Life, Gluten Free

5 Fun & Educational Gifts for Kids

Still doing your christmas shopping and need a gift for a kiddo in your life? Look no further.

I visited The Stubby Pencil Studio and put together 5 great gifts that are fun, educational, non-toxic and inspire creativity. Gifts that you can feel good about giving!

Here is a sample of what you will find there:

Do-It-Yourself Kaleidoscope Kit - ages 3+

Tea Party Puzzle - made from 90% reycled paper, ages 2+

Creative Scissor Pack - Ages 3+

Glob Natural Blends Paint - biodegradable botanical ingredients, ages 3+

Finger Printing Art Kit - ages 3+

Honestly, it was hard picking just five items! I could go on and on.

Okay just one more. Real quick. #6 Jumbo Felt Pens. I may have to break down and get these soon! What a fun stocking stuffer.

Visit The Stubby Pencil Studio and check it out for yourself, while you are there be sure to check their bonus + specials.

You will be pleased, I guarantee it!

*PLEASE NOTE*: I was not asked to blog about The Stubby Pencil Studio. I have ordered from there in the past, I love the product selection they offer and I want to support them by spreading the word. This post was my idea, and it was not sponsored in anyway.

Pumpkin Hopscotch

Not to toot my own horn but I had a stroke of genuis. My daughter wanted me to draw her a hopscotch, and since it was a nice cool fall day.. I thought... why not make a PUMPKIN hopscotch?!

Yes. Hurray for orange chalk.

All I did was draw circles instead of squares, and I added green stems!

We love pumpkins!

And hopscotch!

Then we went on a scavenger hunt...

3 flowers, 1 rock, 1 stick, countless mini leaves

Welcome Fall :)

What our garden grows

Pumpkins, kale, tomatoes, onions, potatoes - oh my!

What fun it has been to have a garden this year.

Next year we hope to rent two plots!

The pumpkins make me really happy. I love pumpkins, and I have a bit of an obsession with them.

Every Fall, our house is decorated (inside and out) with a lot of pumpkins. And this year, the pumpkins will be ones that grew in our own organic garden!

Growing a garden is also a great lesson for young kids. My daughter has become a good weed picker and we have seen more bugs than ever.

Ladybugs, crickets, grass hoppers, praying mantis and an array of bettles in different shapes, sizes and colors.

When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Play Outside: Outdoor Bowling

Over at Childhood101, their April challenge was to get outside and play! Well, that's been a bit difficult for us because of the current weather patterns. We've been getting mostly rain, intense wind or snow. But the sun has peaked its way through the clouds once again and we got outside to embrace the challenge.

My daughter's idea was to play bowling outside and it was a lot of fun. We experimented with setting the pins up in different patterns.

We aren't sure what happened to the bowling ball that went to the set, so we used a mini basketball in its place. We had fun and absorbed some much needed sunshine.

Whats your favorite thing to play outside?

 

Watercolor Art for Toddlers

Introducing watercolors to toddlers can be a fun adventure, especially since watercolors make such dramatic effects on paper, with minimal effort. Personally, I appreciate how smoothly the brushed glides across the paper, creating beautiful lines of color.

I recommend investing in a decent set of watercolors. We picked ours up from Hobby Lobby, in the artist section, for less than $8 dollars because I had a 40% off coupon! Gotta love coupons.

Sophie said she wanted to make a rainbow first, so I set out the supplies and let her create her rainbow - which turned out very well if you ask me.

Next, she painted a flower:

Watercolor is one of my favorite art mediums, probably because it seems so effortless to create something pretty. Here's my pig. We call him Pinky. I'm certainly not an ariste, but the great part of it is that art doesn't have to mean perfection. I think that learning through creativity is important for children, and I am glad that my daughter naturally enjoys creative expression. I never knew how much I enjoyed crafts until my daughter came along :)

Simple Color Sorting & Counting

I recently ordered some colorful paper cutouts from an Etsy shop, mommyholly handmade, and I dumped them out on the table for my daughter to look at. I bought them for craft making fun.

Sophie's first desire, however, was to start sorting them into sets of matching colors.

I immediately realized that this could be a fun learning tool. But of course I was not the one to come up with the idea, Sophie was the master thinker for this one. Toddlers and kids naturally learn through imagination and play, which is exactly how it should be.

So we spent quite a while color sorting and counting these fun paper cutouts. We haven't crafted with them yet, but we sure did have some fun.

And then we did some letter tracing and practiced writing letters.

5 Little Leprechauns Finger Rhyme

My dad's wife shared this with us today and it is so cute. Sophie is having a lot of fun with it. 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

5 Little Leprechauns

Five little leprechauns scurrying by my door,
One jumped away, then there were 4.

Four little leprechauns climbing in my tree,
One hid in the green leaves, then there were 3.

Three little leprechauns, just a busy few,
One went for a pot of gold, then there were 2.

Two little leprechauns, having lots of fun,
One hopped over the rainbow, then there was 1.

One little leprechaun, with all his work done.
He slipped off for a nap, then there were none.

* check out our shamrock handprint craft if you haven't yet!

Our preschool home-based learning curriculum

My daughter is 4 years old, and we have a lot of fun learning with books, with play and just throughout the day. I believe that learning happens everyday and there are a lot of chances for learning to take place. I also believe that it can be fun, thrilling and empowering to learn. It doesn't have to be boring or feel like a chore.

I have been amazed about how much my daughter has learned already just through our everyday life. She has understood the concept of "big and little," very quickly and when she was 2 she soon started telling me that "this is smaller .....  this is bigger than that." We never even tried to teach her that specifically, it was just something she learned along the way!

My husband and I decided to homeschool our child well before she was born, because we felt it was a very wonderful option. I was homeschooled myself, starting after grade 7 and I really enjoyed it. I was thankful for the opportunity to graduate at an earlier age because I was able to go at my own personal pace. I started community college when I was 17. This isn't true for everyone who homeschools of course, and it isn't about finishing the race faster than anyone else. It just so happens that I was able to focus better while being homeschooled and I felt confident that I was able to begin college earlier because that was what was right for me.

So, we are excited about officially starting preschool with our daughter. We are interested in Oak Meadows homeschool curriculum, but while I am waiting on the catalog to come, I have purchased a few things to get us started and I thought I would share it.

Here's our current preschool curriculum plan:

3 workbooks by Active Minds:

Math - basic math skills, counting, telling time, understanding number values, etc

Phonics - consonant and vowel sounds, lettering writing, memory building, etc

Reading - word recognition, pre-reading fundamentals, beginning and ending sounds, etc

Emotions:

We purchased a set of six books on emotions written by Cornelia Maude Spelman. Education about how to identify and handle our emotions is as important as other types of learning. Understanding our emotions is a powerful tool to give kids. Learning about our emotions and how to properly manage them can help children succeed throughout their life, making it easier for them to work well with others, promotes self-awareness and guides them on how to best deal with situations that can come up. Because it IS okay to have emotions, they are perfectly normal.

Art & Nature:

the four seasons, learning about nature and animals, crayon drawing, watercolor art, singing and finger/hand play, various crafting, storytelling

My daughter knows her ABCs, but I couldn't resist this lovely set of ABC Flash Cards by Eric Carle. They are so sturdy, thick and colorful. I highly recommend them. It is great for letter recognition and as we go through them, we talk about what other things start with each letter.

I also really like Learning Resources and we have some things from them for learning shapes and counting. There are many different ways to approach home-based learning and we are enjoying the process of finding out what works for us!