Valentines day Crafts

I planned on starting all of our valentines day crafts, cards, and decorations next week but couldn't wait. (Whats new...)

We made a cute kissing bird valentine for someone we love (shhhh don't tell, you never know who its for! :-))

We also made our love vase. I found these printouts here. The hearts each have love qualities on them from 1 Corinthians 13. We put ours in a heart shaped vase and on green pipe cleaners. It gave us a really good chance to talk about what love is and what love is not. Sweet girl asked me "If I am doing something sinful or unloving then we can come look at these again Mom and I can work on hiding them in my heart!!" So sweet.

Those heart shaped erasers are also coming in handy for love/valentine days activities. Here we worked on counting them!

I have lots more ideas packed away for next week- will make another post then. I am thinking of just talking about biblical love and having fun all next week and postponing the next RRSP unit until the following week.

Exodus 20:15

We started working on our 'T' unit this week. Our verse was exodus 20:15 "Thou shall not steal" and we also talked about tigers, trains, and turtles.

We started by painting the trains that we received in our gift bags from our friend Maiya's birthday party! Sophia started asking the minute we got home from the party to paint them and its been a long two weeks until we actually did! I knew the T unit was coming up and so we held off for a few weeks. Anticipation for school stuff is good! :-) So of course this was the first thing on our agenda the minute I mentioned it was 'T' week!



She really enjoyed learning about the verse and learning what not stealing really meant. In our "ABC Bible Verse" Book we read about a little girl stealing flowers from a neighbor. Soph was convinced that she had NEVER stolen anything in her life. We had to really go into depth about what stealing was. She has since given a few toys back to her brother with wide eyes saying "I just stole this Mommy!" Its pretty neat to watch when your kids start really hiding Gods' word in their hearts and applying it to their daily life.

I found the pack of heart erasers at Target dollar spot and they have come in handy from counting turtles to sorting by size/shape/color.

Her scissor work is improving when cutting her verse out but it is still a source of frustration for her. Need to include more activities to help her improve and gain confidence in this area. Any suggestions on activities that will help?










Resources found at::


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L Unit Wrap Up!

We sorted ladybugs by size, practiced writing L's on our chalkboard with q-tips and water, used our L playdoh mat, hunted for big and little L's, and had lots and lots of fun! :-)

Adventurous edible art!

Today was all about edible art. We started by having a friend over and making mini marshmallow hearts. Unfortunately my pictures disappeared on my phone so all I have are the finished product pics. I really need to start using the real camera more, we actually have a very nice camera! If you notice a few of my pics look much better than the rest, that is why.



Anyhow, we had the girls first sort the pink hearts out of the pack (It was a 4 pack, multi flavored, and yes, I did have more marshmallows eaten than crafted from my tiny marshmallow monsters....:-) ) Then they put glue around the edge of the heart and stuck the little mallows on. Later this evening our little scavenger did eat half of the marshmallows (and the glue) and we narrowly avoided a meltdown when big sister saw what he did -thankfully this is a QUICK craft to redo.

This afternoon we moved on to edible paint. I used pumpkin and apple baby food for Liam to paint with. I am always worried about him eating paint and no matter how much supervision I provide, he still trys, so I was so excited to see this idea here. For Sophia I took "whupped cream" and added a few drops of food coloring and let her finger paint with that. The kids both had a blast! One tip is to make sure to tape their paper down before letting them start.

These are nothing to hang on the fridge, lookwise, but fun! So have fun, take a pic when your done and let them get messy!

Tot School

While sitting around trying to recuperate from this KILLER cold, I have found some blogs that I have fallen in love with. They pretty much put a name and much more organized picture of what I have been doing with the kids. So I am going to link up and join "Tot school" and use some of the BRILLIANT ideas these women have posted! Check out Carissas blog to see more. From there you can link up with some other fantastic blogs, like Totally Tots and homeschool creations as well as one of my favorites Delightful Learning. Theres a lot more that you can find and get lost in.

We have been out of printer ink so I haven't been able to print out some things that will allow me to use a theme and lessons. Therefore today we just did some fun random things and will try a unit next week. So here was today's random Tator Tot School at our place.

We made a homemade skeeball game for girlie spud. This gave me the chance to give her several directions at once, "Pick up the green ball, take three steps back and put it into the number 2 hole."

This morning we did some tissue paper painting. We used some leftover tissue paper we had gotten in some birthday and Christmas gifts. Then we got a sponge wet and painted the peices onto the paper. Little spuds Man needed more help holding the pieces down while he sponged it. Girlie was able to figure it out pretty quickly.

We also have been collecting some bottles, caps, buttons, egg cartons ect from family and this morning we used a Nesquick bottle to play a sorting/stuffing game. It was mainly for Spuds Man but Big girl felt the need to help. He had a blast! He became a bit frustrated at first when things were too big but after a while would throw them to the wayside and find more to stuff in. By far his favorite part was dumping out everything once he was satisfied with its fullness and starting again. What a boy.

The buttons you see are from girlie and a random triangle that appeared. She spotted it and excitedly exclaimed "Mom! Its a button triangle!" I was proud of her shape recognition and so we worked on doing some more. I wanted to get to a rectangle and oval or diamond but she got distracted by some math blocks Grandma got them for Christmas.

Fun with Egg Cartons

I have been asking people to collect egg cartons and other various household items for me (bottle caps is another we are trying to get a ton of) and some family members donated some empty cartons to us at Christmas time so we have spend the morning working on some egg carton creations. I got most of the ideas from http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/ (my new favorite blog!) It was Liams first time painting! Up until now I had been worried about him eating the brush or something. He did really well! He was a little more interested in painting the table after about 2 minutes on the project but all in all, not bad for a 14 month old. :-)


A few recommendations for you:: For the caterpillars (affectionately named Charlie and Kaity after one of our favorite books "Charlie the Caterpillar") I would leave the carton together while painting for the ease of the little ones and cut it afterwards. I would make sure you have nice sharp scissors. Also, I wished I would have cut the holes for the ant legs before painting. My cartons seemed a little soggy and I wished they'd have been firmer for easier cutting. I want to still get some string or something to hang the birds. I have also seen the bird eyes used on an old oatmeal carton to make monster looking faces and may do that when we finish off our oatmeal.

Too much work

We decided to make a handprint wreath this week. Yikes! That was a lot of cutting for Mommy! While its cute, I don't think I'd make it again. Sophia got bored after I traced her hands even though she was helping glue on the paper plate. With all the crafts we do, some are bound to fail! I much preferred the tearing paper wreath we made a few weeks ago!

TP Octupus'

This was a quick and easy craft we saw on the notimeforflashcards.com site. We cut a tp tube in half. Covered it in construction paper and cut the legs. Then we added googly eyes and a smile. Sophia did the gluing and the cutting (great fine motor!) We talked about tentacles and where octupus' live.

Random crafts

We recently made an Advent chain::countdown to Jesus' birthday after seeing our great friends Amanda and Addie over at @walkbyfaith post their pictures. Thanks for the idea, friends!

Also made some fun and easy stick people that we love (we will add more, but our printer ran out of ink)

You can see a reindeer near our stick people. We used Sophias hands to make antlers and glued it onto a brown felt triangle and then added googly eyes and a red nose. Fun, easy and quick!

One project we tried was a flop! Well, mostly. I let S paint snow. I heard it was fun and cool to watch it melt into colorful puddles (on a pizza/cookie pan) Mostly it was tricky, cold and then Liam got into it when I forgot to put it away and after S alerting me I found green speckles EVERYWHERE in the kids room. Yikes. Luckily most of them came out. I should have taken a picture. But I was frantic when I saw it so I didn't stop. :-)