In My Home Meme from the Homemaking Cottage Blog

Shiloah Baker, in a recent Homemaking Cottage post, said: "I created my own homemaking meme so that I would write more regularly with just small prompts to keep me going. I’m assuming, my lovely readers, that you have an interest in what I do in my every day life. I mostly assume that because I’m nosy about how others live their lives too, especially women like me."

Yes! I am nosy in that way, too. I cannot get enough of it, which is probably why I follow so many blogs.

Disclosure: I am one of the writers over at The Homemaking Cottage; however, I read the other articles all the time as well. It is one of my favorite sites.

This is a trial post; I am not sure that anyone cares what I do with my days. Please feel free to comment with a yea (a personal touch is good) or nay (keep it to activities, please) or any other courteous opinion.

Sun-Up

These days I am up just as the teeniest glimpse of daylight arrives. Since we moved to the central time zone, the children have been getting up at 6:30. I preserve my best me-time by getting up an hour before. I often do devotions, get dressed and do make-up (in the dark!), make a list for my day, and prepare breakfast.

Currently Browsing These Home & Garden Books:

Betty Crocker's Best Christmas Cookbook (1999)

Lately I have been reading a lot of children's learning books, but this is a cookbook I have recently used. I tried out the Easy Tiramisu Dessert because we were doing a Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday for our two-year-old and the illustration of the chocolate cake in that book looks just like tiramisu with a cherry on top! It...was...delicious! I don't think I will ever admit how many pieces of that cake I ate myself.

Actually, my oldest son is poring over this book now. No doubt getting ideas. :)

Two Recent Dinners:

This week the family gave me rave reviews on:

Swedish Meatballs (with rice) from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook

and this was pretty well liked, too:

Beef Round Roast with peas and leftover mashed potatoes and gravy

I love Shiloah's dinner of Homemade Subs and chips. That would be popular at our house as well.

Favorite Job Around the House:

This week I cleared out a humongous white basket I bought at a garage sale and put it near our newly-moved bookcases for our library books.

After reading another of Shiloah's posts, I decided to move the children's bookcases out to our living room and to showcase certain classic and recommended children's books. It has worked! They are exploring the books in a way they did not do when the bookcases were back in a bedroom.

What I'm Not Liking Around the House:

The pile of papers and other clutter in the master bedroom. They have been there for far too long.

What I Created This Week:

No, I did not scribble all by myself. I helped the children make this American flag collage. Alhough it is not finished, I worked on knitting my lime-green summer wrap sweater. (I had better get a move on before summer is over!) I also count the fact that I colored the bubble solution in two of the containers so my children can go "bubble paint" as soon as I tape up some paper outside.

Find of the Week:

This is not a vintage find, but a clearance find. ;) My children have only one slightly ragged bath mat so we make do with towels when that one is being cleaned. Now we have this bright rug to use. I love the color! It cheers up their bathroom considerably.

Random Humor In Our House:

Yesterday, our toddler brought a wooden coaster over to me and said, "Coaster." I dutifully repeated, "Coaster!" He said, "Nummy coaster," and cocked his head at me with a grin. A toddler joke! We both smiled as I said, "No, a coaster is not yummy to eat!"

What Is On the Bedside Stand:

The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

A journal and pen

My cute striped bag of goodies: lip balm, hand lotion, cell phone charger, possibly a bookmark...

A box of Kleenex

Sun-Down: 

At sun-down these days I could be: doing an errand, doing dishes, taking a shower, playing a board game with my husband, or, most likely, lounging on the couch reading or knitting. The children are in bed by the time the sun goes all the way down.

Quote of the Day:

I like the quote Valerie Plowman tweeted last year: "Content[ment] makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor," by Benjamin Franklin.

Cute Site of the Week:

In the Kitchen with Audrey

Booking Through Thursday: Size Matters

Booking Through Thursday's question this week is:

What’s the largest your personal library has ever been? What’s the greatest number of books you’ve ever owned at one time? (Estimates are fine.)
Is your collection NOW the biggest it’s ever been? Or have you down-sized?
What’s the fewest number of books you’ve ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?

I believe my personal library was the same size when I was single as now, when I live with a husband and two children! Through six moves in married life, I have pared down my books as much as I could. Still, I kept all my beloved children's and young adult books through all of this. One reason was that they are still some of my very favorite books. Another reason was to save them for when my children might be interested in reading them.

We only have a few more children's books now than I ever did!

My best guess at the number of books in this house is around 400.

The smallest number of books I owned was probably twenty-five to fifty when I was a child at home. When I left home, several of the household-at-large books were given to me or just mysteriously came with me. More were given to me as my mother cleared out her homes. My collection grew from there. I always bought books at library sales and garage sales, but I also started buying books online during my college years.

Now, with children, I find their favorite Christmas-gift books come from my Goodwill selections.

The Easiest (and Most Polite) Children's Thank You Notes

Margaret Shepherd, in her book The Art of the Handwritten Note, has this to say about thank you notes: "Party or no party, birthday gifts require a thank-you note written by you in your own handwriting. 'Fred says thank-you for the Ferrari,' is acceptable only if the car is two inches long and Fred is still in diapers."

What about children who cannot yet write in their own handwriting? Artwork is often welcomed by the gift-giver, as are photos, especially of the child using the gift.

I have to thank my mother for the following easy children's thank-you note idea.

Cut a length of paper (butcher paper, for example) to fit a low craft table. Tape the edges of the paper to the table so that it won't move around when it is colored. Supply whatever craft materials you would like your child to use. Ready, set, go! Let your child color and decorate to his or her heart's content.

When your child has finished, cut the long paper into notecard sizes. You might also write "Thank You" along the side of each card, or your child's name and the date.

You should now have between 20 and 40 customized notecards to use the next time your child receives a gift.

Thank you, Mom!

Two Ways to Help Children Who Get Frustrated with Writing

Often a child has difficulty forming perfect letters and numbers due to the fine motor skills challenge it presents. This may cause emotions to run high. From the child's perspective the skill being attempted may seem impossible.

Working on the concept of perfectionism helps. See this wonderful page from the National Association of School Psychologists for more on this topic.

So does practice. The challenge is to give plenty of opportunities for practice but at the same time make sure it is fun, at least at first.

#1: Make it larger.

A child who struggles writing letters and numbers may need a bigger space to write them. This can also be helpful with very active children because it allows their bodies to move around a little bit, too.

Gather 8.5 x 11" pieces of paper, preferably white copy paper for ease of use. You will need as many pieces as the letters in your child's name. Draw dashed lines in the outline of each of the letters in your child's name, one per piece of paper. (Don't make the dashes too close together or it looks like the child's work is already done.)

Tape the pieces of paper on the floor or a table within easy reach of your child, in the order of your child's name. Ask him or her to trace the letters to spell the name. Give lots of encouragement and laugh with him or her if that's appropriate.

Note: If this is still hard and too frustrating for your child, allow him or her to practice drawing lines alongside a ruler, which will eventually, with practice, make very straight lines that a perfectionist-leaning child will like.

#2: Do Dot-to-Dots.

Dot-to-dots are a less threatening way to make lines from a specific place to another specific place. Children who feel threatened by the idea that they have to make a perfect letter may not feel threatened at all making lines that will reveal a fun shape. It is best to give a few dot-to-dots in a row, or as many as your child wants to do (within reason), in order from simplest to hardest.

Additional Activities:

My son also likes any activity better when it's done in a Kumon workbook. He has tried this one and this one and this one.

I also refer you to one of my favorite learning activities blogs, Children's Learning Activities, for their activities that work on fine motor skills.

Storybook Week 9: I Stink!

I Stink! was written by Kate McMullan and illustrated by Jim McMullan. The first thing to do for Storybook Week 9 is to get hold of a copy of I Stink! from your local library, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or favorite brick-and-mortar book store.

1. Read the Story

Language Arts

Read the storybook or watch the Weston Woods storybook video from Scholastic Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics. Or do both.

2. In Your Community

Social Studies/Story Interest/Arts and Crafts

Talk about your community: Do you see police officers in your community? Fire trucks? Where are the library, city hall, fire station, grocery stores, haircutting shops, and post office? Do you see garbage collectors in your neighborhood? What do they do? Where does your trash go?

Set up a play community using building blocks. Or, if you have them, use play sets. Here is one that we used for a while. And here is a great idea for building a Safety Town out of cardboard boxes, paper, glue, and markers or crayons. (The craft idea is at the end of part two of this great safety tips video. It is not step-by-step instructions, just a demonstration of what the children made. They use cardboard boxes of different sizes, glue white paper onto the surfaces, and allow the children to decorate them into whatever "safer buildings" they like.)

3. Parts of a Garbage Truck

Story Interest/Fine Motor Skills/Arts and Crafts/Language Arts

This eHow page describes types of garbage trucks and their parts. You and your child can learn vocabulary words like: cab, hopper, passenger cabin, compactor, packer blade, rear-loader, front-loader, hydraulic, and lift.

Here you can see pictures of actual trucks to apply your new vocabulary.

Here you can print off garbage truck pictures for coloring.

If you don't already have a garbage truck in your toy collection and your child is very interested, consider investing in a toy garbage truck with working parts (this one has removable trash bins and figures).

For an older child: This is also an investment, but you might consider buying the Melissa & Doug Mighty Builder Garbage Truck which requires a lot of assembly using a screwdriver. We have not used this product, but from reading the reviews, it seems like a big hit with young children. It needs assembly by an older person, so it might be a good fit for a family with both older and younger children. (I've included links in this post solely based on relevance; we have not tried these products and I don't receive any benefit from mentioning them.)

4. Your Own Alphabet Soup Recipe

Story Interest/Language Arts

In the story, the garbage truck gives his recipe for alphabet soup, made in the back of his truck. It includes apple cores, banana peels, and other trashy items. You and your child can think up your own alphabet soup recipe by going through the alphabet and finding words that start with each letter. It would be an added learning tool to use a chalkboard, dry-erase board, or Magna-doodle to write the words you come up with next to each letter. Your alphabet soup recipe-making could even extend across twenty-six days if you assign one letter to each day.

The very most ambitious among you might even come up with a food item for each letter and make that food with your child, although it would take some stamina to do all twenty-six letters this way!

 5. And Even More Garbage Truck Activities!
Arts and Crafts/Gross Motor Skills/Social Studies

This eHow page has additional fun and educational activities about garbage collection.


To see previous Storybook Weeks, click one of these links:

Storybook Week 1: Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/storybook-week-1-chicka-chicka-1-2-3.html

Storybook Week 2: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/storybook-week-2-chicka-chicka-boom.html

Storybook Week 3: Chrysanthemum: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/storybook-week-3-chrysanthemum.html

Storybook Week 4: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/storybook-week-4-click-clack-moo-cows.html

Storybook Week 5: Curious George Rides a Bike: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/05/storybook-week-5-curious-george-rides.html

Storybook Week 6: Diary of a Spider: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/05/storybook-week-6-diary-of-spider.html

Storybook Week 7: Harold and the Purple Crayon: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/05/storybook-week-7-harold-and-purple.html

Storybook Week 8: How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?: http://schooloutofschool.blogspot.com/2011/06/storybook-week-8-how-do-dinosaurs-say.html

The Rainbow Fish Lotto, A Toddler and Preschooler Game

I recently found The Rainbow Fish Lotto at a used bookstore near our home (Half Price Books). It was a low-enough price that I decided to risk buying it to see if it was a good gateway game for our two-year-old.

The game consists of four cards with several images from The Rainbow Fish story printed on them. There are smaller cards with one image each from the story. A basic way to play is to give each player a large card and place the stack of smaller cards in front of everyone. Someone (maybe Mom or Dad) picks up a card from the pile and each player looks to see if it matches one of the images on their larger card.

The box says the game is for ages 3-6. We found good ways to use it with a just-turned-two-year-old who could match the pictures.

For other skill levels, the game can be simplified or made more complex. There are two different versions specified in the game instructions and when playing the game it is easy to think of different ways you might want to use the cards. One way, which a toddler will quickly discover, is to take out all the cards, look at them, and then put them back in again. And repeat.

Speaking of toddler play, one of my favorite things about the game is the sturdiness of the cards and the game box and lid. This type of game could easily be made at home by printing out pictures from a storybook and cutting and arranging them. However, the game we bought will live through toddler play for quite a while.

And of course, this would be a great activity after reading The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.

(I don't get any compensation from this review of the game; I just liked playing it with our toddler. :)

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sushi for Lunch

I thought this was a fun idea from Jif, which I found through bon appetit (which I believe I found through Money Saving Mom's website).

I did have to pin the rolls together with toothpicks. Just before serving them to my toddler, I took them out. (I also placed the "just for fun" chopsticks out of his reach. :)

Our younger son enjoyed it:

Our older son tried the chopsticks:

Then gave up and ate:

Summary:

The lunch was enjoyed.
It was easy to make and put together.
Do not bother with the chopsticks, even for fun, if your children are like mine! (They love play-fighting and don't know how to use chopsticks.)
I don't think this was an all-time favorite, but if the plan is same-old peanut butter and jelly anyway, this is a more exciting way to do it.