A little absent

I've been a little MIA on the new posts this week. We are taking a short summer vacation from school because we are busy bees in other areas. Our apple trees are producing like crazy and I am up to my elbows in applesauce in the evenings. We're gearing up to visit family over the holiday weekend, and we had a HUGE garage sale this last weekend. We've been weeding, weeding, weeding and hopefully soon our tomatoes will turn red and our kitchen will be a salsa canning factory. 

We are also getting ready to start the Five In A Row curriculum at the end of September. The boys will be staying at my sister's house a few days a week while I'm at work and we're working out the details to split school schedules. Bubby will get to join his older cousins during some of their science experiments and there will be lots of other fun things going on. I'm excited to get started and I happen to know my new Five In A Row guidebook is waiting patiently for me at the post office right now.

I do have one project that I have every intention of getting to this week.

Alison over at Oopsey Daisy created this incredible color book for her little guy using sewing scraps. I don't have a big sewing stash so I plan on using scrapbook paper, but I can't wait to put this together. Monkey is very interested in colors these days and is constantly asking "is this blue?" "is this green?"

I have also been working on adding a Link Party page. I've found some incredible new blogs through linky parties and it's a great way to browse through new project ideas. Most of them are parties I link up to now and then, so go check them out!

One Dozen

 A couple of weeks back, between our space unit and transportation unit, we spent a couple of days exploring "one dozen.".

1-1 correspondence game: Using a cupcake tin (we buy our eggs at Costco by the five dozen and I didn't realize we don't own a normal dozen egg carton until it was to late), a die, and small bear manipulatives (or any other small object).

Basically players take turns rolling the die and adding the appropriate number of bears. The person to add the last bear wins.

Counting: I printed out the numbers 1-12 on white computer paper and included these, the cupcake tin, and an appropriate number of beads in a workbox. Bubby had to put the pieces of paper in order and then count out the right number of beads to go in each tin.

I searched our library and found some good books to read:

 

 

Other ideas:

Bake a dozen cookies, muffins, or anything else in a dozen

Add is fine motor objects when counting, such as tweezers to transfer beads

Have a grocery store scavanger hunt and see how many things you can find sold as a dozen (eggs, donuts)

Our new schoolroom!

I've been scheming to create a schoolroom in our house for a while now. I finally came up with a plan and got the Mister to agree. We have this weird long skinny room when you first walk into our house. You can see a sliver of our front door on the right side of this picture.

 Our dining room has always been to the left of the front door (when you're walking into the house). You can kind of see it at the far end of the photo, I had already started moving furniture, and please ignore all the junk everywhere, Bubby and the Mister had just gotten back from a fishing trip.

 Anyways, so we have this weird space (occupied by a couch in this photo), and we had this huge wall of bookshelves. The shelves are directly across from the front door and take up the entire wall, and we've never really liked it. Again with the fishing stuff, sheesh.

 So i rearranged the bookshelves and made a schoolroom.

 Here's a sneak peek.

One more time on the weird wasted space, door on right.

 Looking at the same area now. Love it! Some people may think it's strange to have books in the entryway, but whatever. Oh, and that ceiling fan is going. Our little room is sadly lacking any type of lighting so I think we are replacing the fan with a light. I will also be adding a lamp.

 

Another before photo.

Standing in the same spot, here's the inside of our little school room. I still need to fix the back piece on the shelf to the right, I plan on hanging our felt board there. Every time I walk through there that little red table makes me smile.

I love the fact that it's in the busiest part of our house and I can work at the computer and keep an eye on the boys, but from the door, diningroom, kitchen area (which is where we tend to hang out when we have company) you can't see any of it! At some point I will be replacing those ugly press board shelves with a couple more Billy bookcases from Ikea.

I was also able to put the boys' easel in here which had previously been leaning against the wall in the livingroom unused because there really wasn't anywhere to put it. Our school area has always doubled as our art room so it's nice that the boys have a place to create that's out of the way and not on the diningroom table.

Bubby is out of town right now with the Mister visiting family. I can't wait to show him his new area!

Kid's table redo

 I found this little table at a garage sale for $5.00.

I gave it a quick coat of white paint on the legs to cover up a few scuffs, but I didn't really worry about the legs much because I know it is going to be used and abused.

 

I sanded down the top by hand with 150grit sandpaper just to take of the old finish and take off some glitter glue the boys already managed to get on it. Then I painted four thin coats of red chalkboard paint on top.

I LOVE that paint! It was really easy to apply and covered well. I haven't shown the boys yet that it is chalkboard paint. I'm going to bask in its beautiful red top for a while.

 It gets Monkey's stamp of approval. 

Now I just need to find a couple of wood chairs to go with it.

Pattern Lesson Cards

I recently found Kindergarten....kindergarten which is a great blog with lots of fun ideas. She did a series of posts on how she introduces patterns to her students. I took her main ideas and created a set of lesson cards for myself, which I figured I'd share with you. Most of the cards should be fairly self explanatory but you should go read Kathryn's posts so you can see her methods and the order that she introduces her concepts.

 

 Click the image of my cards for the PDF. I printed, cut, and laminated mine for durability. I like to be able to throw things in Bubby's workboxes so everything is ready when it's time, and I remember to do it. Also because I'm slightly obsessed with laminating things :).

Drying screen

I planted an oregano plant a couple of years ago and it keeps coming back each year stronger then before. I cut some and wanted to try drying it but the holes in our food dryer trays were too big.

 The Mister just bought a roll of screen to replace some of our window screens and has most of the roll left over. I laid the screen over a piece of cardboard, put our dryer tray on top of the screen and used a pocket knife to simply trace around the tray.

 the screen cut easily but is sturdy enough I don't have to worry about it ripping. I was able to cut four screens in just a few minutes.

 I fit the screen inside our trays, added the oregano and turned on the dryer.

This is my fresh oregano all ready to go, I forgot to take an after picture of course. Three trays approximately this full made one quart size mason jar of dried herbs. I did not break them into pieces. Tips I found online said to dry your herbs for the least amount of time possible, and to keep them as whole as possible. Over drying and crushing will release more of the flavor now rather then when you're using it. It only took a couple of hours to dry these trays. I checked them after about an hour and switched the top and bottom trays to even out the heat.

Water slide

The other other night we turned out standard backyard slide into a water slide with a tarp and sprinkler.

 Next time we need to find a spot in the yard that's a little more slanted.

 The neighbor boys ended up coming over to get in on the fun too.

 Bubby enjoyed it.

 Monkey thought we were all crazy for playing in cold water. He prefers the type that comes out of a water heater and goes in the bathtub.

Dollar Tree score

 I don't know how many of you out there have a Dollar Tree, but it is the best dollar store ever. Now, it is a dollar store so some of what they have is frankly just crap. However, they have been adding more and more art/craft and school type stuff that is really fun. I've picked up some art kits for the boys that include everything they need for a small project and for a buck, I really can't complain.

 Right now they have lots of teacher type supplies for back to school. Their window clings and bulletin board cutouts are fantastic! I found some clock window clings for Bubby that you can write in the time and draw the hands in, we also found a sheet of coins and bills that he's been having fun playing with.

 A few weeks back I found these great color charts. My sister and I had just been talking about workboxes and using poster centers so I snapped up two of them.

 I took one set and ran the posters through my laminator, then cut up the second set and laminated those pieces as well. After that, I applied magnets to the back of each poster and to the back of each loose piece. These can hang on the fridge, magnet boards, or a cookie sheet. I plan to use them for matching and sorting activities.

If you have any fun ideas for using these please let me know!

Linked up to:
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Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Making The World Cuter
Confessions of a Stay at Home Mommy
C.R.A.F.T.
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Take a Look Tuesday
Today's Creative Blog
Running with Glitter
Frugalicious Me
Fireflies and Jellybeans
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Somewhat Simple

Technical Help

 

If you're looking for technical help on something, this is apparently the place to go. I tracked down Roberto through searching the Blogger "help" menu. I used his instructions for uploading a PDF file into Google Docs and then onto my blog and had the whole figured out in a matter of minutes. 

I didn't have much time to check things out, but it looks like there are tons of great tips on his blog. He also speaks normal English, and includes lots of pictures. Ya know, for those of us that are just a little bit technologically challenged, or that just want someone to spell it out so we don't have to spend hours figuring it out for ourselves.