then forget that you have that AWESOME book to help you out?  That's me.  It's easy enough to go to the library and find books that fit a theme, but before that step, I want to use what I have in my house . . . which apparently is 356 children's books.  That's not even all of them, because I didn't count my daughters princess books, nursery rhyme, poetry or chapter books.  I found this app to help me catalogue all of those books and I love how easy it was. 

You can scan the barcode (and for the most part, it works, there were some older books, books from book orders or books from the Dollar Store that didn't register) and up pops the picture, subject, title, information, author, etc.  I didn't like the subjects that it gave me, so I came up with new ones that were related to my teaching themes, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to. 

If the book doesn't register you have to take a picture and add the title and subject on your own, but that's minimal in comparison to all the time and energy this app will save you in the long run.

Hope this information has been helpful! 

Oh and best part, the app is FREE!

Painting Snow

Yay for warmer weather and being able to get the kids outside.

In the past, I have tried spray painting snow with coloured water in spray bottles, but that always turns into a very frustrating activity with all the mittens, jackets and cold weather.  I will never give up and will try that another day, however today, we painted the snow with paint.  Yep, just basic paint from the Dollar Store, placed in cups (of course to match the colour) and used our regular paint brushes (the biggest ones).  Easy.  Fun.  Exciting!

Graphing with Shapes

This week our learning focus included


Circles
White
Jj
10

Math: We have been talking a lot about graphs lately - it all started a couple of weeks ago when we created our weather graph as a part of our Weather Week.  Check that out here!  Today we created a graph using shapes and then using colours.  Simple and fun and lots of learning involved.

Here are the books that we used this week!

Uniwai and Hunaahi a Story of the Hawaiian Rainbow by Aaron T. Watene

Purple, Green and Yellow by Robert Munsch

A Baby's First Word Book of Colours by Jo Joof

Let's Say Our Colors (Priddy Books)

The Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow by Joanna Cole

Chameleon's Crazy Colors by Nicola Grant

Also this week I have been finding songs and little rhymes on YouTube and creating playlists according to our themes.  We started last week with St. Patricks Day and the kids loved the music SO much that I thought I would try and incorporate these little videos every week.  So here is a playlist with fun songs about Rainbows!

Enjoy!

Rainbow Theme

So after we finished St. Patrick's Day, the only real logical next step was to learn about rainbows. Because of the age of my boy, I tied in learning about rainbows with learning about colors and the mixing of colors to make new ones.

Literacy: I cut out different shapes and colored them to go with a poem that I found.  You could also turn these pieces into a felt board story if you so wish.  Here's the poem.

Colors

Red, red.  I see red.

It's an apple growing overhead.

Yellow, yellow.  I see yellow. A big banana, long and mellow.

Orange, orange.  Can it be?

An orange growing on a tree.

Blue, blue.  I see blue.  My kitten's eyes - she says, "Mew, mew."

Green, green.  I see green.

From my garden, one string bean.

Purple, purple.  What do I see?

Grapes on a vine, just for me.

White, white.  I see white.

Fluffy cloud, so soft and light.

Literacy: I found this file folder game in one of my books and made it for this special week. It teaches the beginning sounds of words so that children can match the pictures to the lowercase letters.  If you don't have a book with file folder games, I highly recommend you purchase one because they are a great tool for teaching and learning. You can check out this website for great file folder books and printables.

Music: We made a xylophone and then learned about the mixing of colors to make a rainbow.  We talked about the order of the colours in a rainbow.

Art: Rainbow Painting with Cotton Balls

This art project was very easy to set up and clean up.  We talked together about the many different colours of paint that we would need to create a rainbow.  I then put a cotton ball in each colour and let the children dab and spread the paint onto their paper. 

Fine Motor: Cutting Paint Chips

This was a two part activity, however only the first part worked out. 

Part One:

The kids worked with their little scissors to cut along the white lines on the paint chips.  Once this was done, they sorted and mixed the paint chips according to their colours.  They had fun mixing and matching and seeing the differences in colours (light blue to dark blue and all the other blues in between for example)

Part Two:

I printed numerals onto the paint chips that they had cut out and gave my boy (4 years old) a single hole punch.  The goal was to punch out the correct number of holes.  He tried SO hard to squeeze the hole punch, but he just couldn't do it.  It caused a lot of frustration so I highly recommend NOT doing this activity with children unless they are older (probably 7 or 8) because the paint chips are just too thick.