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

Train Tot Pack (*free*)

You’re probably focused on Christmas-y ideas and activities this month.  I know that’s been on my brain for the past few days!  This tot pack has been in the works for a while, and there hasn’t been a ton of extra time for creating.  I’d hoped to be working on a Christmas pack by now, but didn’t want to put this promised pack on hold…

My boys ADORE trains!  Often, as soon as they hop out of bed in the morning, they are playing at their train table.  One boy or the other usually has a Thomas train in his hand.  They BEG to watch Chuggington on TV!  (They have a Chuggington book, and I didn’t even realize it was a TV show until my neighbor clued me in…we don’t usually watch anything other than PBS!)  The number one item on their Christmas lists is more trains!

Alex was super excited to wake up from his nap one day and find me creating train-themed printables.  He grinned and said, “Are these for me?  For Tot School?”  He was thrilled, and I hope your little engineers will love these pages, too!

I try not to include the exact same pages in every pack, just to keep things creative.  There are some new activities like an alphabet mini book with cutting, matching, gluing, and tracing.  I’d love some feedback on the new count & match/add & match cards.  (I’m hoping these will work in a pocket chart, but I have to admit that we haven’t printed them yet!)  If you’re disappointed to find your child’s favorite activity is missing, let me know…I’ll be glad to create something for you!

CLICK HERE to download the train pack FOR FREE at my Teachers Notebook store.  

I started a Pinterest train pinboard, but haven’t had much time to fill it yet.  If you’re saving this pack for later, you can always check back for new additions to the board! :)

This pack contains 27 pages of printable learning games and activity pages for 3 - 5 year olds.  You'll find:
~ scissors skills
~ graphing activity
~ shape matching
~ size matching
~ ten-part puzzle (number order practice)
~ circle what's different
~ handwriting practice T and t
~ rhyming words activity
~ alphabet mini book (match upper/lowercase)
~ train cars for counting
~ prewriting
~ missing numbers
~ count & match puzzle cards
~ add & match puzzle cards
~ dot marker page
~ Find the T and t page
~ Word Builders (spelling)
Graphics © Zenware Designs and Babystar Design Purchased at MyGrafico

Countdown To Christmas

Last year, while hitting the after Christmas sales, I came across a really neat children’s board book.  It’s called Countdown To Christmas, and it is a very simple book of Bible verses and activities to use from December 1st – December 25th. 

There’s nothing profound about this book.  It’s not amazingly theological, nor is it designed to teach the details of the Biblical story of Jesus’ birth.  It’s meant to teach and remind children that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus.

This is perfect for moms (like me…) who aren’t planning elaborate crafts or big projects, but want to make the Christmas season fun and meaningful.  Each page of this board book contains a paragraph to read to your child, an activity, a prayer starter, and a Bible verse for the day.

The first day explains that Advent (or “coming”) is the time when we are waiting for Christmas to arrive.  The verse is 1 Kings 8:20, “The Lord has done what He promised.”  The activity for the day is to create a paper chain with 25 links, then remove one link each day until Christmas.

When I taught second grade, I’d expand on that idea with my second graders by writing a classmate’s name on each link in the chain.  The chain was hanging from a yellow paper star.  As you removed the link each day at home, you were to take a minute and pray for this classmate.  You could do the same with friends, family, or other prayer requests!  We wrote a a poem on the star that went like this:

Each evening as your prayers are said,
take off one link then hop in bed.
When only the star is left to shine,
You’ll find that it is Christmas time!

Other activities in this book include tracing Christmas cookie cutters on paper and cutting them out to make simple ornaments, wrapping a doll in a towel as if you’re swaddling a baby, making napkin rings from sections of paper towel tubes, and cutting travel pictures from a magazine of things you’d pack for a long journey.

I’ve linked (with a referral link) to Amazon in the picture of the book.  It’s a good price, but you also might want to check at Walmart or keep an eye out for this book at the clearance sales after Christmas!

We’re also going to do Christmas picture books for the 12 Days of Christmas.  We don’t have 25 Christmas stories yet, so we’re cutting it a bit short.  I plan to place a book in a gift bag each night so that the boys can open the bag each morning to find the Christmas story for the day.  Occasionally, I’ll throw in a little surprise – a candy cane, a craft, or a small present.  (My sister found a snow-covered Thomas train on clearance after Christmas last year, and I’d like to give that to the boys before Christmas so they can enjoy it!  I figure that will go in the bag on the first day!)

For a REALLY neat idea for the Christmas Book Bag, check out Michelle’s post at Musings of Me!  The bag itself is interactive…you need to read Michelle’s post!  It’s such a beautiful bag; I’m drooling over that picture!  But we’ll stick with our paper gift bag filled with tissue paper since I can barely sew a button! ;)