Mmmmmm

Oh wow how time flies when you are having fun!  It sure has been a while since I made time to sit and blog, sorry for that. 

On another note, have you ever realized how many words start with M?  A bunch and for that reason I took a whole week to focus on that letter and we still didn't get to everything I planned!  Here we go:

* I cut out huge M's from HEB paper bags and let the kids glue on different colors and sizes of paper to Make a Mozaic M.  This one took them and while and they really enjoyed it.

* I let the kids cut out shapes from Magazines. I told them to find pictures they liked and to cut them out, this was fun practice on with scissors.  The goal was to Make Magazine flowers but I realized that was more for older children.  But I did end up Making a few on My own.

* I drew a Maze on a paper and explained to them how to get out and they had fun trying to figure it out.

* The kids glued on Maccaroni to a piece of paper spelling out MOM. 

* The next day I decided to step up the Maze a notch and Made a Maze for them to gide a Marble through.  This was easy I just took a box and cut a side off and taped on colorful straws.  Each child took turns tilting the cardboard and getting the Marble to the end.

* Going along with the Marble theme we Made a few different Marble paintings.  The first one was achieved by putting shaving cream onto a cookie sheet, spreading it out evenly, adding drops of different food colorings, swirling it around with a stick, then placing a piece of card stock on top and pushing down to get the imprint of the Marbled creation.  You put it out to dry and it even turns out to be soft and good smelling :)

                The second method was to tape a piece of paper into a box and let the colored Marbles roll around and design a look.  I took left over yogurt cups and put a little bit of paint into each one with different colors, dropped a few marbles in each color and let the kids take turns on grabbing the Marbles with plastic spoons and dropping them into the box and watching where it went with the paint flying everywhere.  This was fun!

* The kids Made Maccaroni necklaces!  I gave each child a string of yarn and a handful of maccaroni and let them lace it on.  To wear the necklaces easier I attached a safety pin to the ends of them.  My son gave me his.

* On the final day we focused on Music!  We Made what we called Music Makers.  To do this you give your child a toilet paper tube and tell them to decorate it anyway they want.  Then cap on end using paper ( I used 2 layers of tissue paper) and then add a handful of rice to the inside and cap the second end.  There you have it your very own Maracas or what we called them, Music Makers!

We listened to different types of music and talked about the instuments that are used to make music in those songs that we heard.  And finally we played Musical chairs!

* As an ending to the week I let them watch a Movie, just so happened How to Train Your Dragon came out and they got to watch it.

L is for Lion, hear me roar!

As some of you may know my youngest son's name is very unique and very based upon a lion, so L happened to be one of my favorite Letters!  It also happens to be the only letter my 3 year old still has a hard time saying, so we love to practice it.  And we also have another girl blessed with an L name also, so she loved it. 

When I think of L I think of laughing and that is what I tried to keep my kiddos doing.  It was easy for the kids to get used to writing the Letter L and coming up with L words so we had fun.  We also made sure and worked on walking in a Line, trying to color inside the Lines, the difference between Large and Little and also how something can be Long.  Along with all that we managed to take our time learning the letter L and doing many fun activities including:

*We made Lion masks.  To achieve this you cut out the hole in the center of a paper plate, have strips of construction paper cute out in brown, yellow and orange, let the kiddos curl the paper using a pencil then glue the strips on.  You can also take this as a teaching moment with patterns and have them stick to a particular color pattern. As we worked on our Lion masks I told them some fun facts of Lions and how they are the King of the jungle.  As an added bonus since they had been so good I allowed them to watch LION KING!  Talk about a roaring good time :)

* We made hand print Lillies.  I took this from a pattern in a parents magazine, it was complicated but fun and the kids enjoyed seeing their hand print used to make something.  You cut out leaves from card stock that you will hole punch in the middle.  Then trace the kids right hand and cut it out.  Now curl them all with a pencil and attach to a green straw with tape.  And to top it all off you can cut a yellow pipe cleaner in half and stick it through the straw to stick up like the pollen.  These were pretty Lillies that they all took home to Mommy :)

* We made Love Ladybugs.  This was another fun template I borrowed from the web.  You cut out all the pieces for the kids before hand and let them count and glue them all together.  You need to cut out a Big Heart, a small heart ( in red), 2 small black hearts, 6 big legs that are L's, 2 small L legs and 2 antenna that are in the shapes of 6's.  This shows there are 6 legs to a ladybug.  I then drew on eyes and along the way we talked about how a lady bug grows and other interesting facts.  Like did you know that when they flap their wings they go at 84 times a second?!  And of course the hearts represent LOVE.  So there you have it, our Love Ladybug!

K is for Kid!

When you get right down to it there are not that many words that really come to mind that start with K that are in our day to day vocabularies.  So I decided to keep it simple and stick to the things that Kids love most, animals!
I learned from the kids that K is a letter that can be a bit tricky to write, but with enough practice they started to get the hang of it.  And don't even get me started on the fact that some K words sound like they could start with the letter C.  In my mind they are still 3 and just getting them to learn the sound that it makes and how to write it is plenty for now.  So when we were working on those basics we:

* Made a Kangaroo puppet.  I used a template from a website and cut out arms, ears, a nose, eyes, a tongue, a pouch and a baby kangaroo to go in the pouch.  The kids then glued on all of the body parts on to a paper bag and had a blast making their Kangaroos hop with their hands.

* We colored a Koala and talked all about them.


* We made Kites on a page and colored a picture where the Kite was flying.  You will notice I cut out a colored kite from construction paper and glued it on the page along with a piece of yearn to show it was flying in the sky.  The Kids loved using their imaginations to show where the Kite was flying.  I wanted to show them an actual Kite in the sky but we just didn't have the wind for it.

Crafty mama moments

Lately my husband and I have been having the argument of whether or not I am spoiling my children or just being creative and fun. Well OBVIOUSLY I am just being creative and fun, duh! ;-) Well in their lunches lately I have found it to be so fun to make their sandwiches into fun shapes....

Who doesn't love a little bit of LOVE with their lunch?

And you know those lunch ables that kids love but you hate to buy because one they are packed full of sodium and two they are super expensive? Well here's my solution to that:

Healthy nitrate free turkey, mozzarella cheese and organic crackers :)

So what's your vote? Spoiled or crafty and fun?

The best part of it is that you can make them according to whatever your kid happens to be into that day because we all know they change their minds so fastly! And if you are focusing on a particular letter or theme for a day you can pick a cookie cutter that coordinates with that. I stick with it's just fun for the kids and fun for me...so FUN all around.

I and J!

Well I bet you thought I wasn't coming back?! Nah, just have had a lot of stuff going on in life right now that has taken my focus away from the blog. I did still manage to do a couple of letters with some fun activities. If you didn't know my youngest son had to be seen by a GI last week and he went through some tests and a scan so we can figure out what is going on. A week later and we still don't have many answers, but it doesn't look like he will need surgery anytime soon, which is a blessing for sure! Then this week he caught a nasty virus and well I know he will bounce back soon! And not to mention this WONDERFUL weather! Who wants to stay inside when we have weather that allows us to open all the windows and just play outside ALL day?! Anyway onto the preschool where the learning still must go on :)

I have to admit, I didn't have much for I so we worked on it for 1 day. In that one day we did practice writing the letter and came up with words that start with I. As far as activities go:

*We colored an Elmo coloring sheet with the letter I for Igloo on it.

* We made an Ice cream cone and worked on shapes at the same time. I cut out triangles for the cone and circles for the ice cream and had them identify which shape was which and then they glued it onto a Popsicle stick. They had a blast pretending to eat it.

* Oh and we can't forget we colored Iron man pages ( my son's favorite)

As for J:

* one of my kid's names' starts with J and this happened to be on the first day of awesome weather and GI appointment so we decided to work on his name and we ended up making name plates the kids rooms. I wrote their names in block letters and let them color them however they wanted to and then I drew their favorite character on them. I can't post the pics because I can't tell their names but trust me they were super cute! And boy art sure is stress relieving for me :) We also took a moment to talk about Jesus and who He is and that He loves us!

* The next day we made Jack-O-Lantern masks. I drew orange lines down white paper plates, then let the kids color them orange and pick the shapes they wanted the eyes and mouth to be and then I cut them out. Lastly I punched holes on each side, attached some yarn and we had masks!

* I made Jello! Who doesn't love Jello? I tried to make them into little J's with my cookie cutter but it didn't work out so much so we just settled for eating it and saying Jello over and over.

* Our last activity was my favorite just because it came out so cool! We made jellyfish! I gave the kids all a piece of plastic wrap and instructed them to scrunch it up a bit and we glued it down to the paper. Then we glued on pieces of tissue paper strings that were blue as the tentacles. The kids enjoyed talking about jellyfish which was fun as well.

Fall times!

The crisp feeling of fall is finally in the air! I love when the seasons change it always gives such inspiration for change in life. As a mom I have found that while there are many things that change so fast like the boys growing up and what super hero they are into, I want to hold on to some things and let them be the same. This is where I feel family traditions start. Each family may do things around certain Holidays that they call traditions. Me I find myself loving the fact that a couple of years ago I started traditions when I didn't even realize it. I wanted to share one major tradition with you all in case you might like to try doing the same with your family. That is going to Crowe's Nest Farm. Two years ago I was lucky enough to be invited with a play group down to this cute farm and my oldest son who was about 15 months old at the time absolutely fell in love with the animals especially the cow!

He was obsessed with cows and mooing for many months after that. Then last year I realized that you can go to this farm with out a group once a year during their Fall Festival ( it may not be called that but that's what I refer to it as). I suggest taking your little ones down to Manor on one of the weekends they offer it this year in October. It is so refreshing to take a step out of city or even suburban life for a few hours and enjoy the farm animals. It's pretty cheap to get in and you can take your own lunch if you'd like, although they do serve up some food of their own. Oh and there is a perfect opportunity for those cute pumpkin patch pictures. Or you can be like me and get a picture with your favorite animal :)

http://www.crowesnestfarm.org/

There is also the Fall Festival at The Elgin Tree Farm which seems to be nice but we have never tried it out. We may go check it out this year because it seems to have tons of fun activites for the kids!

http://pages.suddenlink.net/jrf/ectf/dd2.htm

Hope you are enjoying this cool breeze in the air as much as I am!

H is for Happy!!!

Hooray for H! We Had tons of fun with the letter H! There are some great feelings that start with H and we sure did talk about them. We were always trying to stay Happy and give tons of Hugs! For some reason my kids were also feeling extra Hoppy and preferred to hop everywhere. There were some activited that I didn't get to and it looks like we will just Have to do them next time. But for now this is what we did:

* The kids made a House made of craft sticks and then colored them
on the inside and out. I loved seeing their imagination used for this one.

* I let the kids stencil hearts on a paper and then decorate them by glueing on pieces of colored tissue paper.

* We did a dot to dot Horse and then colored them! I 've never seen such colorful horses;)

* Lastly I seem to love making crafts on craft sticks so we went ahead and painted wooden Hearts and glued them onto colorful craft sticks. This was a 2 part craft since the paint had to dry but they really enjoyed it.

We ended our days Happy with lots of Hugs! Hope you Have a Happy day:)

G is Great!

Last week we took only one day to Go over G! So far it is the letter that the kids have had the hardest time actually writing. We did lots of writing practice, on paper and on the side walk. But we also did a couple of Great activites!

*I paired the words Green, Grass and Goat all into one activity. First we went outside to look at everything Geen and I let them pick a little bit of Grss. Then we came back inside and they cut out a Goat and Glued him onto a piece of construction paper. Then just for fun I let them glue on marshmellows as the Goat's tummy. Then they Glued their Grass on the picture and colored the Goat's collar.

* We colored a Gecko Green and practiced writing the letter G!

* We also played a lot of Green Light Red Light and I spy!

F is FUN!

Because of the busy week and the non crafty E, we spent a little bit more time with F because it really was FUN!

* We made a Family portrait- this is always fun at this age because you get to see what their little imaginations come up with!

* We colored lots of Fishies that were Friends from our coloring book.

*We made our own fishies to play with or use as a bookmark. I cut out a fish of 2 sizes and let the kids glue them on top of each other. Then we glued the fish onto a colorful stick. And the most fun part was letting the kids glue on the eye and the embellishments to make their fishie fun! By the way I got the bags of eyes and gems at the Dollar Tree!

*We made a picture with our FEET! I traced the kids feet and let them write Feet and their names as a keepsake.

*We made Faces on a plate. I gave the kids a paper plate and let them draw their interpretation of their Face. You can glue a stick to it and let them use it as a mask in front of their face if you would like.

*Last but not least was my Favorite we made Frames! We took colorful popsicle sticks and glued them together in a frame shape then glammed them up with some gems. Then I happened to have some magnet handy so I cut strips and stuck it to the back of the frames so the kids could put them on the Fridge!

E is for energy!

Sorry it's been a while, I experienced an amazingly busy week last week with doctor's visits and MOPS meetings which meanwhile took a lot of Energy out of my but didn't seem to bother my kid's energy:) We did find time to do a few activites last week but E has been the hardest letter for me to be creative thus far.

For letter E we did:

*Lots of practicing writing the letter E

*Colored some Elmo pictures

*Ate lots of Eggs

*Made an Eyes mask- I drew eyes on construction paper and let the kids color in the pupil their color. Then they helped me cut them out and I made holes in the middle for them to see out of and holes on the edges to carry yarn through to go around their heads.

* Learned all about the Earth and topped it off with making an earth suncatcher! I took a paper plate and cut out a whole in the middle and glued a piece of plastic wrap to cover the hole ( you can also use parchment paper).

Then I copied the earth onto the plastic with a permanant marker.

I gave the kids blue and green paint and they painted the earths and then we attached blue tissue paper strings to the bottom (you can use crepe paper instead). Finally I punched a hole at the top and looped a piece of yarn so they could hang it up.

The picture doesn't really do the kids artwork justice, but they were all so excited to get it home and put it on their windows!

D is for Dinosaur!

Last week we ended the week focusing on the letter D! Boys love all things D, Dinosaurs, Dragons, Dogs, the list could go on and on. So needless to say I focused on a couple of really hands on activites each day and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Plus there sure were plenty of dinosaur books to read along the way!

These are the activites we did:

*We made door hangers- I bought the foam ones that come in a pack of 4 at the Dollar tree and on one side I put there name and on the other side I let them color it however they liked and topped it off with plenty of dinosaur stickers!

* We made drums and drum sticks- I always keep the yogurt containers instead of tossing them and I finally got to use some for this activity. It was a 2 part process where I let the kids paint the "drums" with a dark color to try and mask the container and while it dried we made drum sticks with colorful straws that I taped a colorful popsicle stick on to one side. The kids had a blast using their drums as loud as they could!

* We made dinosaur prints- I had them drawn on a piece of manilla paper and let the kids color them however they wanted and then we added sand to the picture to show where the dinosaurs had left their prints in the sand. The kids had fun dipping their paintbrushes in glue then sprinkling on the sand.

*We made a dog puppet- I used a paper bag and had ear and tongue cutouts ready for them to just glue on.

* And of course we had multiple Dance parties!

C

The last couple of days were spent on the letter C in this house!

Again there are so many works and too many ideas to do all in 2 days. There were some good books that we read from the library as well as these activities:
* Colored a cow and practiced writing the letter C
* Colored a car and practiced writing the letter C
* Cut out a cat and glued it onto a piece of construction paper and colored it :)
* Colored a cookie and glued on beans to decorate it

* Played in Cream (shaving cream that is)- this was the favorite by far! I put a plastic table cloth on the ground and gave each child a serving of shaving cream and asked them to draw c's and they enjoyed the texture of it and slipping around it!

* Made a card for mom and dad!

Clouds would have been fun if it weren't raining the whole time, I would have taken them outside to watch the clouds go by and make up what they saw in the clouds. Who knows maybe tomorrow we will be able to throw this in?!

C you later!

B is for Black

Hello all!

Last week we took Thursday and Friday to focus on the letter B. Who knew there were so many words that begin with the letter b?! My son's favorite color is black so naturally everytime I asked the kids what the letter B said, he would say, " B, Ba, Black" We had fun with this one.

There were lots of Books from the library that I incorporated with our lesson which was awesome. We read a book about Buzzing Bees, Butterflies, Black, Blue and of course the letter B.

We did many activites including:

*Making bracelets- with a pipe cleaner, macaroni, and markers to decorate them. (this also works those motor skills too)

*Cutting out a butterfly from construction paper and decorating it

* Coloring a ball and practicing how to write the letter B

*Making a ball- I punched holes on the outer rim of a paper plate and let the kids thread some yearn through the holes and then they colored it how ever they wanted to and we wrote Ball in the middle. (also worked those motor skills ).

*Making a bookmark- I used that foam paper that's real cheap and cut strips out and punched a hole in the top and put a few pieces of yarn to dangle from it. Then I wrote their names on them and let them use markers and foam stickers to decorate them.

There were just so many ideas I had that we didn't get to so I can't wait to do the letter B again!

Today's Savings!

Today the Lunch Deal.com is offering a $30 coupon for Rudino's pizza for $15! Along with other offers. This pizza place is in Cedar Park at the shopping center where the new Cinemark theatre is and is SO yummy! Also Lunchdeals.com offers a program for refferals, very cool...so go check it out:

http://www.thelunchdeal.com/referafriend/?bl=el9taWVsY2FyZWtAeWFob28uY29t&s=ref

If you are a fan of Red Robin they have a couple of dishes that will be $5.99 for a limited time :)

Kohl's has a coupon that you can print for an extra 15% off anything this weekend:

Thanks to the blog ,Free Family Fun, I found out that particpating Chick Fil A's will be offering a free Spicy Chicken sandwich from 10:30 am to 10 pm on Monday to anyone wearing their favorite sports team Logo! I know where I'm eating lunch :) Just call and confirm ahead of time to make sure your location is participating.

Today's Groupon is half off at Mama Fu's! If you are a fan make sure you go and click on groupon on the side of my blog to buy yours today.

Don't forget that Ikea is offering their free kids meals this weekend Saturday through Monday, yum!

Also if you are a person who loves to clip coupons for the grocery store I thought I would share this site with you: http://www.smartsource.com/

They have some pretty good coupons that you can print.

And if you are a fan of getting free samples you can check out this website for samples for things like pampers, make up and baby food: http://freeflys.com/

ENJOY!