Books for Boys

I have given some lists of our favorite books in the past. My boys were younger. See here for a few posts. 

But if you have a son who is learning to read and ready to move past the easy Dr. Seuss-like books, I highly recommend a series of books about Billy and Blaze by C.W. Anderson. These are the first books my 6.5 year old son has been excited to read on his own. 

Catching up with Life Lately. And Projects.

This summer, I feel like my life has been exponentially busier. Its like someone has hit ‘fast forward’ on my life. I spend my days accomplishing everything and nothing. I do the same tasks of daily life each day.

My house remains a disaster.

I desperately need to have a professional photo taken of my children. I tried to take them out for a photo shoot one day.



My oldest turned five. He stopped going to bed at night. He’s up until we go to bed. It’s been a real issue.

Sewing. I sort of miss doing that. I made another pair of shoes for my littlest guy. He’s working on walking alone!

Letter of the Week Crafts: Y and Z

Our last two letters.

Y is for Yo-Yo.

Letter of the Week Crafts: W & X.

Almost to the end. Have you been making letter of the week crafts?

W is for wheelbarrow.

X is for xylophone. They LOVED this craft and pretended to play the xylophones with the pretend mallets. (Popsicle sticks and pom poms!)



Just two more letters to go!

Letter of the Week Crafts: S, T, U & V.

S is for striped snake.

Letter Crafts: Q and R

Have you been watching following my letter of the week crafts? Last week I posted some ideas.

R is last week’s letter. And Q was the week before. So it’ll be a few weeks before we have a collection of more letter inspiration.

Q is for queen (and I did put both an uppercase and lowercase q on the craft…just to get the unfamiliar letter across.) I had worked with the four-year-old by himself that day. So I'd normally let the two-year old do the lowercase or uppercase. I'm learning the limits of the four-year-old...one craft a day is plenty of crafting for him!



Since it was R week and we haven’t studied the R shape at all, I had each boy do a separate craft. R is for rabbit and r is for road.

I’m really enjoying homeschooling.

Letter Crafts: m, n O & P

So I guess we’re skipping straight to m, n, o & p! I don’t know where the rest of the crafts are right now.

Keep in mind, we’ve been doing these since September. August. One of those months.

With some time off for having a baby. I know f was for fire hose.

But m is for mouse (the ears seem to be layered on top of each other…), n is for noodle, o is for owl, and P is for pencil!



It’s fun to see how much better my little guy is getting at writing his name as the year has progressed.

The ‘b is for baseball’ craft only had a G written on it!

Letter Crafts: C & D

Hope you saw my crafts for A& B yesterday.

As you can see, we just did uppercase C and D crafts. I think we should’ve done a lowercase D craft as well. It’s a good way to get the general shape of the letter into the boys’ minds.



C is for car and D is for doghouse (the middle of the D opens and we drew a dog inside).

Stay tuned for more ideas.

Letter Crafts for A & B

As I put the final touches on my fox hat crochet pattern, I thought I'd show you a bit of crafting I've been facilitating for my boys.

Even though I haven’t been crafting much, I’ve been crafting with my kids. We did some homeschooling work last year. This year, they have been working diligently at learning one uppercase and lowercase letter each week. (Ages 4 and 2.)

We do crafts for each letter. We don’t always do a craft for both the uppercase and lowercase letters.
Sometimes I just pick one or the other. Crafting can be like pulling teeth with my little boys…at least for the four-year-old, who this is supposed to benefit right now…the two-year-old is a little more enthusiastic because he loves glue…but I digress.



So here are some ideas for A and B. A is for apple, A is for alligator, b is for baseball, B is for butterfly.

I let them do the crafts themselves. I cut the letters and shapes; I offer suggestions and then they glue them. (And you should see the configurations the two-year-old has come up with.) These are all done by the four-year-old.

We’re working through other curriculum too for math, science, reading and some Bible lessons, but these letter crafts are either Pinterest-inspired or my own ideas.

So get your glue out. I’ll share more ideas tomorrow.

{More} Activities for Toddlers & Pre-Schoolers

Here are a few more activities my two busy boys enjoyed. All three utilize items from around the house. These ideas sort of go along with the “Teach Your Child at Home” posts I’ve shared a few times.
1. Toothpicks into spice containers. This was really more for the benefit of the 2 year-old than the 4 year-old, but they both became rather possessive of their spice containers.

Teach Your Child at Home: Part 5

We’re still having snow and cold, windy weather here. That means I’ve been trying to think of lots of activities to keep my kiddos busy. Here are three we did this week.
1. Color sorting. I purchased these colorful pom poms at the dollar store. They are fun to organize by color into ice cube trays.
 

Teach Your Child at Home: Part 4

My boys would love to play outside. But it’s messy and cold. We needed a new indoor activity one morning, so I got out some dry rice and let them dig in it, pour it, and put it through funnels.

If you pour lots of rice into the bin, you can hide small things in it (like little beads or gems) and your kids can sift the rice off to find the objects. Kind of like panning for gold. I didn't do this because the littlest guy still puts things in his mouth.

I recommend putting a dark colored towel on the floor to aid in the clean up process. The grains of rice will still get everywhere.
But that’s why we have a dust buster. What do you let your kids do when it is too cold and messy to play outside?

Recycled Robot Craft for Kids

I save garbage. Like scraps of paper, scraps of yarn, boxes from food or tea…you get the idea. I have the intention of making crafts with my three year-old. Maybe you remember the owls we made back in the fall.

Let’s just say my three-year-old doesn’t make a lot of for doing crafts. Until I told him we could make robots. (I made him a robot shirt a few months ago. He likes robots.)

One problem: He thought we were making REAL robots. That would have working buttons. And talk.

Teach Your Child at Home: Part 3

I got this idea from a Montessori book. I played a game with my three year-old that helped him learn to distinguish between sounds.
Just fill four same-sized containers with items that sound different when shaken. We used what we had in the pantry: rice, beans, corn kernels, and sugar.

Let your kid shake them and test how they sound different. Then blindfold him and see if he can tell which is which.
Another game to help your child with tactile learning is putting items in a bag (we used a ball, a small pumpkin, a hairbrush, a washcloth, and a pencil), blindfolding him, and telling him to figure out what the objects are without looking.
Two more and easy games to play with your child.
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Oh, and my Monkey See, Monkey Do shop is being spotlighted over at So You Think You're Crafty today. Go check it out. And if you're a considering becoming an Etsy user, check out ShopLocket while you're at it.

Chalkboard Topped Desk

We've started homeschooling at our house. Our oldest is only three, so it isn't exactly rigorous. I wanted to make him a fun workspace. But I didn't want to spend much money. We decided to start with this desk we've had in our garage for a year. My parents were going to burn it, but I thought we might want it. This is the before:

We decided on a chalkboard top. I had some chalkboard spray paint on hand, so I used it. 

Teach Your Child at Home: Part 2

My little guys love to play with water. So when I saw an idea on another blog for an educational water experience, I decided to try it. My three-year old loved it.

What is floating? What type of objects float? Why do they float? What is the opposite of floating?

We gathered some random items around the kitchen and tested them in a large plastic bin. Silverware didn’t float. Neither did coins. Lids for plastic containers floated, but if they got filled with water, they sank.

Fun times.

We also tried to make a (pretend) hot-air balloon following some instructions in a book, but it didn’t work out too well. My three year old kept saying he wanted to make a ‘real’ hot air balloon and insisted all the materials we would need would be Daddy’s tools!

Teach Your Child at Home: Part 1

Someday, we might be a homeschool family.  Our oldest just turned three. He’s not going to pre-school next year, but I want to do some fun things at home with him to help him learn colors, numbers, shapes and letters.

I adapted this idea for working on numbers and colors. (It is supposed to be a parking lot.) See?