Busy Summer!

We've been REALLY busy! So, I realize it has been a really long time since I have posted a blog and I apologize to the two of you that look at this. I taught a summer fast track session and it was cra-zy! (Seriously, some of the best students I've ever taught!) After, that was finished at the end of July, we had a FOURTH birthday party! I can't believe my babies are four. When did it go so quickly? I'm sure every mother feels that way. I have loved every stage of their sweet, little lives. I am grateful to God that he allowed me to be their mother. We had a Mickey and Minnie theme pool party (in honor of their first trip to Disney, which is coming up faster than I can possibly be prepared for!) and boy did we have a blast! TONS of people came and we just had a great time visiting and playing.

That was a little sneak peek of some pictures. I hope to post some others soon. Soon after that we had the 42nd annual McCoy family reunion. We had a great turn out and it is always fun to get to see distant relatives. This year we started a facebook family page to share photos and stories, which I thought was very cool. Sort of a neat way to stay connected this day and age. I'm extremely blessed to be part of such a close knit family. Then it was time for the OLYMPICS!!! I love the Olympics. Summer, winter-It doesn't matter to me. It is such a neat time where countries come together and (usually) display great character, determiniation, and sportsmanship. During the Bejing Olympics, the babies were literally days old and I remember thinking, "The next time the Olympics are on they will be four!" Which, of course, felt like a lifetime away! Now it is here. I structured all our Mommy School lessons around the Olympics and brother and sister have really loved them. I have lessons and pictures to post and share. We have had such a great time with the Olympics and we're sad to see the Closing ceremonies in a few days. Finally, my little brother found out that he and his girlfriend are having a BOY! We are so excited. I can't wait to be an Auntie. Little Baby Ryder will be here in January. They had a cake reveal for the family (the parents knew the gender, but the rest of us didn't). We were definitely kept in suspense!

I'm supposed to do what??

I go to a small group class during the week at my church and we have been discussing forgiveness. What has been the most difficult for those of us broken people in this small group is learning to forgive those that have hurt us or damaged us in some way. And that is a really big issue for believers. How do you forgive the unforgivable? Let's face it, we all have something that is unforgivable (in our opinions). How do we forgive that? While I can't pretend to know the answer to this question, I can share what insight I've learned in our group.

-Forgiveness is a process-Sometimes it takes a long time for forgiveness to take place. Forgiveness is like an onion. There are layers upon layers of hurt and that requires layers upon layers of forgiveness, which takes time. I feel like there are some things I can forgive, but others I cannot (not yet anyway). As I work through each layer of hurt, perhaps there is a layer of forgiveness in there too. It just takes a while.

-Forgiveness does NOT mean trust-Just because we forgive someone does not mean that we have to trust the person that we have forgiven. A person who is truly repentant will turn away from the action that hurt you and will not continue the said action. When those we trust the most continue the actions that hurt us the most, then they have not truly repented. They haven't turned away from that behavior, which means they haven't been worthy enough to receive your trust. However, they should receive your forgiveness. Why you ask?

-Forgive others because Christ forgave us-Christ's blood was spilled to cover all of our sins (did ya get that? ALL of them!). If He can forgive me of ALL of my sins, I am supposed to forgive my brothers and sisters of theirs (not always easy though).

-Forgiveness is for you, not them-When I forgive someone who has wronged me, it is between me and the Lord, not me and that person. UNforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It just isn't going to happen. When I forgive, I don't even have to tell that person. It really has little to do with them. What it does do is strengthen the relationship I have with the Lord and helps my walk grow stronger. It doesn't let that person "off the hook" or imply that you think the behavior is "acceptable," it is a release for you.

Luke 6:37 says, "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." I certainly want God's favor and forgiveness on me.

I believe forgiveness might be the most difficult God has asked His children to do.

I'm still learning...

Well, this isn't the usual Mommy School post, but it is about teaching the twinkies. I want them to learn to forgive others, but more importantly, I want them to realize how much Christ has forgiven them.

Press Here Activities

I am extremely thrilled that I have two littles that LOVE to read. We can literally take a stack of books and sit and read them together from beginning to end, which is no easy feat when you have two squirmy three year olds! I firmly believe the saying that says, "Readers are made on the laps of their parents." It's a lot of fun to now hear Brother and Sister "read" books themselves. They can recall and picture walk with the best of them. They can also read some phonics readers with basic sight words and word families!

We recently discovered the book Press Here by Herve Tullet. Let me implore you to run and get this book. I promise, even if you have a child who is hesitant to sit on your lap and read, he will once you pull this book out! It is a series of dots (pretty basic) but the neat thing about this book is that it is interactive. The kiddos do fun things to the dots (rub, blow, tilt) and the subsequent picture illustrates that! It is so much fun! It also introduces color mixing, which is quite fun for littles. Here are a few activites we did with the book (some I have pictures for, some not).

1. Contact Paper Circles-This was a lot of fun! I just cut a bunch of circles out of tissue paper and brother and sister put them on the contact paper. After the large circle was completely covered, we hung it on the window and you can see the colors blending to make the secondary colors!


2. Tilting and Turning-I have toilet paper tubes with magent backing on them that we use for our marble run on our fridge. We made a hand-held marble run on a baking sheet and tried to get the marble to run through the tubes by tilting the pan (just like in the book).

3. Q-tip Dot Painting-I put circles on white copy paper and only gave the littles the primary colors. They used those to fill the circles with dots only using the q-tip (I am planning to revist this sometime in the future when we study Monet).


4. Venn Diagram Color Mixing-I drew a Venn Diagram on white copy paper and the kiddos took two primary colors and colored in the circles, which allowed them to see what colors they created in the overlapping sections (I forgot a pic, which is sad because these were neat).

5. Kool-Aid Playdough- We made colorful Kool-Aid playdough, which didn't really have anything to do with the book, except that we got to mix it and then press the dough!


8. Patterns-We made patterns using circles made out of the primary colors. We love making patterns of any kind!

7. The last thing we did was create our own Press Here book. We made ours about a balloon that we can blow up and it floats up. Then we pull it down. Eventually it pops! It was pretty cute and the kiddos were really good about coming up with ideas for what to make the balloon do.

If you are looking for some other ideas for Press Here, you can try downloading this mini-book for starters!

Herve Tullet also has some great coloring books that we will be looking out for as well.

10 Super Easy Easter Crafts and Activities

It's been a whole month since I've made a post-Ekkk! That's pretty bad. I'll try to do better (try).

So here are some super easy and cute Easter crafts that we did for Mommy School this past week. Most of these are from pinterest, but some I have just made up. If you need something for the littles to create on Easter Sunday, this is your one-stop shop! My kiddos are three but these can be adapted for any age.

1. Montessori Egg Trace-This was an idea I read about in a Montessori activity book. It was great! My kiddos have had limited opportunity to trace items, so this was a new experience and they also worked on fine motor skills to draw the lines from one side of the egg to the other.











2. Egg Wreath-I cut eggs shapes out of construction paper and let the kiddos decorate them (much less mess that the real decorating kind. We'll save that one for later). Then we taped them around a paper form. You could use this to illustrate the Easter story to tell a sequence or make specific patterns on each egg. The possibilities are endless!

3. Crayon Resist Eggs (Or Tape Resist)-I wrote a message on a white paper egg with white crayon. The kiddos painted water colors all over the egg. We've done this type of project before and the kiddos call it magic painting! If you do the tape resist, put the blue painter's tape down and water color on top. Let dry and remove painter's tape. Make sure to use water colors. If you use regular finger paints, you may tear the paper while removing the paint.



4. Egg Match Up-Here is one of the great projects I found on pinterest. I wrote on plastic eggs (top is capital letter and bottom is lowercase) and the kiddos had to match. We also made a number set which had dots on the top and the numbers on the bottom. I went all the way to 20, which got a bit difficult with the dots.

5. Egg Pattern Match Up-This one was super easy for my kiddos, but they had fun racing to see who could get the most (and it was a completely independent activity, so I could work on something else)! I made an egg shape out of lots of different scrapbook papers and glued them to white paper (index cards might work too). Then I cut the card in the middle and then scattered them all over the table. Then the kiddos just had to race to see who could make the most matches!

6. Styrofoam Egg Print-I learned this process from my Art for Elementary School teachers class. It is very easy and fun to do. Before the activity I cut an egg shape out of styrofoam and drew a pattern on it with a pen. Then the twinkies each painted their egg and then pressed it down on paper to make a print. Then we wiped off the paint and made another print with a different color. Fun and Easy!


7. Peep Patterns!-Who doesn't love a peep at Easter (actually I don't). The kiddos got to try their first peep this year, so they were thrilled. Then we made patterns with some peeps I had printed on paper. I got the image from Petit Design Co (she made a cute peep shirt, so check that out!). Anyway, we made various patterns, which my kiddos are AWESOME at (if I may brag for just a minute). I think at this point they are only "supposed" to know AB patterns, but mine come up with some crazy ones. Sister said what if I did, "purple pink pink green, purple pink pink, green"-Crazy, right? That's ABBC for those of you wondering! This activity was really fun, especially since we got to eat a peep afterward!


8. Peep Counting- While working with the peeps, we just decided to keep right on working. I printed a basket for each kiddo and then some number cards. They picked a number card and had to put that many peeps in their basket! Fun, easy, and good practice!


9. Name Egg Hunt-Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this, but hopefully this description will be enough. I used colorful scrapbook paper and wrote one letter on each egg. Then I gave each kiddo a basket that had a simple sight word on it. They had to find ONLY the eggs that spelled that word (Brother just wanted to find ALL the eggs- "All of 'em, Mommy"). Then we glued them on the basket.

10. Bunny Handprint-Since you know I'm such a sucker for a handprint art, you knew there had to be at least one, right? Here's a cute litte bunny (or kitten-did you know baby rabbits are called kittens? I didn't until we read Rabbits by Gail Gibbons. I cut out all the pieces and let the kiddos figure out how it went together. They did really well and only got confused with the ears. Sister said, "Mommy, I'm going to spell bunny on the top," and then began to sound out the letters, which is something she is doing for EVERYTHING nowadays. I wasn't really paying attention and when I looked over, she already had B U N Y on her paper! I told her there were two N's and she had left a large space, so she was able to fit it in. I was really proud of her for sounding it all out by herself!

No, We Haven't Become Extinct!

Ok, so I know it's been a really long time since I posted something (like a month..geesh). We've had A LOT going on. Brother and Sister's Poppa had to have an emergency surgery in the middle of Feb and had some complications from that. He is at home now, thankfully, and on the mend. We've also been getting more involved in our church, which is great. We did some Valentine's Day activities and we've just started our dinosaur unit, which is what I wanted to share today. I have some math activites that we have been doing that are very fun.

Stegasaurus Order

I see great potential with this little stegasaurus! I put magnetic backing on the bony plates so that we can use them on our baking sheets and they won't get frustrated with moving pieces. I'm thinking in the future we'll do even/odd, count the plates by 2's etc.

Dino Ten Frames
I think ten frames are wonderful for determining more or less and quickly determining amounts. We've been counting the tops and the bottoms and making all sorts of different equations. If you want to know more about ten frames you can go here.

Sorting
Of course, we did all sorts of sorts (ha-ok, I know that was bad). We sorted the dino toys by color, type, size, etc.



Dino Patterns

We made different patterns with the colors of the dinos and the types of dinos (stegasaurus, t-rex, stegasaurs, t-rex). We've got AB & ABC patterns down! We're going to try some more complex patterns now.



Measuring Dinos

I love this picture! We measured our dinos using nonstanard measurement (unifix cubes). We measured the heighth and the length of our dinos.




Adding Sets

Since we have a really good grasp of number sense from 1-10, we've been combining sets to make different sums. This picture doesn't really show how we do the set combining, but it does show two addends and the sum. So, here's what we do:

1. We have two different sets. I usually draw two large circles with a plus sign between them and a large line under the circles.

2. The kids put different amounts of dinos in each circle and count each one. Then, we write the numbers below the circles.

3. We scoot all the dinos below the equals line and count them again. Ta-Da! Addition!



Well, that's some DINO math. I'll post literacy, science, and art activities later!

Another month ends...

And so another month ends. This month has brought abut some beautiful and challenging changes for me. I am still struggling with a great deal of emotional issues, which I don't think will cease any time soon. While that seems daunting and negative, alas! it is not (all anyway). I am learning about letting go and trying "to be present" everyday with the kids. There are lots of things of which I must let go and not just the obvious.
The kids were playing at the park on an unseasonably warm day last week and I was reflecting back over the past year and what a difference a year can make. I was thinking that this time last year I was getting a group of third graders to achieve in state testing. Everyone in education knows that after Christmas comes test prep!Now, I am teaching college students! Still teaching reading (my favorite) and even still teaching it to struggling students. While I miss many things about the classroom, I feel that this is where I am supposed to be. Clearly God's hand has been in evident in my life. What a blessing it has been to be home with the twinkies during this transition and move. I am just starting to really feel it and relish in the enjoyment of having the time to read books, watch movies, sew, and cook! All of which I do after I have spent the day teaching and playing with my own children (because I'm not falling in the bed exhausted-well, most days anyway).

At church, we have been working on a series about Games and how we need to stop playing games with God and His church. It's time to step over the line and be fully committed to giving, growing, and serving. This is a time of growth for me and clearly God has put me in this place to grow closer to Him. In time's of loneliness, God is often crying out for a relationship with me (when it should be ME crying out for that relationship). It's my hope this year will be a year of growth and release for me. I'm hoping for growth in the Lord and release from the anchors that weigh heavy and me and keep me grounded in this world. (If you're interested, watch this HILARIOUS video-If you grew up on Nintendo and Mario, you'll love it!)
I've made several personal goals this year (perhaps I'll share more in a less winded post) one of which is to read more books. My goal is to read 52 (one each week) which should be easy-I hope! I just finished Eat, Pray, Love and what a relevant book it was for me in my life right now. I didn't always agree with everything in it and our beliefs are quite different, but just as I teach my students about the value in all literature, I did manage to glean the desire for God, enjoying what he has giving me, and finding balance in this crazy hectic life!

And enough of the waxing poetic.....

Here is the completed January Homeschool Plan that I posted at the beginning of the month. I have done a little color coding on this chart. Anything that is yellow did not get accomplished. Anything that is pink was added and not on the first chart. Anything in blue or pink was done! I thought it would be neat to see how much we actually got accomplished. Call it the "data driven" teacher in me, but I want to see some growth!


And here is the new calendar for February. Of course, we're doing Valentine's for the first half of the month. My plan is to do some activities about dinosaurs for the second half of the month!

If you have hung in with this post for this long, you deserve a treat! I wish I could have you click a link and get a Target Giftcard, or chocolate chip cookie, or whatever it is you like! But, I cannot do such fancy HTML coding. I can give you a penguin and fish rhyming game to play. If you would like it, just click Penguin Rhyme Time.

Happy End of January-
K

PS. Our January Book list is completed! We read something all but two days this month, for a total of 75 books read and 51 different titles read! That's pretty exciting (I think anyway-I know, I'm a nerd!)

A Little Freebie for you....

This is the first time I have created a Freebie for my site! It's kind of exciting. I was making this little conversation heart coloring page for my twinks and I thought I would up load it here as well. It is full of very simple sight words (the first few on the Fry list I think). Sister knows all of these. Brother knows about half. On a positive note, sis decoded a lot of two letter words this week (mostly rimes, which is great!). I'm so proud of them! If you use the sight word coloring page, I would love to know what you thought-Happy coloring!

Just click here to see the worksheet.


I'll be back later this week to tell you new things I'm planning for homeschool for the month of Feb!

This week at our house.... (Well, two weeks actually)

I'm a little behind on the posting. Sorry to the two of you who read this blog (Grammy and Nona). Oh wait my Aunt Robin just told me she was reading it, so that makes three! We went for a visit to Poppa and Nona's in there and we had a birthday party of J-Man! So, we've been trying to stay busy in the meantime. We're continuing our snow theme, even though as I see the weather report right now, it is currently 60 degrees in our neck of the woods. Oh well. Fine by me.
Here are some things we did:

We talked about Penguins and where they live. The kiddos can also tell you that polar bears and penguins live at opposite poles. They can also tell you that the daddy penguin stays with the egg while the mommy goes back to the ocean for food. And that the leopard seal eats the penguins.

Here are a few math things we did. We worked on making winter shapes with pattern blocks. We reviewed the shapes (especially trapeziod and rhombus). And then we did a little sy-mitten-try (sorry, couldn't help it). They both really liked this. I think it was because they got to smush their paintings!

I saw this cute little snowman on Pinterest and wanted the kiddos to make them. I added a little math to it by having them make the square in a pattern. They also had to draw the circles themselves. You can't really tell by Brother's squares are stacked on top of each other. They also had to cut out the squares themselves from strips of paper (for some cutting practice).

Yes, we are still obsessed with The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats as mentioned before (see previous post). I found this mixed media art from Pitter Patter Art and knew it would be perfect for my two. Brother chose the last page for his art and mostly painted and painted, while Sis chose the sledding/sliding Peter for hers. I cut out the Peters and they glued them on to their paintings. I think they came out great!

Here is Brother's art.

And here are Sis's.

This project is a crayon resist. I have LOVED crayon resist since I learned about it in my Art for Education class. I have probably used it as my "go-to" artsy activity for a lot of different ages. For now, I wrote the kiddo's names in white crayon and drew some snowflakes on their white paper. Then they water colored on top of it. They ooohhhed and ahhhhed. Brother even said it was "Magic Paint." And here's the best part-They were still and quiet for at least 30 min!

Here's one of the last things we did last week. I've been working on a few sight words with the twinkies. Sis has her's down pretty well. Brother still needs some work, so I thought I would make a kinesthetic activity! I taped down sight words on the kitchen floor. Each kiddo had their own color. When I shouted out a word they had to jump on it. It was so fun! We'll definitely be playing this one again. I'm getting ready to read Boys and Girls Learn Differently, which of course I know, but my schema ;) is limited, so I'm going to read some to build my background knowledge.

I also have our book list to post and another few things, but the oven timer is beeping at me, which means the meatloaf is ready! I'm also back at work for the new semester and I have a bit of a commute this time, so things get hectic from time to time (anybody else feel that way?).

Happy Learning!

The Snowy Day

My children apparently do not read the weather report! It has been unusually warm here, but we've been doing nothing but reading about SNOW! Our new obsession is Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day. So this week we did a lot of crafts and learning games with our good friend Peter and his snowy day. We will definitely have to get some more of the Peter series books! Here's what we did this week:

We got a new Melissa and Doug alphabet magnet set for Christmas, so we've been sorting lowercase and uppercase everyday. We've also been spelling our names and other simple words.

This is brother's "Don't See Me" face. He does NOT like to have his picture taken (most of the time), and yes, sometimes we do work in our pajamas!

We also made snowflake stamp paintings like the end pages of The Snowy Day (for some reason it is not letting me italicize or underline the title, which is really bothering me!).

I made those stampers with foam stickers stuck on bottle caps. I LOVE pinterest!

To continue our winter theme, we made these cute little handprint mittens

(remember I'm a sucker for a handprint craft!). They turned out SO cute!

For a little math, we made snowmen using lots of different shapes and we talked about sizes and order and so on. We also reviewed the shapes we used (hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus etc.).

I'm so glad the princess was able to join us for this activity!

We've also been working really hard on sight words. We played a new sight word memory game, which brother LOVED! It was the first time that he wanted to say the words and it wasn't like

pulling teeth to get it out of him.

Another Snowy Day activity we did was work on sorting beginning sounds. We sorted "Starts with S" things from the story and "Does not start with S" things from the story.

We also did a little interactive writing with this and the kiddos wrote the beginning letters for the pictures.

We also made a flow map of the sequence of the story. We had to reread it a few times to make sure we got it correct, but trust me, they didn't mind! I'm working on getting all these things together to make sort of a Snowy Day Tot Pack out of it, but I'm about halfway finished.

Another thing I am trying to do this month is chart what books we are reading each day. I thought it would be neat to look back at the end of the month and see how many books we read. Here is what we read this week:

Sunday: The Snowy Day, Berenstein Bears Count their Blessings, Berenstein Bears Too Much Junk Food

Monday: The Snowy Day, Tops and Bottoms, Asparagus to Zucchini: A Vegetable Alphabet

Tuesday: The Snowy Day, The Biggest Snowball of All, Let it Snow, Mine-a-saur

Wednesday: The Snowy Day, Brave Irene, Put Me in the Zoo

Thursday: The Snowy Day, Ready, Set, Skip!

Friday: The House that Jack Built, Put Me in the Zoo, Lost Little Monkey

Saturday: Jan Brett's Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Construction Countdown, The Great Dogwash

Wheeewww! That is a lot of work in a week! It was a great week and we got a lot accomplished! I love being able to be with these two little miracles. Thank you God for giving me the opportunity.

Something New!

Since it's a new year, I decided I would post something on here that I've never posted before. I know you are all waiting with bated breath! It's a RECIPE! I've never posted one before and I thought it might be fun. This is an old recipe that I've made a million times. It's so good and easy! It freezes great and we always have leftovers. This soup is also great the next day! I love stuffed peppers, but with three year olds, it isn't too easy to eat a giant pepper! So this is sort of an "Unstuffed Pepper Soup." I think this recipe is something I modified from Taste of Home, but I honestly cannot remember. I hope you will try it (and like it, of course!). Let me know if you do!


Here is what you will need:

And of Course:


And here are the simple directions:
1. Brown the hamburger, onions, and green pepper and drain. Set aside.

2. Mix can of tomato soup and one can full of beef stock.


3. Add drained hamburger mixture to the tomato soup mixture.


4. Add cooked rice to mixture.


5. Heat on low until desired consistency is reached! So good!