Bubble snakes

  Home made bubble snakes are such  cool alternative to just plan bubble blowing. Step 1 is to make bubbles click here for bubble recipe. step 2 you need to cut the ends off of soda bottles or water bottles. step 3 get wash rags and lay over cut end of bottle secure wash rag with hair tie or rubber band.

 

step 4 dip in bubbles and have child blow Warning make sure you watch your children closely, if they suck in they can inhale tones of soap. My small toddlers did not get the concept of blowing at first and were sucking in, that resulted in a big mouth of soaps and lots of tears. I could not tell they were sucking in, so watch ten show them and make sure you are sure the are blowing and not sucking!! ahhhh

 

My girls had fun trying to get the bubbles to form a snake.

 

 

even my littlest got a small snake out!!

 

Happy bubble blowing!!!

                          Letter stones

 

 These are the letter stones that I was talking about in my sight word stones post. I use these for my pre school kids as well as spelling a spelling aid for my 1st grader.

 

Here you see my 2 yr old is matching the letter stones to the word octopus , that goes with the letter o that we are learning this week.

 

 

These were super simple to make but a bit time consuming so if you can talk older kids, brothers or sisters, grandmas, or hubby's into helping with the sticking, it could go a lot faster. Note you have to make more then just one of each letter at least 2 of each letter here to make sure you have enough.

 

letter stone uses:

spelling practice

letter recognition

uppercase, lower case letter match

letter match

letter sort

letter go fish

letter dig, done in sand box or bucket of rainbow rice

letter stones are awesome my kids love them. I love them too. Happy letter stone making

 

 

 

 

 

Its pumpkin time !!! Happy Halloween everyone!!

 

This year we decided to not carve pumpkins and instead craft pumpkins! They came out so cool and go along with our bewitching theme so well.

 

 The first thing we did was spray paint the pumpkins, we did 2 black and one a light slate color.

 

While the paint was wet we sprinkled some of this spangle mix I got from Wal-Mart.

 

 

ohh sooo pretty and shiny

 

                                I then picked out leafs, doves and angles for our Jesus pumpkin.

 

The next thing we did was decorate the horn black and orange for the black pumpkins purple, white and yellow for the Jesus pumpkin

 

 After the paint dried I had my tots put on peel and stick Halloween stickers on the biggest black

pumpkin.

 

 My oldest decorated the Jesus pumpkin with peel and stick stickers from our Jesus foam kit, also bought at Wal-Mart.

 

 Next we decorated the tiny pumpkin with buttons and glue. We spelled the word boo and then

placed random buttons on the pumpkin. Turned out darling.

 

 

 

 

                            my son in the background watch all us girls go crazy crafting pumpkins!!!!!!

 

 

 so that it, these are the pumpkins of the year !! We love them all so much. Happy pumpkining !!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colored rice bottles

 

 

Hello, all I wanted to share with you guys a awesome colored rice activity.  This project is a spin off of colored sand.

Fist thing you need to do is make the different colored rice!

Place white rice in baggies add a few drops of food coloring and then a few drops of hand sanitizer.

once the rice reaches the color that you want lay the rice to dry in a deep cooking dish lined with paper towel  allow to dry overnight.once dry grab whatever container you are going to fill the rice and a funnel. I used a cheap funnel from the dollar store and empty plastic water bottle containers.

next help you child fill the bottle with different color's layering as you go

  you can gently shake the bottle to get the rice to spread out

 

once you are done filling the bottles but a ring of hot glue on cap and seal.  These make great grandparent Christmas gifts

Happy Crafting

 

 

 Trick or treat smell my feet !!!!!! A Halloween   Timestamp craft. great for grandparents!!!!!!!

Good morning all,  I wanted to share with you a awesome little Halloween craft that I found on pintrest! I added some stuff to it and did the candy corn different but the general idea came from pintrest. 

So what you do is : get you supply's together you'll need paper, 4 paint brushes or 3 foam brushes and 1 small paint brush for writing names and dates ! You will also need white, yellow and orange paint. (if you don't have orange paint you can make it by doing 1 part red to 3 parts yellow. )

 

After everything is ready call one child over and have them sit on the kitchen table facing you. Convince them to let you paint a foot and let them choose which foot you paint. (my kids did not get 2 choose because I had to smash 4 feet on the page lol)

Next place the paper on a chair under the child and help them carefully place their foot onto the paper. Be careful to hold their foot and do all the moving for them. Once their foot is on the paper gently press down on the top of their foot and then quickly pull the foot off of the paper holding foot and child to prevent falling off the table in the tada action. It helps if you can have someone else help with holding the paper.

 

Tips and mistakes that I learned:

 

1. Make sure when putting the foot to paper you hold the child that the foot is attached to because they tend to slide a little bit because their legs are not long enough to reach the paper and stay seated on the table .

2. Keep paint far away when painting your child's foot they tend to get super excited which can lead to paint a flying......

3. DONT GET UPSET if the foot print is not perfect, this is supposed to be a great moment and as moms we want it to be perfect but you see it is perfect even in its imperfect way.

4. have fun ...

 

happy painting

 

 

  

 Hello everybody, Happy Sunday!

I am always looking for ways to keep my littlest love bugs busy so I can school my oldest. A few months ago I made a bead sorting game  that I adapted from a bean sort game.
its super in expensive and with color recognition and fine motors kills. It is also small and super diaper bag worthy.

 

 

This is it!! you see what I mean by saying it is super diaper bag worthy its is so compact and cheerful!

Ok so I found this rainbow pill stacker at the dollar store, and the pack of beads to go with it was also at the dollar store. This awesome little game cost me 2 bucks. :)

 

How to play

 

   Give each child one or 2 open pods, help them dump out the beads, this step is very important because if you don't they will most likely throw them out in a cute toddler fashion causing beads to go flying every here. Speaking from experience,  but maybe you have little angles in that case move to step 3.  Next have your little angle separate the different color beads into the matching pods.

 

I started with 2 pods for my 2yr old

 

                                   

 3 pods for my 3yr old.

My 7 year old does all the pods  and I have pattern cards that I made out of  flash cards that she can practice patterns or make her own . That it super easy, super cheap  and super portable!!! Happy sorting !!

 

Hello, every one this morning I wanted to share with you another sight word game that our family loves it is called fiddle sticks.

 

How to play

 

Each player takes turn pulling a stick out of the can, on each stick there is a sight word. (This can be adapted to younger players by doing the letters of the alphabet or older children by vocabulary word that they have to define.)

After the player has pulled a stick out they have to correctly say the sight word, if they do not know it the other players get a chance to correctly name the word which ever player get the word correct gets the fiddle stick.

There are 2 to 3 sticks in the can that have red tips on them if a player pulls a stick with a red tip they must  give all of their stick to the player to the right. When the can is empty of everything but the 2 or 3 re tipped sticks the game is over. Which ever player has the most fiddle sticks is deemed the winner of the game.

 

set up

 

Take a old can, or any other container preferably not a clear container because the words and red tips go face down into the can or jar. I used a  green bean can.  I hot glued pompom on the  brim of the can both inside and out to protect little hands from the shape edges of the cans.

 

 

next get your sticks and write you sight words or whatever you have decided to play the game with on the sticks. Make 2-3 red tipped sticks and put them in the can with the rest of the sticks.

 

Grab your players and have fun.

Happy playing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beauty of children

 

This is my little girl, about the time I was getting read to have Jasper she had this thing about carrying every baby that she had around at the  same time. I look at it now and see that maybe she was acting out her fears that another baby was coming and that I would not have time for her.  Then I thought it was adorable, now I see it as a cry to stay in the loop with the babies. Children are so innocent, they follow their parents and regardless if we are tough on them or don't discipline then at all, they still want nothing more then your love, time and care. Children are a heritage from the lord, they are lent to us and all we have is barrowed time.   Check here for simple ways to spend time with your little's. Life can sometimes get in the way of all the little things ad we can get so busy that we miss the simple precious moments. I urge you to slow down, and not look but actually see your child. Give into them here and there and try to teach them to love the lord from the beginning.   I have to work on these things every day. some day I fail other I do well.

Happy parenting

 

Jerzey's Rainbow cupcakes

 

Cupcakes anyone? ok lets do it!!!

 

What you need: 2 box of cupcake mix or make the equivalent of your own!!

2 tubs of white icing

gel icing coloring

baggies

cupcake liners 

tooth pick

sprinkles

 

ok so make the cupcake mix!! now separate it into baggies. so do it in bowls but baggies are easy to Throw away... and squeezable which make the layer process easier

 

add coloring till you get your desired color

once you mix the coloring and cake batter set aside till you have all the colors you want

next layer the colors( see me squeezing the baggie ) just make a small cut in the corner of baggie bake according to box

 

 
Now for the icing 

 

separate icing into baggies, I know repetitive! Next color icing the same way you did the cake batter. start at the center of the cupcake make circles with different colors until you are at the outside edge of cupcake, lol that sounded really complicated :just look at  the picture and you will get it :)
next take a tooth pick and pull it from center outward. I had to hurry it was hot in the house and my frosting was melting . finish off with sprinkles and you are done!! yeah you rock!!!

 this is what they look like out of cupcake wrapper 

my pie taking a bite!!!

happy baking!!!!

Word stones

 

 

 

My daughter, has a slight case of ADHD.  She has a hard time focusing and staying on track. The smallest of  things will distract her and it takes half the day to get her to focus. With that being said, I have to get creative when it comes to things like English and Math but mostly with things like sight words. I made alphabet rocks for her one day, so she could do her spelling words with them. We are big manipulative fans around her!! While I was doing that I came up with the idea of sight word rocks. I love them!! We play sight word go fish all the time with them. Or we will do sight word match I say the word she finds it.

The are super easy to make. I do it by grade level. Here is the Kindergarten sight words. My daughter was held back from 1st grade and didn't know her pre primer sight words so we stated with those, she learned them over the summer and now we are going for 1st grade words.

so do you want to know how to make the.

step 1 get rocks. I used these pretty ones from the dollar store.

step 2  write words on them or use sticker letters or print the words and paste them on . I used a sharpie on these and even tho I mod podge them the words still come off if you rub too hard.

step 3 mod podge over the words or stickers what ever method you used to get the darn words on there :)

step 4 let them dry over night in a well vented area.

step 5 Enjoy. 

Here is a link to sight words by grade. This sight also lets you create bingo sight word cards. What fun !!

Happy learning

Home Made  Laundry Detergent

 

Ahh yes it is that time aging, Its time to make laundry detergent.

Ok so for some this might be a stretch, but for our family of six it is a necessity we seriously spend so much money of detergent every month with 4 kids and a hubby with a dirty job I can Not keep up with the amount of laundry this house produces. Ok enough of the rant im sure there are others that have way more laundry then I do:( and bless them. So I saw this post on face book and I followed the links to how does she do it. This is a awesome tutorial on home made laundry, it is really easy and it is natural, it smells great, and it is cheap!!!

 

ok so, Drum rolllllll the ingredients. you will need

1 bucket for mixing of course

2 purex sent boosters or similar

1 box of 2o mule borax (I know sounds scary) click here for info on borax. crunchy betty  does a awesome job and calming your fears.

1 box of super washing soda

1 box of backing soda

2 bars of zote soap now the bar of soap if you do research and are willing to test you can use many different kinds but I found this works and is cheap so I stick with it.

1 container of oxi clean... I always forget the darn oxy... my husband know that when I pull out the mixing bucket he is most likely running to go get oxi Because 9 times out of 10 it somehow jumped out of my basket when I went shopping for supply's lol ugh.

So here is how you do it. I have a few cute helpers that are going to show you how it is done.

 

Step One grate soap. yes this is a blast. 

 

step 2  layer and mix all ingredients

Step 3 Pour into containers and wham bam done!!

 

I like to use the oxy container I bought at the store and old coffee cans to store the detergent. I use the purex containers as the container that goes on my dryer, The lid to the purex bottle is a perfect about to put in a large load. half is all you need for a small. So the general guide is anywhere from 1-4 Tbl spoons depending on how big and stinky the load is. Because im a homeschooling mommy I totally use this as science/home economics !!!!  Happy Washing.

 

Note.... cloth diaper? this recipe can be used for cloth diapers

Before mixing the detergent take a even about of cups of the oxi, baking soda, washing soda, and borax and mix in container add 6 to 12 drops of essential oils, I like tea tree and lavender. This stuff works great!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahh what sweet bliss, that is when my rowdy love bugs are not trashing it lol.  This is our preschool area, for those of you who do not know, I have a 2  1/2 and a 3 1/2 yr old little girls.  Both girls are doing the fabulous letters of the week curriculum by http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/ .  So far we are in week 4 and LOVE LOVE LOVE the program. In the beginning it is a little crazy getting it together, however it is a awesome, fun and adorable preschool curriculum that is super affordable; my girls love it. We also took from Sue Patricks the idea of work boxes, and adapted it to our needs. I have included a few links for you to do some work box research:) cuz we all know we have so much time for research!!!!! I tried a few different versions and have finally decided that 10 boxes is just to overwhelming lol I just cant keep up. So we used these from Wal-Mart; now I got 3 singles each one was 17.99.  The link is for a pk of 2. Once I got the 5 drawer work boxes  I grouped everything for my 1st grader by subject. (see my up coming post on the paperclip system.) After I got all the curriculum in the boxes, I laminated these labels that I got over at http://cornerstoneconfessions.com/2012/02/workbox-station-and-free-printables.html. Kathy does a awesome job at explaining how the sticker and work boxes go together. I got the cheapest desk set from ikea they are pretty sturdy, and you can not beat the price. I also got 2 hanging bucket storage from ikea as well to store each child's supply's at their desk. Otherwise, I end up with 2 wondering toddlers making messes in their wake as they run about the class room looking for supply's.  The preschool area took about a half a day to put together, I love it, the kids love having their own little desk area to learn at as well. I hope I didnt loos any of you, I just wanted to link the supply's I used to save all you hard working mom's and dad's time. Happy schooling .

Hello, Im so glad you came by to see what we are up too. This blog is about My family and I and how we came to be, are, and want to be. So to start My name is Joey, I have 4 beautiful children and 1 Kick Butt husband. We are God-Loving, homeschooling, cloth diapering, baby wearing, co-sleeping, Horse riding, education loving fools. I am a creative mind, happy soul and giving heart kind of person. So join me and my family as we Journey through this live holding hands, praising god and living each day as it comes.  "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones" Proverbs 17:22