Blessings

I tend to forget how truly awesome and powerful God really is. I have to learn not to worry about things once I have given it to the Lord. He always takes care of us and He sorts out all our little problems. Just now He once again proved to me that I just need to be faithfull to Him and that He provides!

Thank you Lord! You are great and awesome! I praise Your Holy Name!! We serve a living God, a loving God!

He always provides in abundance. We ask for one little thing and He provides tons of it! When Jesus was on the cross, one of the thieves crusified with Him ask for forgiveness, Jesus granted him not only forgiveness but a place in Heaven as well. Just one example of how awesome God is.

I have so many things to be thankful for, a loving hubby, an awesome little girl, amazing parents and parent's in law, brothers and sisters and the list goes on and on.

May God Bless you and may we not forget how truly powerful He is!

Enjoy your weekend and for those in the USA may you have a blessed Thanksgiving!

ABC File

I made this ABC file for Little Mouse and she just loves it. What is great about this is that we can build on it as we do new themes each week! I took some plastic sleeves and inserted pages with the alphabet printed on in them. Little Mouse designed and made her own front page! (picture above)


We then looked for animal pictures in old magazines and cut them out and pasted them on the correct page of the alphabet according to the names of the different animals. Easy!

Tot School - Week 1 | 17 Months

This week for some strange reason I did not take any photos of our Tot School sessions. It just seemed that we had so much fun that I complety forgot to take pics! We are still busy with our animal theme and Little Mouse's Tot Boxes basically stayed the same.

Tot Box 1: Stacking rings and Shape Sorter
Tot Box 2: Cleaning Play set (mop, broom), Laptop
Tot Box 3: Any animal toys that she has as well as some animal magazines


She played with all these toys throughout the week and we had so much fun!

I also got her some Felt Wild animals as well as Felt farm animals, she just loves playing with them and making animal sounds.

Monday

Little Mouse played with the various Felt animals that she has and we also read some animal magazines.

Tuesday

I made a ABC file for her with animal pics from old magazines, she LOVES it. This has been a great educational tool and it was dirt cheap to make!

Wednesday

We did our Open Ended Art project.
Tuesday

Little Mouse played with her Rice Sensory Box that I made for her a while back. She still enjoys it tons.
Books we read and enjoyed!

Animal Magazines
Spot goes to School

That was our week! I just couldn't resist including this one pic that I did manage to take! She pretends that she is a little princess and then she wears her blanky bear on her head as a crown!



If you would like to see what others did during their Tot School week visit 1+1+1=1

Open Ended Art - Corn

We just love Open Ended Art in our house, if you would like to participate or see what other kiddies did visit Mommies Little Artist - this blog is full of creative fun ideas to incorporate art into your childs daily routine! Definately a must visit!!!

For our Corn art last week (we actually did it last week wednesday already, I only got time to post about it now!!!) I gave Little Mouse some pop corn, crayons, paper and some packaging tape. I have to admit I helped her to stick the tape on the paper, but the rest is all her!

She first stuck the pop corn onto the tape and then I helped her to stick it to the paper. She then took her crayons and doodled a bit on the paper.

This is the finished artwork!

I am in LOVE!

I am totally in love with the Suczezz Educational toy range! All products are available in English and Afrikaans and they are truly awesome! Little Mouse loves her new games and while she is playing she is actually learning! The products are of exceptional quality and best of all they are extremely affordable!!

Visit my online shop to view these stunning products!

Question - I need some help!

I have a little problem - I just cannot post any comments to blogs where the comment moderation setting is embedded below post - can anyone help me with some advice? What am I doing wrong? It is sooo frustrating as there are so many wonderful blogs that I would love to comment on but I can't!

Muffin Tin Monday - Food my child is thankful for

Food my child is thanful for...mmmm, I can basically put anything in the muffin tin and she will love it! We are thankful for Muffin Tin Monday! I just cannot believe how much Little Mouse loves MTM. It is amazing to see how her little face lights up when she sees her tin full of goodies!
I gave her some of her all time favourite foods this week:

Top left to right: Cheese, Apples, Rooibos Tea
Bottom left to right: Cream Crackers, Toast with Bovril

Thank you Michelle for hosting such an awesome Blog Carnival!!

If you would like to see what other did for Muffin Tin Monday or if you would like to join in, visit Her Cup Overfloweth.

Tot School - Week 3 | 16 Months

This was the first week we were back on track again after half of my family ended up in hospital! First Little Mouse and then daddy. Just so thankful that everyone is home now and healthy! God is good!


Little Mouse just asolutely LOVES animals. I decided to go with an animal theme for a few weeks and do different activities around that. For her Tot Boxes I did the following:

Tot Box 1: Stacking rings and Shape Sorter
Tot Box 2: Cleaning Play set (mop, broom), Laptop
Tot Box 3: Any animal toys that she has as well as some animal magazines
then I also added her Blocks to the Tot Boxes on her Tot Table this week.
She played with all of these throughout the week and I tried to discuss the animals in her Tot Box with her as much as possible.


Monday

She did some felt board activities with her Ocean Animal Felt Board animals.

She LOVED playing with her laptop - it makes tons of animal sounds that she loves!


Tuesday

Grandma bought her this awesome Alex Tin Tea Set! She is crazy about it and she spend almost 30 min "making tea" - this was a real winner!

Little Mouse also played with her blocks after her bath, she is beginning to get the hang of it! Not really building anything in particular - just playing and figuring out how everything fits!

Wednesday

I gave her a mini white board and some markers and she had a blast just colouring in on the white board. She really enjoys open ended activities like these!

She also discovered the joys of Lollipops this week!

Thursday

My little sister gave her this Ladybug train, the cutest little thing! The tracks consists out of a puzzle that you need to built. The little Ladybug then goes around on the little track that features different animals, Little Mouse really enjoyed this. Evertime it passed an animal on the track I would discuss the animals with her and try and give her some info on them.

She also loved playing with her Wooden Animal Puzzle. She is beginning to imitate animal sounds and this is the perfect tool to help her with that. I would show her an animal, for example the dog and ask her what sound the dog makes and then she would answer "woof woof"! She also enjoyed taking out the pieces and trying to put them back.

Friday

We had a very busy, but fun, day on Friday. We went to our local Nursery and visited all the animals there!

We did our Open Ended Art Project as well as our stART project.

Books we read during the week:

We read loads of animal magazines
Disney Winnie the Pooh Encyclopedia of animals
Train Zoo
and LOADS more! The above mentioned ones are the ones she enjoyed the most.


Want to see what other did? Visit 1+1+1=1 and My Family My Forever!!

God Bless!

A Journey Through Learning Website

Awhile ago I found this great site A Journey Through Learning - they have the most gorgeous Lapbooks for sale.

All the lapbooks are ready for printing and enjoying! As soon as Little Mouse is old enough I will definately order some for us! Why use a Lapbook you may ask? Well, lapbooks makes learning fun and the best part is the kiddies does not even realize that it is educational!

Book Fan Friday - Winnie the Pooh Encyclopedia

This is truly a stunning book! The Disney My Very First Encyclopedia is absolutely a must have! Detailed photos and descriptions on animals, birds, insects, reptiles and sea life make learning fun! Little Mouse loves this book and cannot get enough! I just love that each animal has a double page allocated to it. One full page, full colour photo of the animal and on the other page the different stages in that animals life. Great visual learning tool.
Visit Three A's and a C for more on Book Fan Friday!

stART - Train Zoo

My mom bought Little Mouse this cute little Train book. It consists out of 3 little books that fit into each other to form a train. It fits in perfectly with our Tot School as well, because we are busy with animals and the Train Zoo books are about animals going on a train adventure! All 3 books are easy to read and the illustrations are beautiful.

Little Mouse really enjoyes them and they are permanently on her Tot Table at this stage!
I drew a train for her on a piece of cardboard and gave her some paint and her brushes and this is what she made!


If you would like to see what others did for stART or learn more about it, visit A Mommies Adventures.

Open Ended Art - Feathers

This weeks theme for Open Ended Art is Feathers. I had this idea of going to our local park to collect some duck feathers for Little Mouse to use, but the weather has been really horrible the past few days, you will never say that it is spring. Today we had some sunshine and I took her to our local nursery, they have some gorgeous animals there as well as ducks and geese and I thought that we can then collect some feathers there.

When we arrived at the nursery there was a sign on the gate where they keep the birds that you cannot go in as the geese are busy nesting. I could see loads of feathery treasures just out of my reach! Well, no use complaining, so we visited the other animals and looked for feathers anywhere we could! We found 3. Yes, only 3.

Here is Little Mouse with the animals!

The Bunnies



The Llama


The Chicken


Back home I gave her sticky tape, the feathers, pens, paper and a little bag. This is what she did for open ended art - she just placed the feathers in the bag!!! :) After hours of looking for feathers she only placed them in a bag....

Want to see what others did for Open Ended Art or learn more about it? Visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms!

Thankful Tree

I saw this great idea on Adventures of a Flake, she created this beautiful tree for her family to express what they are Thankful for.

I decided that we also need a Thankful Tree, in Afrikaans we named it the Dankbaarheids Boom.

I drew a tree on a piece of poster paper and Little Mouse helped me to paint it. I cut it out and stuck it to our kitchen wall. We started to apply our leaves with our Thankful messages on the tree and I will post a pic of what it looks like by the time it is Christmas.

I think this is such a amazing idea, thanks Branflakes! This is the ideal opportunity to teach children to be thankful for what they have in life, I will from now on put our Thankful Tree up every November and take it down in the new year.

Soon Little Mouse can join in and this will be a fun yearly activity, teaching the entire family, what great blessings God gives us each and every day.

First "Hair Do"!

You'll never say that it is spring in Cape Town - it has been raining like crazy here. Little Mouse's hair is getting longer and thicker now and it takes a while to dry on their own, being so cold outside and just recovering from the whole hospital experience, I decided to dry her hair with the hair dryer for the first time.

She enjoyed it so much! Feeling like a big girl! Here's my baby girl with her freshly dried hair!


Here she is spending some quality time with her "woof woof's"!! She is growing up so fast...

Muffin Tin Monday - No Theme

Want to find out more about Muffin Tin Monday or join in the fun? Visit Her Cup Overfloweth!

We had a crazy week last week with both Little Mouse and Daddy ending up in hospital. The result was that we did not have a Muffin Tin Meal last Monday. This week, even though Little Mouse still is not 100%, I decided to spoil her with a Muffin Tin Meal.

I made the tin while she was sleeping, thinking that if she wakes I will first give her a bottle and then I will put the tin on the table and she can snack on it when she likes.

BIG MISTAKE!!! When she woke up and saw the Muffin Tin the last thing she wanted was a bottle! She started crying for her Muffin Tin and I had to give in and give her the tin! She sat on her little chair and ate most of the food! I was so glad - as her appetite still is not back after the hospital and tummy bug incident, but the MTM worked like a charm!

She had:

Top Left to Right:
Fish, Chicken, Rooibos Tea
Bottom Left to Right:
Toast with Marmite and a Lolli Pop

Here she is enjoying her tin, if you look carefully you can still see the tears on her cheecks!

Tot School Week 2 | 16 Months

Little Mouse was not feeling so well this week, she had a tummy bug and tonsilitis! We only did some Tot Schooling early in the week - she was hospitilised on Friday, but by God's Grace she is home now. You can read my post on that here.

Monday

We made some storage boxes for her Toy Box - to make planning for Tot School easier. She helped me to sort out all the goodies! You can read my post on that here.



Wednesday

I wanted to do some activities with her, but I could see that she was not feeling well. We then took some Alex Draw in the tub Crayons and drew on our sliding doors! She had a blast! You can read my post on that here.


We also did our Open Ended Art project on pumpkins, she also enjoyed that very much.

That was about it for this week, on Thursday she was feeling crummy and I took her to the Doctor for tonsilitis, by Friday she was in the hospital with a tummy bug. My poor baby...

If you want to see what other mommies and kiddies did for Tot School, visit 1+1+1=1

My poor little girl...

Little Mouse was a bit under the weather all week, last week, but by Friday she was really sick. I rushed her to her peadiatrician who immediately admitted her into hospital, her tummy was not well and she was dehydrated, she stayed on a drip for the entire Friday and Saturday morning. They then removed it to see if she would take in any fluids on her own, but she didn't - so the drip went back on and we stayed the night again. On Sunday morning they removed the drip again and she only started drinking at around 18h00, she ate almost all her food and she started to talk and move around again. I was so relieved! We got home at around 23h00 last night and the feeling of just being home with your child is so awesome! Our prayers were answered and we are home, our God is so awesome!

Here she is in her hospital cot watching TV, something she rarely does at home!