Tot School – Christmas Fun

Alex is almost 4, and Max is 27 months.

We’re doing a mix of typical tot school and Christmas activities right now.  We’re reading a little daily devotional book, using our Countdown Chains, and every day there’s something little (a book, a craft, stickers) in a gift bag under the tree.

The kids SO look forward to checking out the gift bag under the tree each morning.  They know that Mommy is the one putting things in there, but it doesn’t ruin the fun.  One day, there was a paint with water book that my mom found on clearance last year.  

  

Another day, it was magic capsules that grow in water.  After the capsules had grown, we used the sponges to stamp & paint on construction paper.  (Thanks, Jess H, for leaving a comment on my blog with that idea!)

 

Their favorite Christmas story so far is Room For A Little One.  It’s a sweet story with pretty watercolor illustrations that shares the birth of Jesus in a different way.  It’s not 100% realistic, as animals don’t talk, but it is a beautiful story.  Alex walks around the house now saying, “There’s always room for a little on here!”

One of the activities in our Christmas Countdown devotion book was to trace Christmas cookie cutters, color them, and hang them on the tree.  I knew my boys would NOT want to color, as it’s just not their thing.  Alex has been asking to paint lately, so I got out the finger paints.  We were out of paper plates, so I stuck the (non-toxic) finger paint on the boys’ lunch plates.

Below are the pictures of Max’s first time fingerpainting…I didn’t even think about that fact until he SCREAMED.  Apparently, while the bright colors LOOK pretty tasty, finger paint doesn’t taste very good.  Whoops!  Nothing a nice, big sippy cup of apple juice couldn’t fix! ;)

 

After the little taste-testing incident, Max refused to touch his fingers to the paint.  I grabbed some q-tips to use as disposable paint brushes.  He painted just a bit, but decided it was more fun to match the cookie cutters to the shapes that Mommy had traced on his paper.

Alex had a good time, though!  He had so much fun smearing paint that you can’t even see the original colors anymore…it’s just a blend of Christmas-y colors.

We mainly used resources from Over The Big Moon this week.  Alex enjoyed the size-sequencing of baby Jesus in the manger.  This week, I cut a sheet of construction paper in half and taped the two strips together.  I asked Alex to sequence the pictures from smallest to largest, then glue it to his paper.  He did a GREAT job!

Max was determined to do the “Which One Is Different” page.  I helped him make the first few circles; after that, he scribbled on the correct pictures. 

 

When he finished that page, he moved on to pre-writing.  Sort-of.  Really, he just wanted to scribble on the page.  He tried, though.  He SO badly wants to do what Alex does!

Alex, on the other hand, does a pretty good job with both of these activities!

We played this Christmas shape game from Living Life Intentionally.  Each player gets a tree and six shapes.  You take turns rolling the die, then placing that shape on your tree.  The first to fill their tree wins the game.

Max thought he was playing, but really, he was just randomly placing shapes on the tree as he desired. He’d roll the die on occasion just for fun.

Alex stamped the J and j, and Max just stamped on a piece of paper.

Max definitely has his own ideas for what he wants to do during Tot School these days.  I’d love to do things that are more to his level of learning, but he wants so badly to do what Alex is doing!  Oh well ~ he’s still learning, just in his own way! :)

(The J is for Jesus page is also from Living Life Intentionally.)

 

We hope that you & your kiddos are having fun rogether as you anticipate the coming of Christmas!

You can learn more about RRSP, Preschool Corner, or Tot School by clicking on the links below.  You’ll also see what other moms are doing with their tots and preschoolers!

If You Give A Mom A Muffin

(5/1/2012) - The MOST POPULAR Google search leading people to my blog right now is "if you give a mom a muffin printable".  I don't have one of those, but I went ahead and searched for a cute one.  If you landed on my blog in search of a cute printable, CLICK HERE to link to a cute one at Keeping Life Creative. 

(5/21/2012) - When I shared this poem, no author was listed.  I received a message today from Beth Brubaker, the mom who authored this adorable poem.  She shared the original version of the poem, which I have corrected below.  Thank you, Beth, for writing this adorable poem that accurately plays out many days in the life of a busy, young mother!

-Dawn

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A friend shared this today, and it made me smile.  I thought some of you might understand :)

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If You Give a Mom a Muffin
By Beth Brubaker

http://footprintsinthemudblog.blogspot.com

If you give a mom a muffin,
she'll want a cup of coffee to go with it.
She'll pour herself some.
Her three year-old will come and spill the coffee.
Mom will wipe it up.
Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks.
She'll remember she has to do laundry.
When she puts the laundry into the washer,
she'll trip over shoes and bump into the freezer.
Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper.
She will get out a pound of hamburger.
She'll look for her cookbook
(How to Make 101 Things With a Pound of Hamburger.)
The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.
She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow.
She will look for her checkbook.
The checkbook is in her purse,
which is being dumped out by her two year-old.
Then she'll smell something funny.
She'll change the two year-old.
While she is changing the two year-old, the phone will ring.
Her five year-old will answer and hang up.
She'll remember she was supposed to phone a friend
to come over for coffee.
Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.
She will pour herself some more.
And chances are,
if she has a cup a coffee,
her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

O Christmas Tree…

…or why you should hire a babysitter while you assemble your new Christmas tree! ;)

The tree we’ve had in our living room for the past 7 years is pretty bare looking.  It’s the one I bought for my apartment when I was single.  It cost a whopping $50, I think…and it looked it! 

Keith decided this year that we needed a nicer tree in our living room.  We bought one a few weeks ago, and it’s supposed to be the kind with fold-up branches for easy assembly and storage.  SUPPOSED to be.  I guess that’s only after you struggle through the first-time assembly. 

Now, I”m a firm believer in waiting until AFTER Thanksgiving to set up the tree.  One holiday at a time for me, thank you! :)  Normally, Keith is fine with that.  This year, he was let out of work early on the day before Thanksgiving.  With a little extra time on his hands, he decided to haul in the new tree and all of our decorations.  He emptied the contents of the tree box all over the floor, only to find out it wasn’t quite as simple as we expected.  In fact, it was a bit challenging…made even more so by two eager little helpers who were hauling branches off in all directions, stepping on branches and bending them, and getting into all of the ornament and decorations boxes…all while I was trying to make dinner.

Oh, the chaos!  We never did get the tree finished that night.  We worked on it again on Thanksgiving morning…with our little “helpers” being just as helpful as the night before.  We decorated it on the day after Thanksgiving…and by this point, you’d think it would be easy.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough lights for the tree…trip #1 to town.  Then there wasn’t enough garland for the tree, and we still needed one more string of lights…trip #2 to town.  We couldn’t find the ornament hooks that we’d purchased last year, resulting in Keith repurposing a whole bunch of paperclips.  By this point, many of our ornaments had been broken by eager, excited little helpers.  By this point, both adults in the house were REALLY trying to keep our crabbiness to ourselves so we didn’t ruin the kids’ fun.

CRAZINESS!  I told Keith that, if it wasn’t for the joy of children, I’d probably hire of babysitter next time we assembled the tree!  I never realized it would be so difficult to decorate a tree with little ones.  There’s hope, though…next year, we’ll know how to assemble the tree correctly.  Next year, we’ll leave all ornaments in storage until we’re ready to put them on the tree.  Next year, we’ll wait until after Thanksgiving, too! 

I waited until the tree was fully assembled to take any pictures.  That way, we were all smiling in the pictures.

   

All’s well that ends well, though ~ Now that the tree is decorated and finished, it really does look pretty.  The boys are doing a pretty good job of leaving the ornaments on the tree.  They LOVE getting to push the button on the power strip to light up the tree each afternoon.  They’re excited about the Christmas Surprise bag under the tree, with a book, activity, or dollar store item for each day.  We’re making some fun memories, and I love that the boys are so excited for Christmas to come!

Thanksgiving Random Pictures

I’ve mentioned before that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It’s not really commercialized, and you can just focus on family and blessings.  We did that this year, but not in the typical, relaxed way.

I have to admit that my camera didn’t come out very much on Thanksgiving day or the day after.  Thanksgiving Day ended up being a little crazy.  Keith decided he wanted to use his free time in the morning to put up our new Christmas tree.  I always prefer to wait until after Thanksgiving, but he had the time…so I didn’t want to complain.  It turned into a crazy mess – the tree was far more complicated than we’d realized, and the kids were running away with branches or stepping on them as we worked…CRAZY!

Somewhere in the chaos, I managed to wash my hair, nurse a baby, make two dishes to bring to Thanksgiving dinner, and get the car loaded with all our “stuff”.  Alex was grumping and being stubborn ~ he didn’t want to eat. the pb & j sandwich I’d slapped together for his lunch.   I told him he could either eat and get down, or he could sit there until we left.  He chose to sit there until we left.  I ran to dry my hair while the boys were eating sandwiches.

Keith came and got me about 5 minutes later, asking me to take a look at Alex.  As soon as I saw my little boys’s face, I instantly felt like the worst mom EVER.  Poor Alex…the allergist told us that Alex is NOT allergic to peanuts, and we believed him, even though we had been pretty confident that Alex was allergic.  He still hadn’t eaten his lunch, but he must have touched his sandwich, then rubbed his eyes.  His eyes were all puffy and swollen, and he had hives all around his eyes.   (We’re praising the Lord that Alex stubbornly chose not to eat it!) We gave him Benadryl, and we grabbed the epi-pen handy just in case.  We drive past a town with a hospital on the way to my parents, so we threw the kids in the car, started driving, and figured that if we needed the ER, we’d know it by the time we passed it.

Thankfully, there was no need for the ER.  We drove straight to my parents’ house to spend time with the family.

We were back at my parent’s house again the next day, as my mom always does a homemade soup & bread dinner on the day after Thanksgiving.  That was my birthday, so we did a birthday time for me and for BoGyeong, my brother’s family’s exchange student.  She obviously loves little kids, and Alex is in LOVE with her. He calls her “BoGUM”.  It’s so cute!

My sister brought their new puppy, Maya, over for a while.  She’s so cute, and the kids loved her.

We just didn’t feel very relaxed, and there wasn’t any time to sit down & count our blessings.  Thanksgiving had a very rushed feel to it this year, and I’m a little disappointed by that.  Next year, the tree isn’t going up until after Thanksgiving…and NO peanut butter sandwiches will be around, either!  We definitely enjoyed the family time a lot, though! :)

    

Tot School – Thanksgiving

Alex is almost 4 (!), and Max is 27 months.

I’m a little behind on Tot School blogging…I’m a little behind on family blogging, too!  There just aren’t enough hours in the day when you have three little ones! :)

We only spent one day on Tot School during the week of Thanksgiving, as we had grocery shopping, Bible study (for me)/Preschool Bible class for Alex, and Daddy had some time off from work.  We chose to just work at the kitchen counter, with three kids lined up on stools.

For the most part, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves this week.

Max took the finished maze from one of the “big kids”, tried to do it himself, and then he scribbled all over it and yelled, “I did it!”

 

This measurement sheet drove Alex crazy.  I think he understood the concept, but he was annoyed that he couldn’t color in EVERY box! 

 

Max was the only one who wanted to build words this week…he just matched letters until his attention span gave out.

Cutting & gluing – Alex is a very big fan of those activities right now!  We chose to cut & glue the 4-part puzzles together this week because of some little kids who are on a glue stick kick! ;)

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Christmas Countdown Chain printable *free*

It’s hard to explain to little ones that there are still 24 days until Christmas.  Since we put up our tree, Alex is asking me every day, “Mom, is it Christmas yet?”  When you’re little, you need VISUAL reminders.

This got me thinking about the Christmas Countdown chain that I used to make with my second graders every year.  (I mentioned that in my last blog post.)  You begin on December 1st with a chain of 24 links, then you remove a link each day.  As the chain grows shorter, your kids have a visual idea that the wait for Christmas is growing shorter!

For my boys, I designed a new star topper in Photoshop.  After printing and laminating one copy for each boy, we made paper chains together.  I stapled the chains, but Max handed me a green chain, then a red chain to practice colors.  Alex helped me count to 24 links.  Both boys hung their own chain on their bedroom door.

You can keep it just that simple, OR you can use it as I did with my second graders: write a simple prayer request on each link.  As you remove it before bed at night, include that request in your bedtime prayers with your children.  My second graders wrote down their classmates name.  For your family, you could pray for friends, relatives, neighbors, or anyone/anything else that comes to mind.

As long as I was designing a printable, I figured it might as well be shared.  Sorry for getting this out on December 1st…it was a last-minute project!  I guess you can always make 23 links if you do it tomorrow! ;)

Click on the picture to download…

http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/dschurma/christmas-countdown-project