January 2009

My Favorite Resource Books: Art & Creativity

We’re big fans of “process” creating around here – enjoying the doing and not necessarily worried about the finished product. We also enjoy making crafty things for holidays and gifts, but for the most part it is all about the experience! All of the creating books I use regularly are by MaryAnn Kohl- she is [...]

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Our Top 10 Play Things

Things that are keeping the girls busy lately: Art supplies, especially stickers Playsilks & pieces of fabric Small animals Chapter books; How-to-draw books Dress-up clothes Music (often combined with playsilks and/or dress-up clothes) Letter writing and delivering Puzzles Board games Each other What are your kiddos really into right now?

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Watercolor Initials

The girls and I made some new personalized artwork for their bedroom. You can see the step-by-step and finished product over at Blissful Kids today! Have a great day!

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Wood Vehicle Kits from Maple Landmark

A good part of our Sunday was spent creating these: We all had such fun with these Made By Me wood vehicle kits by Maple Landmark. Each kit comes with a vehicle body, four wheels, and four axles. These kits are made in the USA from smoothly sanded unfinished pine. All you need to assemble [...]

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Print Awareness

Print awareness, also called concepts of print, involves understanding the basics of how the written word and books “work.” It includes important early literacy concepts and skills such as: understanding that print has meaning handling a book (finding the front, back, title) understanding how we read print: left to right, top to bottom, front of [...]

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File Folder Games

I’ve written about these before, but we love making our own board games out of file folders. You can check out my ideas and examples for these easy DIY games over at Blissful Kids today! Happy playing!

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Roll-a-Snack

When the pantry starts to fill-up with various odd and ends of crackers, cereal, raisins, etc., we like to dump it all together into a yummy snack mix. Sometimes, we even make it into a game – a little math with your snack! I call it Roll-a-Snack. All you need are various snacks (nuts, dried [...]

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New Year’s Interviews

This is our third year “interviewing” the girls at the start of a new year. One of the questions we ask the girls is, “If you could change your name, what would you choose?” Delaney chose Milk and Frosting the last two years, but strayed away from food names with Mulan this year — so [...]

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Making Clean-Up Time More Fun!

Hello there! I can tell it's the New Year, 'cause I've got cleaning and organizing on my mind. Every night, before bath and bedtime stuff, the girls clean up their playroom and bedroom (with some Mommy and Daddy help usually…). Since it is part of our routine, there is usually no fuss about it. Sometimes, [...]

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Happy New Year!

This year, it’s New Year’s cards instead of Christmas cards. Loved incorporating some of the girls’ writing to make these – Natalie wants everyone to have a happy and exciting New Year, and Delaney is wishing you a year full of silly and fun! Happy New Year!

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