Letter H

Activities for H week!

• Cut out hearts (you know, do the folded paper thing) - this is good for practicing scissor skills! A little more difficult than straight lines, but still good practice - and decorate them with heart stickers, markers, paint, whatever. We gave a decorated heart to a girl named Haley at church.
• Hats - pull out all the hats in your house (or if you're like us and have a bazillion, just get the kids' play hats) and sort them by size, color, etc. Wear them and have a parade of hats.  If you have one you can decorate, do it!  Asher actually hates wearing hats, so this activity wasn't very exciting to him, which saddened me, because I think it's so fun!
• Dig holes in the sandbox or dirt.
• Give lots of hugs!
• Play with a toy hippo.
• Draw a house, talk about your house/home, play with a dollhouse.
• Sing "If You're Happy and You Know It"
• Make a newspaper hat - we did this, decorated it, and gave it to Asher's friend Hayden at church.
• Make handprints with paint on a large piece of paper.

• Cut out some additional hearts from colored paper and a few from newspaper print.  Then glue them onto another piece of newspaper.  Have your child see if they can find all the hearts and discuss camouflage.  You can tailor this to your child's age - I only used 2 colored ones and 2 newspaper ones because Asher is so young. I numbered them after he found them.

Letter G

Activities for G week!

• Green - you can do tons with the color green!  Paint with green paint, go on a hunt to spy green things, sort M&Ms and eat the green ones first, etc.
• Make some green frosting and put it on graham crackers for a snack. Asher asked for this one nearly everyday for the next 2 weeks.
• Read "Green Eggs and Ham" and use green food coloring to make scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Asher was excited, yet skeptical about this.  But he eventually tried it and loved it!
• Pan for gold in a sandbox.  We painted some really small rocks with gold spray paint for an activity at church.  When that was over, we just put them in our sandbox and pretended to pan for gold!
• Color a picture of a giraffe.
• Watch a video of giraffes on YouTube.
• Go to the grocery store.
• Teach your child a new game or play an old favorite.  Like golf!
• Play in the grass.
• Look at things you've grown in the garden (during G week, our garden still had some produce).
• Eat some gum (if your kids are old enough.  Mine wasn't.)
• Most importantly, talk about God!!

Modern Slavery

My husband surprised me with tickets to a Tenth Avenue North concert last night.  It was awesome!!  I really like their authenticity and genuine spirit.  They truly make their concerts into a time of worship and put all the spotlight on God rather than themselves.  

Their tour is called "The Light Meets the Dark" and is used to highlight the heinous issue of modern slavery.  I have heard many times about this problem and it has always been a heavy weight in my heart.  But two things were said last night that really hit hard.  They have partnered up with Compassion International, which is a child sponsorship organization.  A Compassion video was shown where 3 adults from other countries spoke about their lives before Compassion intervened and they were sponsored by someone.  One man said that he remembers his mother holding his 10 month old sister as she died of starvation.  I have an almost 10 month old.  Wow.  I don't even want to imagine what it is like to hold your baby as they die of something so simple, yet something you can't provide.  Not only that, but the days and weeks prior to that when they cry out in hunger.  

Then the lead singer of Tenth Avenue North began to talk about slavery and he said he'd always wondered how it actually happens, how a child becomes a slave.  And he began to paint a picture of a common scenario.  A man is working in a field for many hours.  Perhaps a coffee bean field, plucking the beans by hand.  At the end of the day, he brings the pile of beans to his boss and receives $1 for his day of work.  He feels the stress of not being able to provide enough for his family to eat.  Then a stranger comes along and says something like "I have work for your child.  If you let her come with me, I'll pay her $300 a month."  And the man, out of desperation, gives his daughter to the stranger, maybe not having the slightest idea what she will be doing or what will be done to her.  Now, I know that thousands of other children are kidnapped or get into the sex slave industry by more forceful means, but as I sat there and thought about my two babies sleeping peacefully at home, I tried to put myself in that mother or father's shoes and felt heart-wrenching pain.


The singer went on to say that when you sponsor a child through Compassion International, you actually stop that cycle right where it starts.  You literally pluck a child out of a desperate situation in poverty and give them a new start in life.  Instead of a stranger coming to that family's house to offer "work" for a child, a Compassion worker comes and brings wonderful news in the form of food, education, clothing, and most importantly, the Gospel for the child.  What amazing news that must be to a family who wonders how their dollar will feed and clothe their children, let alone give them any education!


He went on to give the typical speech about how it's about the cost of 3 or so lattes a week, but not being a huge coffee drinker (thought I love it, opportunity and cost deter me), that kind of talk never resonates much with me.  What does is realizing that I have and most of the world has not.  It doesn't matter that most of our clothes are second-hand and our TV is old and I have to watch almost every penny I spend.  I have clothes and a TV and pennies to spend.  I spent this morning folding clothes and thanking God that I have clothes to put on, a washing machine to clean them in, a clean floor to fold them on, a warm bed to sleep in, food to eat for breakfast, and many other things.


But even more than God taking care of me on a daily basis with my physical needs, He has taken care of a deep spiritual need that all of us have.  He sent His son Jesus to die on that old rugged cross to take our place.  He literally plucked me out when I was drowning in sin and saved me.  And I thank Him all the time for what He did for me.  He can pluck you out, too, if you just trust Him.  Believe that He died for your sins.  Tell Him that you need Him.  And don't forget to thank Him :)


Our sponsored child is Joan and he lives in Peru.  He's 15 now, which is hard to believe.  He was only 8 or 9 when we began sponsoring him.  It's like watching your own child grow up too fast :)



http://www.compassion.com/

Letter F

We had lots of "F"un during F week!

• Flowers - we didn't do this particular activity, but I found a neat craft in Family Fun magazine (instructions posted below).  What we did do was take a flower sponge and used paint to stamp some flowers across a piece of paper.  Then I had Asher practice drawing lines by drawing the stems with a marker.  Then we completed the picture with some bug stamps and other flower stamps!

  

• Fingerprints and Footprints!  You can do so many things with this.  I had plans to do the following activity with our play group, but we ran out of time and didn't get to do it.  Read Dr. Seuss' "The Foot Book", then roll out a long sheet of easel paper on the ground and have the kids step on a paper plate with paint and walk down the sheet of paper to make lots of fun footprints!  Left foot, left foot, right foot, right!  For fingerprints, use a stamp pad, paint, or just color marker on the fingers and make them into bugs, caterpillars, letters, etc.
• Frogs - the day we did this was a rainy day, so it was perfect for an indoor activity.  Take several paper plates and color them green.  Then cut a wedge in each plate to make a lily pad.  I will insert here that it would be a wonderful and easy opportunity to help your child learn to use scissors with these wedges.  I didn't even think about it until Asher said "I do it!" I helped him get his fingers in the holes and held the plate.  Once he got started with each new cut, he actually did pretty well!  And your preschool teacher will thank you a million times over if you've worked with your child on this skill beforehand!!  Anyway, we pretended to be frogs and jumped on the lily pads.  We have a small toy frog that Asher liked to make jump around on the lily pads too.
• Make a small and simple family tree with photographs and help your child understand some easy concepts about family (like his grandma is actually your mommy).
• Four - do everything in fours!  And practice that counting!

Letter E

Our activities for the letter E week:

• Ears and eyes - listen to different sounds (you can get into high and low sounds, loud and soft sounds, play 2 sounds and ask your child if they were the same or different, etc.), look at things and talk about how we see with our eyes, use a blindfold to put on and see how hard it is to walk around in the dark, etc.  Just be creative with this one!
• Put googly eyes on a picture (one that has eyes, of course, or it might look silly :)
• Put silly glasses on your eyes!
• Eggs - go somewhere where you can get messy and bring a few eggs and a bowl.  Let your child play with the eggs and see how hard they have to push for them to crack.  Let them feel the inside of the egg and see the different parts.  Then cook some eggs (not the ones you played with!) and eat!
• Save the eggshells to make some crushed eggshell art.  Be sure to peel out that thin lining so that all you have is the hard shell part.  When the shell is dry, let your kid have fun crushing the eggshells on a piece of paper.  Put some glue on a piece of paper and sprinkle the pieces on.  When it's dry, you can paint them with watercolors.
• Watch a youtube video of some eggs hatching.
• Make this elephant craft: http://www.first-school.ws/activities/shapes/animals/elephantshapes.htm - you can discuss the shapes and have your child glue (we used tape) the pieces on a piece of paper to make an elephant.  But really, if you just search for elephant crafts on google, you find a ton more to do!  We just used this one because it was really easy. (picture above)
• Exercise!!

 

Letter D

It's been busy in the Regier household and we haven't had much time to do our letter activities lately, but we are getting back into the groove this week!  I also haven't had much time to update the blog, so although we are farther down the alphabet than the letter D, I'm just getting to writing about our fun activities.  We didn't do a whole lot for our D week, but here are the activities:

• Dance to music!
• Make drums out of butter tubs, canisters, pots, etc. and make some noise!
• Read a book about dinosaurs
• Hide a toy dinosaur around the house and have your child search for it
• Hide a toy that starts with D (dinosaur, duck, dog - we used the duck and dog) in the dirt and have them dig to find it!  This was Asher's favorite activity - he wanted to do it everyday for the next week!
• Make a day/dark picture (I know the opposites are day and night, but to make them both start with D I had to get a little creative).  We divided a large paper in half and I drew a sun on the day side and a moon and stars on the dark side.  Then I had Asher paint blue all over the dark side and color the rest of the picture with markers once the paint dried.
• Watch Dumbo - this movie has been played about a thousand times in our house, so it was a no-brainer to include it in our D week!
• Let the dogs out to run around
• Draw pictures!
• We gave a jar of "delicious" salsa to our friend Dana!

Letter C

Here are some activities we did during C week:

• We baked cookies for lots of people we know whose names begin with the letter C!
• During naptime one day, I cut out 10 circles from colored paper and taped them around the house.  When Asher woke up, I told him to go hunt for the circles.  I thought 10 would be plenty, but I really should have done 50!  He loved it and I was continually taping them back in different areas to keep the activity going!  When we were done, we taped them to the floor and counted them.  You could also do different sizes and colors and sort them.
• Using 3 different sizes of jars/cans, we stamped circles using paint and the tops of those cans.

• We also used sidewalk chalk (a staple in our house) to draw very large shapes on the driveway.  I pointed out the circle and wrote "circle" inside it.  Then we walked around the "perimeter" (new vocabulary word!) of each shape, jumped inside and outside the shapes as I named them, etc.
• During our playgroup one day, we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and made caterpillars from egg cartons.  The caterpillars are really easy to make: cut out a section of 3 from an egg carton.  Have the kids paint, then attach pipe cleaner for legs and antennae and either draw eyes or glue on googly eyes.
• At the end of the week, we took a "field trip" to our local Casey's General Store to buy some chocolate with coins (this was my husband's idea - and probably the best one for C week as my son still gets excited to go to Casey's and get some chocolate!)

Letter B

Here are the activities we did during B week!!

• Baked brownies and brought them to our pastor's (Brian) house and gave them to Brian, Ben and Brad.
• Gave a book to our friend Brody for his first birthday!
• Took a "field trip" to the bank to exchange the coins in his piggy bank for "bills" and then went to the library for some books, many of which started with B.
• Colored on one of the Diapers.com big boxes with markers (this is all we did with this idea, but if your kids are a little older you could put things in the box that start with B!  You could also "bury" something in the box and talk about that vocabulary word!)
• Make bubble art - mix 1/4 cup of dish detergent, 1/2 cup water, 1 teaspoon of sugar and divide the mixture into small cups or bowls.  Put a different color of food coloring into each cup.  Either use bubble wands or make your own (just use pipe cleaner and bend the ends to make a circle and secure it).  Then get out some white paper and blow bubbles, letting them pop on the paper! (I got this idea from http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/preschool_themes/bubbles/bubble_art.htm where there are lots of other bubble ideas!)
• Blow bubbles!  If you want to make your own or do something a little different, make the bubble solution from above and put it in a container (like a yogurt container) with a lid.  Punch 2 holes in the lid on either end and stick a straw through one side.  Have your child blow on the straw to make the bubbles come out the other hole!  Make sure they don't suck on the straw, like my son did.  Although he did have a nice bubble come out of his mouth when he tried to talk!!
• Grab all the balls you have in your house and sort them - size, texture, bounciness, etc.
• Make a bug - take a styrofoam ball and paint it.  when it's dry, give it some eyes (you can use googly eyes if you want) and a mouth and use pipe cleaner for the legs.

Here's our bubble art:

 

The Many Uses of Shaving Cream...

If you're looking for a fun and cheap way to keep your kids (and you) entertained for a while, get some of the cheapest foam shaving cream you can find (we use Barbasol), go outside, spray some in their hands or on the cement and let them have at it!  It washes off easily and it feels really cool :)  See how many things they can think of to do with the shaving cream.  We found out that clapping with cream in our hands makes a nice white shower.  Also, if you spray some on the cement, it's an excellent way to practice letter/shape/number recognition or have them practice writing in it.  Great for the tactile learners!!

Letter A

I'm a teacher at heart.  I have taught 5th grade, 1st grade, and preschool as a teacher and just about everything as a substitute teacher.  Everywhere I am with my son, Asher, I can't help but point out shapes as we drive, count the flowers we see, and explain new vocabulary as we play.  Using an idea for a preschool curriculum I ran across (http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/) as a springboard, I decided to write a short daily activity to do with Asher centered around a letter of the alphabet.  The thing that impressed me most about the curriculum on Heavenly Homemakers was that she incorporated service into the lessons.  So each week, we choose a person or a few people who's name starts with the letter of the week and give them something that also begins with that letter.  For example, this morning Asher gave a flower to Faith at church because it's F week.  He absolutely loves giving things to people!!  The first week, I had him pick a toy airplane (and a few toy cars) to give to his friend Abrahm because we would see him 2 days later.  He was so excited that he insisted we go NOW to give it to Abrahm!  I learned very quickly that I need to keep my mouth shut until it's time to do it :).  Asher is only 2, so the point right now is for us to have a fun activity to do and expose him to the letters of the alphabet.  So here are some of the activities we did for the letter A (subsequent letters to follow in other posts):

Letter A

• Apples - we got 2 apples off of our apple tree and cut them both in half, each in different ways.  I showed him the seeds and let him taste the apple.  Then we made apple prints (or stamps) using paint on a paper plate.  We then gave an apple to Amanda! (not one with paint on it, of course...)
• Airplanes - I did a search for airplanes on YouTube and we watched a few videos.  Asher loved this and watched his favorite one for probably 20 minutes.  Except his favorite clip was 90 seconds long, which meant I traveled back and forth to the computer every minute and a half... We also gave a toy airplane to Abrahm.
• Animals - we didn't do much with animals, but there's tons you could do with it...
• Asher's name begins with A, so we started the curriculum on his birthday and spelled out his name a lot.
• There are a bazillion ways to practice letter writing, and for the letter A, we used shaving cream outside.  Just spray it on the cement and use your finger to write!  Then wipe to erase and do it all over again!  He LOVED this!

Homemade Popcicles and Flavored Yogurt - Yummy!!

We had playgroup at my friend Sherri's house one day and she brought out some cute little homemade popcicles for the kiddos to eat.  She had just put some yogurt (various flavors) into ice cube trays to freeze with toothpicks for handles.  Then a few weeks later, I was at my friend Dana's house and she brought out some homemade popcicles made with lemonade in popcicle molds.  Also very tasty and cute!  By then the inspiration had hit: I HAD to make some popcicles.  I started with some strawberries I found on sale:

I chopped their green hats off and put them in the food processor:

When my super awesome food processor has done its work, it looks like this:

Now, at this point it tastes a little tart, so I added some agave nectar to sweeten it up.  We were out of honey (used in the applesauce) and I try my best to add natural sweeteners instead of sugar.  Not that I'm totally against sugar.  It's just that when I have the choice between refined sugar and something natural, I will most likely choose the natural route.  Because my 2 year old doesn't need any more sugar than he already gets!  Then I poured the mixture into an ice cube tray:

I cut up some straws into thirds and stuck them in the popcicles to freeze for the handles.  Someday I'd like to get some popcicle molds, but this works well for now.  My son loves them!  I'd also like to try some other popcicle flavors such as:

• lemonade
• apple juice (or other juices)
• applesauce
• pureed cantaloupe
• pureed frozen grapes (or maybe not frozen, I'll see how that works)
• chocolate flavored something - maybe yogurt?

Any other ideas??  I'd love to hear some!

I took some of the rest of the strawberry puree and mixed it with plain yogurt.  That was also tart and needed some agave nectar to sweeten it up.  My son has this obsession with Dannon-ino yogurt and would eat the entire package if I let him, so I saved the cartons and put the yogurt in them.  The first time I presented one to him, he was extremely tired, so he saw right through it and freaked out.  But I'll try again when he's in a more pleasant mood :)

Delicious applesauce - right from my own backyard!

We have an apple tree in our backyard.  Last year, it didn't produce any fruit at all, due to a late freeze, and we almost gave it the ax.  I'm so glad we didn't because this year, the fruit was abundant!  About 2 weeks ago, we had a strong storm come through our town that produced a "microburst", knocking a bunch of my apples to the ground prematurely.  So began the apple picking!  After picking all the good ones off the ground, we looked at the tree and decided to go ahead and pick as some of them were getting buggy.  Thus far, I have made 9 apple pie fillings, 4 quart jars and 3 pint jars full of applesauce, and 12 4 oz. jars plus 1 2 oz. jar of unsweetened applesauce for baby food.  And I still have enough apples for a batch of some apple jam.  Here are some of my recipes:

Honey Applesauce
I used my handy-dandy peeler-slicer-corer thing that I got for Christmas a few years ago to prep the apples:

 It's super fun to use and makes a nice peeling necklace to wear around (at least until it turns brown and smells).  And the apples look cool and are easy to do a quick slice down the middle before plopping them in the crock pot (after you check for bug spots and other stuff you should probably cut out - or just don't tell anyone.  Hey, it's cooked, right?)

 Next, I just sliced the apple in half with a knife and put the pieces in the crock pot (after cutting out the bad spots).

 Then I added 1 cup of honey (approximately, I didn't really measure), a splash of lemon juice, and a cup of water.  Turn the crock pot on low (stir occasionally) and magically, 6 hours later, this is what you get:

 Why yes, that is the most delicious applesauce on earth.  Glad you asked!  If you like it chunky (I don't really care one way or the other), just mash it a little more with a fork.  If you like it more creamy, put it in a food processor like this one:

 I'm telling you, this is the best food processor to be found.  If you don't have one, I pity you.  My parents bought it for my husband for Christmas.  










I froze my applesauce in glass jars, but I'm told you can can it.  I just don't like to take the time to can unless I have to!  I do enjoy canning and want to do more, but honey, if I can freeze it, I will!

 
Apple Pie Filling
6 cups sliced and peeled apples
1 T. lemon juice
3/4 c. sugar
2 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Combine them all in a bowl and stir together.  Then put mixture into a gallon freezer bag:

 

Yes, I've finally joined the blogging bandwagon!

I did it.  I got a blog.  Not that I need one more thing to do, mind you.  But in my stay-at-home-mommyhood, I have viewed countless blogs by other moms that have sparked my creativity for crafts, activities, food, you name it!  So I thought I might dive in and share some the ideas I've come across.  No, I'm not being original by any means, and part of me feels like a copy cat, but I thought it might be fun.  And we'll see if I can even find time in my day to update it!

So, what do hippo, popples and penguins have in common?  They all contain vowels and the letter p.  And they are all what my oldest son (age 2) must have with him when sleeping.  The Popples is a stuffed animal I had as a kid :) It's so cute to watch him interact with his "friends".  The conversation goes a little like this: "Hippo!  Where are you?  There you are!  Wanna go to the park?  OK!"  One thing I have started with him is an ABC curriculum (and I use that term very loosely) where we learn a letter each week and do activities and crafts.  We also incorporate service into our "lessons" (again, a very loose term) by giving someone whose name begins with that letter something that also begins with that letter.  For example, during A week we gave an apple to Amanda.  I learned this on the website www.heavenlyhomemakers.com (love this site!).  He loves giving things to people!  When I told him we were going to give some toy cars and an airplane to a friend named Abrahm, he packed them up and demanded to go right then!  That was a lesson in "never-tell-a-toddler-you-are-going-to-do-something-until-you're-ready-to-do-it"!  Some letters are easier than others to work with.  This week is all about the letter E!  Someday soon I will get up our "curriculum", when the to-do lists in my mind settle down a bit :)