Valentine's Day EASY Craft!

I found this idea on Pinterest today and we put it together!  This was one of those days I was glad some people see me as crafty.  We used a lot of things donated or given to us by others for this craft I was able to pull together in minutes.  Get the directions here.  Ours doesn't look nearly as neat as the one on the Martha Stewart blog.  But we had fun with it anyway.  Thanks Beth and Donna for your contributions to our craft today!

This is my third blog of the day, just FYI, in case you missed one :)

Bible Lessons

Maryn loves to spell.  Look what she put on our craft for our Bible lesson today.  :)

I really find most Bible study curriculums and ideas for preschoolers and toddlers kind of lame, or confusing for small kids.  This kind of leaves me to do things on my own.  I always wondered what other families do with their kids for family worship time and Bible lessons, so I just thought I'd share how we do it.  Although it changes all the time.

I usually just read along in Maryn's Bible story books (either The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes or The Jesus Storybook Bible) with whatever they are working on in Sunday School.  Maryn's Sunday School class sends home a great newsletter (kind of like a Weekly Reader) that has a Bible story, little games, activities, mazes, poems, songs or hand rhymes and other ideas for parents.  Josiah's Sunday School class sends home a great newsletter too with the sweetest little hand rhymes and songs, and simple little activities.  These two resources help me tremendously.

A few weeks before Christmas, we started reading about the birth of Christ, so we read Luke 2 again and again, about once or twice a day.  That's how Maryn learned it almost by heart.  Kids memories are incredible.  And we did little crafts and things as we went along.  I find most of those ideas now on Pinterest or dltk.com.  DLTK has a bunch of coloring sheets--probably a waste of paper for most kids, but you know how Maryn loves to color!

Then we learned about the wise men, Jesus as a boy, John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism, and then the calling of Jesus' disciples.

We just read a Bible story from her books or the actual Bible during our breakfast (my kids won't sit still any other time of day besides meals as they stuff their faces, and I find they do listen better).  OR we do the Cubbies lesson/practice the verse of the week for Cubbies.  OR we finish the newsletters from church, and discuss the crafts and things she made at Sunday School.

I'm getting way off topic.  Sorry!

So anyway, I wanted to share this CUTE disciples song we learned last week.  We don't sing the last verse.  But I love this.  Maryn is so cute singing it!

Tune of "Jesus Loves Me"

Jesus called them one by one,
Peter, Andrew, James and John,
Next, came Philip, Thomas too,
Matthew and Bartholomew.
Chorus-
Yes, Jesus called them,
Yes, Jesus called them,
Yes, Jesus called them,
He called them one by one.


James the one they called the less,
Simon, also Thaddeus,
Twelfth apostle Judas made,
Jesus was by him betrayed.
Repeat Chorus.

Matthias then took Judas' place,
To preach to men of every race,
Paul three preaching trips did make,
And went to Rome for Jesus' sake.

Now this week I'm trying to do all the most famous Peter stories or disciples and Jesus stories.  That's why we made the boat you see above.  I think we'll use it do the Jesus Calms the Storm story and the Jesus (and Peter) Walks on Water story.  We have a good Keith and Kristyn Getty song called "Once Upon a Boat," that's about Jesus calming the storm.  It's pretty cute.  I need more kids' Bible songs because I know very few.

Isn't it a lot harder to teach New Testament stories to preschoolers?  Teaching about the walls of Jericho falling down and Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea was a lot easier and more "fun!"  But I think the best Bible lessons, even at age 3, are simple and straightforward.  I really hesitate to do anything too abstract., like some of the lessons I see online.  But since Maryn does love to color and do crafts, I try to get fun stuff like that sometimes in our Bible lessons.

Polar Bears and Wise Men :)

There's so many cool ideas for snow paint.  Here's one we tried today, and it dries so puffy.  It's so cool!  Only Maryn didn't understand that you need to leave globs of the stuff so that it stays puffy.  So I did the puffy snowman and she did all the scribbling.  :)  Oh well.

 Look at our cute wise men!  I don't think the handprints look like camels, but oh well.  We tried.

 And here's our snow bear.  Maryn cut out all the shapes and the sign he's holding is some of the basic facts we've learned about polar bears.  They are pretty interesting animals.

I love learning along with my daughter.  It's so much fun!

Penguins with Maryn and Updates with Josiah :)

We had such a fun day!  I woke up early, at 6:15, because the kiddos have been sleeping in till 8:30 pretty consistently.  I thought I could have breakfast with my hubby, have some quiet time, take a shower, etc.  And then this little one came down the hall at 6:30 am, ready to go:

 We have been learning about penguins.  Here Maryn is with her Mommy penguin, who has gone to the ocean to catch fish.  She left her mate with her baby for four months!

 Ella Grace visited today for a few hours, and here she is with the Daddy penguin.  He carried the egg on his feet those whole four months (we used a Kix cereal piece as the egg).  Then the egg hatched.  Here's the Mommy meeting her baby for the first time!

I also made two loaves of bread in the bread machine and experimented with some recipes and a new bread pan, but still not quite what I wanted.  I don't know why my amazing bread baking friends don't share their secrets.  My bread tastes good, like most homemade bread, but it's smaller and denser than Miss JoAnna's and Miss Hope's. Boo.  Everything they touch turns to gold.  Why are some people like that?

My little mister, Josiah, is saying lots of words, using lots of signs, growing more and more independent each day.  But the best part is that he's starting to really remember animal sounds.  Ah!  So cute!  His favorite is the elephant.  He can also do a cat and anything growly.  But his growl is the cutest thing.  He's not very intimidating :)

He has learned two new words.  "Mess," and "Sit!"  Ha!  I wonder how he learned those :)

He folds his hands when we sit to eat, ready to pray.  He walks to the bathroom when we're done to wash his hands.  He walks to the kitchen to get some milk when it's time for bed.  And knows just what to do at teeth brushing time.

He often lays down without a whimper at bed time, but is STILL waking up 30 minutes to three hours into his sleep.  It's driving us crazy.  We thought we nailed it down as a lactose thing, but it's not adding up.  I don't think it's his belly.  I suspect he's having nightmares/falling dreams...he wakes up freaking out, just wanting Mommy, and the only thing that consoles him is Mommy.

So it goes, life with kids.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  Once you think you have something figured out (like a way to have a quiet time, or a way to have an easy nighttime), it all goes out the window.

We do school randomly :)

 This morning I sent Maryn and John to the grocery store with a list and Maryn had a "BINGO" card and stickers.  She had to find all the numbers she could at Target and mark them with her stickers.  Then after lunch, Maryn and John played this game I found here.   We used a spinner with the numerals actually on it rather than dice because Maryn needs to learn her numbers.  Although she was very good at counting and coloring the number she spun.

During Josiah's  nap, we used the buttons Miss Beth gave us to get crafty:

Cute, super easy button ideas here.

Maryn loves school.  I started looking at kindergarten and preschool curriculums again and I am just feeling very pessimistic about them all.  I feel at this point all we really need is a math curriculum (preschool) or at least a guide, with ideas for stuff to do.  She's way advanced right now in reading (letters, sounds) so purchasing or trying to follow a preschool program would be kind of pointless.  I need a good scope and sequence, or something like that...to keep us motivated and on track.  Also some social studies and science would be great too.  Right now we do so many random things, whenever we feel like it.  But next I do believe we will study the northern states, Canada, and animals that live in colder climates.

If you have any ideas of books that would give me some basic guidance, let me know.

Right now we're watching 101 Dalmations and she is scared out of her mind.  :)  It may be a long night.

Oh my. She is practically a teenager.

Not only is every other word in her vocabulary, "Like," but now this!

 You should have seen how sweet she looked sleeping there last night. She slept in it all night and didn't fall out.  I think she did wake up once and cried a little bit.  I think she forgot where she was.

John worked so hard yesterday.  He took down the loft, helped our friends carry it over to their apartment (which oddly enough is the same apartment we got it from, and they put it in the same spot!), put it together over there, only to come right back to carry Maryn's new furniture upstairs.  He put together the bed, we rearranged lots of things in both kids rooms, and I tried to vacuum and dust every time we moved anything.  It was exhausting, let me tell you.  Then we used a valance our friends gave us with the bed to cover up the unsightly toys in Maryn's closet...

 So Maryn's closet is now home to her kitchen, dress up clothes, some school storage, and above on the racks there are hundreds of toys for rotation or to only get down when the kiddos ask for them.  It's a mess in this picture...sorry!

Maryn has been so tired and yucky feeling lately.  We may just need to get outside more, but today during Josiah's nap, we tried this fun little activity with her old crayons.

 We unwrapped and broke several dull crayons and sorted them by color into this silicone mold.  Then we let them melt in the oven set at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes.  In a couple hours, we will pop them out and we'll have new gingerbread man crayons!  I may make some into Christmas ornaments.

This activity kept my tired little girl's fingers busy and her bottom still for about half an hour this afternoon.  And for that I am grateful!

 She's such a big girl.  :)

Kites, Wind and Weather: Day One

This week, we are finally doing our Kites, Wind and Weather theme that my aunt Cathy sent to us many months ago, intending it for spring of course.  Well, we were a little slow about buying a kite and other things we wanted for these lessons.  But we finally found a kite at Walgreens for $1.00 and tried flying it on Saturday.  We got our money's worth, that's for sure.

Well, the kite didn't really work, but I guess kites are not that appropriate for 2-3 year olds.  Daddy didn't have much success with it either.  But I think Maryn does get the idea of what wind is, kite or no kite!

Here's what our schedule looks like most school days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

First things first...

I set out our pattern block/tangram things for Maryn to do while I got myself ready and sorted out and breakfast on the table, Josiah changed and such.  These types of table activities keep her busy first thing and she's always excited about what she's going to find on our table on school day mornings.

Bible and Breakfast

I like to do our Bible story reading during breakfast, while the kids' little hands are occupied and they are sitting relatively quietly.  We don't have a set thing we do for Bible time, but it usually is a story out of the book The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes by Kenneth N. Taylor, The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones, a Bible Story pamphlet we got from Maryn's or Josiah's Sunday School class, or now AWANA Cubbies stuff.  Today, we practiced the Cubbies verse of the week (While we were sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8), and we read a few stories about Jesus' death and resurrection in The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes.  I like this Bible story book better for Maryn's age over the Jesus Storybook Bible.

Alphabet Practice

Today, we practiced the few letters I know Maryn needs to practice:  X, Z, T, G, Q, b, d, and j.  I put those letter magnets on our magnet/white board you see above, and we sorted them out and put them into The Leap Frog thing to hear their sounds.  We sorted them into our ABC garden.  My aunt Cathy made us these little flower cups:

The flowers are laminated, so I just wrote the letters we wanted to practice on them, and Maryn sorted her magnets into the corresponding cups.  Cathy also sent us picture cards to go into the cups (apple for a, bear for b, etc.), but today I just wanted to focus on letter recognition.  Maryn is surprisingly good at knowing words for letters but still gets some letters and sounds mixed up, so we focused on that today.  It's more fun and easy for her anyway!  She is still two, after all.

Then, we got out the shaving cream!  I stuck Maryn in Josiah's high chair and let her spread a bunch of Barbasol shaving cream all over the tray, and then she made letters and pictures in it.  I gave her WAY too much shaving cream, and it created quite a mess.  :)


Fine Motor Skills: Tear and Glue 

I think Maryn has finally gotten the hang of tearing.  Tearing paper is surprisingly difficult for most preschoolers, but is really good for their fine motor skills.  Maryn tore up enough blue paper to make a "cloud" and colored a kite for a very beautiful picture.


Math:  Kite and Number Matching

This was a worksheet we did with a sheet protector and dry erase marker.  She had to match the kite with 5 hearts on it to the number 5, the kite with 8 stars on it to the number 8, and so on.  She was great at this with numbers 1-5!  Which is great progress from just a few months ago.

Kite Painting and Paint Mixing

Maryn loves to mix paint colors.  Today, I decided to show her what happens when we mix white into our paint.  I put black, purple, red, green, and blue in small dishes and added a bit of white to each one.

She really had no idea what might happen, since we've only mixed primary colors to make secondary colors.  She was thrilled especially that red and white makes....PINK!  We used the beautiful colors she made to paint a "kite," for decoration only, not for flying.

Here's the artist washing out her paintbrushes.  She also helped sweep the floor, make lunch, and wash the dishes.  That's one great thing I foresee with homeschooling:  real life, practical skills!

Music, Dance, Large Motor

Then we went back to Maryn's room for some music time.  We got out her instruments and used those, our bodies, and toys--whatever we could find--to make "weather sounds."  We made rain sounds, thunder, lightning, and wind.  While we made the sounds, we acted like trees in the weather.  Like trees blowing in a light breeze, in a windy storm, in a tornado, or a hurricane.  It was great fun!  Then we danced and listened to some other music.

Science Experiment


We made a windsock puppet to take outside and dance in the wind.   This was a great, great age appropriate thing to do with Maryn (better than a regular windsock or kite) because she could move with it and "Dance with the Wind" (a book title we also read today).  We just colored a double sided fish on card stock, stapled the two sides together around an old broken wand, glued crepe paper and ribbon to the ends, and went outside to dance and play.  Fun!

Books We Read

We read a few books throughout the day.  We read The Wind Blew, a great classic by Pat Hutchins.

We also read Word Bird's Rainy Day Dance, Clifford Keeps Cool, Raindrops, and It's Raining, It's Pouring by Kin Eagle.

How long did all this take?


One great thing about homeschooling is that you get a lot more done in less time.  We honestly did everything on our list before lunch, with time to spare.  And we even fit in time to do other things I didn't post here.  I was able to leave Maryn to do her painting and coloring on her own, so the house even stayed clean.  Josiah even got some learning in, too, and lots of play!  But he took a nap around 10:30, until 1:30.  So we had a great school day.  If Josiah had not been cooperative, that's okay, because we can always finish after lunch, or even after dinner!  I love it.  And Maryn loves it too.  She's always begging for more.

So now you know what a school day kind of looks like for us.  I can't post every school day because that would take forever.  But there it is.  Happy Back to School!!!

Good ideas!

Something FUN to do!
http://nurturestore.co.uk/create-a-song-bag-to-boost-language-and-maths-skills

Maryn's School, Holy Week Day One

 This is our Easter Mountain.  So, the idea is to go through Holy Week day by day with your kids using this mountain and the chenille stem people.  It's sooooo weird and crazy, I know.  But I can already tell that this is really going to help illustrate what events led up to Jesus' death and resurrection.  I am excited to see what Maryn learns.  Tomorrow, Jesus will ride through Jerusalem on a plastic donkey.  The donkey is enormous in proportion to everything else.  And the cross is huge too.  Oh well. 

Here's some other school stuff we've been doing.  Maryn has totally been loving the butterfly unit from aunt Cathy.  See the butterfly she colored all by herself?  Her coloring is getting super impressive! 

 Oh, and I wanted to show you this book from Cathy that is really helping her learn to count and recognize numbers.  She loves I Spy books, so this kind of combines the two skills into one book.  Perfect!  If you're having trouble getting your 2 or 3 year old to count and recognize numbers, a book like this might help.  She loves it.

 We have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I told Maryn we were going to use these pieces of manila paper to make a caterpillar, so she painted this (the white mark was actually much smaller but she messed it up before I took the photo:)).  She said, "It's going to be a caterpillar." I had a flashback and thought...did she...remember...the book that we read like, two days ago???  So I opened up The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle,,,

 ...and saw this.

 Now I don't know what you think, but I think that really looks similar!  And cannot be just coincidence!

Isn't she cute in her paint shirt?  I'm not sure but I think she must get it from me.  Her cuteness, that is.  And her creativity.  And her memory.  ;-)

Butterflies!

I decided to really start the butterfly theme tonight that my aunt Cathy sent for us.  I had no idea Maryn would LOVE it all so much.  Here's what we did.

First, Maryn woke from her nap to find little orange slices shaped into butterflies.  Which was something I made up about 2 minutes before she awoke.  Then, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle very, very enthusiastically.  I got some good tips from my friend Laura's website here:  TeachMeToTalk  Sometimes I get into the habit of reading like I'm teaching first grade.  Maryn is bright, but she is still 2, and I need to be a little more enthusiastic when I read to her.  I remember the way Maryn and Tye would be captivated by Miss Laura's animation.  Not that I need to always be like that (that would be exhausting), but here and there I think it's helpful, especially with something as important as reading.

Earlier in the day, we made butterflies out of plastic baggies and hundreds of construction paper squares.  This was a perfect activity for Maryn!  She loves to cut.  Squares are so much fun and easy to learn how to cut from strips.  AND here's the best part--it all got cleaned up!  After the squares are cut, you can have the kids put all the squares in the baggie, then tie the middle up with a pipe cleaner and voila!  Butterfly!  Maryn made THREE.  I literally had to stop her.

Then for Math we did some patterning.  For writing we did a letter B worksheet (Cathy sent us a week long lesson plan and we followed it).  The we did a "discovery table" by making a "butterfly garden" with Easter grass, silk flowers, play caterpillars and our plastic baggie butterflies.  She loves this garden.

The we played our butterfly music and danced around like butterflies.  We pretended to be inside our eggs, hatching, eating the egg, then we crawled around and ate lots and lots and lots of leaves (our leaves were blankets and Josiah, which he really loved getting "eaten"), and then we made a chrysalis (our tunnel) and without any prompting, Maryn burst out of it shouting, "Look Mommy!  I'm a butterfly!"

After that, we sorted some magnetic food and some Colorforms food (I had a Very Hungry Caterpillar Colorforms set from teaching) into food groups.  She loves talking about food groups, courtesy of Sid the Science Kid.  But she doesn't have a clue, really.  Eh, it was fun anyway.  She was very disturbed when she realized The Very Hungry Caterpillar did not have any cereal.  She's also decided that dairy is her favorite food group because, "I like ice cream and cheese," she told me, as she licked the ice cream cone sticker.  Yum.

This is Maryn sleeping before our butterfly fun:

 Cutting, cutting, cutting:

 Cutting....(observe our little classroom in the background.  Ah!  I'm such a loser!  Get a life, Amanda!)

 What did Josiah do the whole time?  He had lots of fun.  He's been pulling up on everything.  He's never satisfied where he is.  He is always diving right on his head to try to get to things clearly out of his reach.  He has been starting to crawl but always wants the next thing.  Or me!  But when I'm holding him, he wants to jump.  Or scratch or be somewhere else.  Agh!

If you zoom in on this pic, you can see he has some bad allergies.

 Oh, she loves this butterfly garden!

 When we were pretending to be butterflies, we took a break to drink nectar (juice) from flowers (plastic cups with construction paper petals).

We had so much fun!  Thank you Aunt Cathy!

Psalm 23

I found these cute little ideas to do with preschoolers on the 23rd Psalm (The Lord is my shepherd...).  Maryn loves the story of the lost sheep in the New Testament.  She gets really emotional when she knows something or someone is lost.  So we talk a lot about how we are lost, and she is like that sheep, but Jesus wants to save her.  We love that story, and this Psalm. 

And Jesus.


http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/SampleLessons.html#psalms

Check back here tomorrow or the next day.  I did buy more storage and I have lots of pictures to post!

Preschool Monday

We started Preschool Mondays today.  I had four children here, ages 2 and 3.  Our activities mainly focused on dinosaurs and/or the letter D.  Here are some things we did.

Stegosaurus Picture:  We used cornflakes to create plates on the backs of our stegosaurus (see pic).

Make our own dinosaur:  We used some textured items to make the skin of our dinosaurs appear rough and glued triangles to their backs for spikes.  We talked about how plant eating dinosaurs might use their spikes (protection, intimidation) and how they might use plates (to appear bigger and more intimidating, protection).

Dinosaur Categorize and Sort:  We sorted plastic dinosaurs away from other animals (mammals, insects).  Then we sorted them according to what we think they ate, by looking at their teeth.  As we sorted we talked about what a sail might be for, or their long tails, claws, horns, crests, etc. (thanks to Dinosaur Train I semi know what I’m talking about).

Popcorn Letters:   

First, we did this song (to the tune of Three Blind Mice)

Popcorn kernels, Popcorn kernels

In the pot, in the pot                                     (Crouch down like a popcorn kernel.)

Shake them, shake them, shake them

Shake them, shake them, shake them            (Shake your body.)

Til’ they POP!  Till they POP!                            (Jump!)

The kids loved this song.  Then we put some letters in a popcorn box (two letter Ds and a few other letters), courtesy of Aunt Cathy, and acted out the song.  At the last POP, I popped all the letters out of the box and the kids tried their best to find the letter D on the floor.  It was great!  They loved that.

Bean Bag Dance:  Great song!  We also sang a Good Morning song and a Hello, how are you? song.

Puzzles and Drawing:  I honestly think puzzles was everyone’s favorite thing.  Hmph.

We found the letter D magnet and I let each kid find it on the board and place it in the thingy that sings the D song (from the Letter Factory…it’s a Leap Frog thing for your refrigerator).

We decorated Ds I had cut out on card stock with little dinosaur glitter things. 

Dinosaur Relays:  We put balls on kitchen serving spoons (I used a more difficult ball/spoon for the 3 year olds) and ran back and forth with them.  Another idea is to make dinosaur feet with shoe boxes and stomp around or do a relay with them. 

Five Little Monkeys:  We did this rhyme (I couldn’t find a good dinosaur one so I changed the words to this a little.  It should say “Mr. Alligator”), using some little monkeys I printed and put magnets on the back of for our magnet board.  They LOVED it.

Five little monkeys

Swinging in a tree
Teasing Mr. Dinosaur--
"You can't catch me." 
 Along comes Mr. Dinosaur
As quiet as can be--
SNAP!!!
Continue until all monkeys are gone

Away swims Mr. Dinosaur
As full as he can be!

It was a fun day and I've already started planning for next week.

sort this out

 

Here's Maryn sorting little hair ties into Valentine's bags.  Cathy sent these to us, and as you can see, she taped a different color hair tie to each little bag.  The other day, we used the hair ties to make patterns on her little wooden hammer.  Making patterns and sorting are very early math skills.  Your kiddos do it when they clean their room, help sort, fold and put away laundry, and many times in their play.  Sorting is oddly fun for lots of kids, and it's one of the reasons preschools have "bins" instead of giant toy boxes.  Labels on those bins further teach kids how to read, categorize, and sort.  Plus it teaches them to clean!

Sorry about my lack of posts, especially pictures, lately.  My kiddos are sick.  Maryn has had a fever the last two days and all of us are trying to ride out a pretty nasty cold.  Hopefully we will be better soon!

Valentine's Day is coming!

 If I was more internet savvy I would say my Aunt Cathy and I should start our own blog.  But I will just share some ideas here for you, my friends and family.  For anyone who cares.  Cathy gave us some fun activities to do.  Here are a few!  I love this puzzle above.  Puzzles like this are so, so good for teaching kids that little pieces can be grouped together to make new shapes.  If you have little ones, investing in puzzles, pattern blocks and other tangram types of games are totally worth it.

 Ah, Valentine's Day is a teacher's dream come true.  There are a hundred easy center and craft ideas to do with hearts.  Above you see some broken hearts Cathy made for us, which are simply matching the alphabet.  This is a great one for Maryn because she knows all her letters if they are together like that, capital and lowercase.  So this is one she can do all by herself...and there's a few colors to make it a bit easier.

If you have older kids, you could do this with matching upper to a lowercase letter, matching sight words, creating compound words, synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, suffixes, math problems, etc. 

 I remember doing these crafts with my first graders!  Once a seven year old learns how to make a heart by folding paper and cutting that tear-drop shape, there's no turning back!  All you need to do is provide paper and they'll come up with all kinds of decorations.  But you can post some pictures or samples around to help them out.  Don't forget heart butterflies!  We haven't made one yet.  But we will soon, I'm sure. 

 But the best Valentines of all

 are my two little sweetlings!

And John, too!  :)

Valentine's Day and the Bible

We've been tying in some of the lessons from Maryn's Sunday School class and her Awana Honeybees.  Their key verse for the year is, "God loved us and sent his Son.  1 John 4:10."  So while we talk about who we love and who loves us, we also talk about how we love Jesus most of all and how much he loves us.  He loves us even more than our Mommies and Daddies.

We read about the good Samaritan yesterday, and how he helped the man lying on the road, even though that man was supposed to be an enemy.  They've been talking about how to be a good helper, and that when we help our parents, we're ultimately helping God.  So we've been talking all the time about ways to help Mommy and Daddy, our neighbors, and our friends.  One of the KEY ways to help Mommy and Daddy is to simply OBEY.  So often our little ones think the only way to help is to get stuff for us, clean up for us, etc.  (isn't that true of us as humans serving God, too?) But we are trying to teach Maryn that simply obeying us is truly a huge help.  And the other way to help us is to spend time with us.  We've talked about how just cuddling with us now and then makes us feel so special and loved.

One of the questions in our catechism is this:  "How can we glorify God?"  And the answer is, "By loving him and obeying him."  So we are trying to teach Maryn what that looks like.  It's a difficult concept, but is most easily exemplified in the parent-child relationship.  It doesn't just mean we serve, serve, serve.  It also means we obey, we cuddle, and we enjoy each other.

Make a Puzzle

Maryn and the neighbor boy have been making puzzles for each other.  But little kids get a little scissor happy with their puzzles and it can be quite difficult (impossible) to put them together.  My aunt suggested making these cute, EASY puzzles for our Spring Party in March.  Here were the results of my test run.  I think Maryn will like it.  I plan to test this craft on our neighbor kids first. 

Just lay out some craft sticks (big ones if you want the puzzle to be easier for little kids) and use any kind of tape to hold them together.  Give the taped together craft sticks to a kid to color.  I used markers and crayons and both worked very well.  Markers might be better for little ones.  When the child is done coloring, take off the tape and voila, a complete puzzle.  I imagine paint would work well with this project, too. 



You could make puzzles like this to help kids memorize Bible verses (a line per stick, a word per stick), spell their names, remember the order of the colors of the rainbow, remember the order of anything, really!  If you try this project, let me know what you did and how it turned out.  I'd love to see pictures. 

Christmas Crafts and other stuff

 Here is the handprint wreath.  Read the poem.  So cute. 

 Here's the little handprint reindeer.

 Here's a baby Jesus candy cane/cradle thing.

 Our handprint reindeer from last year.

 Our cinnamon ornaments.

 Josiah:  MOM!  This is not funny!  Help me up!

 Maryn:  I want that in my hands right now.
Josiah:  Whaaaaaaaaaaa...?

 Maryn:  Mom, you're totally losing it.
Josiah:  She's right.  You need counseling.

Maryn was stealing John's broccoli.  I know, he looks really concerned.  Never mind his under arm residue.  :)