We are a few months in to our home preschool adventure, and loving our letter of the week learning. I’ve joined 30 other bloggers for 31 Days of ABC hosted by All Done Monkey, with daily alphabet learning activities for each letter and much more. Today I’m sharing fun activities for the letter L and the word Light. We had a blast creating a DIY lightbox and exploring the letter L.
We started preschool with the Bear at home this year, and though I was confident I could teach him I didn’t really know where to start. We want to create a family culture of life long learning, and want to save the money traditional preschool would cost. Thankfully I found some amazing resources for home preschool on some of my favorite blogs, and I’m sharing them with you today. You can read more about our plan for home preschool here, and some of our favorite ideas for pumpkin fun with preschool kids here. Read about how we paint with preschoolers and toddlers stress free here. You can teach your preschooler at home, you really can. Read on to find great resources to help you.
Pumpkins are one of my favorite things about fall. I love to have them around the house, eat them in everything, and create pumpkin fun for my kids. Today I’m sharing 20 easy ideas for pumpkin fun for preschool and toddler age kids. Pour yourself a DIY pumpkin spice latte and pin these ideas to do with your favorite little ones. Did I mention I’m partnering with some other fabulous bloggers to give away $2000 at the end of this post? {It’s true!}
Pretend play is incredibly important for child development. In preschool children it helps them develop their thinking, emotional, social, and language skills. Today I’m sharing three easy ways to encourage pretend play and imaginative play in your children.
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Summer has been so good to us, but I have to admit I’m ready for school to start. I love getting in to the fall routine, even though we sorely miss having my teacher husband at home with us once school starts. This fall the Bear (age 3) and I will be starting home preschool, and we are both crazy excited. I’ll be sharing more as we get the details figured out, but for now I’ll tell you a little about our game plan. Today I’m also sharing one of my strategies for winning lunch time battles as well as a coupon and offer for a free 5×7 photo print perfect for those back to school prints.
Finger painting with toddlers and little kids may sound like a total disaster waiting to happen, but I promise it can be fun and painless. All you need is construction paper
This was the Pearl Girl’s first foray in to finger painting, and she did well for about 10 minutes. I feel pretty great about that for a 14 month old. She really liked the feel of the paint on her fingers and patting it down on the paper. I set out four color options on a disposible paper plate. Only put out as much paint as you think they’ll need for one painting at a time. I gave each child a piece of paper and had Bear show PG how to do it. I guided her first few strokes and then she got the hang of it quickly. The Bear will paint happily for about 20 minutes now at age 3.
Let go of any image of Pinterest perfection and let your kids have a blast being creative. We’ve been reading a book about Franklin the Turtle being an artist, so the Bear believes he is one. I think every kid does until someone tells them different. Artistic expression is important for development and doesn’t have to be difficult for parents and caregivers to execute.
Clean up is so easy during the summer. I turn on the hose and let the kids splash the paint away, then turn the hose on our mini picnic table to wash it down. Leave the paintings out to dry and head in for a snack. You can find one of the ways we preserve kid art at no cost here. Happy Independence Day America!
Every time we tell friends about our family travel plans with two kids under three, they look at us like we are crazy. We may very well be, but we love to travel and are almost done with our first adventure of the summer and preparing for our next one. Today I’m sharing 20 tips for entertaining preschool kids while traveling, and I hope they will be as useful to you as they have been to us. We love to travel and to take our kids along, so keeping them entertained is a must for our sanity.
We’ve been living and working at Camp Buckner, a beautiful camp in the Texas Hill Country for the last 2 1/2 weeks serving with Young Life. Traveling to and living at camp is challenging, but we are using it as a test run for our big 4 week road trip coming up later this summer. In July we will head out to Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you don’t miss our adventures.
Every year it is the same struggle. Will I let the busyness of the season overwhelm me or will I focus on the real gift of Christmas – the birth of Christ? Gift giving can me stressful and expensive, and as I watch my kids’ wish lists expand as quickly as my own I worry that we are drowning the joy of Christmas with our wants and desires. Gift giving is an important part of how we celebrate the holiday, so today I’m sharing ten gift ideas to help your family have a Christ centered Christmas. As a bonus, the generous folks at Zonderkidz are giving away five of the books I’m featuring to one lucky reader. Read on find out more, enter the giveaway, and then hop over here to find 75+ Gift Guides and Holiday Ideas for Kids from my favorite Kid Blogger Network friends.