We’re waiting on baby over here so while we wait we are finishing some projects. Yesterday, Brian and I added this top to the dresser in the nursery. The dresser is the 3 drawer Tarva from ikea. It is unfinished pine so it was easy to match pieces from Menard’s for the top…
Continue readingAs I mentioned yesterday, we adhere to a strict budget for children’s supplies and learning materials. Despite that, I never feel like Kent lacks for things he needs. Here are some ways we keep the costs to a minimum: Always, always read the reviews and do research before making a purchase. A cheap product is not cheap if you have to replace it often. For example, Kent’s snack cup cost $16.99. Lesser models can be purchased for $2-3. However, we only have ONE cup to keep track of and it works infinitely better than the cheap ones. It has been going strong for well over a year now and still looks like new. We will purchase ONE cup for the new baby, too, because Kent still uses his in the car. They will surely outlast both boys. We like having one cup to wash, store, and keep track of. Plus, Kent is learning the value of having quality things and taking care of them. We’ve followed this same guiding principle when selecting everything from crib mattresses to shoes. Make it known what is needed! Kent is blessed to have wonderful grandparents on all sides. They know that we try hard
Continue readingI’m not sure why but I feel led to write about this right now. We’ll see if Kent sleep schedule agrees. 😉 In my post about our Montessori Inspired Kitchen Setup I shared some of the products we’ve purchased for Kent to use. We are on a tight budget around here so it is important to pull together nice materials for him without spending a fortune. You can read more about our financial situation by clicking on “Our Money Story” up above. We follow Dave Ramsey’s teachings and operate on a zero based budget by utilizing the envelope system. We have a line in our budget for “Kent”. This line will eventually changed to “Children”. As is stands right now the amount will not increase with the number of children. Right now it is $60/month and we put that amount, in cash, in an envelope for him every month. If he needs something, or there is something I feel we should have to aid his learning, I go to his envelope first. Here are some examples of what I have purchased from his envelope: sunglasses sensory materials (water beads, etc.) puzzles story books books to aid me in teaching him
Continue readingIt’s not like me to post pictures of something before it’s perfect and completed… but it’s also not like me to actually post pictures of anything I intend to share. I want to make sure this makes it on the blog so here it is in it’s current state. I intend to post more pictures as we add things. I’m really into Montessori lately. It’s all about fostering independence in the child and helping them feel that the things they spend time on have a purpose. Every child has a drive to do things on their own and Montessori is all about embracing that and making it easier. Enter our kitchen setup. From left to right: Hooks on the wall, within his reach, for his aprons to hang on. These are both from IKEA. The green one is waterproof and wipe-able for things like finger painting. The red one is thin fabric and really pretty useless as food (including tomato sauce!) goes right through it. On the floor under the aprons is a small caddy with a microfiber cloth and his green feather duster. This is the start of his cleaning supplies and I’m not sure they will stay there.
Continue readingWe’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 readingKent 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 readingKent was 20 months old. Well… this will give me a chance to catch up on these posts. We hardly did anything for gray week! Or, maybe we did, but it’s all a blur and I didn’t take any pictures. Brian was off work for awhile with a wrist problem and I think gray week fell on his first week home. It was a hard adjustment for us (mostly me, I admit it!) but in the end we made a lot of good memories and were sad to have him go back to work. We just didn’t make any memories about the color gray, apparently. I was able to snap a couple pictures of some materials we used, and I can share some of the projects I’d had in mind… I think we had some elephant books from the library but, alas, no pictures of those either. We used his Melissa & Doug Safari animals puzzle as our puzzle of the week. Other ideas I had in mind that didn’t come to fruit this time: Sing and dance to “The Old Gray Mare” (available on YouTube) Make an elephant mask out of a paper plate (lots of tutorials available online)
Continue readingInstead of doing our normal tot trays we did our own version of Resurrection Eggs to lead up to Easter Sunday. We started on Palm Sunday. For more details on these projects please see my post about Resurrection Eggs for Toddlers using The Beginner’s Bible. The night before Easter we made Resurrection rolls. This year we opted for the super easy recipe described here. I even splurged and bought the pre-made dough. He had fun helping with this and so did I (pretty impressive since it was almost 10 o’clock when we did it!). They turned out delicious and perfect for a busy morning. I know Easter was awhile ago but I hope yours was blessed and full of happy memories, like ours. This post is linked to Tot School Gathering: Week 14.
Continue readingFor 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 was 20 months old. Wow! I’m three weeks behind on Tot School posts again. How does that happen? As I was perusing the web looking for Easter ideas I kept stumbling upon tons of cute flower, bunny, and chick ideas. Sure, they were cute and I wanted to do them, but there are not at all related to Easter in my eyes. Since March 20th is the first day of Spring I decided to do a whole week on the new season. Fun was had! Our tot trays for the week: Do you do anything fun or special to recognize Spring? This post is linked to: Montessori Monday Tot School Gathering Place ~ Week 13
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