Praises of a Wife and Mommy

  Thank you to;  From Kindergarten With Love , who gave me this idea.  I love her vinyl letters and wish I could have made mine like that, but I have no cricut...so a marker will have to do.  :) :)  Kids love games and I have noticed that if I say "game" to anything my daughter gets excited.  :)  When those "games" are educational I get excited.  :)  This was very easy to create!  I found both clear and white spoons at the dollar store.  I used white as my capital letters and clear as my lower case letters.   I know my daughter knows her capital letters much better then lower case so this game is good practice for her to start to learn those lower case letters better.   I spread the upper case and lower case letters out in two different piles.  Then I first had her locate the letters in her name and put the lower case with the upper case.  After she did her name I told her to try to make ...

  I bet your looking at that picture wondering what it is???  I froze a whole lot of water with random objects or colors in it to create some fun for the kids during our hot and humid day.  We have had several days in a row that are 90 plus degrees and  heat indexes in the 100's!   I  included a car, paint, food coloring, dog treat, bath toy, and even some fruit.  :) I also provided a few "tools" to help the kids dig them out or play with them.   The frozen paint made a bit of a mess but that's part of the fun.  My daughter did not use the tools much she just started throwing the ice until they broke.  The kids seemed to enjoy the play even though the ice melted very quickly. How are you  beating the heat?  This post is featured on: 

I had several sheets of colored circle stickers that were used for a garage sale and I knew we could create something fun with them.  :)  First, I asked the hubby to create dice for me and he so kindly did.  :) Then on one die we wrote numbers and on the other we put one of the sticker colors.  Then my daughter and I played a game and would shake the dice and then put the number of stickers on a piece of paper and create a masterpiece together.   Our picture has some flowers and butterflies and a big sun.  :)  

Are you looking for a way to reuse some of those caps off of your baby food jars?  Then here is a great idea.  After you clean them simply use a permanent marker and write letters on each cap.  I did a set of capital, lower case, and numbers.  After you have completed that there are an endless amount of activities you can use them for.   Our first activity was very simple.  I grabbed our letter flash cards and my daughter had to match the letters, say the letter, say the sound, and trace each letter.   A few other ideas: -make words -practice names -match lower case with upper case -put the alphabet in order -find objects that start with that letter -I bet you can come up with other ideas too...Please make sure you come back and share your ideas.  :)

Since St. Patrick's Day is this weekend we have been creating fun projects with bright color's.   Today we practice our lacing skills along with following the rainbow pattern.   * TIP:  Use a little scotch tape at the end so you can lace without any yarn separating. * What little kid would not want to make a necklace that hass a dual purpose as a snack for later.  :) Little man just wanted to eat the snack. :)

My daughter picked out some pom pom's at Dollar Tree this week.  Today she got the pack out and decided we should make a rainbow because it was raining outside.   It is BEAUTIFUL!  

I read that you can put glue on wax paper let it dry and then peel it off and stick on the window like a window cling.  I was excited to try it but for some reason our clings did not cling???  What did we do wrong?   Oh well, Selah still had a fun time. 

It was Friday night and we had no plans so after bath time was completed we wanted some fun and excitement.  I got the popcorn popper out and then I poured some milk in 3 little dishes and dropped a drop of food coloring and found the paint brush! Who knew painting popcorn could be so fun!  :)  That is a big excited smile!    Working on some fine motor skills! Tongue is out so she is concentrating very hard!  Num, Num, Num

This is so easy but it is different then a pencil so my little preschooler had more fun.  :)   We have letter flash cards so she would pick a card and tell me the letter and sound and then write it in the salt.    This is similar as our shaving cream but the texture is different and well the activity was different in the eyes of my daughter so it was a win win.  :) 

I found this awesome letter printable's while on pintrest (follow me and I will follow back).  Here is the website:  http://www.education.com/slideshow/color-animal-alphabet/Color_Letter_A/ First I had Selah practice writing each letter and then we reviewed the sounds.  :)  She is getting better with the sounds and with writing but she had the most fun doing the pictures.    

First get the stickers out and have fun placing them all over the paper.  When you are finished you can work on using adjectives.  This was a new thing I did with Selah and it was fun.  First we played I Spy.  We took turns and I was proud of my daughter for describing each of the stickers.  Then we switched it up and asked questions and giving answers until we guessed the right sticker.  

I just finished watching the speech that Martin Luther King Jr. made on August 28th, 1963-"I have a dream."  Before I had my daughter watch and listen to the speech with me we had a little discussion.   We were planning on going out for lunch today since Daddy is finally back so she picked McDonald's.  I made sure she knew we were going to have a discussion so she would understand why we celebrate this holiday.   Next, I told my daughter "what if little girls with blue eyes were not allowed to eat at McDonald's?"  The look on her face was perfect, actually I was afraid she was going to have a tantrum.  She said, "that is sad."  I told her a couple of her friends could go but she could not because she had blue eyes.  After this all set in and her wheels were turning I was able to describe what it would have looked like during Martin Luther King Jr. time.  We talked about segregation and what his dream was and how we are now living ...

Who doesn't like getting messy but still learn??  Shaving cream has more uses then shaving -PLAYING, but even better LEARNING!   I used a white board to write the letter and then I had my daughter copy the letter in her shaving cream.  Before she could do her letter she need to identify and give me the sound of the letter.  

My daughter received the alphabet tiles for Christmas from her auntie.  I am so excited because they can be used in so many ways.   First thing we did was put them in alphabetical order on the living room floor.  It was fun because it was a little bit of a maze, turn here, down here...etc.   After she went through hoping on each tile while saying her alphabet I knew we were off to a great start.  My daughter has known her ABC's for sometime but we have been working on letter recognition for a few months so I knew this would be awesome to get all those letters down.   I got our dry erase board out and wrote a letter on it.  It was her job to locate the letter and to give me the letter name, sound, and a word that starts with the letter.  This allowed me to figure out what letters she is still struggling with.  Keep your eyes peeled for more lessons with Alphabet tiles.  I have a few more ideas spinning around my head so I w...

Day 27: Dress Up! Play prompt: Have a rummage through the dressing up box (if you have one!) or your own drawers and find some interesting dressing up items. Get the whole family to put something on and then make up a story, sing a song, dance, play imaginatively together! Dress up is one of Selah's favorite things to do but we did things a little different today.  We had a lot of running around and hustle and bustle with shopping and Christmas play practice.  So Ballerina's do need a bath so she had fun in her little tutu in the bath tub.  :) I mean what is not fun about dressing up in your bath??  :)  She and her friend did just dress up on Thanksgiving and they had a lot of fun.  :) 

DAY 26 CHALLENGE:                               PLAY IN A BOX DAY 26 CHALLENGE: Spend  [at least]  15 minutes playing with, in or around a cardboard box! Let the imaginations of your children decide what it will be today. Add any elements needed to create it. Since we just put up the Christmas tree it was easy to figure out we were going to play with the big tree box. :)   First we were drawing and coloring shapes.  Then Selah started to draw random things and before I knew it we had a house for her princess's.  :)  I think she was a bit sad when I told her it was time to clean up because we were going to put the box back in the garage.  We live in a small place so the box was kinda blocking our door.  Ponies were on guard.