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Preschool update

We had a fun week for the most party. Disrupted week by shopping and play dates but that is fine. We still managed to get loads done. I didn’t always have the camera though, so here is what we did…

Our Shapes pegboard:

Jumping over objects:

Threading and counting

Sticker book:

Yellow dots on our D stencil sheet:

Kumon Numbers 1-30 book

Using handmade mat-man pieces

With our lovely summer on the way (we might be bypassing spring!) we are enjoying monkeying around outside

Preschool Corner is a great place to link up or to just get ideas!

God Bless

Preschool

Elijah is 4 years old

We are enjoying a different pace. I am less stressed about NOT having to find activities to match any theme. We are enjoying reading time much more. Conversation regarding the stories we read, has increased quite a bit too. We are enjoying the activities so much and Jessica seems to be calming down in the school room too.

So here are the moments I managed to capture for our school week (not everything was captured by camera):

Elijah always loves his HappyTap. It is a cork-board, little wooden hammer, little nails and wooden pieces. I am very careful about the nails!

With the sun heating the days, we have been spending lots of time in the sandpit

These are foam letters that he put on top of the matching letter of the laminated work sheet.

The letter of our week was M. We used the Stencil sheet from ABC+123 and did some money rubbing…I took all the change out of my purse and Elijah loved creating the impressions.

The beginning of a rock garden (copper sulphate crystals)

Elijah had decided to decorate our walls again with some Picasso inspired? creation…I decided that punishment should be suitable…Daddy eventually helped him finish. It was quite a large masterpiece :)

The highlight of Elijah’s week was an activity that I thought would best be done by Daddy…Learning about levers and such by Hammering and pulling out nails!

I thank God daily for giving me the privilege of homeschooling my kids. I wouldn’t miss these moments for anything

Head over to Preschool corner for some great ideas and inspiration!

God’s Blessings

Muffin Tin Monday – our ABC’s

After quite a long absence from MTM, Elijah was excited when I told him we would be having MTM.  He kept running inside the Kitchen and telling me it was time to take a picture!

The theme this week was ABC’s. I decided to use each letter in Elijah’s name.

E = Egg Bread, L = Liquorice, I = Iced Tea, J = Jelly, A = Animal cookie and H = Ham

Great fun!
Check out other great Muffin Tin Mondays

God Bless

Great Teddy Products

So let me start by filling you in on my original problem.

When I normally see a “new” brand of crayons or paint, I always wonder to myself if this is a Chinese throw away product. They normally never mention if they are non toxic and so many people just don’t care when buying children’s products. But at the end of last month I purchased a set of RollaBall Paints. It is a South African made product. Not many innovative products around but I really think this is one.

We had a problem with two of the colours. I emailed Dala and within 30 Minutes had received a reply from Kevin O Sullivan. What a pleasant surprise for our problem to be sorted out  quickly.  Shortly after, I had gotten assurance that a replacement would be sent. I received the package yesterday and was very surprised to see, not only had they replaced our product but we had been sent some extras too!

So what does any blogger do when we get free stuff? We review it!

Teddy RollaBall paints:  These are lots of fun, and very tidy to use. My son has loved exploring with the paints. The colours are very bright and the containers fit perfectly into his 4 year old hands.

Teddy Jumbo Wax crayons: I was pleasantly surprised to see that these are made from 100% recycled wax! Not something I have seen before. I love Jumbo crayons for little hands. Jessica is at that exploring age and loves to copy whatever her brother is busy with so these are perfect!

Teddy Chubby Pastels: Elijah immediately wanted to try these out. I really like the chubby (shorter) size. They encourage a child to hold the crayon more towards the bottom, thus encouraging correct pencil grip. Elijah also mentioned they smelled nice :)

Overall I was totally sold on Teddy as a Brand.

We hope you have a creative week and Look out for Teddy products. They are well priced for even the frugal mommies!

God Bless

Finding My way

The internet has added so many positive influences in my life. Manly through meeting new people through their blogs and especially those extra-special mom/homeschoolers who share everything that they make, ideas they have and all the wonderful advice a mom/woman could ask for.

Now one of those great things that I discovered is that there are so many exciting ideas/ways that you can add “fun” into schooling.  All the information out there can be quite overwhelming. Which can cause a problem…
What I found happening is that I was trying to incorporate everyone’s ideas into our homeschool. The Problem? It was too much and not every person’s ways work for my children.

At one stage there was a “Theme” thing going on..everywhere I looked I saw people doing themes. We tried that and I am glad we did for a while, but it was not sustainable! I spent more time trying to put togther a “plan” and get ideas and printables for the theme that I was loosing out on Quality time with my kids…

I took quite a while to come to accepting that what others were doing (it is all still Awesome) but it just wasn’t working for us at this time.

The way FORWARD:

One of the things was to take a look at what we had to use…Sonlight P4/5 was not the main focus of our day so I decided that it needed to be. More focus on reading and DISCUSSING what was in the story than just reading and putting it down.
William thankfully was willing to order the new Instructor’s guide that goes with this curriculum. It has changed quite a bit, each day had activities to go along with the stories…last week for example was growing crystals and using a Hammer and nails ! A lot of fun for my little boy!

Another thing I had only been slightly using was ABC+123 from Shirley over at Footprints in our Land. When I purchased it Elijah was way to small so it sat unused! There are great activities in there to a go along with learning our ABC’s. A very nice program and well priced.It will work very nicely if you have a good library.

One of the Constants in our week has been Jolly Phonics. I love this phonics program because it uses lowercase and together with the DVD that you can purchase, Elijah has practically taught himself. The books are used in the DVD and he often requests to watch this at anytime! We are using this along with ABC+123.

I will still be using all the great resources out there in blogland for schooling, but being more selective and also not to try do it all!

I love participating in blog carnivals and taking photos for these helps me to still see what we have done. I hope to continue joining in.

Our Activities are going to be increased in September because Swimming lessons starts up, which happens twice a week. We will not be continuing with Kindermusiek because Elijah is too disruptive to Jessica’s class.

I hope to bring a part of my day soon where I can really focus on prayer for my family, something that has been sadly lacking in the greater scheme of things.

I am sure there is much more to say, but i will stop now rather than later!

God’s blessings over your Journey!

Totschool

Jessica is 12.5months old

Tot School

Totschool has not been too busy, mainly because I am still trying to settle into Preschool with Elijah. The other big thing that has happened was the Big ’1′ birthday. Photos are posted here.

A few things we have been doing is playdough, sandpits and drawing. My daughter loves crayons and paper!

Jessica has started Kindermusiek and that ALL important milestone of keeping Mom super busy because Princess Jessica has learned to walk!

A few photos that I thought were worth a posting (because I thought they were cute)

I love this new expression Jessica keeps giving me lately

Playing in the winter sunshine…well kind of. The cat helped her get dirty.

Jessica is learning that crayons are so much fun, but the dot markers are great to run away with…especially when Elijah is busy using them.

Learning to eat Pizza! I am hoping to make homemade pizza from this week but we will see what happens. The kids really enjoy Pizza night

Don’t forget other great Totschool sites linked here

God’s blessing over your families

The Princess’s 1st Birthday

We had the party at the ArtBucket in Sasolburg. Marli – the owner made such a wonderful Butterfly garden considering it is winter. We had great fun and the food was delicious.

Preschool – a few weeks combined

Time slips away and I forget to blog. Being pregnant can do that to one’s brain/body. Busy busy busy Or just being WAY too tired.
I have come to accept the fact that trying to the way others do things is just not working. I spend way too much time prepping and not enough with my Precious Monkeys.  I am stressed and my brain is so busy on thinking of things to do, well it can’t go on. So change is yet again on the way. (Will hopefully blog about that later today)

But here is the last few weeks of Preschool for us:

Play-dough faces. I printed the faces off Sparklebox. I printed off different ones and used for our group activity with friends. It was great fun. I really enjoyed this and Elijah still continues to enjoy making all the different expressions  that he can think of.

The pegboard. Elijah has never been interested in the pegboard and has been quite a chore activity to do. I chose a difficult pattern to follow and it seemed to really capture his attention to the point that he finished the exercise. YAY!

Jolly phonics Worksheets. I am always more interested in Elijah colouring in the picture rather than him writing but he loves copying! He loves the Jolly Phonics books, mostly because they have an indented letter to trace on each page

I was busy on OpenOffice Spreadsheet (similar to MS Excel – but free)  one night and Elijah decided to find it on his computer. He then kept asking me to spell out names. He would find the letters on the keyboard and type as I spelt. An activity he created all on his own :)

Working in a Laminated exercise book I purchased a while back at a discount store as well as working with his Kumon Numbers 1-30 book.

I purchased some cheap foam numbers/letters and We played this game where I would call out a number and he would have to squish the right one. I am certain I have seen this somewhere but I am not sure where. If anyone knows where let me know.

We got a Melissa and DougPuzzle – Not 100% what it is called. Teaches really important skills like zipping, buttoning etc…Lots of fun

I got this great little printable off Carisa’s site at 1+1+1=1

Our theme for one of the weeks was Outerspace. I had so many activities planned but only got to a few of them. A “Let’s go to the moon” lapbook. Was great fun for us to put it all together. Also made an Atronaut tube craft from Making Learning Fun.

Playdough is always fun to mess around with.

We added a new feature to our Morning routine. The ABC Exercise cards from TeachMama. I first found these great cards shared on 1+1+1=1! Here Elijah is twisting his ankle. It also taught him a new part of his Body.

We have added Stencil sheets as a weekly activity. Elijah was supposed to use a RollerBall paint I bought but the thing wouldn’t work!

Another Theme and what landed up being a 2-week adventure was the FIRE Station. We managed to organise a visit to the Sasolburg Fire Station for a whole group pf people. It landed up being Awesome! The Trip photos are here.

Elijah is working on our Fireman Lapbook that we downloaded from HomeschoolCreations. We also played fireman with a great little outfit we bought at MrPrice Home store.

Head over to HomeschoolCreations for PreschoolCorner!

Have a great and blessed week!

The FireStation outing

With great thanks to the Fire Fighters of Sasolburg EMS for showing us such a great time!

We had a great time and that hose really has a kick…I almost landed on my Bum!

God Bless

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I am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirby

In “I Am Hutterite” Kirby takes us on a journey into the Hutterite community . At ten she was packed up, along with her 6 siblings. Her parents left the community and was pushed into a unknown world as such. Kirby provides a lot of history along with a very honest look into the colony. As she takes us on the journey she reconciles her self with her heritage.

When I saw the title I knew I had to read this book. I had never heard of the Hutterite colony, but I knew this was exactly what I was looking for. A change from what I normally read.

Kirby is so descriptive in her  writing about the colony and community life I could easily call this is a living book. I loved the feeling of being with her. I could imagine every situation, I treasured the feeling of emotions that pour out of this book. Her journey is so full of life, the words all filled with honesty, she doesn’t shy away from the painful moments. I was teary in quite a few places where I felt so aware of the struggles her family faced.
This is certainly a book I would buy for friends and family. It makes me look at my own life and makes me want to treasure those around me so much more.

I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

God Bless