Mama Dani's Musings: August 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Project 52: Week 35

I had to take my project 52 pictures this morning b/c I realized that all the pictures I took recently are pictures I want to use for my post on Irene. So...here are my little ones with their bed head.

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Flutter By Friday 8-26: Come Link-up!!

Welcome to this week’s Flutter By Friday blog hop!
The reason:
For readers to find other neat blogs to read and follow.
For bloggers to find readers/followers.

Here’s what to do:

Use the linky at the bottom of this post to post up to 2 posts per link-up.
Come back and see what other bloggers have been linked to.
Comment on a post you like.
Follow a new blog.
Come back next week to do it again!

I’ll randomly pick a link from this week’s blog hop to feature in next week’s blog hop!

Please take a moment and check out this week’s featured blog:
A Go-with-the-flow Mama's Blog
I'd also appreciate if you placed this blog hop button on your blog.

This linky will end Sunday evening...unless we lose power b/c of Irene.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Project 52: Week 34

All ready for bed! Isn't that just the cutest!? Today, she melted my heart by climbing in my lap and telling me, "I love you! You're a great friend!"

Monday, August 22, 2011

Kids Meal: 123s

This week were adding math into our curriculum so we had a numbers lunch.

Sandwiches and cheese cut out into numbers and baby carrots.

More Muffin Tin Monday ideas:

Muffin Tin Monday at Her Cup Overfloweth

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Weekend Recipe: French Breakfast Muffins

Like the author of the blog where I found this recipe, I have no idea why these are call French Breakfast Muffins but I do know they are good!!

The recipe can be found here.

The ingredients:
Muffins:

1/3 cups Melted butter
1/2 cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 1/2 cup Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Nutmeg (I still haven't bought nutmeg so I used cinnamon instead)
1/2 cup Milk

Topping:

1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Melted Butter
1 tsp Cinnamon

I normally don't have a helper when it's early in the morning but this time I did.
Check out the bed head!!

This recipe is smaller than most muffin recipes I've made. It only made 8 muffins. ...8 muffins that were gone in no time. Though, I could have not filled the muffin tin so much.

A warning: If you make this recipe, your kids will love them but will love the top best.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

School Days: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We're are more serious about homeschooling this year...well, as much as you can with pre-k4. What I mean I guess is the main goal this year is to get into a good routine and stick with it. When we did the outer space theme, we pretty much just did the unit study. I did some thinking and thought maybe it might be best to ease into a routine. So, we are going to add a subject a week until we're were we should be at. This week we did a smaller unit (that will in a way spill over into next week) and added literacy (letters, phonics and writing).

Our unit is based on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. A friend shared a lap book idea with me and I added onto it so that it could go into next week. I didn't have any file folders but I have lots of over sized construction paper. I made the construction paper work. This is the first lapbook we've made. Sean really enjoyed putting it together. He even picked it out one night for his bed time story.

I added a few extra things that were not in the original lapbook or in the add-ons. Sean knows his first name pretty well so I added another mini book for his last name. Sean really likes playing a matching game with the upper and lower case letter cards so I printed out more coconut cards and added dots to make a number matching game for next week. Tree book was a big hit because he can read it by himself.

The original lapbook can be found here and the add-ons can be found here.

We also did a simple craft. The trunk is their arm print, the leaves their hand prints, the coconuts their thumb prints and they used stamps to make the letters up the tree.

Sean played Go Fish for the first time but we used the alphabet flash cards we already had. He loved it! Doesn't help that he has beginners luck and won. ;)

Along with the unit study, I made notebooks for worksheets. Sean really likes to do worksheets and we have a ton of workbooks that were given to us (partly used) and a few that I bought. I went through them and picked the pages I thought were the best to make his pre-k4 book. I'm sure we'll add on to the notebook as the year goes on but right now it has beginning sounds, rhyming, and patterns.

I made a separate notebook for handwriting. I actually cut and pasted from existing worksheets to create the worksheets that I wanted. Instead of him learning to write the letters in alphabetic order, I wanted to group the letters like this: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/lessonplans/handwriting-group-upper-and-lower-case-letters

Maddy couldn't be left out so I made her a notebook with colors, shapes, go togethers and tracing. I used page protectors in all the notebooks so the worksheets can be used over and over again. The kids also love using the markers! -- a win/win!

My little ones hard at work:

Friday, August 19, 2011

Flutter By Friday 8-19: Come Link-up!!

Welcome to this week’s Flutter By Friday blog hop!
The reason:
For readers to find other neat blogs to read and follow.
For bloggers to find readers/followers.

Here’s what to do:

Use the linky at the bottom of this post to post up to 2 posts per link-up.
Come back and see what other bloggers have been linked to.
Comment on a post you like.
Follow a new blog.
Come back next week to do it again!

I’ll randomly pick a link from this week’s blog hop to feature in next week’s blog hop!

Please take a moment and check out this week’s featured blog:
Mama Notes
I'd also appreciate if you placed this blog hop button on your blog.

This linky will end Sunday evening.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Project 52: Week 33

Nap time!!
Sean has pretty much given up naps so this is a true rarity at our house. Both kids napping at the same time!!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Pregnancy Update: 20 weeks

Wow! I'm 20 weeks already, about half way till we get to meet our little Jellybean!!

The ruler shows 10 1/2in...about how long Jellybean is this week.
This pregnancy is getting more real. Up until a couple of weeks ago, there were days where I could almost forget that I'm pregnant. Not so much any more. It really hit me a couple weeks ago when a stranger asked me when am I due. Then I surprised myself. With Sean and Maddy, I was quick to say my due date. This time, I just said January. I wholeheartedly believe that there's a due month (so going 2 weeks my due date would be normal) rather than a due date but I still focused on my due date when I was pregnant with Sean and Maddy. Not so much this time I guess..

I'm also feeling Jellybean even more now. He/she tends to be more active first thing in the morning, at the kids’ nap time and at night. I'm feeling him/her more than I felt Sean or Maddy and that's exciting. I can’t wait until Richard and the kids can feel him!

I’ll have an ultrasound scheduled soon but the blue and pink are going to have to wait. We're team green this time. That's right, we're not finding out the gender until January. I'm normally an impatient person when it comes to surprises but I'm pretty excited about waiting this time. However, I am getting boy vibes..we shall see! We’ve started our name search and have a small list going..key word "small". I'm not sharing that just yet either. We may share the final boy and girl name once we have it narrowed down but not until then. BTW, Why are girl names so much easier!? So far we have a few girl names but only one boy name..

Monday, August 15, 2011

Kids Meal: ABCs

We're easing into the school year by adding one subject at a time. This week we're adding literacy. What's better than an ABC lunch!?

A (apple) to Z (zucchini)
Alphabet Cheez-its, Alphabet spaghetti, More Alphabet Cheez-its

More Muffin Tin Monday ideas:

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Weekend Recipe: Blueberry Crumb Bars

What an easy dessert!
The recipe can be found here.

The ingredients:

1 cup Sugar
1 tsp Baking powder
3 cups Flour
1 cup Shortening
1 Egg
1/4 tsp Salt (optional)
1 pinch Ground cinnamon (optional)
4 cups Fresh blueberries
1/2 cup Sugar
3 teaspoons Cornstarch

The recipe says that the dough would be crumbly. It sure was!!

I also learned that you should be very gentle when pressing it into the pan. The places that were pressed harder were very hard after being baked.

Other than the hard bottom layer (which was my mistake, not the recipe's), it was very good!! I plan on trying this again with other fruits.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Bath Paint

We had a pretty lax school week this week so I thought I'd share a project we did. We made homemade bath paint.

It's very simple. Just mix together the following ingredients:

1/3 cup liquid soap (I used tear free shampoo in case of accidents)
1 tbsp cornstarch
food coloring

The kids loved it!!

They started out finger painting but the paint wasn't thick enough.

Sponge brushes worked much better!

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