I turned 27 on the 9th. Where does time go!? We celebrated with a picnic at the park. We were approaching another financial milestone and things worked out just right us to hit it on my birthday. By the grace of God we transferred the last few dollars and now have a FULLY FUNDED emergency fund! Hallelujah!! We are still a long way from true financial peace (because of the farm) but this is a big step to have completed. It feels good! You can read the rest of our money story here.
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Tot School: What’s Next?
Our Tot School journey started with lots of lots of research. We kicked off with color themes when he was 12 months old. We had more fun with our St. Patrick’s Day theme than with any other to date. We took a break from colors to welcome Spring and celebrate Easter. We ended our color unit with Gray week. Then we had our most educational week where we learned all about Chicks. After that it was on to shapes! Color themes are pretty standard. I was inspired to do shape themes by Kaysha at Memorizing the Moments. After that, though, it seems like most tot schoolers move on to letter of the week themes. I am not interested in introducing the alphabet this year. We spend a lot of time reading with Kent so he does have a lot of exposure to letters. He understands the concept of print. For example, he will point to a road sign in a book and say “slow” because we’ve moved his finger along the letters while pronouncing the word and he remembers. We often started our color and shape weeks with me printing the theme name on his magnadoodle and sounding it out
Continue readingHorses Small World Play (and keeping it real…)
I love seeing Kent use his imagination and I’m fascinated with all the small world play ideas on the web. I have been trying harder to facilitate his imaginative play. Recently one of our tot trays was a square made out of Lincoln logs. For rectangle week I added some longer logs and horses from his Safari Ltd. toob. We used the log rectangle as a paddock for the horses to jump in and out of. Now for the part about keeping it real… I wonder sometimes if people think we have a perfect, strict schooling routine. Let me assure you that “tot school” is very much a fly by the seat of our pants operation on most days. Here’s what happened when the phone rang during our play session… So you see, nothing perfect here! We have fun though! 😉
Continue readingWatercolor Squirt Bottles
Since becoming aware that clipping was difficult for Kent I have been on the lookout for new ways to strengthen his little hand muscles. These little squirt bottles turned out to be a great way to do just that. I bought mine from the vet clinic but similar ones are available on Amazon. I let him pick the colors and filled each bottle with liquid watercolor diluted with water. Then I placed two coffee filters on an old towel in a cake pan. He caught on right away and went to work. It was great to see his little hand muscles flexing. I have never before seen him so engaged in an art project! He systematically emptied each bottle and then requested to do it all over again. I moved the coffee filters to some newspaper for drying. We gave them out as decorations. An older child could cut them in the shapes, or I could have cut them in small pieces and had him make contact paper art!
Continue readingShape Milk Caps
Kent was 24 months old. We did some Triangle activities the week of June 9-15 but somehow I can’t find any pictures! After that I was consumed with the thought that baby could come any time and Kent was spending a lot of time with his Dad. So, we didn’t do much Tot School for awhile. We eased back in to it the week of July 21. This was something I came up with in a rush on my first day home alone as a mama of two. I wanted to have plenty to keep Kent busy so I had this ready and waiting when he woke up. He played with it for most of an hour off and on. He matched up a few but had more fun stacking them and trying to stack them while they floated. The marker came off the pan with a brillo pad and I saved the caps for another day.
Continue readingOn My Due Date…
… I finished these burp cloths. 🙂 I made 20, 4 of each pattern. They are sewn with flat diapers and a little bit of flannel for decoration. I followed this tutorial on YouTube. We used white prefolds for Kent but he has been using them to wipe up spills on the floor for the last year so I wanted something fresh. Burp cloths were way more essential last time than I ever would have guessed. I was very blessed to have a good milk supply and we went through a lot of soaked cloths! This time I am prepared. I have 4 flat diapers left so I’m going to treat myself to a bit more flannel in a fun design. A quarter of a yard is enough for 4 cloths, and at 50% off (if the sale is still on) that’s a whopping $0.82 total. I’m prepared with an extra dollar in case the sale is over. 😉 I’ll probably be posting more projects to keep my mind off of all this waiting I’m doing!
Continue readingOn Break to Plan!
We’re here and doing well! Brian has been in the fields a lot for Spring planting and Kent is enjoyed riding along every chance he gets. I’ve had more time at home alone than normal. So, I took a break from Tot School to map out plans for the next several months. We’ll be kicking off a “Summer of Shapes” on Monday. I have 13 shapes selected and plan to spend a week on each one. With a short hiatus for the new baby’s arrival we should wrap up shapes in September. Then we’ll move on to other exciting things! I’m almost 33 weeks pregnant. I feel great. I’ve still been getting in some runs which is very uplifting. It’s almost time to get all the baby clothes and things out again. First, I’ve been finishing a lot of home improvement, organization, and decorating projects. I should post some pictures, our home is slowly becoming more… homey. I distinctly remember the first day after Kent was born that I felt like I had a productive day and accomplished the things I wanted to. He was 8 months old. So, I’m trying to be better prepared this time (can anybody say
Continue readingTot School: Chick theme
Kent was 21 months old. I found so many cute chick activities while searching for Easter ideas! We raise a couple hundred chickens a year here, plus we have some laying hens wandering around. Our first batch of day-old chicks arrived on April 5th. We learned all about chicks and chickens that week! I picked up this cool life cycle of a chicken set at the Chippewa Nature Center. We used it as the basis for the week’s activities. I put some white, yellow, and orange feathers in his sensory bin. At first I added only the nest and eggs figurine. We talked about eggs and decorated an egg coloring page. Each day I added another figurine and talked to him about what it was. Then we laid out each day’s coloring picture and matched up them up with the figurines. We colored a hen on the fourth day and a rooster on the fifth day, even though the set only has one adult bird. He recognized rooster, hen, etc. when we used those words but I explained that the rooster is the daddy, the hen is the mama, and the chick is the baby. That made a big impression
Continue readingResurrection Eggs for Toddlers using The Beginner’s Bible
For pictures of these activities please see our Easter post. After venting about the lack of truly Easter related “Easter” activities on the web I received several suggestions to try Resurrection Eggs. There are some commercial versions available for purchase but a quick google search pulled up several DIY editions, too. My biggest concern was making all the activities toddler-friendly. I didn’t expect him to “get it” completely but I wanted to lay a foundation for him to learn upon and have lots of fun in the process. I’d say we succeeded. The best DIY plans I could find that were geared for toddlers came from Play Eat Grow and H is for Homeschooling. I wanted the activities to line up with the chain of events in the Bible and I wanted to tie each event in to a hands-on activity. I pulled ideas from both blogs and added some of my own to fill our eggs. Both of the sites I linked to offer a printable list of verses that tie in to each day’s discussion. We didn’t do any studying or memorizing of the verses this year. Each day we opened one or two eggs and talked about
Continue readingKent’s Birthday Present
We have the perfect birthday present on order for Kent! His birthday isn’t until July but you know us, we like to plan ahead! The exact specifications are unavailable at this time, and despite having some pictures we’re told that the item may vary a bit from the description. The estimated arrival date is July 13th, 2013. Kent was shipped earlier than expected though so you never know. 😉 They were able to provide us with some details. Such as… IT’S A BOY! And… I’m feeling great. Thanks for asking a million times! 😀 This is at 21 weeks and 1 day.
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