A list

First, I want to mention that I do not believe that how much/little TV your kids watch is an indication of what kind of parent you are.* We all have different circumstances. I'm not swearing off TV forever (though I will admit I LOVE having it off.) After this break, we'll probably watch 30-60 minutes, and it will probably be as rewards for girls doing their jobs and helping out. I will try not to use it as a babysitter as much. But if that is what works for you, DO NOT feel guilty. I had to get to a point where I couldn't let myself feel guilty, I had to keep my sanity. Mountain winters are hard!

I also don't believe TV is inherently bad. The Girl knows all the letters and their sounds thanks to Leap Frog's Letter Factory (she actually had those down by the time she was 2 1/2!) Mickey Mouse Club House has reinforced a lot of the things I've taught her, and Little Einsteins is just fun, not to mention the classical music and art that show introduces small children to! But too much of anything is not good. And that is the point we are at!!

BUT...Spring is coming! And with it we will have so many more things to do than play outside!

Here is where I need some help. We could have many yucky weather days ahead of us, and I though I would compile a list of fun things to do instead of watching TV. What has worked for you on those days when you say "no TV" and your kids keep whining for a show? What activities do your kids LOVE? Leave me a comment and I will put together a list, or blog about it and I will link to your blog! Let's help each other. I think Babycenter.com has great ideas for all sorts of things, and a lot of the homeschooling/preschool blogs have perfect boredom busters! And sometimes just getting down and playing make believe with my kids is the only thing to quench the whining. And quite frankly, I think they'd rather play with me than watch TV anyway. (Not to be cocky, but they love me...most of the time!)

My goal is to have a list of 100 different things to do that are easy to put together. Will you help?






*Though I have heard of parents who put their babies in a high chair all day in front of a TV. There is a point where it reaches neglect, but I doubt any of us have problems with that!

No TV week

After a complete meltdown by The Girl (DD1) last Saturday, because I wouldn't let her watch ANOTHER show, I decided it was time for action. We've watched a lot of tv/movies this winter. And I mean a lot. Are you aware of the AAP's recommendation for media? Well, we met or surpassed that most days this winter. It was clear that The Girl was addicted to watching shows, and it's almost scary to see how transfixed Sweet C (barely 18 months) gets any time the TV is on.

Yesterday was our first full day of no TV. It is probably the first time in the last 3 years we have not turned any tv or movies on. Actually, we have an old TV and don't have cable or a converter box, so we don't get TV service. But we didn't turn any movies on. And do you know what? I liked it. It was nice. It felt good and we played together, read LOTS of books (which is typical in our home anyway), and just enjoyed the relative quiet. The Girl was made well aware of the NO TV for a week rule, and she didn't whine ONCE about watching a show.

So, this week we will be TV-free. Wish me luck!

This week's activities

An inspiring message I found on a friend's blog:
"If I had my child to raise all over again, I'd build self-esteem first and the house later. I'd finger paint more and point the finger less. I would do less correcting and more connecting. I'd take my eyes off my wathc and watch with my eyes. I'd take more hikes and fly more kites. I'd stop playing serious and seriously play. I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars. I'd do more hugging and less tugging." ~Diane Loomans

Five things to do with my girlies this week:
1.Play dress-up and act out a book
2. Memorize the 4th Article of Faith
3. Make up silly rhymes and illustrate them together. The more absurd, the better. ("The fat cat ate the hat. Then the rat ate the fat cat who ate the hat...") This activity will teach your child to listen for words that sound the same and to identify rhyming patterns.
4. Make pumpkin wheat honey muffins together. (Recipe below)
5. Go on a Spring Time scavenger Hunt.

PUMPKIN HONEY WHEAT MUFFINS

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ cups white flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. (heaping) all spice
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
4 eggs
15 oz. can pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil
½ cup honey
Chocolate chips (optional)


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place muffin liners or grease and flour muffin pan(s) (makes between 24 and 30 muffins).

2. In a large bowl, stir together the flours, sugar, spices, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the center of dry ingredients, and put in eggs, pumpkin, oil, and honey. Mix until dry ingredients are absorbed. Fold in chocolate chips if desired (1-2 cups). Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full.

3. Bake for 18-22 minutes in preheated oven, or until the tops of muffins spring back when lightly touched.

Finger paint link & activity plan

Due to our recent purchase, I'm not allowed to buy anything for the next year. Yeah, I took a chunk of the money we had saved for a minivan to buy my piano. But already I think DH is convinced it was a good purchase. (I hope!)

Anyway,we don't have fingerpaints, so I googled "Homemade fingerpaints" and found this link. I don't have cornstarch, so I'll use the recipe that calls for just flour and water. I know The Girl (DD1) will love this, and I hope Sweet C (DD2) won't eat it. But if she does, it isn't toxic! We should try pudding painting sometime.

Also, I solved our rolling pin dilemna (remember that I wanted a rolling pin for The Girl to use with her Play Doh?) by purchasing 2 1" dowls from the craft store. Rolling pin total: $.50 each! Suh-weet! And it works great, I didn't sand it or anything, and the Play Doh doesn't stick. We'll have to see if it works as well for homemade play dough.

I thought I would just plan 5 activities for the week, to do each day. I'm struggling to keep up with the actual Montessori preschool/tot school stuff, and I think it would be better just to have ideas of things to do. My goal is 1 hour or less of TV each day, and 2 hours or more of playing outside, at least when it's above 45 degrees.

Five Activities for the week:
1. Finger paint
2. Nature collage (after a nature scavenger hunt, of course!)
3. Write and illustrate our own story
4. Field trip (I'm thinking I'll call the firestation, which is close, and see if we can visit.)
5. Put on a couple puppet shows. (I have puppets, we just need to utilize these more frequently).

I'm also going to try to be more consistent with circle time each day, and be better about using the Book of Mormon Reader each day to read to my girlies.

A few things...

1. Our hard drive got fried. Like, we could hear it sizzling. So I have only little computer access until we get a new one, which is not a top priority. lol. I actually love being offline, it helps me keep my priorities straight. And I still have our Ipod Touch, so I'm not TOO disconnected.

2. I bought a piano today. A digital. I love it. I'm so excited. My girls enjoyed playing it today!

3. A few things on my to-do list this week:
a)find out the gender of our baby,
b)finger paint with my girls,
c)host playgroup
d)quit playgroup, because it is too much stress (it is a "drop your kid off" kind of play group, which just doesn't jive with my Girl being barely 3, and it doesn't remotely help with my need for adult socializing).
e) play my piano at least an hour a day (I've played since I was 8, but haven't had a piano since I moved away from home last decade. I'm a little rusty.)
f) find some piano students, to help convince DH that this was a good investment.
g) start cutting out felt for my quiet book pages. Deadline for finishing the pages: April 15th!
h) SMILE. A LOT!
i) make dinner and a banana cream pie for hubby on his birthday.

4. I've been really grumpy lately. By lately, I mean for the last month or so. Or maybe the last year? I don't know, but I have got to break this cycle of grumpiness. I'm hoping the warmer weather will banish sickness from our home. Which would improve my mood drastically.

5. I'd like to start walking 2 miles a day.

6. My toddler was diagnosed with RSV this week. Good thing she isn't tiny any more! Sheesh! We really haven't been healthy for more than a week at a time this winter!

7. I've done Montessori stuff the last two weeks, but I can't access the pictures on our fried hard drive. Sob.

Spring is coming!

DEAR March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

I LOVE Emily Dickinson's poetry! Today, when I remembered it was March 1, this was the first thing that came to my mind! I don't want to wish time away, but I am so glad spring is coming. Although, here in Utah, we've probably got at least a few snow storms left before summer. (We often have freak snow storms in April, May, or sometimes even June!! Gotta love this Rocky Mountain weather!) Here I am with my kiddos last spring!

Anyway, I first came accross this poem in the Emily Dickinson: Poetry for Young People. I bought the entire series of Poetry for Young People while I was teaching school, and I have never regretted it! Shakespeare, Frost, Poe, Whitman, and even Lewis Carrol. And each poem has definitions of some of the more difficult or archaic words. Let's face it, one of the reasons poetry can be difficult to comprehend is because we don't use many of the same words!

Thinking about poetry reminds me of an activity I did with my 5th graders to help improve their reading fluency and expression. One of their reading assignments during guided reading rotations was for them to pick a poem (from The Highwayman to Shel Silverstein. They could pick ANYTHING!) Every Friday, we held a "Poetry Off." Everyone performed by reading their poem (they were NOT allowed to memorize) and I graded them on fluency (how fast they read), annunciation, volume (being loud enough to be heard) and expression. My students LOVED this!

Poetry is a great genre to read to your kids from a young age! Start with Mother Goose. The Girl loves my Emily Dickinson poems, especially "I'm Nobody." I adore Scranimals and Zoo Doings by Jack Prelutsky (who, in my opinion, is a better kid poet than Silverstein.) "Don't ever make the sad mistake of stepping on a sleeping snake. Because, his jaws might be awake!" (from Zoo Doings)

So, this post about spring has turned into a post about poetry. Ah, spring is so poetic! I guess that is fitting!

Montessori Monday #2

I can't find my camera. Which means I can't find the pictures I took last week. But I'll explain a couple of the things we did:

1. We played with a button snake. Great. Idea. I pretty much have bookmarked in my crafts folder every thing that Counting Coconuts has made for her son! She's my Montessori craft mom hero. You can also use the colored felt for patterns, sorting, counting, you name it! I love felt!

2. Speaking of love, and felt, I made some felt hearts for Valentine's day and painted numbers on them with fabric puff paint. I didn't add embellishments, because I wanted her to count out for herself. DD1 wasn't as interested in the hearts as I hoped. I had her use some of the googly eyes we had (that I purchased a while ago for a project I haven't started yet) to count. She played with those for an hour, and has since practiced sorting them by size. It made a cute picture. Wish I could find my camera...

3. We also played play-doh. A mini-rolling pin and a variety of cookie cutters are on my wish list. :)

4. DD1 started showing interest in writing her letters. I can't get her to hold her pencil even remotely correctly, but she'll draw a few letters, and they aren't too bad. To help with her fine motor, I made some stencils out of old cottage cheese lids. I'll have to post a tutorial after I find my camera. Hmmm. Where is that?

I'm linking to:

Quiet Book Swap

I am the queen of unfinished projects. I will gather materials for a big project, start full steam ahead, and fizzle out quickly. That is, unless I have motivation. Things like my baby being due any day, or making a gift for someone else, or working on a project with others are all great motivators for me! I started a quiet book a while ago. I finished (almost) about 3 pages. But I didn't use any interfacing to line the muslin, so the pages were so floppy.

Anyway, I'm working on a quiet book swap. This will be tons of fun, and we need at least 10-15 people! Details are here (A great blog you should follow, by the way!) Email me with any questions or if you'd like to participate. Depending on how long it takes to get a group together, the deadline will probably be sometime before August. :)

Wish list

I have a huge wish list for Montessori-type games, puzzles, and materials. One activity set that looks especially fun is this Alphabet Soup Sorting game! FUN! I LOVE it. But I don't want to fork over $36 for it. Especially because I'm pretty sure I could make something like that.

I've been toying with trying to collect 26 10-oz baking powder containers. Maybe these containers would work? I don't want glass containers, but I think cardboard would be more in line with Montessori thinking than plastic (a big part of Montessori seems to be using quality, real materials.) Besides, having to buy containers would sort of defeat the purpose of not buying the toy in the first place.

Maybe it's time to hit up Freecycle? Anyone want to start collecting baking powder cans for me? :)

Montessori Monday #1

I thought I'd keep track of every time I actually post something about Montessori, on a Monday. If you'd like to know more, there are tons of great blogs, or you can just google "Montessori." I've started reading a couple of books, and hope to compile some information myself, but hey, I'll be proud if I can actually keep up with posting about what we're doing.

First of all, I want to mention how cheap (or even FREE) utilizing Montessori concepts with your children can be. I was overwhelmed when I first began looking at blogs and all the cool gadgets people had. But all the things I use are free. Or at least, they were left over from other projects or things I had around the house. You'll see what I mean. You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to have Montessori play time each day. You don't need to buy an expensive calendar to do circle time, or fancy beads for any activities. It's amazing how, the more you look at what people are doing, the more you see the potential for a Montessori activity in almost an object! (For example: buttons, beads, ice cube trays, rocks, leaves, pillows, straws, empty jars, cups, the list goes on and on!)

So, without further ado, here is our general morning rhythm, and what we did today during play time. *Rhythm is not the same as schedule. I like how flexible we are, and if something doesn't work out one day, I don't beat myself up. I'm working on consistency right now so my kids can know what to expect, but I like having a general outline, at least for our morning!

7-8 am: wake up and eat
8-9: shower, get dressed, etc (You can use Montessori Practical life here, your child can pick out their own clothes, practice buttoning and zipping, etc)
9-10: Clean a little (dishes, make beds and pray, etc)
10-10:30: Circle time (Calendar, numbers, shapes, songs, and stories, I'm trying to incorporate scripture stories here, but we're still working on getting through the days of the week and the weather, to be honest!) Here is a picture of my homemade calendar, my preschooler helped paint a cut up cardboard box and glue things on. Really easy, totally free! I also added a space for weather, and number, letter, and shape of the day. I'd like to start doing a scripture verse every day too!


10:30-11:00 Activity time. Many people do boxes or trays or other ideas where they have the activities all ready, and have trained their kids to know how to get them out, play, put them away, choose between multiple activities, etc. I'm not there yet. I'm just getting started, and I don't have a "space" for trays or boxes. Work In Progress! But here are some things the kiddos enjoyed today (DD1 just turned 3 and DD2 is 17 months. Yes, our 3rd is due in August. We're crazy. But we sure love them!)

We did play number memory, but DD2 kept trying to grab the cards, so I got the parmesan cheese jar and some straws for her to develop her fine motor skills. DD1 got jealous, ditched the memory game, and tried to take over DD2's activity. So I got out spaghetti noodles and an old garlic powder jar for her (a little small, a little more difficult.) Montessori moms with multiple kids: how do you get them to play together nicely!? ARGH!!




In the afternoon, we got out the pom-poms and some different colored plates to sort colors. That was a hit with DD1, and DD2 enjoyed the parmesan jar with straws again!



I'm linking to:

Montessori Curriculum

I have been meaning for weeks to post more about the Monterssori theory of education, and hopefully I will get a weekly post going about what I'm doing with my small fry, but until then, feel free to check out this site: Montessori Home-Schooling.

Women of Destiny

I have been wanting to blog about this collection of music for a while, but blogging has taken a back seat lately. DH is either out of town or working crazy hours until April, so I'm playing single mom for a while. And to be honest, I'm too tired to blog even when I do have time!

I received this CD in High School.


The words to many of these songs run through my head frequently, but one song in particularly is especially poignant right now. I thought I'd share the lyrics. Enjoy!

She
She is not a picture on a magazine,
She's the woman just behind you in the checkout line.
She may appear to be common but she mystifies
In all the ways that wisest men and children understand.
For she has eyes that sparkle with her love
And she has a smile that is gentle as a dove.
And no woman from the movies or an ad
Could ever hope to be
As beautiful as she.

She is not a highly honored diplomat
Held responsible to lead the world to peace.
But what she does is every bit as seriousAmidst the turmoil everywhere that will never cease.
For she has hands that wipe the tears away
And she has a voice that makes everything ok
And no woman from the papers or TV could ever hope to be
As indespensible as she.

And it breaks my heart every time I see her wonder
If she means anything in this world that pulls her under.
And she doesn't always see the way that Heaven smiles above her.
That's the reason I try to always tell her that I love her.

For she may not be known for giving millions
To the charities and auctions on the news.
But I believe she's given more than anyone
All the times she's ever had to chooseTo give up sleep, to rock her children every night;
To give her heart to always hold their dreams so tight.
And the best that you or I could ever hope to be
Is as wonderful as she.