St. Patrick's Day!

So, leprechauns can do some silly things.  Like steal shoes & switch clothes around, but when they leave your house, sometimes they leave things behind.  The little leprechaun that visited our house left some green footprints & chocolate gold coins behind.   As you can see the kids wasted no time picking up those "gold" coins.

Number Book

I made a neat little number book that Asher loves.  Jack is a little beyond it but has still picked it up a few times.

It was really simple.  I just used some clip art  of animals and put a different number on each little page.  The pages were divided to leave a space to put the numeral there once Asher counted everything up.  Asher did a pretty good job right off the bat.  But didn't like how the number didn't stay, so we decided to use velcro, so once the number is matched he can keep it there.

I then decided to make the numbers into "sandpaper numbers".  Easy enough to do once you have glue and sand.  Now Asher can count them up, find the number, trace it with his fingers & then match it up. 

I also put little whole up in the corner & put all the number cards on a ring.  So, we can spread it all out or keep it like a book.  Once I had such success with this with Asher, I took it to the Montessori school that I am volunteering at & one of the boys that I am working with there loved it!  The teacher thought it was awesome because the little boy was so engaged, which doesn't always happen with him.

So this little project is definitely a keeper & maybe we will even add to it as time goes on.

3-part lesson

I got my first lesson on how to teach a 3-part lesson.  What fun!   I love learning new stuff & being truly helpful as I volunteer at the Montessori School.  I have been helping out, but not feeling truly helpful as Montessori is so different from a traditional classroom. 

Anyway, after the teacher I am working with took the time to show me how to do a 3 part lesson with the kids.  I was busy all day long working with the kids.  Loved it!!!!

I also just got a teaching album & some DVDs from North American Montessori Center (via ebay).  What a deal on ebay & they have already been so beneficial (and I have only read 2 or 3 lessons & watched about 4 different teaching segments on the DVDs).

Making Pretzels

Lots of cooking has been going on recently.  I guess that is what happens when it is cold and snowy outside.  Needless to say, I probably need a lot less sweet stuff in the house, so I started to hunt for new "healthy" recipes the boys could help me with.  Although the boys would have been just as happy with another batch of cookies, brownies or muffins.

I came up with two winners.  The first one being chewy granola bars.  Which turned out great, I love them & we have tried them with many different kinds of dried fruit in them, including apricots, craisins, mangos, apples & pears.

But the real hit was the whole wheat pretzels. The recipe called for regular flour, but I always try to substitue all or part.  The first time we made them I did half & half & then the other 2 times we have made them I have used all whole wheat & they have turned out just as good.

The boys loved rolling out the pretzels and twisting them up.  We have tried them plain, with cheese and with cinnamon on them.  We have enjoyed them with dinner (dip them in soup & both the soup & the pretzel are gone in no time).  We have eaten them for an after dinner snack with cinnamon on top.  And I sliced them in half & use it as sandwich bread, which was a huge hit when Jack opened up his lunch box at school.

Puzzles

Seems like something so simple, yet my youngest son has always gotten frustrated with puzzles.  He was always anxious to try them out, but it never seemed to get completed.  We could work on them together and he never really got the matching of the pieces.  I could start them and he just couldn't see to correlation to the pieces that were left.  This "puzzled" me to some extent since his brother has always done them & enjoyed them immensely. 

And yes we have puzzles of all varieties and age levels (even though he is 4).  Anyway, this morning while we are in the midst of getting ready for school (and all it entails), Asher drags out an extra large 48 piece dinosaur floor puzzle & asks for some help once he is finished flipping over all the pieces.

My first instinct was to say no, because I was trying to get things & bodies ready to get out the door in 20 minutes.  However, I decided to stop and help since this was completely prompted by him (under no ones suggestion) & he was already flipping over all the pieces.  To my utter & complete surprise, he completed the majority of the puzzle by himself (I even got up a few times, left and came back).  He didn't lose interest in it before it was finished & he never got frustrated. 

I was so proud of him and his accomplishment.  This just really speaks to the fact that some kids are ready for things at different stages and that fact that when something is child driven it is so much more productive.

Busting Up the Ice

So I am so ready for spring!  We got a few warm days here last week & it really gave me spring fever.  I even started cleaning out the basement.  And with that I found lots of little "good for nothing toys" or so I thought at the time.  Anyway, I was collecting them in a pile (originally for the Thrift store), but once I started thinking about hot days & the way all the little toys ended up in our make shift water table last year (post on that later).  I thought I should save them to that again. 

But then alas more snow came & my warm thoughts are no longer here, as I shoveled myself out & watched as Asher helped sprinkle salt on the front walk.  Then Asher started banging up pieces of ice with a hammer from the garage. So that is when I thought of my little ice treasure idea. 

I took all the little toys from the basement & playroom that noboby seems to know where they came from or what to do with them & froze them in a pan of water.  What fun.   The boys thought they looked so cool & they kept hunting for everything them dropped in the pan.  when we were dropping them in, they noticed (& we talked about how somethings floated & some things sank) so some were on the bottom & some were on the top. 

Well after the examination the real fun began.  Asher needless to say went straight for the hammer and broke it up.  Jack on the other hand wanted hot water & while he was waiting for that he sprinkled rock salt on it. Which we talked about once he did it, but that proved to be too slow of a process for him & he poured the hot water on it & then finished it off with the hammer. 

But best of all once all of this was done, the mess melted away & those little useless toys were fun again for 20 minutes!

Word Game

Jack is really into sounding out words right now, but gets easily bored of "practicing" sight words.  Even though I made a really cool tape road on the play room wall & all the sight words are on car shapes & he is trying to get to the finish line.

So, my search for something a little more fun & practical was underway.  And I am happy to say I found a really neat simple game.  This came from Kellyskindergarten.com  (under games).  There are a few versions of this game.  However, I chose the space one since that is one of Jack's interests.

The pictures are actually in color (which were awesome) but we only have a black and white printer.  So, I chose light blue card stock to print them on & as I was watching TV one night I embelished them a bit with my markers.  I then laminated them, cut them & put a hole in the corner to keep them on a ring. 

The words I printed out to use for now are simple, CVC words.  But she also has a set of -ing words, which will be great as we branch out.  The game is simple, you pull a card & sound out the word.  If you know it you keep it & if not you put it back.  There are a few "extra" cards that let you take a card from a fellow player (alien), get an extra turn (shooting star) or end the game (Earth).  We have played this over and over. Jack is trying so hard to learn new words to be able to get new cards.  I really like it, because it is quick & simple (I can play it while making dinner).

Making Birdfeeders

As many of us have done in our own childhoods, we made birdfeeders.   However, we had a very interesting conversation before hand which is why we ended up making the bird feeders in the first place. 

We recycle & reuse quite a few things and the other day I opened the drawer that I save paper towel & toilet paper tubes in and decided it was time for a project.  My drawer was becoming full way too fast (and the boys preschool didn't need any at the present time).  We have also been talking a lot about animals and how they survive without someone feeding them.  We have a dog and it is the boys job to feed him (although not from the table, which comes up every night at dinner).  Anyway, I was explaining how wild animals scavenge for food and that at some times of the year it is harder than others.  We went over why bears hibernate and how they can survive and why some animals store food up for the winter months, etc....

So needless to say our next step was bird feeders.  The kids had a blast with this and we are now ready for some winter snow (and my drawer of  "tubes" is almost empty).  We also shipped some off to their Great-Grandmom's so "their" birds wouldn't go hungry either.

Back on Line after Dropping my Laptop!

Sorry I have been slow with the updates.  I dropped my laptop back in January & just got a new one.  A good lesson for the boys to take care of their toys.  We have had many a discussion about why you need to take care of your toys & that if you break them you don't necessarily get a new one (and definitely not right away). 

I think the boys were as excited as I was to get a new laptop because they know I had been saving for it.  So we made a family event out of it & we all went to Best Buy (fun, fun!).

Volunteering at a Montessori School

So a little over a month ago I  started volunteering at a Montessori school.  I chose to do this in order to get some more experience that will help me out next year when my youngest goes to school full-time and it is time for me to jump back into the work force.  

It has been great.  I love being back in the classroom & forgot how much I enjoyed it.  I have been doing some one on one tutoring as well as teaching science workshops to small groups of kids for the last 5 years but there is just an energy that comes with a good classroom. 

My kids are excited for me too, which is so funny.  They ask about the kids at "my"  school.  They want to know what I do all day & what the kids are like.  I love their curiosity.

I am sure I will have many good stories, as well as many teachable moments & surprises that I will be sharing along the way.

Quadrilla Marble Maze

My boys love this marble maze.  They love what they can create, every design is different & cool looking.  The wooden pieces notch together easily which makes it easy enough for my younger son to do as well as my older son. 

My older son played with a simple plastic marble maze at a friends house & liked that he could create different designs & change it & see what effect his change had immediately.  I am not a huge fan of plastic toys, which led me on my hunt for this.  Actually, all I had to do was go to one of my favorite toy store and ask, AMUSE toys.  They immediately knew what I wanted.

I really like that my kids can either follow the step by step picture directions or they can create their own creation.  It's a sophisticated learning experience based on simple design.