This is my first summer as a true civilian. I don't have to report to anyone! Therefore, I am packing up the kids and leaving the state. Since I'm not burning leave and I don't have to be back by a certain time, we are going to drive across the country to see Granny at the farm! I'm starting to think of it as an obstacle course. Here's a list of my obstacles: (Note: this list is not all-inclusive and is in no particular order.) 1. No Daddy - He's still Active Duty, so we're leaving him at home. I ...
I quit. Sorry, folks. The snow finally melted and we no longer spend any time inside. It's hard to wrangle a kid who wants to run in fresh air. I still have everything and we pull it out occasionally, but not daily. I have the entire month of May set aside for rainy days and days like today when it's too windy to go to the playground or play baseball in the backyard. I will not buy any more months until it starts snowing again. I guess you can say that we're taking summer break.
Attention Sports Fans! Followers! Occasional Peepers! HowToMom is too busy to keep up with 14 different blogs, kids, dogs, playgroups, FB pages, etc. etc. HowToMom has a hard time keeping track of what to post on which page and how to keep Mom things separated from Eat things and it's wayyy too much work and not enough coffee. SO.. I will begin merging everything to HowToMOM and will post only on http://www.howtomom.info and http://www.facebook.com/howtomomblog Please take a moment to re...
Our first week of the Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum was tons of fun! The program is designed to work for ages 2-5, so there are a lot of different ways to lead the kiddos. I've been keeping it as simple as possible so that it is fun for my 2.5 year old and his 1.5 year old buddy that comes over to play. We concentrate on the hands-on, interactive things and mostly skip over the abstract thinking, problem solving activities. Little Man DID make an important discovery though, "Deserts have dirt." ...
I was babysitting one of Little Man's friends today, so I adjusted our curriculum to work for 2 kiddos. Mother Goose is very flexible, if you have the time and materials on hand. I just happened to have paper big enough to cut out some extra cowboy boots. We had a blast decorating our cowboy boots, square dancing to the included music CD, talking about squares, stomping our cowboy boots to spell our names, and talking about the month and days of the week.
The Little Man and I are starting our first month of Mother Goose Time next week!I can't even begin to explain how excited I am about this. I've been all over Pinterest and I've followed all the blogs, but this program sends me everything I need for a whole month of fun learning time! Seriously, they sent me scraps of paper and little green foam pieces for building a paper cactus! Hopefully, our schedule will go according to plan and I'll have a really great review for you all in May! Mother Goose...
I'm working my way down the list of activities that Montessori schools encourage. It seems like a lot of normal day-to-day chores, but they are actually very important skills for little ones to learn. Today, I randomly grabbed: our coin jar, some measuring spoons, muffin cup liners, a makeshift piggybank, and kids chopsticks. Once I started scooping and pouring, the kids BOTH took over. I had expected Little Brother to take an interest, but Big Sister put down her book and joined the fun. Littl...
I'm working my way down the list of activities that Montessori schools encourage. It seems like a lot of normal day-to-day chores, but they are actually very important skills for little ones to learn. Today we worked on scooping/spooning and pouring. I pulled out a box of beads and some items from our tea set and sat down on the floor. Little Brother was curious, but not interested. That is until.. I started scooping and pouring, then he politely took over and played for about 20 minutes.
Did I mention that Big Sister is a Brownie? Did I also mention that I got roped into being her Troop Cookie Mom? Our cookie season was from February 9th to March 9th. It's over now, whew!
Let me be honest: it took me FOREVER to find coffee filters in my grocery store! I have always used a re-useable filter, so I've never bought them. I seriously walked around the store twice looking in all the obvious places: by the coffee, by the creamer, by the paper goods. They were hidden on an end cap at the END of the coffee aisle. SMH Anywho - I've been looking up fun new craft ideas for Little Brother and found some "every day household items" crafts that required me to go shopping... for coffee ...
