Fairytales - Preschool fun with Three Billy Goats Gruff

Role Play activity
Three Billy Goats Gruff is a fun story to act out loud.  I have been acting this one out while cooking supper many times recently.  Mini Me loves to be the troll and use a nasty, scary voice but he also likes to play the three different billy goats and change his voice. 
We also like to pretend we're the billy goats going across the bridge at one of our favorite playgrounds!

Fairytales - Preschool fun with The Little Red Hen

Word family activity
One of Mini Me's favorite letter games to play is using our foam bath letters to make word families.  When we start with a sample word and then change a letter

A Year of ABCs: Letter H

Art: H is for Hand Hug
Both of my children LOVE having their hands traced so anything involving hands is an instant hit.  I had Little Lady smear paint a piece of cardstock, then I traced several of her hands on it.  I cut the hands out and secured two of them with yarn

Handling the tough preschool questions

Contrary to the title, I still feel like I do not handle these tough questions gracefully.

Mini Me:  When is the end of all the days?
Mommy:  You mean, the end of today?  You could say it ends when you go to bed.
Mini Me:  No, the end of all the days?
Daddy:  You mean the end of the week?  There are seven days in a week and the last one is Saturday.
Mini Me:  NO!  The end of ALL THE DAYS.
(Daddy and Mommy exchange a very confused look.  Is he asking what we think he's asking?)
Mommy:  Well, only God knows when we won't have days any more.
Mini Me:  Okay.
He was so satisfied with the truthful, efficient answer! 


****
Mini Me:  Look at those squirrels in the tree, Mommy!  What are they doing?
Mommy:  Um, well, it looks like they are just right there together... 
Mini Me:  I think they are wrestling over a nut.
Mommy:  Yes, why yes they are.
I cannot tell you how much I laughed at his quite accurate observation of the mating that was occurring right in front of our eyes. 

***
Mini Me:  Where was I before I was born?
Mommy:  You were with God.
Mini Me:  Where?
Mommy:  You were in His heart.
Mini Me:  How did I fit in God's heart?
Mommy:  Well, when we say you are in someone's heart, we are talking about the love that person feels for you inside them, the part of us that feels happiness and love.
Mini Me:  I thought I was just in your tummy.
Mommy:  Well, yes, but before that you were in God's heart and Mommy's heart because we've always loved you.
Mini Me:  I just don't know how I fit.
Me either, buddy, me either.  I love you bigger than my heart and surely God loves you even more.   I can't believe we've been giving 'good morning' hugs for four years already!  You made me a mother and I'll love you forever!

Fairytales - Preschool fun with Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Portion size eating activity
One morning at breakfast Mini Me requested that we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears as we ate.  It just so happened that he was not eating the greatest so I

A Year of ABCs: G with movement, music, science, Spanish

G is for gallop, gorilla walk, graceful.
After our follow-the-leader fun from F week, we've been playing that game a lot.  For G week we added in some G-movements like galloping (which Little Lady tries very hard to do), walking gracefully, and moving like a gorilla.

We swung our arms low and beat our chests.  Little Lady did discover that she can make up for her lack in galloping skills by donning a cowgirl hat and playing a guitar as she gallops.  Works for me!

G is for God is Great.
Mini Me learned this song in preschool along with some actions to go with it and he loves to sing it, so we belted it out for G week.  I have never heard it before he came home singing it but he remembers tunes really well so we just went with his version and I assume it's correct!

I am unique. I’m like nobody else.
God made us very special. I am myself.
Blue eyes and brown eyes and some that are green;
Red hair and brown hair and blonds I’ve seen,
But I’ve never found another me, and so I say…
God is great, God is good, God made all that we see,
Like stars and the earth and the flowers and bees.
But most of all I’m thankful for making me!

G is for garden.
We have done this activity several times before, but we revisited it for G week.  Little Lady's small motor skills are impressive as she pokes the flower stems in the holes, creating a lovely flower garden!  We talked about the different colors and kinds of flowers.  We tried to smell them and wondered if the bees would come. 

G is for gracias.

Due to the previously mentioned sleep deprivation I did a horrible job of remembering to stick this word in during G week.  Heaven knows we say thank you enough at our house so this should be a very easy Spanish vocabulary word to work in! 

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Potty training: who's the boss?

I don't know if this situation comes up too much among mothers... my daughter is ready to potty train and I am not ready for that to happen.

I love our Bum Genius cloth diapers and I'm not ready to sell them.  I wrote a few posts on the joys of using them, that you can read here.

I'm not ready to trip over the potty chair in our small bathroom.

I'm not ready to run to the bathroom umpteen times a day and kneel on the cold, tile floor while waiting for the magic to happen.

I planned to start training in the summer... Little Lady could wear sun dresses and it would be warm.  There would be no socks to dribble pee onto.  Maybe I would even try the pants-free training.  I would be done teaching for the summer so she could have my attention every day and maybe, just maybe, we could train her "right" when we didn't do so hot with her poor big brother.

But these children, you know, have different plans.

We've had the potty in our second (even smaller) bathroom since Christmas, upon the insistence of Mini Me who spied it in the closet and really, really, really wanted his sister to sit on it.  She peed in the potty a handful of random times the first few months of the year, which we cheered on with whoops and hollers.  We weren't going to press it, but would put her on the potty every once in a while.  Almost every time she did pee.  Yay!

A couple weeks ago she starting asking me to go potty.  "Pah-ey?"  So we would run to the bathroom and sure as the sun rises, she would pee.  We started wondering what was going on.  We started putting her on the potty a little more regularly - before and after bed, after meals, before leaving the house.... and every time we did, she was dry and would pee in the potty.  Was she really ready?  It sure seemed like it.

I resigned myself to the realization that I am not the boss of her and her potty needs.  I went out and bought underwear (though I should have had her use Mini Me's old underwear... little girl underwear is kind-of silly and I miss that thick elastic waistband the boys' has!).

We are seven days into underwear and have had only one pee accident (at the library, no less!).  We take her potty every couple of hours and she pees almost every time.  What's more, she does not tarry on the potty.  She does her business and declares, "Done!" and then she's off.  Bowel movement accidents in the underwear are another story, but we figure, we already wash cloth diapers so what's washing an extra load of underwear?

And so, my smart little 21 month old has decided to potty train herself.  I feel lazy that I've done nothing special to "teach" her.  I feel proud at her progress.   And I feel very much like a mama to young children when I think about how many times a day I say "pee" and "poop".  Gotta love potty training!

Home made craft stick bracelet tutorial

My inspiration for these bracelets came via Pinterest here and here.  
My bracelets are no where near as fancy and artistic as the ones at these sites, but I think they're cute just the same and will make lovely gifts for some of my nieces!  

The steps of the process are fairly straightforward:

1.  Boil the craft sticks and/or soak in hot water until very wet and pliable.  

 2.  Carefully bend the craft stick into a gentle circle.  Easy does it!

Home made watercolor paints

Last summer I read this about how to make your own watercolor paints and how to use those to make paint-with-water coloring pages. 


The ingredients are basic and the method is simple:
Ingredients:
3 Tablespoon Baking Soda
3 Tablespoons Corn Starch
3 Tablespoon White Vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons corn syrup
Food coloring

Method:
Mix everything but the food coloring.   Divide the mixture in separate containers (I used an egg carton).  Add your desired colors to each portion.

 I made red, green, blue, yellow, orange, pink, and purple.  I cut my egg carton in half so Mini Me and Little Lady can each have their own set.  I put a little too much of the mixture in some cups and it started to overflow and run into the next cup. 


If you leave these to dry overnight, they should harden but mine did not.  All of my colors still had liquid sitting on top so I soaked the liquid up with small bits of paper towel.  Underneath was perfectly hardened and vibrant paint!  The kids can paint with them like store-bought watercolors using a brush dipped in water! 


While they are still wet, you can make your own paint-with-water pages. 
I printed various coloring book images onto card stock and made drips and smears of color on the picture.  When they dry, all the kids need to do is use water and a brush to "paint" the pages. 

These pre-made pages are fun but it took me a long time to make them and it really stifles the kids' creativity because I'm choosing the colors; not them. 


Mini Me and Little Lady really loved their watercolor paint sets.  I decorated each carton with their name, too, so they each have their own special one.
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A Year of ABCs: G with art and math

G is for green glitter.
I completely pooped out on this G week activity thanks to some utterly insane sleep deprivation from my sweet angel.  We still have our green glitter discovery bottle back from D week so we played with that and called it good. 




G is for gift shapes.
I got this great idea from one of my favorite blogs, Two Steps Behind Six Little Hands.  I wrapped some toy shapes in foil and put them in a bucket.  I wrapped two of each kind of shape so we could match them once they were unwrapped.  I narrated each shape and color as Little Lady opened the gifts.

In the end, there was not much shape-matching going on but we did spend a very long time wrapping and unwrapping objects with the foil.  Mini Me got into it, and the three of us wrapped and gave each other random gifts over and over.  It didn't take long for Little Lady to catch on to our gift-opening surprise: "Oh!  It's just what I always wanted!" or "Wow!".  I loved hearing her little voice imitate ours.

G is for great grub and grandparents.
One night (by complete accident), Mini Me recognized that we were having a G meal: grilled chicken, garlic rolls, green beans, and grapes!  We spent the rest of the meal discussing it and practicing our G words.  
Coincidentally during G week, Little Lady learned how to say Grandma and Grandpa!  It's fun hearing her practice her new words by repeating them over and over again. 
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Silhouette canvases

These silhouette canvases were inspired by this post where they were made with fabric and put in a nice frame.  I wanted these to look nice next to the sticker canvases in the kids' rooms, though, so I thought I would use a canvas instead of a frame.  I think they look nice and simple and were very easy on the budget to make.

You will need:

8x10 canvasses

a profile photo of your child

scrapbook paper

ruler, pencil, scissors

double stick tape - or maybe glue

More alphabet hunts

We love using our foam bath letters for ABC hunts.  See what we've done in the past:

Outdoor ABC hunt to spell CVC words.

Let's do it inside!  

We can even hunt for letters in the snow.

We took the letters outside in some beautiful spring weather to have a new hunt.

I gathered the letters to form three words, then I hid the letters around the yard.

Mini Me and Little Lady ran to collect them all.

When they brought them to me, I put the letters for each word on a patio square but left them mixed up.

Mini Me had to unscramble the letters to form the word, then he sounded the word out.

He did great.

And Little Lady practiced making towers.  She does neat work!

All photos courtesy of Mini Me (except the one he is in!)
After a few rounds of this game, Mommy was more tired than the kiddos!

A Year of ABCs: F with movement, music, science, Spanish

F is for follow the leader and find the frog
What toddler does not love follow the leader?  We did a lot of this, marching around the house, waving our arms, walking low, stomping, and singing as we went. 

Find the toy is a game both kids really latched on to this winter: we would hide a couple toys while they were out of the room, then call them in, and they had to find the toys.  For F week, I grabbed two frogs from our bath toys and hid them.  I was going to ribbit as Little Lady got closer to the hidden frog, but she did not like that.  Instead, she just searched for the frog, thimble thimble style.  This game provides endless entertainment and problem-solving skills.

F is for Froggy Went a Courtin'
I remember learning this song in elementary music class and I still love it.  We sang and bopped to this one quite a bit.
There are many verses and I do not know them all.  Here are the first couple that I know:
Froggy went a courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh
Froggy went a courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh
Froggy went a courtin' and he did ride
With a sword and a pistol by his side, uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh

He rode right up to Miss Mousie's door, uh-huh
He rode right up to Miss Mousie's door, uh-huh
He rode right up to Miss Mousie's door
Gave three loud raps, and a very big roar, uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh

F is for felt face

We talked about the different parts of our faces and practiced placing them on our fun felt face!


F is for familia
 Since Little Lady loves to do a familial roll call several dozen times a day during which she calls out our names and we state where the person is, it was very easy to slip in our Spanish word of the week.  She loves her familia.  


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Moving with books: Tumble Bumble

We just love moving with our books.  Tumble Bumble by Felicia Bond is a cute, lyrical story about a variety of animals that meet each other on a walk through town.  
Mini Me had a blast narrating this story with his movements, acting out the various pieces of the story from bumping to bouncing to singing to tip-toeing, to wiggling his sore little piggy tail after someone stepped on it.  The book ends with all the animals tumble bumbling into someone's house and piling into a bed (hmm.... super cute as a kid's story and very creepy from other viewpoints).  The best part of our moving with this book was piling into a bed as we recited the end.