watering it down

Melanie wanted to do an art project while her brother and sister were napping. I offered her some water colors. At first I was just going to let her paint alone, but then I decided to make it more meaningful.

I chose a word to sound out and paint at the top of the page. WATER. After spelling the word, I told her to draw a picture of it.

I expected to see a picture of waves, like the ocean, but when I came back to look at her work she had drawn a sippy cup. And it was a pretty darn good picture of a sippy cup.

Ten minutes, new word, cool art.

Take ten!

ar, oo, sh!

Teach some new sounds and watch them grow!

I took a few minutes the other morning to teach some new letter combination sounds to Melanie and Easton.
1.) I showed them the letters on paper.
2.) I told them what they sounded like.
3.) We practiced.
4.) We sounded out some words using the new sounds.
5.) We played a game.

Easy, simple, 10 minutes of learning fun!

For the game, I had the new sounds written up on top of the paper. Below those I had a group of words using the new letter combinations. The kids had to circle all the words that had the "sh" sound in them, the "ar" sounds, and the "oo" sounds until all the words were circled. They also had to sound the words out and tell me what the words said.

See, nothing special, yet the kids still liked it!

It doesn't take much to teach your kids, just a little time!

Just for fun, here is a picture of the letter T Easton made out of cheese and a graham cracker. :)

Take Ten!

Counting on me...

It's all about counting to one hundred these days. We count by ones, we count by tens, but try teaching to count by fives and you get ignored. :) Oh well, they'll learn the other ways to count someday.

For now, we play catch on a regular basis and it is super important that we count our catches until we miss. And when you miss, you have to say "aww I missed!" It's really cute and really quite fun.

It's also important to teach the girls how to curtsy and the boy how to bow, in case there are any tricks or something cool to show mom in between games of catch.

So far the dance moves and tricks between our games have been pretty entertaining.

Our kids are counting more than numbers in their lives. They count on us to be their biggest cheerleaders!

Take Ten!

Learnterest...Pinterest

I have become officially addicted to Pinterest. I have tried recipes, DIY projects, and it has given me lots of ideas for things to do with the kids.

Below is something I "pinned" on Pinterest to do with the kids.

While the idea behind this game is really cool, I just do not have the energy, time, money to make something like this...so I improvised!

Introducing my cheaper, less energy expending, less time taking version:

This is our muffin tin filled with little things from around the house. We went through each little muffin cup and counted the things inside and then wrote down the number on paper. Double points for mom! I got them to practice counting and writing!

I filled the tins with boy things, girly things, random things. One of the cups has an envelope I found  in a desk drawer that was covered in stickers. They had to count the stickers on it! Make it interesting!

Engage those little minds!

Take Ten!

Life's little math lessons...

I'm always looking for "busy" activities for my kids to do by themselves so I can do things like shower without a fight ensuing. There is nothing worse than being in the shower and hearing your kids fighting in another room.

The activity I made up yesterday promoted math skills, matching skills, and playing skills. The kids liked it, I liked it, and it kept them busy for the ten minutes I needed.

Pull out the blocks or legos.
Tell the kids to divide them up by color and then count each color.
When you get back to the room, have them report the number of each color to you.

When I got back I was told there were 16 red blocks. That was as far as they got before they decided to build castles and cities.

To make it a little more math worthy, I took the yellow blocks and we did some adding and subtracting with them.

Example: Place a line of 6 blocks together, take away 3 and asked how many are left.  I asked: 6 blocks minus 3 blocks equals how many? They count what is left and answer.

Take Ten!

Easy peasy ABCeasy...

I made up a game for my littlest girl. She doesn't get much one on one time with me because her big brother and sister don't always nap. On this day, she woke up before they did, so we played a fun game of Easy Peasy ABCeasy. 

Yes, I made up that name and yes, I get to name it because I also made up this game. It's not anything special, but it was fun for her and she learned some letters along the way.

Get some ABC blocks, make a "castle" and let your little knock it down. Grab the blocks that fell, and name the letters. Repeat. And repeat again. Then do it again! Get the idea?

Your little one will love it! You will love it. Everyone involved will have fun, I promise!

Take Ten!

Play dough and PJ's...

What? You don't make play dough in your pajamas like we do?

This was the first time we've made play dough and it is surprisingly easy. We chose to make a Valentine pink play dough.

Supplies: Kindle set up on table with recipe displayed, oil, salt, flour, water, cream of tartar, food coloring

Here is the complete recipe with instructions: play dough recipe

Mix it all together in a pot, cook on medium-low heat until it clumps together and looks like play dough. It took a total of 15 minutes and voila! We had pink play dough!

The kids were excited, I was excited, even the dog was excited but only because he wanted to eat it. :)

Take Ten!