Letter of the Week- Letter R

Here we are again, at the end of another letter week.  Click on the link below for my full curriculum and check out the pictures for a glimpse into our week. Handwriting practice. Stamps. Finding the letter R. R is for Rainbows!   I think Addi is to young to start teaching the ROY G BIV method of learning the colors, especially trying to teach the different between blue, indigo, and violet might be more confusing than it is actually helpful.  So, we just stuck to red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple as our rainbow colors for the week.  One thing I wanted to point out is that many of these activities are simple enough that they could be replicated for St.Patrick's Day. We started by making...

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Fruit Pizza

Fruit pizza...one of my favorite desserts.  It is sweet and yet so refreshing.  It's a great spring time dessert because of all the amazing fruits that are in season then.  I was first introduced to it about 8 years ago at a birthday party.  Since then, I've used various different recipes (because there seems to be a ton) but my favorite so far  (in taste and appearance) is the one pictured here that Addi and I made into a rainbow for her letter r week lesson. The base of the pizza is actually one large sugar cookie.  Anytime I make sugar cookies I use Sweet Sugar Bell's basic recipe.  For the fruit pizza I placed all the dough on a pizza tin and rolled it out into a perfect circle.  I baked...

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Celebrating 100 posts with my very first giveaway!

Well friends, this is my 100th post!  There are so many things I hope to continue sharing and there are 100s of ways I hope to improve.  For now, I would love to celebrate by having my very first giveaway! In honor of it being my 100th post I will be giving away 10 Busy Bag Sets with 10 games in each set!  That's right, 10 new games for your little one and you don't have to make a single one!  The only restriction is that you must have a U.S. mailing address. There are multiple ways you can enter my giveaway and each one of these ways will give you one entry into the drawing.  Your name can be entered into the drawing up to 10 times! HERE'S HOW YOU CAN ENTER: Follow Me.  Become a follower of my blog by submitting your email in the "Follow Me" box located...

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Each and Every Week

Each and every week we start out our lessons with a few basic activities.  If you have ever noticed the bottom section of my curriculum sheets there is an area entitled "Activities."  These are things I feel preschoolers, at an actual school, would call "learning centers."  Typically a learning center is a section of the classroom in which students engage in independent and self-directed learning activities.  These are activities they have become so familiar with that they need little assistance or instruction, if any at all.  Many times I don't take pictures of Addi as she is doing these activities but we are faithful to do most of these each week with whatever the new letter is that we are learning about. Letter...

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The Secret to Being "Book Smart"

A friend and I were talking the other day about different types of workbooks you can buy to give your child practice with different skills. They have workbooks on just about any topic ranging from colors, shapes, letters, math skills, or whatever else you can possibly imagine.  They have them for preschoolers.  They have them for high schoolers.  There are hundreds of styles and formats by numerous different publishers.   Some are pretty expensive costing as much as $15-20 and others you can find at the Dollar Store.  My friend was telling me how she would like to expose her son to educational activities and not just coloring books; however, she really has a hard time investing in them.  She hates buying workbooks...

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Do-a-Dot

When I first started looking into preschool activities, I was seeing Do-A-Dot activities everywhere.  I went to pick up a Do-A-Dot marker for Addi and suffering from a case of sticker shock, I ended up not getting one.  After looking at four different stores the cheapest one I found was $3 and the cheapest set (a 6 pack) was $15.  I started wondering what it was that made them so great.  Then, low and behold, one day as I was walking through the Dollar Tree I saw "Bingo Markers."  They come in all the same colors, are actually are smaller in circumference (so they fit in a preschooler's hand better) and they are only $1 each!  I only purchased one at the time because I wanted to see if the quality was equivalent...

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Busy Bag Organization

Several ladies have asked me how I organize and store our busy bags.  Great question!  When we first started making them last year and after one or two busy bag swaps I realized how quickly they became a cluttered pile of confusion.  I asked another lady who I had swapped with and she said she just kept them in a box in their coat closet so they were easily assessable to the kids but out of the way.  Great idea I thought, until I realized, oh yeah...we don't have a coat closet (or any kid-friendly closet).  I considered Addi and Josiah's closets, but then I realized how much I didn't want them to pull out the busy bags unsupervised because some of them do have smaller pieces. Next I researched what other blogging...

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