Creative-Mommy

Well, for those who are interested..here is an update on life here. I am having a hard time posting pics because my phone, which I was using went KAPUT and my new phone takes HORRIBLE pics. So, I have been avoiding the blog. But I forgot the reason for the blog in the first place. It was not just a place to show off our homeschooling activities, it was a place for me to have a place to talk about the things that are going on in my life and to update family and friends on those things too.

Baby Abby is not so much a tiny baby anymore. She is already 3 1/2 months old. It is so hard to believe. I am still struggling with her birth, but we are getting through it day by day. Even knowing how things turned out at the hospital though, I would have waited for labor again in a heartbeat. No matter who it pissed off. She has been the healthiest baby. And she is just beautiful. She has the biggest smile I have ever seen.

Liz and Rachel and Julia have been working on school. I am loving having all three of them home, and it is such a blessing to watch the relationship between my girls grow and flourish. They are doing so well. I am really proud of them. Sometimes I think its a good thing that I have bright kids, since we are still learning our way around homeschooling.

Julia's new favorite game is what we call THE BUMP GAME. Basically, I stand up 8-10 crayons on the table and she bumps them over, the only catch being that she picks one that corresponds to a color I name. We win when all the crayons are laying down. It has increased her knowledge of colors by a lot and she loves it. Rachel is working on pre-reading. She has been showing an increased interest in letters and the sounds they make in regards to the printed word. She has known all of her letters for quite a while now but is just now getting to the point of realizing those printed symbols correspond with a sound.

Elizabeth is reading chapter books, working on her math, writing and just loving being able to learn at her own pace, which seems to be a tad faster than her age.

Well, I am off this morning to make a Thanksgiving Tree. We are making a tree to put up on the front door and between now and Thanksgiving we will each be writing something we are thankful for each day and putting it on the tree. Thanksgiving I plan to have everyone share the things we are Thankful for. I know Jason especially has been feeling a little low lately, and think this would be a great way to count the many blessings we do and take a fresh look at life.

Love and blessings to you all.

I have several craft and fun pictures and information to upload and will be doing so in the next couple of days. As always, thanks for your continued patience. This time especially it will be worth it. I found the GREATEST site ever!

My littlest one in a fit of crankiness!

This is an absolutely awesome site devoted to learning about other cultures and countries through crafts and swaps. Worth being checked out and bookmarked.

Well we started our homeschooling year today. I was awakened at 7:30 by a little girl who was super excited to get started on school- namely she wanted to make caramel apples for a snack. One of my goals this year is to involve my girls more in cooking, to instill that love of cooking and to teach them the lessons that are inherent in food preparation: patience, measuring skills, reading a recipe etc...

Since we are starting our year off with A, the snacks we will be making all feature something that starts with the letter A. Two of these I will post on today are Alligator Swamp Water and Caramel Apples. Caramel apples are not usually a major production, except that the girls and I made our own caramel. The recipe is super-easy and very tasty and unlike other caramel recipes this one uses ingredients that are already in your cupboard. I call it 1 Cup Caramels.

One Cup Caramels
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1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup Karo syrup
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
dash salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in a sturdy saucepan. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until soft ball stage is reached. On my candy thermometer, to set properly I cook it to 245 degrees F, but the soft ball test, of dropping candy into cold water also is an accurate test. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. If making caramel apples, dip apples in hot caramel. If not, pour caramel into a greased 8x11 or 9x13 pan. Cool completely. I had some large leaf shaped sprinkles from last year and after the apples had sat for a few moments, I let Rachel press leaves onto the caramel for pretty fall apples.


Alligator Swamp Water
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Mint chocolate chip ice cream
2 liter bottle of ginger ale, sprite, 7 up or Dr Pepper
Chocolate ice cream topping

Put 1-2 scoops of ice cream in a clear glass. Add soda until foam reaches the top of the glass. Let sit a moment until the ice cream colors the soda. Top floating ice cream with chocolate syrup. Serve immediately.

Mostly I wanted to see if I could post pictures directly from my phone, which it appears as though I can. But this is my baby, 23 days old. In my opinion she is getting prettier and prettier everyday. I am not biased, I assure you...

Found here originally: http://mamakatslosinit.blogspot.com/2009/08/writers-workshop-things-i-have-learned.html
I thought it looked fun so I decided to give it a shot...
Choose a prompt, post it on your blog, and come back and sign Mr. Linky. For good comment karma try to comment on the three blogs above your name!!

Things I have learned from my toddler. Parents cannot hear a baby crying two feet away if you do not tell them about it. Uncooked noodles and cat food are delicious. Playdough in the bathtub equals gooey squishy fun. Toys are so much easier to find if they are scattered all over the floor. 15 baths a day is a perfectly acceptable number. Fruit snacks = mana from heaven. If a story is good the first time around it will be amazing the 2 millionth time around, and its best to space those readings as closely together as possible. Any squishy medium is great for finger painting. No one wears shoes unless they are going for a walk or to the park.

Links: 5 Little Shapes and 5 Green and Speckled Frogs both came from http://www.childcareland.com. The flashcards I sent to a friend for her little boy, and forgot to save the website. If anyone knows where they came from please let me know!

I find that flashcards are great for my kids, not so much so I can walk around and drill them on whatever it is we are working on, but so they have something to hold and carry around. Julia will take one to me and ask about it, then take it to her dad, and her sisters then back to me. The reinforcement works very well, and it gives her a special manipulative that is hers to "play with". The set I made her is for basic colors. This site had many more I would have loved to have, so please let me know if you are familiar with it. I saved the file to my computer, but not the address to my favorites.

The shape song is to the tune of Three Blind Mice, and can be found on Shelley's childcareland site, under the freebies. It promotes basic shape recognition and once again provides a manipulative for my daughter to use and move around.

5 Green and Speckled Frogs is a song I learned in pre-k many years ago. My oldest learned it in pre-k as well. The frogs themselves came from Shelley's site, although any clip art of frogs would work. You could also make a glove puppet or finger puppets, depending on your child's interests and learning style. The pattern was for a flannel board, which I do not have at this time. However, as I have shared before, I do have a metal board my husband made me, and so I find that magnets work well for us. As always, everything on here has been reinforced with packing tape, although contact paper or laminating sheets would work as well.

Many people I know do not actually do school work with their younger kids, but instead give them something to keep them out of the way. I find that involving all my girls in school makes things go more smoothly for me, and the little ones are learning more than I would have expected.

At not quite 2 Julia can sing the ABC song, count to 10 on her own, manipulate objects to 10, recognize basic shapes, as well as knowing the words to several nursery rhymes. She is also learning the letters in her name. I do not sit down with her and drill her and make her do schoolwork. But she loves to sing, so we sing, and she loves to count spoons, so we count spoons and she loves to sit on my lap and dictate shape-drawing or letter writing. So we do all those things and I find that she is already gaining a love of learning. When I say it is time to do school, she is often running at the front of the pack to get to the table.

That to me is the beauty of homeschooling.

I am in the midst of preparing for school to start at my house. I had hoped to be all ready and started by Monday, but I seriously overestimated myself. Hey, it happens. So, today and the rest of the week are crack the whip time. Elizabeth will be home Sunday, so we will all start on Monday with school work, which means the rest of this week is time for me to set up our school room, aka my living room.

Rachel will be doing ABCs. I have some file folder games for her, a lapbook, recipes for snacks, an animal book, coloring pages etc... I will be posting as we do each letter. The first one, is of course A. We will have an alligator wall set up, as many of our crafts and science projects involve alligators. We will also be making pinweels for AIR. There are several songs we will be learning and a fingerplay. (All the information for this will be posted online, as soon as I get my pics up). I will post the links for you as well, and if there is anything on here that you are interested in, template-wise, feel free to leave me a message and I can email you what you need. I will also post the snack recipes.

Julia will be learning the 5 Green and Speckled Frog song, complete with magnetic puppets, working on the 5 basic shapes, colors and reinforcing her counting skills. There will be some overlap with Rachel's school work, as her coloring pages lend themselves well to kids Julia's age as well.

Elizabeth will be making a cat lapbook http://www.homeschoolshare.com/cats_lapbook.php found here. The lapbook Rachel is making is also found through homeschoolshare.com. It's a great resource, especially if you are new to lapbooking. She is also learning American History, beginning with the Native Americans. My hope is to have some overlap between the lessons I am using for her and Thanksgiving.

Please note that almost everything I use I find free online, or get the idea from a book I have and go from there. I do not purchase any materials online whatsoever so you will seeing a lot of links on my blog this year (as much of Elizabeth's stuff especially is found online) and they are all to free materials you can print out on your own computer, or download and save. I promise I will get this laid out in an orderly manner so you can find what you are looking for. I will be posting off and on over the next few days, as I get stuff organized and set up.

Well, it looks like Elizabeth will be taking a week long vacation with my aunt, so we will commence the school work when she gets home. I started gathering the materials I needed today. I found an entire workbook online for Liz for math, which will at least tell me what concepts she needs to work on and we can go from there. I also found a lapbook for her to do for science, and a great American History website for social studies. Throw in some vocab and a book/reading worksheets from LearningPage.com and I think we have her covered. For Rachel we will be focusing mainly on ABCs. My plan is to do one letter a week. I will be using a lapbook for each letter as well as resources and templates from several of my books. The crafts I will probably just spread out among all three girls. For Julia, we will be focusing on counting songs, stories, nursery rhymes etc in addition to the basics like shapes, colors, numbers, etc.

I will, as always be putting up the resources, as I find them and posting pictures for your viewing. I was dreading school starting up again, just due to the amount of work in putting together not only one, but three curriculums, but what I found today is that I am actually very excited to get started. So, we will be gearing up. I may start with Rachel next week, while Elizabeth is gone, but it will depend on how quickly I get her information scanned in to the computer and printed off.

I also need to make a supply run. I have been keeping busy making diapers for Baby and making cloth shopping bags. My kids keep absconding with the bags I make, which is OK since the ones I have been practicing on have Dora the Explorer, Tinker Bell and Cinderella. I also want to get started making some Christmas presents. It will just be a matter of getting into some sort of routine. I am kind of putting any major plans on hold, while I wait to start school.

I would also like to get back into working on my novel, which I have started on the Pheonix Rising blog. It would be nice to carve that time for myself again, at least until Bible Study starts again. But, as always, best laid plans and all of that. LOL. I also need to finish Liz's toucan bookmark. Wow, the more I type, the longer my to-do list gets. I guess I should get off here and actually get busy.

I will have some pics up soon as I start making games and manipulatives for the kids.

Well, baby Abigail Grace made her grand debut on the world on July 28, 2009, one day after Elizabeth's 6th birthday. She weighed 7lbs 6oz and was 21 inches long. Today is her one week birthday and she is doing great. She is a happy, peaceful baby.

The rest of us are trying to get back to some semblance of order. It will no doubt take us a bit, but the goal is to start school again on a serious note by the beginning of September. I am currently looking for any sites, ideas etc so if you know any let me know. Elizabeth will be in first grade, Rachel will be Pre-K/Kinder and Julia is Pre-K.

Thank you so much to everyone for everything. We will be back to business soon!

Well, I am still here, and still waiting for baby. Apparently she is more a slow-cooker than a microwave kinda gal. Its been nice though; we have been spending time with the girls. We took Liz to get her birthday presents this past weekend (it's early, but I didn't want to try to be doing it around who knows what else). Then we spent the 4th at the park.

Not much going on here. Just trying to stay cool and get through this summer. I am looking forward to fall so much! I hope to be back posting regularly after the end of this month. Thank you all for bearing with me and being patient. That is one of the nice things about homeschooling though, is that we can fit it around our schedule and our lives.

Peace and blessings to each of you.

I know this is usually a blog about our homeschooling journey, but these days it has been so hot here and I am so tired, we haven't done much. Mostly we have been reading, and coloring and singing the ABC song. I am counting down the days until this little one makes her appearance. Last night, or this morning rather, I woke up at about 5 with contractions. I was up with them for a couple of hours, and figured this had to be it, then I dozed off and slept until 9. When I got up, the contractions started again, mostly in my back, and they have been intermittant all morning. But, they aren't getting closer together and they aren't getting stronger (at least not yet). I am glad I didn't call Jason in the middle of the night and tell him I was in labor.

Luckily, he will be home from his class this afternoon sometime. It has been a rough couple of days here, due to some issues with family that I will not go into at this point. But as I sit here and type this, I am getting phone calls from an unknown number and so am pretty sure the family in question is up to some new tricks this morning.

I am just praying this baby gets here soon! I am so worn out and not sleeping well. But I will keep everyone who needs to know posted, and be patient with my homeschooling hiatus. I don't know why I was thinking we could manage a whole curriculum this summer. I must have been out of my mind.

Pretzel Fish

2 C warm water
1 T yeast
1 t sugar
4 C flour
1 T table salt
2 T baking soda
1 T sea salt

In large bowl combine 1 1/2 C. warm water, sugar and yeast. When yeast is bubbly, add table salt and flour (1/2 c. at a time- more flour may be needed). When stiff dough is formed (similar to bread dough), place ball of dough in bowl and let rise until doubled. When dough is doubled, punch down. Pull off golf ball sized pieces and shape into long thin ropes. Twist ropes into fish shapes. Mix last 1/2 c. water with baking soda. Dip fish shaped dough into the water and place on a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt (or other topping of your choice) and bake at 400 degrees for 15-18 minutes.

I apologize for the lack of postings lately. It has been sweltering here, and i have not had the energy for much. I did make Elizabeth a set of magnetic poetry. I looked online for a word list, where someone else had made a set for their own kids. However, much to my suprise the only ones I could find were overpriced commercial sets. I bought some magnetic strips at Wal-Mart (88 cents for 15 strips.) I stuck them to a piece of paper and wrote several copies of each word running from and, the and of to octopus, flashy, fish, seahorse. I covered the strips with tape and cut them apart. Elizabeth can then play with it to make sentances or poetry on a cookie sheet. I spent less that 5 dollars, (closer to three I think) on a set of magnetic poetry that would have run me closer to 15 had I bought it retail. :)

Well, we spent yesterday repainting the girls' bedroom and assembling and repainting some bunk beds we got used from a friend of a friend. The kids were super excited to get their bunk beds finally, and although it took us almost 9 hours, we feel like it was a job well done. I cleaned their room again and repainted the walls off-white (which they badly needed) and made the trim and the beds a powdery blue (which Rachel loved since it matched her shirt lol). Anyway, just wanted to share. :)

Elizabeth and I made a drawing of a diagram of what the ocean floor looks like. I had found the detailed instructions to draw one (let me know if you need the directions) and then she and I painted it with tempera paint. The next morning, we added labels such as continental shelf, shoreline, plain and trench. (The goal for me is not that the girls memorize all these features, but that they are introduced to them and introduced to the idea that the ocean floor is not a flat surface. Eventually I am sure we will come back to oceans and I want the seeds of knowledge to be there.)

SAND MODELING DOUGH: (textured play doh!)

1 cup sand

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 teaspoon Alum

3/4 cup hot water

food coloring if desired

Mix sand, cornstarch and Alum in bowl. Add hot water and stir vigorously. Add food coloring if desired. Cook over medium heat until thick. Let dough cool. Mold into desired shapes and let dry in the sun for several days. Store any leftover dough in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Then we used this recipe to make sand modeling dough to make our own ocean floors. I will get some pictures up of the finished product, but they are still drying. The directions for the floors says to have the children make diagrams of the ocean floor and label the features. We did not go quite that far (especially as the activitiy is for 2nd graders). But the girls had a wonderful time creating sea features for their ocean floor like coral beds, tunnels, starfish etc.

It always amazes me how much kids can rise up to the expectation set for them.

While I wait for the sand dough to cool so we can make our models of the ocean floor, I thought I would post on here about some texture bags I made for the girls last night. Julia (my two year old) hardly gets as much fun school stuff in the form of games as the other girls, but she loves this. I took a very sturdy zip-loc bag and added hair gel to it. Then I took a handful of shells and wooden beads that I bought at Wal-Mart and dropped them into the gel. I sealed the bag, folding down the top and taping it. She then can squish the beads and shells around, as well as play with the gooey hait gel.

Rachel wanted a bag too, but since I was out of hair gel, I made an adaptation of it for her. I took some tempra paint and squirted it in a zip-loc bag. I then took a magic marker and wrote her name on the outside. After sealing and taping the top of the bag, I turned it over to her. She can trace the letters in her name, while playing with the squishy paint, and has a "big-girl" texture bag. Both were great hits!