Summer Reading Chart

So some kids are bookworms and some kids would rather be playing with actual worms.  

I have 1 bookworm and 2 that would rather being playing with worms!!

So I made up this Summer Reading Chart to perhaps persuade my oldest that reading can be fun, AKA BRIBE him!!

Now some may think this is not a good approach but we sometimes do what we have to do!

Every time he reads a book to me, he can cross off a number.

When he reads 22 books then he reached his goal and will 

get his reward. 

I left a line at the bottom so you can fill in the "BRIBE" that will motivate your child best. 

If you would like to download this summer reading chart

click here

Week 2: Reptiles

 Week 2: June 4th- June 8th

Theme: Reptiles

My son LOVES reptiles, therefore his younger sister claims to love reptiles (she likes to copy a lot of what he does). So this week we are learning all about frogs, lizards and snakes.  

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Frog Puppet

*This one is more for our 20 month old, his favorite song is 5 little speckled frogs

Cobra

Rattlesnake

Snake Pizza

Frog cookie

Lizards

This doesn't really have anything to so with reptiles but  I thought it looks fun and wanted them to have a shirt to wear over their swimsuits. I will let you know how it goes :)

Shirts

Journal Pages

Here is a great activity that helps keep your kids minds thinking. 

A daily journal page!!

I love this because you can start your child doing this as young as you wish.

I helps them practice their writing skills, use their creative juices to answer the question and they get to use their art skills.

But the best part of all is, I hope to start teaching my children about journal keeping.

I have made a book for them (I will show in another post) and each day I ask a question and they can answer it. Every Friday they can write whatever they want to write about.

Sometimes I write some of the sentence for them and Ryker needs to fill in the blanks.

Amelia is still learning how to write so I wrote the sentence for her with a marker and then she traced it with a pencil.

These are older journal pages, but normally I have them write their name and the date.

Here is a link to blank journal page you can download and copy. Get started with your kids, then when you have a little free time, try and make them a book or buy a children's journal page already made.

Journal Page Download

This is a journal you can buy.

Week 1: Beach and Ocean Animals

Week 1: May 28th -June 1st

Theme: Beach and Ocean Animals

Here is a few ideas of some fun crafts you can do with your kids.

As you can see some of these are very simple and you can make from some things you have at home. Start saving TP rolls, egg cartons etc.

Water bottle fish

*Water bottle

*tissue paper

*glue

*water

*paint brush

Whale book

*Paper

*Then let your child decorate the whale with markers, paint or crayons.

*Read a non-fiction book about ocean animals or look up info on the internet and let your child write at least 3 to 5 facts they learn. You can have this project fit the level of your child, so your 4 year olds book will be different than your 7 year olds.

Egg Carton Lobster

*egg carton

*red paint

*paint brushes

*pipe cleaners

*googly eyes

Octopus plush toy

* I will post later how I'm doing this because I'm not going to use a sock when we make ours. 

Octopus Craft

This project can be as elaborate or as simple as you want. If all you have is paper, that is fine. Just use paper to decorate the Octopus. If you have buttons, stickers....whatever, than use that as well. 

Shark Craft

*paper

Starfish s'mores

*I'm going to change this a bit and be adventurous and use ice cream instead of marshmallows. 

*This is also going to be apart of our service project for the week, because we are going to make these and take some to a friend.

 Awesome worksheet ideas

Here are some great examples of ways to keep your child writing and learning. You can find all this clip art on the computer for free.  It doesn't have to be as cute as this teach made it, but it gives you an idea of how simple you can make learning fun.

PLEASE leave me a comment if you have any questions on how to do any of these. I don't mind helping at all :) I can even tell you the best place to get the supplies you may need.

Summer Schedule and Ideas

I had a few friends ask me how I plan my summer out and thought I would share it with anyone interested.  First off.....I'm a preschool teacher! I have been writing up lesson plans for the past 7 years of my life so it is habit and very routine for me. So if this seems excessive, then just do what you are ok with. But for me...

this is all I know :)

Start out by printing out a calendar page for the months you need to plan. I will be gone the first week of August and then school starts so I just wanted to focus on June and July. 

Start out by asking your kids what are some thing they would like to learn about or know more about. My sone LOVES animals so I told him to tell me specific ones to learn about. 

Then I went through each week and gave it a theme. Our first week will be "Beaches and Ice Cream"

Now plug in all the activities you have schedules already like swim lessons or summer camps etc.

I made a simple (plain and boring) weekly schedule. I don't have time to make it all cute and whatnot and really who cares.....it is for my eyes only and I will throw it away.

This is where you can get more specific and the Saturday or Sunday before the week.....plan out your week so you can be prepared. Yes, it will take some time on your part but well worth it to having a smooth week at home with the kids. 

Now the time I really need to plan for is the afternoon. We have swim every morning, it is after lunch that kids start asking to watch TV and then 3 hours go by and your child hasn't moved from the couch. This is where the planning will really help.

Luckily my toddler takes his nap at this time so I have to keep my 7 year old and 4 year old busy and learning. 

We will do cooking one day, art projects, service projects, work pages, activity bucket (I will explain below), play dough, science project etc. 

I also have my kids do one hour of quiet time in their rooms and they can play with any and all the toys they would like. They can't come out unless to go potty and this did take a good week to really get them to understand. But now they know what I expect and they usually end up playing longer than an hour.

Here are what I call our "Activity Buckets". As you can see they are not fancy, just a buckets with random activities in them. I have coloring pages, stickers, blank paper, crayons, markers, glue, scissors, work sheets and dry erase markers.  I let my kids choose what they want to do from the activity bucket. I will add new items when they run out of them.  My sone LOVES Mario and Legos, so I will get online and google "mario coloring pages" and print out several different ones. I even let him choose the ones he would like to color.  I have had these activity buckets for about a year now and they really have been a great success.  My daughter never complains when she sees me getting them out, sometimes my son does because he is not into coloring as much as she is but once he sees his mario or something from Lego land he is happy as can be.  

I LOVE to find already made worksheets online. My daughter loves Wizard of Oz so I found these tracing work sheets for her. p I print them out and I slip them into a sheet protector then she can use them over and over again. Kids LOVE dry erase markers.

My last tip on summer boredom busters is keep your eyes open. Whenever you see something on clearance or really cheap, it is worth the money to keep your kids entertain for awhile. I LOVE the dollar store and dollar sections.  Also use your local crafts stores coupons...they are always for 40% or 50% off so buy fun art project for them to do. JoAnns, Michael and Hobby Lobby have sooooo many fun crafts and projects you can buy.

I hope to post weekly, some of the projects and plans we will be doing. Please share your ideas with me as well. Happy Summer!!!!!

Oh and last but not least........as you can tell, I'm not a photographer nor will I ever be. So sorry for the lame pictures but you get the point ;) 

GCB

I don't know about you but when I saw a preview for this show I was very much stunned. Ok not stunned because these days you can get away with ANYTHING. I never watched it but saw the commercial and basically figured out the plot, Christians Women:  judgmental, hypocritical, lustful, ruthless people. 

Being a Christian woman, I know we are not perfect BUT most of us are good kind women who want to help others and raise our families in the best way possible. I do know that we are being mocked and made fun of in society today.  

I am happy to announce that ABC has cancelled this show.......probably due to lack of viewers, which puts a smile on my face to know that not enough people wasted their time with this show. 

Our freedom of religion is most defiantly being stomped on but we can't let that get in our way of the truth and living the Gospel. 

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/abc-cancels-anti-christian-good-christian-belles-television-show/

How to grow a carrot in 30 mins

So if you have every wondered how to grow a carrot in 30 mins......her is how you do it. 

Step #1- Place some mud (chocolate pudding) into a cup.

Step #2- Place a little seed into the mud (Sixlet candy)

Step #3-  Place soil (crushed Oreos) over the mud  

Step #4- Have the little ones leave their cup out and go play while the magic seed begins to grow.

Step #5- While kids are away place the carrot (sugar cookie, 

found at this site) inside the soil.

Last step- wait for the kids to discovered that a carrot has grown. 

I had so much fun doing this with my preschoolers. Try it out next year around Easter time.....your kids will love it :) 

* Sidenote: I made the cookies the night before and they were hiding so the kids didn't see them before finding them in their cups.