Cool Catapult

I saw this really cool idea on a blog that I found this morning called Go Kid Yourself. She has some very great ideas for things that she does with her little boy. This is a catapult and I made it with stuff that I already had at the house. It only took about 10 minutes to make it. I had a wipes box in my bedroom. I hot glued the clothes pins on first, then used the wide popsicle sticks. At church the kids earn tokens and use the capsule machines and so we had several of these lids. She use soda caps but we don't drink soda and I didn't want to drink 5 bottles of water to get lids LOL. The kids really liked it. The only think I would do differently is to maybe get the plastic clothes pins to see if they would hold together better than the wooden ones. Other than that it was fun watching them shoot pom poms across the room. Even the baby enjoyed it. I am glad I found her blog. There a few more ideas that I saw and want to do with my kiddos.

2 days off work

On Monday, the kids went to daycare and I went to work. My six year old was complaining of a sore throat off and on. I figured it was just drainage because the other three had runny noses and drainage. I figured I would take everyone to the doctor on Tuesday because I really needed to go into the office on Monday to get some things done after being off Thursday and Friday for thanksgiving. I called the pediatrician on Monday afternoon for a different reason and she ended up transferring me to the front to make a 2 year (it was supposed to be an 18 month) checkup for the baby. I asked her while I had her on the phone if I could get 3 appointments but for sick appointments you have to call the same day. She said they only give 2 but if I brought another adult with me they would give me a 3rd if they had enough. I called the kids' Mimi and asked her if she would be available the next day to help and she said she would - Praise God! So the next morning 8:00 I started calling. It took 4 tries before I got a person and she put me on hold. I finally get her back on the phone and she gives me 3 appointments for 1:15. My 6 year old was very quiet and whiny which is how he acts when he is sick. The 4 year old and the baby are running around and playing with he 3 year old and are perfectly fine. I actually considered canceling the appointments. We did a couple of activities before we had to get ready for our appointment - it's 45 minutes away. We meet up with Mimi and get them all signed in. I thought they all had sinus infections. No one had a fever and I had been giving them a 1/2 teaspoon of Benadryl at night to stop some of the drainage and let them sleep. Well by the time it was over both of the boys had strep throat and the baby had an ear infection. SERIOUSLY? HOW DID I MISS THAT? When I thought about it though I realized that my 4 year old had not been eating. He is NOT a complainer. I have to really watch him to know if he is sick. He lays around when he has a fever (it has to be high like 101 or higher) and that's the only way I know unless I happen to snuggle with him and he's warm. Usually when his throat hurts he will say foods that he normally likes are nasty. I got nothing from him this time. I felt really bad. My 3 year old was with us and the Dr. went ahead and treated her for strep also since she had the same symptoms and they wouldn't give me 4 appointments. I thought that was very nice of her. The next great thing that she did was give me an antibiotic that only has to be given 2 times a day (for 10 days). This is great because they get it when they get up and when they go to bed and I don't have to take it to daycare and ask them to administer it. So 4 kids on antibiotics and a number of other meds. I don't think I've ever left the pharmacy with such a huge bag of medicine before. This is the first time we have had strep throat. The doctor was very thorough. The kids had to be on the antibiotic for 24 hours before they could return to daycare and she said after 48 hours to throw away their toothbrushes. I never knew any of that. My sister told me that when her kids were little she was not told and they ended up with strep 3 times before the doctor told her to toss the toothbrushes because she was re-infecting them each time.
So everyone is better. I was off work for two days and got NO housework done. Unless you count washing all of the laundry that did not get folded or put away - but it is clean.

Advent

Today is December 1 - the first day of advent. I wanted to do something special with my family and so we are celebrating advent this year. I am very excited. I found a really neat book that I am very satisfied with called The Family Book of Advent. Tonight I talked about the candles and the evergreen garland. The candle we lit tonight was the Hope candle. We had an activity where I just kept telling them it was coming and then I would say soon, real soon. Then I handed them a bottle of soda and had them to shake it and we watched the bubbles. We talked about what happened when we opened the bottle and how the people had to wait for year for the King to come. They enjoyed it - especially the fact that they got to taste the soda afterwards.
Zion got to light the candle tonight so of course I had to talk about fire safety and never touching matches or fire. I will let a different child light it each night.





 

 

Everyone shook the bottle and watched the bubbles and then I opened it. It did not spew everywhere like it would have if I would have had a real bottle of soda. We don't drink soda but someone had given me one for volunteer appreciation so I poured the can of soda into an old water bottle because they were supposed to be able to see the bubbles. They still got the idea though.

Then we looked at our scripture and put our bulb on our Names of Jesus wreath. Tonight's name was King.

At the end of advent we will have 15 balls with names on them. I think it is going to be very beautiful. I love the different activities with each night and they are all easy to prepare for.

For us, at the end we will have a birthday party for Jesus. I am still praying for ideas for this part. I really want my kids to know that Christmas is about Jesus and the gifts are just extra but Jesus was the ultimate gift. I think we may participate in some of the outreaches that our church does as well to really making giving a part of our Christmas.

Homeschool November 30

In order to break up the monotony of our schoolwork I decided to do everything hands-on tonight. It was a lot of fun. We made no cook play dough first off, from a recipe that I found on another blog. Everyone voted for it to be yellow. It was a TOTALLY easy recipe and I think we will make some more at some point during next week so we can play with the different colors.

This was the first time that everyone actually helped me to do something in the kitchen. I was very impressed that each of them waited their turn. I was also glad that the recipe was easy to divide by 4 so everyone could add all of the ingredients. Everyone can definitely count by 4 now. LOL

I added the boiling water to the dry ingredients and everyone took a turn to knead the dough. When it wasn't so sticky anymore I split it out into 4 pieces and let everyone have a piece to knead.

I love the fact that it is so quick that once you knead it and it isn't sticky you can play with it. It was much softer and nicer than the stuff you buy in the stores.

They let me play with them for a little bit and I made a snowman (the one on the right. LOL). Niya kept stealing my pieces as I made them so I wasn't sure if I'd ever get it done lol. She thought it was hilarious to hear me whine and ask for it back. Zi tried to copy mine and he did really good making his body....but a jealous 2 year old smashed it :-( and hurt his feelings. He tried hard to recover but it kept falling and then he smashed it to keep it from falling over. I encouraged him and told him he was doing great so he went ahead and added the eyes and arms to it. I named mine frosty the doughman. We decided that his could be doughman too and they were buddies. I so enjoy playing with my babies.
I had some airtight buckets that I had gotten from Dollar Tree and so I stored it in there. I have 5 more of these little buckets so we must make some more colors. Mine will only be able to play with one color at a time though because they tend to make a blended mess. But they had fun with their yellow which actually began to resemble yellow cookie dough rather than the brilliant yellow I imagined. Next time I plan to do orange and add some pumpkin spice to make it scented. I am sure I will have to stop the baby from eating it. Shucks, I may have to stop Zi and Niya from eating it. LOL

Amarion got to play I Spy with his sight words. Another activity I saw on a different blog that I follow. I wrote several of his sight words on a piece of cardstock and then I let him fill a Ziploc bag with rice. I tried taping it over the top but I only have masking tape, and while it works great for the floor activities we do - it's sticking power was rather lacking.

He did do really good though finding his words and writing them down. He had not found all of them so I let him continue with his activity after dinner. Then I had to change the rules because he saw that he could lift up the bag so he just started moving the bag and writing the words like that. Well I solved that problem - I cut out each word and put them in the bag and added more rice. Now he has to work to not only find the words but then turn them over - which is not an easy feat in a bag or rice.

After dinner Zion finally got to play his drums. They are not nearly as loud with his door closed. Thank you Jesus!!! So he got 15 minutes of that while Niya and I worked on numbers at the table. I didn't get pictures but I bought some silicone baking cups and put paper numbers in the bottoms. We say what the numbers are and she counts that many things (depends  on what I pulled out - this time it was santa, penguin, and snowman pencil toppers)
Then we moved to the floor. While they napped I redid our floor numbers and this time I went all the way to ten. We play a game where I call out a number and they hop to it. I am amazed at the simple games I make and my kids want to play over and over and over and over.......I love the repetition and I guess they don't realize they are learning and think they are just playing with mommy (well, we are playing. LOL)

Every now and then I would tell them to count the dots by each number. Zi is 4 and is better at this than Niya but she is coming along. Since we have been counting so much lately she no longer skips 3.
I am also working with them on recognizing different shapes so while they were napping I made another activity where I took shapes from a game we made at Lowe's Kid workshop and traced them onto a piece of cardstock. Then I gave them the shapes and they matched them up. They are super fast at this so they were done within a couple of minutes.

And they wanted to do it over and over again as well. I think I am going to pull some random toys from the toy boxes next time and let them figure those out for a bigger challenge.
My guys are the BEST!!

Christmas Traditions

Now that I have adopted my children, I want to create special memories and traditions for us as a family. I have really been struggling with Christmas because while I want it to be special, I don't want it to be a time where they just get the gimmies. I want them to know and understand the real meaning of Christmas. I started out by telling them that santa claus was not real. I don't want to have them believing in santa who they cant see and then I tell them later that he's not real and then they are believing in God and then they are waiting to see if He is real too. So we had a long talk about what's real. I did find a really neat blog about talking about how people are santa in our lives. I also talked with a coworker and I think I will tell them the story of St. Nicholas along with everything else that we do so that they understand that that is where santa claus came from.
well in my searching and desire to make Christmas meaningful, I prayed. I wanted to introduce advent to our family and I wanted to have a birthday party for Jesus. I asked people how they did advent and I called friend to ask what book she used. I couldn't find the one that she had but I found one at Lifeway Christian Bookstore and I am so excited to get started. Sunday wont get here fast enough. I think this book is going to be wonderful:

Each day you read in the book and there is an activity for you to do as well. The first activity that you will do that I am so excited about is the Names of Jesus Wreath. You have to get a wreath and 15 Christmas balls. I got silver because I think the marker will show up nicer. As you are going along on the days, when you read the scripture you look for the different names of Jesus and write them on the balls and at the end of the 25 days you will have a names of Jesus wreath. I am so excited and really think the kids will love learning all of his names. Each of the stories and activities are on their level or easily adjusted. There is something to do each day and it just builds the excitement. I have already started reading the book because I just cant wait. lol
I also bought the advent candles and I bought some of the long matches so that I can let the kids participate in lighting the candles each night. This is going to be an awesome Christmas this year. On Christmas morning we are going to sing happy birthday to Jesus and have a party for him before we open any gifts. I am still praying about the details of this part because I want them to really understand the importance of the birth of Jesus and why we are having a party for him.
I have not been this excited about Christmas since I was a kid.

Thanksgiving 2013

We went to Louisiana to visit our family for Thanksgiving. We had a great time. The kids really enjoyed seeing their cousins for the holiday. They wanted us to stay until Saturday to let my kids go skating with the other cousins but I just could not do it. I am really a homebody and like routine so we headed back home this afternoon after the kids got up from their naps.
On Thursday, my oldest turned 6 years old so he had a Turkey Day Birthday. My little cousin's daughter turned 8 on Wednesday so we did something for them together after our Thanksgiving lunch. They both had a great time. Unfortunately I left my camera at my sister's and was too far out to turn around to go back and get it. She is coming to the kids' dedication at church on Sunday so she will bring it with her then. I had a few pictures on my phone though.

Good morning birthday boy.

cupcake cake - because I don't believe in someone spitting on their food and everyone eating eat.



 





My handsome birthday pirate.

Everyone had a great time. Because all of the sales started on that evening, we had our meal at 12:30. After lunch we went to my sister's house. I was not thinking because I should have taken some leftovers to my sisters for the kids to eat later. Well around 6 PM I get the bright idea to go out and find something for my kids to eat. It was not until I was stuck in traffic and nothing was open that I realized remembered that it was Thanksgiving. So the 2nd bright idea of the night - run into Walmart "really quick" and grab some corn dogs. This thought was more hilarious than the first. There was no running into walmart. As a matter of fact I couldn't get in walmart at all. I have never in my life seen so many vehicles or people in one place. Since I was stuck I decided to see what all the hype was about. I think I got the best deal of everyone in there. I found the alphabet, shape, and number mats for $12 each. I was about to spend $20 apiece for each of these. What awesome savings. I also grabbed a Hi Ho Cherryo game for $3.88 and a combo spin art and pottery maker for $9.99. I thought I did great considering I was stuck in line for 45 minutes to pay for it.

When we got home I opened up the mats even though it was already after 8. Zi and Niya really enjoyed them more than I anticipated. I let them put them where they wanted and when they were done they danced on them, hopped on them, turned flips on them and just had a splendid time. Well I decided to take out all of the centers and let them race to put them back in. It was a challenge.

 

 

I watched them walk around the spot they were looking for several times and it was tempting to tell them where it was, but watching them successfully match each shape was worth the wait - to me and them.

They were very pleased with themselves. They worked hard. And I admit it was a ploy on my part to keep them up late in hopes that I may just hopefully will get to sleep in late. They went to bed at 10. If they get up at 6 like normal people will hear me scream all the way to the North Pole.

I think the mats were a hit and will be taken out quite often. It will also be an easy way to teach them hopscotch.





 





Homeschool progress...Yay

So I am very excited with our progress with homeschooling. Yesterday Zi and Niya made so much progress with their letters just by me associating each one with a member of our family or someone we know. Tonight we worked on them again and they still remembered and we added a couple more. I totally love it. I also love that they don't get tired of doing the same thing over and over again. I did add a few things to it tonight just so that they don't get bored. I gave them "fingers" to point with and I gave them miniature marshmallows if they got them right. They love food. These two could hear a bag opening 2 miles away. They had so much fun. Tonight we added in numbers and associated them with our family by their ages. Although mommy is number 1 and I am far from that age and my sister is number 5 and she's not any closer to it than me lol. We did a few colors but I didn't want to overwhelm them. But with colors I associated them with foods - banana yellow, apple red and orange orange. they laughed every time I said orange. We had fun and then we played Jungle Book Trouble. By then their eyes were really glazed over and even though the thought of going to bed upset them, they fell asleep as soon as their head was in close proximity to the pillows lol.

Last night I really wanted to do something with Amarion to make his homeschooling more fun and more than just bookwork but I couldn't come up with anything and so I prayed and Abba gave me an idea - sight word Yahtzee! Cool idea. I looked online to try to find a letter dice. I found a pack of 5 for $6.99 but after shipping it was over $13 and not worth it. I decided to make my own and so I printed off a blank dice pattern and I was going to write the letters on it. I told one of my employees about my idea and he asked if I happened to have a Boggle game (and I do) and he reminded me that the dice in that were all letters. BRILLIANT!!!!
So tonight after the younger ones went to bed Amarion and I played the game. We already had a deck of cards that I had made for sight word Go Fish so I picked out all the words that were 4 letters or more and then randomly chose 5 (each of us had the same cards). I used all of the dice from the Boggle game and a red cup from our rotary organizer.

 

He got to go first and I kind of helped him along in the beginning to look at his letters and decide which letters were in each of the words. He caught on pretty quickly. You get to roll 3 times just like in Yahtzee. Each time you roll you can keep as many letters as you want or you can roll all of them. When you spell a word you turn over that card and the first person to turn over all 5 of their cards wins.





I had to add a rule though and I had to watch during his turn because I was trying to multitask and I looked up and saw that he was picking up his dice and changing them to the letters that he needed. Little Turkey!!! He was not allowed to pick up a dice unless I saw it first. So he forfeited one of his rolls for cheating. and the little smirk on his face let me know that he knew exactly what he was doing.

 

He got really close to spelling "little" but didn't roll another "l" by his third roll. He was a good sport though.

I told him to look really close because he rolled a word with his first roll. Lucky Duck!!
And he found it!

He tried to spell another word since he still had 2 more rolls but he didn't get the "p".

He finally got all the letters for little. He was very proud because he took 2 turns trying to spell it.

 

He was really moving along great and spelling one word after another. My board on the other hand was not looking so hot.

He was down to one last word to my three and I finally spelled yellow but that was all I could get before he spelled jump and won the game. He kept saying he wasn't sleepy because he knew how to hold his yawns in lol but his eyes were closed before his head hit his pillow too.
This will definitely be a game that we will pull out again. Thank you Abba for such a great idea.


 



 

Success with our letters!!!!

I am so very excited. Homeschooling has been going great but I was getting really discouraged trying to teach Zi and Niya their ABCs. I have been reading blogs and trying to see what other people are doing. I learned some really valuable things like - don't teach them in alphabetical order, don't use upper case, read lots of books - and I was doing all of these things. We read loads of books. We don't have TV so books are our best friends.
Well I had lunch with a friend today and I expressed my concern to her and she told me what she did to help her daughter and her nephew learn their letters. She gave them names. Yeah. I was not hopeful. She explained that she would say for example "this is Z. This is Zion's Z and this is S. This is Syniya's S. Well I had some lowercase magnetic alphabets and I took them out this evening and they immediately came over to the table and began to play with them and ask me what they were. Well at first I was just telling them what each letter was and then I remembered what my friend had said and I tried it. We had mommy's M, Zion's Z, Syniya's S, Amarion's A, Bibleman's B, Gracie's (dog) G, Kameelah's (my sister) K, Pam's (their aunt) P, Larry's (pam's husband) L, and C for the baby.
OH MY GOODNESS. THEY REMEMBERED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. IN 10 MINUTES OF PLAYTIME.
We had to stop for dinner but after dinner I quizzed them and both of them remembered each letter. I would ask where is mommy's m and they would get it. Where is Syniya's s and they would get it. I almost cried I was so excited. so then we moved to the kitchen table and I switched from the magnetic letters to some cards from a game that I had and they still got them all right. Oh boy. I just wish I had a family member for each letter of the alphabet lol. Although we are quite lucky to have a Z.
I tried to call my friend and tell her about our success and apologize for doubting her, but she didn't answer (which means she forgot her phone in her car again. lol)
I didn't get a single picture but I can always get some tomorrow. I have got to come up with something for the other letters now. This is too exciting. This is more progress with letters in 10 minutes than I have had since we began in October. Praise God.
We are slowly getting our numbers and colors. I made a matching game for the colors and a counting game for the numbers. I think that with the repetition of both of those they will eventually get them. I am always searching for new ideas though. I will get pictures during tomorrow's school.

4H Craft workshop

I took Amarion to his 4H Holiday Craft workshop. I was glad we got to do this together. He really enjoyed it a lot. He got to make 2 edible crafts a turkey and a reindeer (and as I am sitting here typing this I just remembered that he never got to eat them because they are still in the car. oops!)
He also made a snowman out of a light bulb, a reindeer out of a flower pot and a turkey out of a baby food jar and tracing his hands on paper for the tail - we didn't get any pictures of this one because by then I was actually helping him do this craft and so I couldn't take pictures (or at least that's my excuse for not having pictures. lol) He also made an ornament where he put glitter on a little light bulb but I can't remember if we got that one or not. I remember putting his name on a sticker and hanging it up on that little rack to dry. I guess now I'll have to go out to the car and check and then if not I'll will have to run by there and see if they kept it or not. I hope so. It was really cute. He used red in every craft that had it available because that's his favorite color.

 

 

 

 

I love the last pictures of his painting. He decided that he wanted to put some of his leaves on the ground and make some look like they were falling to the ground. I think he did awesome (even if I am a little biased).

I am really glad they held this workshop. It was only $5 and as really well worth it.

 

 

 

We are in 4H

Last month I signed my 5 year old up for 4H. This was actually BEFORE God put it on my heart to homeschool. I thought it would be a great experience for him. I was in 4H when I was a child but never really got to participate in any of the activities so I thought this would be great for both of us. His first meeting was cool - it was at the park and they had a scavenger hunt that he really enjoyed.

Niya chasing Amarion to help him find the things on his list.

Amarion looking for a blade of grass shaped live a V

Had to find a leaf the size of their head.

 

 

The younger kids enjoyed the activity as much as Amarion. Afterwards he took all of his stuff from the scavenger hunt and made a picture.

 

 

 

 

He was very proud of his paper. Unfortunately for him he didn't get to bring it home. I told him we would take a picture of it and he could hang the picture up over his bed. He was happy with that. (I was not letting all of those leaves and dirt come in my house. Nature belongs outside! LOL)