Month: September 2019

Mini Crib Sheets

Dear Sis,

When we were renting a super small house in Texas, and still nannying two other kids, we decided on a mini crib to save space. 

William – April 2017

It has two height adjustments, so it is ideal for not having to bend too far with an infant. Sadly, not a lot of bedding is available commercially for the mini crib and the things I can find are for a 3 inch mattress. I bought the 5 inch mattress… go figure.  Which is why the sheets I bought for William had to be strapped on so they didn’t pop off. I decided I’d make some flannel sheets for baby sister that are the correct size:) 

The best part… I shopped during JoAnn Fabrics Flannel-o-rama and with a 25% off entire purchase coupon and paid about $10.00 for all three fabrics. My sheets were less than $4.00 each!

I am all finished with the sewing portion of my nesting process! Baby sister can come whenever she wants now:)

Love,

b

B is for Buttons

Dear Sis,

Our Daily Reading

The first fiction selection is the widely popular book, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by James Dean and Eric Litwin. As Pete’s favorite shirt loses buttons, your students gets some counting practice, and learns from Pete’s positive attitude that rotten luck is no reason to cry.

The second fiction selection, Grandma’s Button Box by Linda Williams Aber, is a story about a girl who spills her grandmother’s button box, while she is out. She and her cousins work together to find and sort all the buttons before she returns. Another great math story!

 “b” is for Button Letter Craft

Parent Preparation

  • Print b if for Button Printable from Tag Sis, You’re It!
  • Supply crayons, scissors, glue stick and liquid glue, assorted buttons, and a sheet of craft paper.

Student Assembly

  • Color “b” with crayons.
  • Cut out or ask your grown up to cut out your “b.”
  • Paste “b” to sheet of craft paper with glue stick.
  • Glue buttons to “b” with liquid glue.
  • Write or ask your grown up to title, name, and date your work, for your homeschool portfolio.

Pete the Cat Groovy Buttons Game

Game Play

2-4 Players

Set Up for Each Player

  • Cat figure place marker
  • 1 Button Jar
  • 2 Buttons (to place on Jar)

Rules of Play

  • Youngest player spins first.
  • Land on Green: add suggested number of Buttons to Jar.
  • Land on Red: remove suggested number of Buttons from Jar and place them on Pete’s Shirt.
  • Land on Blue: trade Jars with Player of choice.
  • Land on Blank Green Space of Pete’s Shirt: take all the Buttons on the Shirt.

Game End

  • Play ends when all buttons are collected.
  • Any buttons remaining on Pete’s Shirt are divided among players, starting with the youngest player.
  • Player with the most buttons wins!

Pete the Cat Groovy Buttons Game helps your student practice counting and number recognition for numbers 1-5.

Button Shape Sorting Jars

Activity Materials

Our Process

  • Review shapes using Shape Puzzle.
  • Read shape names on jars to student and have them place the corresponding shape over the name. The Flower Jar will be the only one without a shape.
  • Ask student to short buttons into the correct jar, saying the color and shape of each button as they go.

Lunch: Button Sandwiches

I used a glass to cut circles of bread and a drinking straw to create the button holes. William wanted PB&J, so I cut the bread first and then made the sandwiches. For ham or turkey and cheese, it would be easier to make the sandwich first and then cut it into a round. Just pull off the top slice and create the button holes before serving.

Love,

b

B is for Bear

Dear Sis,

Our Daily Reading

Our fiction selection for the day was, There’s a Bear on My Chair by Ross Collins. Poor mouse has an uninvited guest in his chair! Mouse rants in rhyme until finally, he gives up. When mouse leaves, bear goes home to find mouse asleep in his bed. Even little ones find the humor!

Our non-fiction selection for the day was, Brown Bears by Kate Riggs. This book is a quick read, so your little won’t be over whelmed with information. 

Breakfast: Bear Toast

Bear Toast
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Ingredients
  1. 1 slice bread
  2. 1 T peanut butter
  3. 3 banana slices
  4. 3 blueberries
Instructions
  1. Lightly toast bread.
  2. Spread with peanut butter.
  3. Top with banana slices and blueberries to make bear facial features.
Tag Sis, You're It! http://www.tagsisyoureit.com/

We had a midwife appointment today, so I made William’s toast to go. He was eating and listening to his daily reading during my 38 week check up. What can I say? Moms multi-task! Midwife Linda and the receptionist couldn’t get over how cute his breakfast was!

“B” is for Bear Letter Craft

Parent Preparation

  • Print Bear Parts and Upper Case B Templates from DLTK’s Educational Activities. Color and Black and White versions are available for both. We opted to bring the B is Black and White and the Part Parts in Color.
  • Cut out the Bear Parts. We didn’t use all the bear parts. We skipped the eye brows and tongue and traded the paper eyes for wiggly ones.
  • Supply a brown crayon, glue stick, and 2 large wiggly eyes.

Student Assembly

  • Color the letter B with a brown crayon.
  • Paste the dark ear circle onto the larger ear circles and paste the dark nose circle to the oval snout. 
  • Paste the ears, snout, and paws in place. 
  • Paste the wiggly eyes.
  • Write or ask your grown up to title, name, and date your work, for your homeschool portfolio.

Bear Counting Clip Cards

Activity Materials

Our Process

Today we didn’t incorporate our numeral puzzle because we were in a mall lounge waiting for Build-a-Bear to open. 

  • Shuffle cards.
  • First, ask student what color the bears are.
  • Then, ask student to count the bears.
  • Next, ask student to find the correct numeral. My student has little to no number recognition at this point, so I read the numbers to him slowly, pointing to each one, and then asked him to identify the correct number.
  • Finally, we put the cards in sequential order.

September Field Trip

Built-a-Bear Workshop

As part of our schooling process, I decided that I wanted to make sure we had a field trip each month. Family friends John and Susan gave us some Build-a-Bear Workshop gift cards a few months ago, so I thought B is for Bear day would be the perfect opportunity to put them to use. Ironically, William chose a dinosaur for himself and a rabbit for baby sister… neither of which begin with letter B!

Afterward, William played in the mall play area for the better part of a half an hour and we had food court pizza as a special treat for lunch. It was toddler heaven!

Gummy Bear Pattern Strips

Activity Materials

  • Print Gummy Bear Patterns from Pre Kinders, on card stock.
    • Cut out and laminate for durability.
  • Supply gummy bears. I bought two bags because I realized there were hardly any green and white in them!

Our Process

  • Sort gummy bears by color.
  • Work through as many pattern strips as your student has patience for. I bribed mine with the promise of 3 gummy bears to eat after the completion of a pattern:)

When William was all tucked in for nap today, next to his new dinosaur, he smiled and said, “We had a good day Mama.” Afterward, I went to my room, to make the bed, since we left for our appointment before Daddy was up. When I was done making the bed, I tidied a few other things, and realized that William had placed baby sister’s new rabbit in her crib. Sometimes that kid makes my heart melt!!!

Love,

b

 

Bassinet Sheets

Dear Sis,

The bassinet you and the Jackson Grandparents got for us when William was born is all ready for baby sister’s arrival. It only came with one sheet for the pad. I was too tired those first few months after William’s birth to make more, so I just wrapped receiving blankets around it when the sheet was dirty, but I remembered it was something I wanted to do this time around. 

Today, I used three of William’s old baby blankets to make new sheets.

I used the pad itself to cut the blankets to size. I made tissue patterns from the sheet for the two panels for the back. 

Now we are all ready for baby sister to spit-up all over her sheets:)

Love,

b

 

 

B is for Boat

Dear Sis,

Our Daily Reading

Today’s non-fiction selection was Boat Book by Gail Gibbons. It talks about all the different kinds of boats, broken into categories by how they are powered and what jobs they perform. A great toddler book… that is simply factual, without being condescending. 

Today’s fiction selection is the Golden Book Classic, Scruffy the Tugboat by Gertrude Crampton. If you don’t remember from when you were a kid, Scruffy is a toy boat that longs for adventure in the great big world. Once he has his adventure, he realizes that he is better off in his small section of the world, with the man in the polka-dot tie and his son. 

“b” is for Boat Letter Craft

Parent Preparation

  • Print b is for Boat Letter Craft by Tag Sis, You’re It, on white card stock.
  • Provide paints, brushes, painting smock, scissors, blue sheet of craft paper, and a glue stick.

Student Assembly

  • Choosing different colors for each part, paint the trapezoid boat, triangle sail, and “b” mast. Set it aside to dry.
  • Once your painting is dry, ask your grown up to help you cut out your boat parts.
  • Paste the boat parts to blue craft paper.
  • Write or ask your grown up to title, name, and date your work, for your homeschool portfolio.

Colored Sail Apple Boat Float

Activity Materials

  • 10 different colored sheet of craft foam, cut into squares. We used red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, gray, and brown.
  • 10 lollipop sticks, trimmed skewers, or similar narrow craft stick, to thread sails onto.
  • 5 apples, sliced in half.
  • A dish bin, half filled with water.

Our Process

  • As your student hands you sails to poke into apples, ask them what color it is, reminding them if they forgot, and having them say the color name back to you. 
  • Have them review color names again as you place the boats into the water. Only 7 of our 10 boats were sea worthy, but that’s okay. It presented the opportunity for more practice.
  • First, we counted all the sea faring boats. Then, we counted the boats that sank and had to be docked.
  • Finally, we named the colors of the sea faring boats. Then, we named the colors of the boats that sank.

Three of our boats were not sea worthy. The first one, I accidentally pieced through the skin on the bottom of the apple. It floated for a while, until too much water got into it. The other two weren’t symmetrical enough, and tipped themselves with their own weight. William decided we should just eat the boats that didn’t work:) 

Song of the Day

We printed this lyric sheet by downloading the PDF from Children Love to Sing. We sang to our sailing apple boats before cleaning up.

Transportation Counting Puzzles

Activity Materials

Our Process

  • Lay out all the number cards at random. Counting between each addition, match the wooden puzzle numeral to the corresponding card number.
  • Using the puzzle as a reference, and counting between each addition, line up the number cards in sequence.
  • Working with shuffled transportation counting cards, ask student to count the number of vehicles on each card.
  • Then, count down the number row, and place the vehicle card in the correct location.
  • Finally, we discussed that number ten was made with two numerals… the one and zero. 

We even finished our lesson early enough to go to library story time!

Love,

b

New Pajamas

Dear Sis,

I made William a new bedding set well over six months ago. When we were finished, we had a bit of flannel leftover from the sheets, so I cut out a matching pair of pajamas. Life got busy, and they ended up in a project box, until the light of the baby-sister-is-almost-here-sewing-craze shown on them!

I started assembly shortly after completing Sneaky Fox Saturday afternoon:) The pattern needed some reworking, plus I learned to use the button hole feature on my new sewing machine, so progress was a bit slow.

I was concerned, having cut this out well over six months ago, that it wouldn’t fit William, if I didn’t make it pre-arrival of baby sister. My concern was unwarranted. This pattern runs… forget big… HUGE! The assembly is simple enough, but I had to make some modifications to the size 2 so it would be small enough to fit my 3T wearing son. I left the bodice and sleeve panels as is, but decided to remove the interfacing from of the cuffs and make them half of their suggested width. I proceeded as usual with the front closure and collar. 

For the pants, I used a pair of pajama pants that fit William to figure out the crotch depth and leg length. I ended up chopping inches off of both… and I have a very tall kid. The result fits, and has growing space for the next year or more!

The button hole feature on my new sewing machine, took the better part of an hour to learn to use, but it is wonderful! No more hand sewn button holes… in my modern sewing anyway:)

As always, William is very proud to wear whatever Mama makes him! He told me, “I like it Mama.” I soon as we got them on. Mission accomplished!

Love,

b

 

Backing Great Grandma’s Quilts

Dear Sis,

Great Grandma Cooper gives out hand embroidered quilts to all her great grand babies. I’ve actually made and backed two of my own, so the one she gave me for William in 2015 has been sitting in a box waiting to be backed for sometime. When, I got a second one for baby sister in July, I decided it was time to do both!

I used to be of the mindset that this was a task that needed to be hand sewn. The combination of the versatility of my new sewing machine and the need for more efficient time usage that goes along with second wave motherhood, has persuaded me that things don’t necessarily have to be perfect to be done well:)

William’s Quilt

I chose a pale blue swiss dot for this one. I was trying to make it look suitable for a little boy. Luckily, the colors in the bow boarder was very accommodating:)

Baby Sister’s Quilt

Again, the boarder inspired my fabric choose. I like the vine embroidery so well, I wanted to help make it more of a focal point:)

As I recall, Great Grandma Cooper gave Evelyn a beautiful quilt and I’m sure your about to get another for your pending addition:) Bring them sometime when you visit and I’ll happily back them for you so they wash and wear better over the years!

Love,

b

B is for Ball

Dear Sis,

Our Daily Reading

Today both selections are fiction. A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka is a picture book about a dog who really enjoys her ball. Sadly, on an outing to the park another dog pops her ball. She goes home very sad. The following day, on her way to the dog park, the dog that popped he ball shows up with a new ball for her. She ends up with a new ball and a new friend. William loves to read this story for himself since there aren’t any written words, he feels like he is doing it right. I like that William learned, that when we break a friends toy, we have to work to make it right again.

The second book, Ball & Balloon by Rob Sanders is about a ball and balloon, who each take turns wishing they were the other. This book shows how the ups and downs of life are better with a friend. 

Basketball Shot Counting Mats

Activity Materials

Our Process

  • First, we rolled as many balls as we could out of a can of orange play doh.
  • We discussed that zero meant their were no basketballs anywhere.
  • Then, we matched the puzzle numerals with the numerals on the card. Only five cards fit on our table at a time, so we worked 1-5, and then 6-10.
  •  Next, we placed the correct number of play doh basketballs on the card, counting aloud with each addition.
  • During clean up, we revisited the concept of zero.

Baseball Lacing Cards

Activity Materials

Football Color Matching Puzzles

Activity Materials

Our Process

  • Sort the helmets and jerseys into two piles. 
  • Starting with the helmets, have student identify the color before setting it down. Have student say color names they forgot, once you provide the answer.
  • Repeat the process of color identification for the jersey cards.
  • Then, ask the student place the jerseys with the corresponding helmet. 

Playing Ball – Fitness Activity

We have LittleTyke T-Ball and Basketball in our back yard, but whatever you have will probably do the trick:)

Love,

b