Writing – Page 2 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Thankfulness and Thanksgiving

thankfulness-header

My favorite holiday as a kid growing up wasn’t Christmas. Maybe that makes me an odd kid. But for me, it was always Thanksgiving. The traditions our family had were precious to me, and that ritual was something I came to love, and to long for. To this day, I don’t even have to close my eyes to be transported back to Grandma’s kitchen the morning of Thanksgiving. It was the same every year. Year after year, after year.

It’s those memories that make me want to establish special traditions with our own kids related to Thanksgiving. Not just about Thanksgiving itself, but about thankfulness. Thats why when my friend Ashley wrote this post about creating a super cute little fall prayer journal, I jumped on the idea and decided to make a similar one using Becca’s handwriting journals and turn it into a Thankfulness Journal. (Step by step directions on how I made mine can be found at the bottom of this post.)

I think something kids today really struggle with is entitlement. With very little to no effort on their parts, stuff just shows up. And I started realizing recently that our kids have no idea what they have. They have no idea what half of this city doesn’t have… and that’s where my idea for the Thankfulness Journal was born. Each day of November, Becca will sit down and think about one THING (NOT a person!) she is thankful for. She can draw a picture, and we’ll work together on sounding out the words, and writing what she is thankful for. This is a great activity for your kids to work on handwriting, spelling, and phonics! In the back half of the journal, we will talk about our family traditions (not just from Thanksgiving) we are thankful for and write and illustrate those, as well. And to keep myself on the right mental path, I’ve downloaded Ashley’s grown up version of a Thankfulness Journal, which you can get free here!

Another activity we’ll do before Thanksgiving to talk about thankfulness is thinking about all the foods that we eat – not just at Thanksgiving, but also other times. I will give her food magazines to cut pictures from (fine motor practice!) and she can glue them onto poster paper and work on writing labels for the foods she finds. I will also challenge her to pick foods that she doesn’t like, that she knows other family members DO like. Maybe she’ll find a picture of scrambled eggs. Or a picture of bacon. Or a picture of (Heaven forbid!) broccoli. I want to encourage her to think about others, and what our preferences are. This is a great way to think outside the box… and stop the spread of selfishness!! She also needs practice thinking about balanced meals, so she can use the pictures to make posters of balanced meals… and pick a few of the foods she’d like to try someday! (Hey, this Mommy can dream, right??)

Fall is a fabulous time to get outside and remember the beauty that God has blessed us with on this Earth. Maybe it’s something as simple as a seed collecting and sorting activity. Or maybe it’s getting out and doing a photo challenge in nature to find certain small creatures or plants – then print those pictures and place them into a little journal that your child can look back at to remember to thank God for the little things in nature that He has placed in our lives to remind us of his majesty. Even if you don’t think there is much to explore in your front yard, you’d be amazed what you can find when you get down on all fours and pretend you are a beetle!

I would challenge you to have your children write thank you notes to their friends who give them treats for Halloween. Encourage them to list out not just what the friend gave, but WHY they are thankful that child is their friend. “I love it that you make me laugh.” “I like how you help me when I can’t tie my shoe.” “Thank you for always smiling at me and helping me be happy when I’m sad.” Even if your kids are used to writing thank you notes, I bet they are probably used to saying “thanks for the _xyz toy_.” And that’s it. Mix it up this November. Get them thinking about WHY they are thankful for that friendship they have. Let them use fun stickers and special pens or markers to make those friends feel really special, and to add some fun to what can seem very serious for your kids.

Now is the perfect time to plan what activities you’re going to do this November – to not let Thanksgiving get lost in the shuffle between Halloween and Christmas. It’s a great time to think about what new family traditions you want to start, and to really center your own mind on thankfulness. We often focus so much on the costumes we’ll wear and the gifts that we’ll buy, or even on the turkey we’ll cook… that the actual purpose of giving thanks is lost. Hopefully these ideas will help everyone in your family remember to be thankful for the objects, foods, nature, and people around them, because Thanksgiving is so much more than just a day we eat a lot of food and hang out with family to watch a parade and some football. This year, focus on the things and the people they are thankful for, and WHY they are thankful for them. Let’s raise a generation that isn’t the ME generation, but the YOU generation… the THANK YOU generation.
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Make your own Thankfulness Journal!

Check out how Ashley made hers here.

I don’t have any Modge Podge, and wanted to cover the book entirely… so I took 4 sheets of scrapbook paper and here’s what I came up with! You can do the same in just about 5 minutes!

supply-list

paper journal

I also cut pieces to cover the insides so that the print on the front cover was not distracting. You wouldn’t have to do that – in which case, you would only need 2 sheets of 12×12 paper. front-cover-of-journal

There are more posts in this series! Check them out here:

Saying Thank You with a Handmade Card

Thankfulness and Thanksgiving – For Your Toddler

Writing About Thankfulness

50 States Postcard Exchange!

postcard-ad

It’s been several years since I was in the classroom teaching. But one of my favorite things was doing a postcard exchange. There’s nothing more exciting than getting mail – like real, legit snail-mail mail! This year as Becca’s enthusiasm for geography really gets going, I wanted to provide her with that opportunity as well – to send and receive 49 post cards from the other states in the USA!

And amazingly enough, I got some immediate response when I posted on my Facebook page that I was looking for interest. Enough that I decided it was worth it to set up a Google spreadsheet and invite the whole country (well, one person from each state) to participate! We have some states already represented, but we’re still looking for states to join in the fun! If you would be interested in purchasing (or making if you’re really artistic/adventurous/crazy) 49 post cards (50 if you’d like to keep one from your own state), and then mailing them out to the other 49 states, then please shoot me a comment here and let me know what state you’d be representing! Then I can get back with you and let you know if your state has already been selected by someone.

Please note – I’ll need your email address if I’m going to include you in the exchange and send you the spreadsheet to update with your information. So please be sure you include it when you comment.

Logistics:
-Buy 49 post cards that represent your state. (price??)
—You can usually find them in the book section at Walmart, at your local zoo or aquarium or other tourist trap if you’re in a big city, or some grocery stores even carry them in the office supply section.—
-Answer questions about your state on each postcard (you can type and print on labels to save your hands!)
-Address post cards to the other participants.
-Mail 49 post cards. ($0.34 per stamp = $16.66)
-Receive 49 post cards!

Who can participate?
ANYONE who enjoys getting mail! Classrooms, homeschool families, lonely college student who wants mail, adult who loves mail, family who wants mail, ANYONE!!!!

Comment today and I’ll let you know if your state has been covered!

Our Penguin Unit

Throughout this post there will be a variety of links. Some will be to other websites or files for you to download. All sources are credited where necessary. There will also be affiliate links which will be denoted with (aff link). When you choose to click on these links to purchase items, I make a tiny % of the sale profit off of that item. That goes to helping keep this blog alive. Thank you for your purchases.

So of course this blog post wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of back story. I’ve said previously that I’m great about setting goals, but not so great about putting the nose to the grindstone and actually making them happen. But this year that is going to change! Because I’ve switched my focus from super long term objectives, so short term monthly objectives. Especially when it comes to school at home. Becca’s love for learning is voracious. She keeps me on my toes at all times. She constantly is begging for more activities, more books, and asking more and more and yes, more! questions. Since having her own dictionary and LOTS of other non-fiction reference books in her room the questions have backed off a little bit, but not entirely. She just can’t learn enough, fast enough.

I used to stress out thinking that homeschool needed to look like me sitting down with her all day and actually doing instruction time. All day. Boy doesn’t THAT sound like a nightmare with a child who has SPD and has to move ALL. THE. TIME. Except when she doesn’t because she needs to be wrapped tightly in a blanket and suck on her finger. But then this fall I read a book that truly changed the way I think about homeschool. I realized that what it looks like for somebody else isn’t going to be what it looks like for us. And that is OK! (Thanks again to Alicia Michelle from Your Vibrant Family for your encouragement and support every step of the way! I believe I CAN do this homeschooling thing as long as I have to! Which I not-so-secretly hope is not very long!!)

Anyway, I discovered that I can plan a STACK of activities for Becca and we can sit down and do them in an hour, or an hour and a half. And then we are done. I’m now realizing – that’s ok! We go at her pace, I tell her what activities we’ll be doing, and she selects which order we do them in. She gets to take breaks between them if she so desires, and play with learning games, engineering materials, etc. (All of her breaks are STEAM breaks of some sort.) When she is done, we take a STEAM break (want some STEAM activity ideas?)… Then we get back at it. All the while, Brother can play in his room on his own, and is perfectly content since it’s no more than an hour and a half time block. (Yes, I am blessed!)

So back to those goals – I decided that it was time to do a thematic unit from start to finish. And actually finish. So I gave us two weeks. Which was a perfect time frame. She goes to Mother’s Day Out a couple days a week, and we often don’t do “school work” on those days, though sometimes we do. Just depends. I like having the flexibility to let her be three and a half, while also letting her brain be whatever age it happens to be that day.

learning about penguins

So the past couple of weeks we have been learning about penguins. I first told her we were going to make a mystery picture to find out what we were learning about. Granted, this took a little bit longer than her attention span, but I kept it exciting for her by asking her which block to color next, and we traded off who colored and who read the letter/number combos, and who found the right block to color. We got to a certain point on it, and the light bulb came on! “We’re gonna learn about penguins! Like in my Magic Treehouse Book Eve of the Emperor Penguin!” (aff link) She was so excited she was literally jumping up and down in her chair.

We sat together (she often sits in my lap while we do school) and talked about all she already knew about penguins (which was actually a good deal) and then we both came up with some questions we wanted to answer about them. I wrote down what she dictated to me on one of the graphic organizers, and then we talked about another way to organize our thoughts – with flaps.

graphic organizers

She really enjoyed the flaps, which I cut from one file and attached onto another. (Hey, teaching is all about getting creative, right?) All of the files I used will be linked in a list below. All were found on teacherspayteachers.com as freebie files. Later in our study, we talked about how we can also organize our thoughts into a web format. She decided that for her, she prefers flaps as her method of thought organization. She especially liked having the definitions of the penguin vocabulary words behind a flap, so that she could easily just flip and see the one she wanted to see.

coming soon

You might have seen this picture if you follow my page on Facebook. This was one of her favorite parts of the unit of study. I modified her old Antarctic Habitat Box to be just rock salt and white rice (less messy), and she not only got to have free play time with the penguins and their blue activity tray (aka water), but she also used the penguins (want to get your own set? Click here – aff link) and her penguin word bank sheet to sort and classify them. We pulled a few prey and predators from our ocean habitat box as well. She enjoyed acting out the food chain in her habitat, pretending the penguin ate a fish, and then a leopard seal ate the penguin. Morbid? No. Not at all. She is fully immersed in how the animal kingdom functions.

penguin reference guide

Then, we took all of the worksheets we completed and compiled them into a book. She drew her version of a penguin on white card stock paper for the cover, and I even stapled onto the back cover her story book that she dictated to me. Not only does it serve as a mini-portfolio of her work, it’s also a great reference guide for her in the future. She is so proud to have it on her bookshelf in her room. (And she took it to Mother’s Day Out to show her teacher and coordinator!) We also wrote on the back cover the title and author of the two reference books we used (Penguins by Emily Bone, and Nat Geo Kids Reader – Penguins aff link). We also listed the YouTube video we watched to learn more about a crèche, and the fabulous online resource of the New England Aquarium, where we saw amazing penguin pictures (we found them when searching for “molting”) and learned more about penguins in captivity. It was important to me that she start learning the importance of sighting her references when she does research. We didn’t go into formal sighting rules, just listed them so they are credited and we could go back to them in the future.

And now, to give more credit where credit is due, here are the links to the files that I used from TPT. Again, they were all freebies, so I can share them with you, but please realize that these are NOT my creations – each creator has a page within the file that gives her credit for her work. And each of these files is WONDERFUL! I’m so thankful for a resource like TPT to find fabulous content for our projects!

Penguin Mystery Picture Graph

Penguin Word Bank

All About Penguins

Flip Flap Fun

Penguin Pre-Writing Fun

Did you like this post or find it helpful? Please comment and feel free to share on social media! I’d love to see how you’ve used these ideas to help your own students! Follow my Facebook page here. Check me out on Pinterest here. And now also on Instagram!

Christmas Activities

I debated about how to do this post – if I should put everything separate so it doesn’t seem overwhelming, or just put it all together. I decided it’s easier to reference later if it’s all together… and honestly, if I wait on some things until later, you have less time to do them with your kids! So… get ready. I’m about to bombard you with a bunch of fun ideas – the first several will be great for even your little toddlers, and the rest will be geared toward your older kiddos.

Many of these activities I have stored in little plastic bags and all inside a storage box (in fact, the same box that once held our Apple Activities). But a couple of them are ready at the window any time one of the kids wants them. The great thing about the activities in the box is that while Becca is working on her activities, she can select something from the box for Gray to do, to appease his desire to do what she is doing. She can also interact with him on his activities, and I love watching the tender moments they share (which usually come right before a snatch-grab-cry-scream fest HA!) together when working on a project. If you have a toddler and an older child, you know how hard it is to find something they can both do either together, or to keep the little one occupied while the older one does something different. This box of activities seems to be my best effort yet in this department.. and is about 80% effective! So, here we go! Let me know if you try any of these with your kids! I’d love to see you share pictures on my Facebook page, as well!

sticky window

The Christmas Tree Sticky Window is super simple to make – just draw a Christmas tree onto a piece of clear contact paper, and then attach it to your window with tape – so that the sticky side is out. Then, cut various shapes out of felt or other fabric (so that they won’t adhere permanently) and let your kids decorate the tree over and over again! While Becca enjoyed this activity at first, this is definitely a Grayson favorite. He LOVES standing at the window and moving the shapes around. Of course, he also loves to carry the shapes all over the house and leave them random places…

shape identification

This felt Christmas tree was a busy bag I made a few years ago at a MOPS meeting – simply by cutting shapes from various colors of felt. It’s a great activity for the kids to do together – Becca loves to tell Gray the names of the shapes and their colors. She likes to make patterns of ornaments – he likes to throw them in the air and watch them rain down around him. Either way, they are happily occupied.

writing coloring

In an effort to provide activity for Gray AND Becca in the same box, I have a couple of Christmas coloring books and some blank paper that either of them can enjoy, but I also have magnetic Christmas words that Becca can spell, and then write in her bare book (I found a bunch of them in the Target dollar section at one point this summer!). She also has two rhyming word wheels that she can practice with and write the rhyming words in her book. Gray loves that he’s “writing” with crayons while Sis is writing too. He feels so big and important, and it shows! We just have to watch that he doesn’t run around with a crayon sticking out of his mouth… he has that tendency.

geo shapes

We have some really fun building materials – you could use anything you have laying around – Legos, Duplos (for your little hands), building blocks, marble runs, whatever you have. Challenge your little ones to build a Christmas tree out of the supplies provided!! Looking for more STEAM Engineering ideas? Click Here!

reading retelling

We have a play Peanuts nativity set (affiliate link – thank you!) available on our low window sill for Becca to retell the Christmas story anytime she’d like. Gray also enjoys playing with the characters, and he loves to sit and listen to her act out the story. I also provided in her Christmas activity box Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends (affiliate links – thank you!) books – along with a tiny stuffed ginger baby that she can read the books to, and then use to re-inact the stories.

Not an activity for Brother, Becca LOVES making Christmas trees of various designs using green popsicle sticks, red buttons, white pom poms, and one gold one for the star on top. She has come up with some of the coolest, and also weirdest designs. Some look like trees, and some, well… don’t. But she is having a blast, it’s a great sensory activity for her that really allows her imagination and creativity to go wild.

fine motor

Becca struggles with some simple things like getting dressed, and in order to strengthen her hands and fingers to work on those little things like putting on socks and shoes, I try to find lots of fine motor skill practice activities for her. I had some green colored pasta leftover from one of our habitat boxes, and also have some little Christmas jewelry pieces that I put in some little containers and let her string onto pipe cleaners to make bracelets and necklaces. She LOVES it, and it’s great practice. I even made an extension to this that stays in her room for holiday play – mini ball ornaments that she can string onto pipe cleaners. It’s fabulous for her, and I’ve seen just in the past couple of weeks her fine motor skills making some great improvements!

$star math$

I programmed several index cards with a variety of patterns and addition/subtraction/multiplication story problems, and had her use these little star cards to solve them. She even said “I wish all math was fun like this!” So we’ve started using the star cards for other kinds of math too. You could use anything you have around the house – scraps of paper, fabric, cut pipe cleaners, Legos, Duplos, crayons, etc. Hands down, using manipulatives makes math more fun! (And Mr. Gingerbaby even got involved in the math, too!)

$more math$

Becca has always struggled with seeing the importance behind having any numbers beyond 20. She can count to 100 now with ease, but just really doesn’t see the point. But she does love a good challenge, so I cut some 100s grids into lots of funny pieces, and she really enjoys putting them together. I also took her sensory box from last Christmas and stepped it up a notch. She loves playing with it with her balance. She has discovered that the shiny and matte ornaments do not weigh the same as each other. She has weighed the cookie cutters that are also in the box, and loves to scoop and pour the rice/split peas into and out of the balance. She gets so excited when she makes them equal, and loves trying new combinations to see how much she needs to equalize if one side has more ornaments, etc. I love seeing her creativity come out in this simple hands-on sensory activity, and I love to see her enjoying math. She’s measuring with her measuring cup each time, and getting better at recognizing the values, etc. Seeing her enjoy math is so good for me – I’m not a fan of math at all… so I try hard to make it really enjoyable for her so that she will love it.

What Christmas activities do you have going on in your house? We are also doing daily advent activities, reading lots of Christmas books, and watching lots of special Christmas shows. I’m hoping we can get out to look at Christmas lights sometime soon as well. It can be such a crazy time of the year, but when we remember to stop and focus on the Reason for the season, it is all worth while.

May God richly bless you and yours this Christmas! I look forward to hearing from you on Facebook, and I look forward to starting the new year with some new resolutions and some new post ideas!! Do you have something you’d like to see me post here on my blog? Send me an email! I’d love to hear from you!

Apple Activity Box

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you probably remember the really fun activity centers I made for Becca last fall using our water table. I brought it in from our summer play on the back porch, and she really had a blast… and I was super proud of all I came up with for her to do! Fast forward a year, and lil Bro is into EVERYTHING… even things he’s not ready to do yet. So, I found a way to re-make her apple activity center into a box that can easily be packed up and kept out of reach of Grayson’s little grabby hands!

You can find boxes like this one at your local craft store in the scrapbooking section – they are 13×13 and are fabulous!!! I used scotch tape to stick the index cards on so they can easily be removed and the next seasonal activity center can go in their places.

Here are the skills that I included:
Math – apple patterning / apple adding & subtracting / measuring
Reading – a book to read and retell / a poem to read and recite
Writing – magnetic words to build / a blank book to write them in
Art – markers to make illustrations in the book and on the poem cards
Science – non-fiction book to read
Hand-Eye-Coordination/Fine Motor/Engineering – create an apple tree with popsicle sticks and buttons

Here are the direction cards, which guide play but certainly don’t limit it – she has gone way outside the box of just following these cards, though the lil OCD in her followed each card in order to some extent before moving on to do her own thing. I also included with each instruction the list of items your child will need to complete the activity. Some require prep, some don’t.

1. Write and illustrate a book about apples using the words on your magnets.
–>I got packs of 3 blank books for $1 at Target before school started! Score. You could make your own just by folding paper together and stapling. You’ll also need to write a few fall words on index cards, cut out, and stick magnet tape on the back.

2. Practice saying the poem without looking. (Recite from memory).
–>You’ll need to write the poem on index cards. I got it online – original source unknown. Here are the words:
—->card 1: Apples are so good to eat,
—->card 2: To have them is a special treat.
—->card 3: Red, green, yellow too,
—->card 4: All of them are good for you!

3. Draw pictures on the poem cards to illustrate what the words say.
–>Provide markers or crayons for illustrations

4. Make an apple pattern. / Add the apples: green apples + red apples = how many apples all together? (We extended this and did subtraction and multiplication as well – we have 2 groups of 5 apples.)
–>I got these little apples at Dollar Tree. You could easily use buttons or gems or place apple stickers on index cards and cut out. As long as there are at least red and green so that your child can make patterns, you’re good!

5. Make an apple tree with popsicle sticks and buttons. How many buttons did you use? How many are left over?
–>You’ll need a bunch of random red, green, and/or yellow buttons, and some popsicle sticks. I had green popsicle sticks, so we used those. Any color will work. You can really extend this by having your child pattern with the buttons, sort by size, add, subtract, make even groups for multiplication, etc.

6. Read the book “Apples” by Ken Robbins. Retell to a grownup.
–>Any non-fiction book about apples will work. This one fit well into the box I had. I selected a non-fiction book to add in a science aspect to the box, but you could easily do a fiction book. In my apple center last year, we had Ten Apples Up On Top and did a block activity with it. You could easily have your child use the buttons to put ten apples on top of the book characters, or some such. Use what you have, and you know your child – if your child won’t be “into” a non-fiction text, use what they will love!

7. Build the fall words on your magnet tray!
–>This activity is totally a repeat from last year’s apple center, because it’s just so fun and it’s always great to practice spelling! I didn’t want to buy a bunch of magnetic letters, so I just wrote the words on index cards, cut out the letters, and put magnet tape on the back! Super simple and cheap! And obviously, you can save them from year to year to use again! You’ll also need some sort of magnetic tray – I got this pizza pan from Dollar Tree and she uses it for all of her magnetic activities, including building sandcastles, which she loves.

8. How many cups of apple “tea” mix? Find and bury treasure!
–>Again a repeated material from last year’s apple center, I simply took a bag of green decorative fish tank rocks from Dollar Tree and added some Black Apple Tea leaves to it to make it smell like apples. We didn’t know that she has Anosmia back then… (Anosmia = no sense of smell.) To extend this activity this year, I took the rock/tea mix and put into a small container and provided her with measuring cups to measure with, and a couple of fall shaped mini cookie cutters to bury and then dig around for. She loves digging in the rocks, and will bury and find and rebury and find the cookie cutters over and over again.

This apple activity box has already brought us HOURS of fun, and I just created it this week. It’s sure to be a hit well into early October, when I plan to take them out and convert the box to a pumpkin activity for Halloween/Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoy the ideas… I’d love to know how you put them to use with your kids! Please share! If you’re not following my Facebook page, please be sure to click over and “like” the page and then share your photos and ideas anytime! 🙂