Fun with a Freebie

 I love to get freebies in the mail. I am forever filling in forms and signing up for free samples online. Recently, I signed up to get a free sample of Duck Tape brand duct tape sheets. They are 8x10 (ish) sheets of duct tape that remind me a lot of contact paper. I wasn't sure what I would do with it, so when my zebra print duct tape sheet came last week, I set it aside - until yesterday. While I was updating my coupon binder, I realized it was getting pretty beat up. The plastic edges were coming apart and it was clear that it wouldn't last much longer... until... aha! Duct tape sheet! I cut the sheet into 1 inch strips and applied them to the edges, both inside and out. When I fixed all the splits, I had plenty left over, so I decided to do the bottom edge that wasn't splitting yet, just to make it even all around. Since I still had some of the sheet left, I cut out the word COUPONS in a funky font and put that on the front. The letters got a little lost on the white background, so I inserted a sheet of yellow construction paper in the pocket behind the letters and that really made the letters pop! Perfect! I got plenty of attention in the grocery stores when I pulled out my big binder before, but I think the next time the binder makes an appearance in Giant Eagle or Walmart, it'll really turn some heads!

This pic doesn't really show how vibrant the binder actually looks because I took the pic with my cell phone. I'll try to take a new pic tomorrow with my actual camera to see if I can make it look better.

Well, shucks!

Color me tickled pink to have had one of my muffin tin meals featured on the ParentMap blog along with 4 other very creative mamas! Thanks so much, ParentMap! I'm honored to be included in your blog post! Click the "Featured in ParentMap" banner in the right column to check it out!

Muffin Tin Monday

We didn't do a theme today - just yummy, healthy and pretty food.

We had: vanilla yogurt with a little bit of blue sprinkles, carrots, celery & peppers, butterfly cheese shapes for Micah and string cheese for Laural, peanut butter & homemade spearmint jelly on whole wheat sandwich thins, red grapes and blood orange sections and a ham flower.

A very happy Laural.

We didn't have a muffin tin meal last week due to being terribly busy so she was rather upset with me, but I think all is forgiven since we managed a tin this week.

What have we been up to?

We've had a few busy weeks in our home! We've had Laural's birthday party, Easter, and a whole bunch of other stuff that has been keeping us on the go but in between it all, we've managed to get some school time in. Because of my own insecurities, I decided to change the path we've been on with Laural's kindergarten and try something different. Up until recently, I've been doing my own home grown version of a curriculum, putting together things that I thought fit the requirements. But then, I began to worry. What if the way I'm doing things is making her fall way behind what other kids her age are doing? What if the way I'm teaching her to read and write are setting up bad habits that will be tough to break later? What if our math program isn't up to par? So, because of all my worries and wondering and not really having anything to compare our curriculum to, I caved and bought the Heart of Dakota Kindergarten curriculum. After looking through the book, I realized that I really had to reason to be concerned. We are pretty much way ahead of kindergarten reading, math and science. But that's ok. I thought about it and decided that we are going to continue with Heart of Dakota but on a little faster pace for the things that we are already ahead on - kind of like a review - and take a little extra time on the things that we haven't spent as much time on. I like that it's a little more organized than what we've been doing (I'm not much of an organizer) and it will give a good base for her for certain 1st grade components.

So today, Laural and I continued with Heart of Dakota and I decided that it was time to start Micah on something a little more structured. So we started on Letter of the Week by Confessions of a Homeschooler. I love this curriculum! I started Laural (at age 2) on the Brightly Beaming Letter of the Week and while I really liked that one, I like this one even more. I might try to figure a way of combining the two. I wasn't sure how Micah would do with sit down learning, but he did an awesome job today! We started with a couple of the more hands on and fun things to do (I kind of ignored the suggested order of things so I could get a feel for how Micah would handle it). I think we will remain unstructured for a week or two to let him get accustomed to the idea of sitting and working on school work before I start structuring his school time. I started him with the A magnet sheet.

 I gave him pom pom magnets and the A/Apple sheet on a cookie sheet and he put the magnets on the tree and the A.

Next, we tried the poke page. Basically, I gave him a giant pushpin and put the paper on a piece of styrofoam and let him trace the letter Aa by poking homes in the paper!. I admit, I was a little nervous about letting my 3 year old handle a giant pushpin, but I explained to him that the end was sharp and not to touch it and he listened. What really amazed me was the awesome a job he did! He completely traced both A & a with only a few breaks to put a hole in other places on the page. I think I've been underestimating my boy!

We also glued apples to an apple tree, traced Aa with a pencil (he did a great job with this one too) and tried our hand at finishing patterns (not such a great job with this one). I also let Laural do the apple cut & paste and a cutting practice page since she doesn't handle the scissors so well yet. I'm really hoping the weather warms up soon so we can take some of our lessons outside! I miss the outdoors but with all the rain and wind, it's far from enjoyable outside yet. I also want to get some of my plants outside. My peas have gone crazy! I need to get them into one of the garden beds soon.

Steve starts vacation tomorrow and we've decided to just hang out around the house for the week and maybe get a yard sale organized for the end of the week - if the weather cooperates. I have so much stuff I need to get rid of - including piles of Beanie Babies! Yes, I fell into the craze long ago and we have loads of them sitting around in bags, needing a good home. Unfortunately, I don't think they retained any value so several have already become Laural's pets. LOL Oh well. I had fun chasing them all down years ago.

Sprouts!

Laural is so very excited that our seeds that we planted a week ago are really starting to come up! So far, we have beans, peas, zucchini, and cucumbers visible. Our peppers and sunflowers are holding out on us. The packages said they take 10 to 14 days though, so we aren't worried yet.

Laural is calling them our plant babies.

Here's a little photo fun we were having today.

And a little ear update: She had the stitches out on Tuesday and everything is looking quite good. Still a wee bit swollen and red and tender. Still a bit of healing to do, but it is definitely better than it was last Tuesday! Here's the most recent pic:

Hard to see in this pic, but clicking it will take you to a bigger pic.

Muffin Tin Monday - Easter

For the first part of the month, we've been enjoying the secular imagery and fun of Easter but during this holy week leading up to Easter, we have changed our focus to the real reason for Easter and this was reflected in our muffin tin meal this week. 

Top Row: Red veggie juice representing the blood of Christ, a chocolate raspberry crisp representing the body of Christ, an apple ring crown of thorns

Bottom Row: Carrot sticks to represent the nails, a tortilla cross with peanut butter, onigiri with sesame seed to represent the stone rolled away from an empty tomb

Laural ate her entire lunch and some of Micah's too. I ended up making them each another tortilla cross which Micah called a "Jesus T" which had me trying to figure out what he wanted for a minutes. Too cute. I forgot to take pics of the kids with their meals because I was munching on the leftovers.

To help bridge the changeover in our focus, our book of the day is "My Easter Basket and the true story of Easter" which takes a look through the Easter basket and connects the colorful treats in the basket to a point in the Easter story. It's a sturdy, glittery board book so both kids can enjoy looking at it.

Our Snack Time Survival Kit

I recently entered a giveaway at Molly Green's Econobusters blog and won! Yay! I love entering blog giveaways but I don't win very often. This is the 3rd time in many, many entries on many, many blogs. Our prize was the Beanstalk Express Snack Time Survival Kit and we got it today! Laural was super excited to see it (and I was too)!

It's a clock, with 3 little positionable clocks underneath it. Each little clock has a hook under it to hang a snack card on. There are 33 different snack card ideas and each day, you let the kiddos pick 3 cards they want to have as a snack that day, hang them on the hooks and set the time that they will be able to have the snack. In our case, Laural has been watching the clock like a hawk so she can tell me when it's time to have the next snack. Unfortunately, she had to watch our regular kitchen clock since the clock on the survival kit isn't working. I think we will have to send it back for a replacement.

As you can see from the above picture, our first snack was apples and peanut butter and here we have it!

Laural wanted them to look just like the picture card - on a red plate, but alas, no red plates in our house, so this was the best I could do for her. Then we had a talk about how we will not be able to make all the snacks look like the ones on the card. Micah just ended up eating the peanut butter straight out of the cup, using an apple as a spoon. Laural and I ate his apples. I wish there was some magic trick I could use to get him to eat fruits and veggies!

Laural's ear is looking pretty good today. She gets the stitches out tomorrow! She's nervous but I think she's looking forward to having them gone. As it's healing and the bruising is settling in more, we have been able to see how a bit more of the damage. While only the top part actually split, you can see the area below that was damaged underneath. She really did a number on her poor ear!

Homeschool = Learning Anywhere at Any Time

One of my favorite things about homeschooling my kids is that we can take just about any task around the house - or just about anywhere else - and turn it into a learning opportunity. Today, we learned a lot about plants and how they grow as we planted seeds in a starter tray. This simple thing that I needed to do to get ready for my garden turned into school time!

Planting cucumber seeds.

And red sunflower seeds.

We also planted peppers, beans, sugar peas and zucchini. All the rest of our seeds (corn, carrots, beets, lettuce and a few other things) will be sown outside when the weather is a little more agreeable.

While we were planting, we talked about what a seed needs to start growing into a plant. Then we talked about the life cycle of the plant (seed, sprout, adult plant, flowering, creating seeds, death), plant parts (root, stem, leaves, flower and fruit) and what plants need to continue to grow and produce fruit (sun, water, food). We also talked a little about how bees will visit the flowers to gather nectar and end up pollinating the plants. Next week, we will be starting a plants, fruits & veggies theme so this was a good kick-off for that. As we go through the various lessons, we will be able to keep track of our tray and watch our seedlings grow. We're hoping to get to Phipp's Conservatory as a field trip next week as well. I love their spring flower show!

After our hard "farm work" was done, we had to have a little snack. Since we had been talking about bees, we just had to have some local honey on some warm, buttered  homemade biscuits. Yum! Well, it was yum for me but for some reason, I haven't been able to get Laural to come around to liking the taste of honey. She ate half of her biscuit and didn't want any more.

Ear Update: It is looking quite a bit better today. The swelling has decreased and it is more of a normal color than it was. It helps that she was finally able to let me do a little better cleaning of it and get most of the dried blood cleaned from around the wound. She wanted me to take a picture of it so she could see it better - it's hard to see the inside curves of the outer ear in the mirror! So here it is.

She gets the stitches out on Tuesday. I just hope she doesn't freak out as much as she did when the ER doc was getting ready to stitch her up! She gets very anxious and upset if she thinks something is going to hurt. She gets near hysterical when we just need to take a band-aid off. Poor kid.

Another One for the Books

It's time to break out Laural's baby book and add a new "first" to the list - stitches. I'll file it right beside her first chest x-ray. I'm not sure how she managed it, but she tripped in our living room and hit the side of her head on our metal, oil-filled electric heat that I had on because of the chill and dampness we had today. In the process she split her ear open across the upper cartilage. The moment I saw it, I knew it was going to require stitches. Micah was having his nap, so we had to wake him up and Steve must have heard her scream because he woke up and came running. So, off to the ER we went. Fortunately, they weren't busy at all and we went straight to a room where she was checked over. The doctor came in a few minutes later and confirmed my suspicions - she needed stitches. When they got ready to start, she started to freak out - she does not do well with medical procedures, especially when she knows a needle is involved. I had to hold on to her arms and body tightly and the nurse had to hold her head still. I think the doctor started stitching before the lidocaine had a chance to fully take effect. She ended up with 4 stitches in her ear. Poor kid. These childhood years can be rough on a kid - and on mom & dad as well.

If you are squeamish, you might want to skip the pics.

Fun stuff, huh?

My Bunny Bento

I decided to make myself a bento to go along with the kids' Muffin Tin Monday meal and I also decided to make a separate post for it so when I link up to What's For Lunch Wednesday, it isn't cluttered with all the extra stuff. I went with a bunny theme for lunch and here is what I had:

A tiny clementine with a heart cut to make for easier peeling, apple bunnies, a carrot with a broccoli top, edamame & a few snap peas, a bunny sandwich (cheese inside) with fruit leather facial features and jelly bread ears, a ham flower, and a boiled Easter egg decorated with nori & cheese.

I used the ham flower and some of the lettuce baran on the bunny bread & cheese to make for a yummy sandwich. Tucked under the bunny and out of sight are pieces of scrap bread that i used as mini sandwiches with ham & lettuce. It was a yummy lunch but a bit too big so the clementine was saved to be a tasty treat for later.

I'm linking to What's for Lunch Wednesday so click on the button to what made it's way into bento boxes  around the world this week!