6 Months

Bean is six months old! She is sitting up independently for short periods of time, has started eating baby food and has her first two teeth coming in! Halfway to being one year old, such a sweet girl :)

Winter Sensory Tub

I created a sensory tub to go along with our winter unit

We have:

white rice

irredescent basket filler (Dollar store)

cotton balls

light blue and dark blue flat sided marbles (Michael's)

silver ball thingys (Michael's)

foam letters spelling out WINTER

I gave each of the kids a small bowl and clear plastic tongs and they were off!

The tub was definitely a hit, which is good because I already have one in the works for Valentine's Day.

Winter Fun

For the next two weeks our theme for school is winter! We've got a book basket full of winter books, winter printables printed, laminated, cut and ready to go, and some fun winter activities to go along with it all!

The printables we are using are from Musings of Me and Confessions of a Homeschooler. For Five in a Row we'll be rowing Katy and the Big Snow. I anticipate having a lot of fun with this theme and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things after the holidays, moving and just general chaos as of late. Stay tuned!

Muffin Tin Monday

There was no theme this week, here's what Buzz and Boo had:

Top row: cheese quesadilla, white grapes

Middle row: pretzel sticks, peanut butter (for dipping)

Bottom row: goldfish, no-bake cookie

Bean had carrots :)

Fun with Money

We spent the last week learning about money. With Boo I focused on identifying the different coins and knowing their values. Buzz reviewed these and also worked on some simple money math. We used these printables. They both loved playing "Pet Shop" with these cards.

We had a few money books in our book basket:
Benny's Pennies by Pat Brisson
The Go-Around Dollar by  Barbara Johnston Adams
If You Made a Million by David M. Schwartz
Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday by Judith Viorst

To wrap up our money study we added a fun twist to our normal family movie night. Ruben made a time card for each of the kids and they used it while they "worked" cleaning up the living room, the school room, the playroom and their bedroom. Then they each got paid $2 in change for their work. We printed off movie tickets and set up a concession stand. Buzz and Boo both used their money to buy their movie ticket ($.25), pizza ($.25/slice), drinks, cookies and candy. They had a blast!

Muffin Tin Monday: Food Picks, Skewers and Kebabs

Or the theme at our house: Mommy was sick all weekend and didn't even bother to check what the theme is supposed to be and wanted to skip this week until Buzz realized that today is Monday and he and Boo insisted on eating their lunch in a muffin tin so Mommy let them choose whatever they wanted and they were happy :)

Bottom row: PB sandwiches (heart for Boo and cross for Buzz) and peas (plus cross shaped fruit leather for Buzz because he loves it)

Middle row: Peanut butter balls and pretzels

Top row: Ice cream with sprinkles and applesauce

Happy Mufffin Tin Monday!

New Year's Eve

I heard about a fun activity to do as a family over on the FIAR message board: New Year's Eve Bags. We decided to give it a try! Basically it's a way to count down to midnight (although my kids didn't stay up that late, we celebrated a pretend midnight around 7:30).

I used one paper lunch bag for each hour that we counted down (we started at 2:00) and attached a paper clock face telling which hour to open each bag. On the back of each bag I attached a rhyme that gave a clue to the activity we would be doing that hour.

So the kids would look at each bag to find the one that said the correct hour, read the clue and try to guess what the activity would be. Inside the bag was something we would be using for the activity. I borrowed some of the rhymes from the lovely FIAR ladies, tweaked to fit my needs, and made some up myself. And, yes, they are corny but that's ok :)

2:00 Shuffle the cards and deal them out. Game time is what this hour's about!
In the bag: Uno (a new game for them)
Activity: Play card games

3:00 2011 is almost here. Time to reflect and think back on the year
In the bag: 2010 questionnaire
Activity: Answer questions such as favorite memory of the year and what you are most thankful for this year. We sealed these in an envelope to be opened next New Year's Eve.

4:00 Bowling, golf, sword fighting too! Grab a controller, you know what to do!
In the bag: Wii controller
Activity: Play Wii

5:00 Crust and sauce, add some cheese. Let's make a dinner that's sure to please. While we're at it, it wouldn't hurt to mix up something for dessert
In the bag: Can of tomato paste (to make sauce) and bottle of hot fudge.

Activity: Make homemade mini pizzas and blondies for dessert

6:00 Has this been fun? Has this been groovy? Let's change into jammies and watch a movie!
In the bag: DVD
Activity: Watch The Tale of Despereaux and enjoy blondie sundaes

Final Bag (when the movie was over) It's almost midnight, almost a new year! Let's make some noise! Let's shout and cheer!
In the bag: Noise makers
Activity: Count down to "midnight", blow noise makers and throw balloons in the air while shouting "Happy New Year"!

We had a lot of fun and we might have to make this a New Year's Eve tradition!