(And All My) Work Be Praise

This is one of my favorite easy activities, as you can tell by the fact that this is my third blog post about it! A big piece of paper, a marker, and a set of letter magnets is all it takes for a quick 5-10 minutes (depending on the child) of letter recognition. It started with Silas and upper-case letters two years ago , and then upper/lower case matching last summer . And now, here we are with Toby! He knows most of his capital letters by sight, so after a day or two with the capitals I'll probably try to get him to match some lower-case letters. It's never something we spend gobs of time on, just a few minutes here and there while a brother finishes up breakfast or something. Funny side note: if you clink the link to last summer's blog, you'll see that Silas (last year) and Toby (this year) are wearing the same jammies in these pictures. :)

As I've mentioned dozens of times, but some of you (I've met new friends since last year!) probably don't know, I'm a big fan of the ABC Jesus Loves Me preschool curriculum. You can buy workbooks, but I never have; the weekly lesson plans are all available for free online. The author, Heidi, now has curricula available for one-year-olds (though I'm skeptical of the point) through five-year-olds (which can be supplemented to be kindergarden, depending on your state's requirements). She has suggested activities for a 36-week academic year, including Bible stories, Bible songs, character development, finger plays, nursery rhymes, classic children's books, shapes, colors, numbers, letters, pre-writing skills, letter and number formation, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, literacy, social sciences, self-care . . . seriously, everything. I've never done it all! We tend to be a bit ahead of the game in academics in my house, but I would honestly NEVER thi...

It's been over a year since I blogged last, and I really don't expect to have time to start up in earnest again any time soon. Even still, I couldn't resist the opportunity to show some comparison pictures between my first toddlers and my current toddlers. I'm using ABC Jesus Loves Me  again, a combination of the two-, four-, and five-year-old curricula (more on that later). One of my favorite activities from the two-year curriculum is using dried spaghetti to show the shape "line." I mean, really, who thinks to teach "line" when you're doing shapes? Not me. Above: Silas at 2.5, in January of 2015. Halfway through, we turn the paper sideways, so as to get a feel for horizontal and vertical lines. Below: Toby at 2.5, in June 2016. That week, he wore his construction hat all day, every day. Painting on a vertical surface is a great way to strengthen little hands!  I love that you can see the smooth curve of chubby toddler c...

Almost exactly eleven months ago, I set Silas up at the refrigerator with a hastily-constructed letter poster and some letter magnets. ( See it here. ) He's now a whiz at capital letters, including their phonetic sounds, but I realized recently that he doesn't know most of the lower-case letters at all. So I re-created our letter matching activity, but this time with lower-case letters on the poster! I ran out of room for y and z, but Silas made me squeeze them in with a pen later. Since last summer, we've managed to lose several of the big letter magnets. I fully expect to find them all if our stove ever has to be moved. Fortunately, Silas received these wooden letter magnets from his great-grandmother for Christmas, and I tucked them away for "the future." The future is here! The magnet set includes both upper and lower case, but I only gave him access to the capitals for now. We have several road trips coming up this summer, so I'm brainsto...

Silas was surprisingly agreeable when I asked if he wanted to do an activity this morning, so I pulled out my box of toilet paper tubes, the can of pom-poms, and the mini tongs to re-create an activity from when Levi was two . (Levi was just barely two, and Silas is nearly three, but that's a difference in attitude more than aptitude between those two!) It didn't stay educational for very long -- I was hoping to count pom-poms as we put them in the tubes -- but it was  fun and occupied his attention for over twenty minutes! He struggled a bit to manage the tongs. Such concentration! Even with a brother laughing in the background!

I have been trying for three weeks to get Silas to do this rectangle activity. Usually the glue stick is one of those coveted items that gets him excited about a craft, but he is dead set against it. So, in the name of authenticity, I'm going to stop hoping the craft will happen and just show you real life instead! The goal: glue some black rectangles onto a larger rectangle. (Silas is standing next to me right now shouting, "I DIDN'T glue, Mommy! I didn't!") I even flipped the paper over and tried to get him to glue anything anywhere. No dice. Today, he chose to eat leftover oatmeal instead. I don't even know how his bowl got from the counter to the little table. He did, however, spend time each day I tried putting the cap on the glue and taking it off again, which is a great fine motor skill. And right this second, he's in the kitchen picking up all of the black rectangles he threw all over the floor in his rage, so we're p...

Two big break-throughs with Silas this morning: 1. He willingly told me the shape we were working on (square). 2. He jumped into the activity without a single protest. (Usually he complains for about thirty seconds that he doesn't want to, and then gets into it.) I'm beginning to believe that he just might outgrow his two-year-oldness after all. (That's easy for me to say right now, while he's sleeping. I might be singing a different tune, come dinner time . . . .) I sort of made this activity up on my own, loosely based on some playdough mats I printed from some site or another several years ago. I traced around a square out of our color tiles (from the manipulatives kit for Saxon math K-3 ), then used that as a rough template to make more counting sheets. Cheap paper, a marker, squares I already owned, one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, fine motor skills (in matching the tiles to the paper) . . . my kind of activity! And as a bonus, Owen d...

After several weeks of doing a shape/color activity with Silas each week, I can say two things with confidence: 1. He knows all of his colors. (I knew this already.) 2. I have NO idea if he knows his shapes. Silas's two-ness is in full swing right now, and one of the things he's adamantly put his foot down about is identifying shapes. I got pretty good at tricking Levi into answering questions he didn't want to, three years ago, but Silas will not be manipulated. Now, he will tell me happily that a triangle is "a mountain," and a square "might be a diamond," but that's about it. Kid's driving me crazy. But, we persevere, and this week we persevered with the help of some sticky craft sticks my mom sent for him. About an inch or two on one side of the craft stick is sticky. She suspected peeling off the backing would be good fine motor practice for him, and she was right: the first one was a little hard, but once he figured out where to ...

We're doing a little unit on Chinese New Year this week. One page of this printable pack  was a one-to-one-correspondence activity, matching up something (stickers were suggested, but we used the yellow dot marker) with each gold coin.  I fully expected Silas to dot willy-nilly all over the page, but he actually took great care in matching up the marker with the coin. Success!

This morning I stood gazing into the craft section of my big den closet, trying to find something unusual for Silas to practice green squares with. The glittery, sticky craft foam sheets I've used often before caught my eye, so I grabbed a green sheet and quickly cut out some big and little squares. (Okay, I didn't measure, they probably weren't actually  squares. But close enough for a two-year-old.) First, we sorted them into big and little. I picked up this tray at a dollar store a loooooong time ago, with intent to use it for sorting activities, but this is the first time it's come out of the cupboard. Then I peeled the backing off of the foam and let him stick them all over them ABCJLM square paper . I feel strongly compelled to assure my readers once again that Silas and I spent maybe five minutes at the most at the table for this. He was quite grumpy at the beginning, which is actually why I brought him to the table alone, hoping that some one-on-...

Painting is always a good idea, when you have a long day at home with nothing to break it up. Painting with cars is simply the icing on the cake! (Idea taken from a friend, with the educational benefits superimposed from ABCJLM . Which really just means that a few times I asked Silas if he was making lines.)

Silas and I consolidated his knowledge of circles and lines in yellow crayon to make a sun. He was pretty excited about it while it happened. Then he threw a big fit (over who-knows-what), crumpled up his paper, and threw it off the table. As such, there are no pictures of our sun drawings. Just keepin' it real, folks. So sweet one minute . . . 

At long last, Silas is starting to get interested in doing things. He's only 2-1/2, so it's not like he's behind or anything. My older two were just so engaged in activities by this time that I've been frustrated, not sure how to entertain the toddler all morning long! Finally, two weeks, ago, he asked for a dot marker, and happily sat at the table for nearly half an hour. That was my cue to pull up the ABC Jesus Loves Me two-year-old curriculum and plan a few activities! My days already feel pretty full right now, so we're just doing one shape and color activity (combined) each week. I didn't manage to post last week's, so here are the two we've done so far: Red Circle I cannot overstate how simple I am keeping things. Print the ABCJLM circle page from week one . (Or just draw a circle on a piece of paper. Who's going to care?!) I chose to write the word "RED" in the middle, because Silas knows most of his letters and likes to point ...

Silas turned two last week! As we did with Levi's last birthday , we celebrated in two chunks -- breakfast donuts from our local bakery in the morning, and a family party in the evening (actually, in the evening a week later, since that's how schedules worked out this year).  Also like Levi, Silas went straight for the sprinkle-covered donut . . .   . . . but then refused to touch it with his hands and ate most of it leaning over his plate. Silas doesn't usually get any plates at all, let alone something breakable, so this was quite a special occasion indeed!  Silly, silly boy. Confession: a small part of the reason we waited another week to celebrate with family is because we didn't have his gift finished yet. Check out the wall behind Silas's high chair in the above picture . . . and now in the picture below.  Yep, while he napped, we installed and "wrapped" (with a sheet) what may be the coolest present ever. (In my ...

My third son is a delightful boy, but he turns destructive when left alone for too long. A few days ago I went through all of my appropriate pinterest boards and made a big list of activities just for Silas to do while the big boys do other things. Today, he was willing to play with playdough with Levi and Owen for a while, but lost interest much sooner than the others. I scanned my brain quickly for something else to occupy him while I finished cleaning the kitchen, and this sprang to mind. A big piece of paper, a Sharpie, and a little masking tape later, Silas was happily matching letters at the fridge. Truth be told, he lost interest in this pretty quickly, too, but has gone back a few times to add another letter here and there. Anything that will take up a few moments of his attention . . . I'll take it! Also fun: later in the morning, Levi and Owen both wanted to make their own page of letters to put on the fridge. Owen has only recently (within the past week)...

exploring with the five senses Marshmallow week was so long ago now that I barely even have the desire to document it. But, so as not to ignore it completely, I'll do a picture-heavy version: Levi and Owen traced their names with glue (well, I helped Owen) and then lined them with mini marshmallows. (Idea here .) Meanwhile, Silas scooped mini marshmallows from one bowl to another using a tablespoon. He might have gotten one or two into the bowl instead of on the floor . . .  In the name of science, we experimented with dissolving colored marshmallows. The tall glasses on the left were filled with very warm water; the short glasses on the right, with cold water. You can only just start to see it in this picture, but the warm water really took on the colors of the marshmallows (pink and green), while the cold water stayed clear even after several hours. (Idea here .) Owen used mini tongs to move marshmallows from plate to paper, counting to the number...