Pond theme and Letter M

 We started of with some bingo marker fun, Mouse just loves these little paints, thank you auntie Donette! I printed this M page from Confessions of a Homeschooler

 She loved using all the colours to  dot the two M's

She also used the markers to paint a picture of a duck, also from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 The week would just not be complete without Mouse being silly!  I heard her say that she applied some kitten make up, puzzled I went to take a look at what she was talking about, only to find that she used markers to draw blue and green whiskers on her cheeks!

 We enjoyed reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle {again!} After we finished it she asked for an ice cream, just like the caterpillar.  Here she has a beautiful ice cream smile!

 She enjoyed loads of cutting exercises

 Mouse also loved the pre writing exercises from Confessions of a Homeschooler {don't you just love Erica's blog!!!}

 I printed some different sized turtles, ducks and fish for her to size sort.

She also searched and coloured all the number 2's on the weekly shopping ads. I learned this trick from Rene Lighton, she is a brilliant lady!  Her motto is use what you have at home, educating your children should not necessarily cost you a fortune. I attended one of her workshops, which was truly inspirational and I also have one of her books, Let's Get Ready, I can really recommend this!

Will post some more pond theme and letter M goodies soon!

Fire Station Visit = FUN!

 A fellow homeschool mom organized a visit to our local Fire Station, Mouse was joined by two of her best friends and fellow homeschoolers, Sweet Pea and ArrowBoy.  This is the kind Fireman, Fireman Rowen,  that showed us around the Fire Station.

 Here's one of the Fire Trucks

 Mouse even had a turn holding the fire hose!  With the help of this kind Fireman {Lady}!

 Here Mouse is exploring the inside of the Fire Truck

 She was really intrigued by the size of the Truck

A fun and very informative day!  We all learned something.  Thank you to all the kind staff of the Durbanville Fire Station!

Book Review - The Promises she keeps

I was send a free copy of The Promises she keeps by Erin Healy to review by Booksneeze.

It's her destiny to die young. The man who loves her can't live with that.
Promise, a talented young vocalist with a terminal illness, is counting on fame to keep her memory alive after she dies. Porta is an aging witch and art collector in search of the goddess who will grant her immortality.
When Promise inexplicably survives a series of freak accidents, Porta believes that Promise is the one she seeks. But Chase, an autistic artist who falls in love with Promise and opposes Porta, comes between the women with his mysterious visions and drawings, and plunges everyone into a flesh-and-blood confrontation over the true meaning of eternal life.

I found this book extremely difficult to read.  I truly struggled through this book, I always try and do a positive review and highlight aspects that I enjoyed about each book, this one unfortunately I did not enjoy at all.  There is no doubt that Erin Healy is an excellent writer, this work of her, unfortunately, I did not enjoy.

I found the story not only difficult to read, but the title and short description of what the book is about is also misleading. I blog with integrity and I am always truthful in my reviews.  This is my opinion on the book, but please feel free to read the book to form your own.

Why Homeschooling is fun..

....because if it is a gorgeous day outside you can read your books with your doggy!

Cotton Ball Craft {Lamb}

This projects has been on my to do list forever! We finally got round to it this week.  I found the idea here.  They have a great step by step tutorial.

You will need:

Toilet Paper Roll

Glue

Black Felt

Black Pom Pom

Felt in any other colour for your bow

Black Pipecleaners x 1

Scrap Paper

Wiggly Eyes

Cotton Balls

I preconstructed part of the lamb by inserting the scrap paper into the tube, adding the face with black felt, the eyes and ears as well as the pipecleaner legs.  Just wrap the pipecleaners around the tube.

I then covered the tube in glue and while holding it, Mouse stuck the cotton balls on.  Lastly we glued on the pom pom for a tail as well as the blue bow.  I trimmed the legs a bit to add a bit of stability.

She is very impressed with the lamb and very proud of how it turned out!

I used normal glue stick, which worked okay, but a stronger glue like craft glue would have been a better option.

Bingo Marker Fun!

We have finally completed our My Body Lapbook!  It was so much fun and Mouse really enjoyed this lapbook.  

As an add on to both the My Body lapbook as well as the Stone Soup lapbook we did I printed some Bingo Pages from DLTK on healthy eating and healthy food choices.

Mouse used her bingo markers to colour in the objects that I shouted out, we then also identified them either as a healthy food choice or an unhealthy one.  

In the completed My body lapbook we also did the following:

• Counted our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers and toes
• Drew a face
• Memory game 
• Tracing - I drew a mouth, nose and ear in dots and she had to trace them
• Funny faces with different eyes, ears, noses and mouths {this she loved!}

Also from DLTK is this carrot dot to dot page.  Instead of the normal 1 - 10 this one was an ABC dot to dot.  We identified each letter and she dotted with her bingo markers from A to F.

 Currently we are concentrating on the letter M.  We used our Kinderwerf alphabet cards and word cards for this.  We also re created the words on our word cards with felt letters.

For our calender time I also incorporated colour of the day, shape of the day and memory verses thanks to tips from Donette and Grietjie. 

Next week we will be doing a Pond Life Theme, 5 Senses and the letter M.

Have fun and God Bless!

Flippen Lekka Thai Style Soup

We love Thai style soups and this one is so easy to make!

Ingredients:

Vegetable or Chicken stock
Chicken pieces (about 2 pieces per person)
Noodles (thinnest you can buy!)
Red Pepper, diced
Carrot, diced
Baby Marrow, diced
Flippen Lekka BBQ Spice of course!
Soy Sauce

Method:
Start of by cooking your chicken in the stock, the amount of stock will depend on the amount of chicken pieces you are cooking.  It needs to cover the chicken completely.  Cook until done, remove chicken from stock (save the stock!)  and bone and skin the pieces.  Shred into little bits. Season the chicken well with Flippen Lekka BBQ Spice. Keep warm.  Strain the stock into a bowl and set aside.  Season with some Soy sauce and keep warm.

Stir fry the veg until done, you can  add as much or as little veg as you want.

Cook the noodles per package instructions, drain.

Assemble your soup:

Dish some noodles in the bottom of your bowl, add some veg and chicken on top and add some of the broth.

Enjoy!

Thank you to Flippen Lekka BBQ Spice for providing the free spice used in this dish.  All veg in this dish was bought from FineCuts Veg.  FineCuts are also agents of Flippen Lekka BBQ Spice and you can order through them!

Calender / Circle Time

 I've been wanting to do a proper Calender / Circle Time with Mouse for some time now.  There is such cute printables available on various blogs but they are all in English and our home language is Afrikaans.  After I saw this post by Nadia from Fun With Mama I knew I had to make my own!

 The first poster has the following on:

1. Today is, Tomorrow is and Yesterday was grit

2. Date of today

3. Day name

The second poster has the following on:

1. Seasons

2. What is the weather like today?

3. Letter of the week

4. Number of the day

5. Extra pouch

 You know something is a hit when your child kisses it!

I saw this super cute idea for a Weather Bear on Little Sprouts, she has a printable version that you can download and print.  I made our own version - Tatam die weer beer!  {Tatam the weather bear}

 A dear friend blessed us with some lovely vinyl stickers ages ago - I used the stickers to cut out our bear and he is such a cutie!  Because it is vinyl I don't need to laminate.

We then designed some pretty clothes to go along with Tatam, it is raining in Cape Town at this stage and he had to get an umbrella of course!  The clothes we are just sticking on with some press stick at this stage, but I would like to get some velcro at some stage.

Any other fun ideas for cirlce / calender time?

Stone Soup Lapbook

I read the story of Stone Soup a while ago and it was so cute that I decided to fit it in as a lapbook in between our five senses and body work. The story is about a clever little fox that outsmart some farm animals that was not that nice to him. He asked for some food and all the animals refused. He then asked for some water to make some soup and sheep gave him some. Proceeding to add a stone to the water and putting it on the fire to boil all the animals were intrigued, they tasted the soup and saw that it needed something, all of them in the end gave up some of their food for the stone soup! Cute story! There are loads of different versions of this book available. We used the one by Tony Bonning.

I started off after reading the book for the first time { we have read it multiple times now and I had to renew our loan from the library twice now :)} by preparing a tray with a naartjie, pear and a yoghurt cup on.  I then asked her to study the tray identify each object and to remember what was on the tray.  I then removed one of the objects without Mouse looking and she had to tell me which one I removed after she took a look at the tray again.  After this observation game we made a mini fruit salad with our ingredients on the tray!

For our second activity on the book I cut out some fruit and veg pictures from an advertising page from our local community newspaper as well as some sweets, chips and cookie pics.  I drew on two separate pages two pots for her.  One labeled Healthy Food and the other Unhealthy food.  I asked Mouse to sort the pics into healthy food options and unhealthy ones, explaining to her the difference and the benefits of a healthy eating plan.  She then had to glue the pics onto the correct pot.

I drew an apple on the healthy pot and a sweetie on the unhealthy one as she cannot read at this stage - this just helped her to identify the different pots on her own.

Here is the finished pots!

I also found some cute colouring in pages on DLTK especially for the stone soup story.

I made some flash cards of some of the animals as well as some items found in the book, I showed them to Mouse and asked her to identify the items in the book.

Mouse needs some practice with sizing, so I made these sizing cards for her, also with different items in the book.  She loved this.

In between all the Soupy fun we had to built a tent of course!

It is also important to dress appropriately when you are going to do some serious colouring in!  I made this tutu for her a few days ago and she looks so cute in it!

Have fun!

Giant Floor Playmat

I love felt, I love the feel of it, I love the ease of working with it and I love how felt is such a forgiving medium, you can make tons of mistakes and the end product always looks great!

 I made this giant floor playmat for Mouse, this thing is seriously big!  I totally got carried away with all the felty goodness :)

 These little cuties are finger puppets, two sets for two sweet birthday boys.

And then our giant floor mat needed some houses!  I made this from a recycled juice carton.  I first saw this idea on Joyful Mama's blog.  This little house was a huge hit!

I have some more projects lined up, hopefully I will be able to finish them soon!

Reward System

I've been searching for a reward system that actually works.  We have certain rules in place and the use of our timer have been great, but I needed something visual to encourage Mouse.  My dear friend Grietjie from Joyful Mama made Mouse this awesome little hairclip holder.  I'm using this a little differently at this stage and it works great!  I painted some pegs in pink, purple and yellow and I am keeping them in a glass jar in her cupboard.  As soon as she does something as asked of her or if she behaves she is rewarded with a peg.  When she reaches 10 pegs she receives a reward, which is anything from a visit to the zoo to a sweetie.  Each time she adds the peg herself and she counts the pegs as well, so I'm sneaking in some maths as well!

Homeschooling: Measurements

Having introduced weights and scales to Mouse the previous week I thought that it was a great opportunity to do measurements as well.  We firstly measured her and wrote down her length in her My Body Lapbook and then we had some fun with measurements and different lengths of items.

 To illustrate this to Mouse I took different sized pencils, we named them as biggest, small, smallest, etc.

We also drew with each one, determining which one worked the best!

Mouse also measured some items in and around the house with my measurement tape.  

 Mouse also made this cute little bag!  I cut out the bag for her and stitched it for her, she glued all the felt pieces on the bag by herself.  She loved this.

To add on to our body study we had some fun with our Suczezz My Body Felt Set.  

We will complete our My body lapbook and we are also busy with some Five senses fun!  I'm also planning on how to implement more into our homeschooling without spending money, will share some ideas with you soon.