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Showing posts from April, 2018

Galaxy Battle Math- Duel Forces Counters

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This Friday is May the Fourth, aka Star Wars Day!  I have one child who thinks he's Darth Vader, and another who wants to take the Millennium Falcon to grandma's house.  We love the Star Wars movies, but we really like the merchandise, concepts, and spin-off movies (like Lego).  We really, really like lightsabers. Every day this week, I'm going to be posting a Star Wars themed post, counting down to the big party day.  Today, I'm giving you a free printable for preschool/kindergarten math. My boys are working on their number identification and values for 0-10, so I made this Star Wars math board for them.  At it's simplest form, the math board helps kids learn numbers by presenting the 5 or 10 frames and showing kids how those numbers fill out the frame.  For example, "number 1" would have one counter, "number 2" would have two counters, and "number 10" would fill out the frame.  I have included number cards so that kids can

Slimed! 70+ Recipes from the Experts

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Slime is everywhere these days!  My kids love it and make it almost every day.  They can't wait to try all the amazing, fun, and sometimes edible slimes in this post.  Once again, I'm teaming up with the best moms in the Kids Blogger Network to bring you a MASSIVE round-up of kids' crafts.  When I started this post, I was aiming for 31 recipes, one for each day in May.  But, instead, I ended up with over 70 ideas- enough to keep you busy all summer!   Don't forget to PIN all this fun for later! 1- Taste Safe  // Look We're Learning 2- 3-Ingredients // Busy Mommy Media 3-  St. Patrick // The Art Kit Blog 4- Super Stretchy // Little Bins for Little Hands 5- Calming Lavender // Natural Beach Living 6- Gold Slime // Crafty Moms Share 7- Chia Seed // The Art Kit Blog 8- Butter // Little Bins for Little Hands 9-  Fluffy // Best Ideas for Kids 1- Cinderella // The Art Kit Blog 2- Galaxy Slime // The Best Ideas fo

Montessori-Inspired Printables for Studying Coral Reefs

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Putting together a list of resources specifically for studying coral reefs turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.  I thought that with Pinterest at my fingertips, anything was possible.  Instead, I ended up with a list with some Montessori stuff and some sensory things.  I should have labeled this "How to Use Safari Ltd Products to Study Coral Reefs" since I ended up grabbing so many great ideas with our favorite plastic toys. Reef Grammar Farm // Grace and Green Pastures Free printable tags for nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and more. Sea Turtle Sensory Bin // Every Star is Different Use the Safari Turtle Life Cycle pieces to reenact their journey with a fun sensory bin. Reef 3-Part Cards // In Our Pond Montessori style matching cards for the Safari Coral Reef toob .  Print and match. Fish 3-Part Cards // Child Led Life Studying the Coral Reef is a great time to study fish. Sensory Bottle // A Little Pinch of Perfect The activity co

Montessori-Inspired Mosquito Life Cycle 3-Part Cards

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When Dragonfly (age 6) found out that female mosquitoes use the blood they take from humans to nurture their babies, she decided that being bitten by a mosquito wasn't very bad.  She speaks very tenderly about them and gets very happy when they're near her.  I anticipate this changing very soon, but I wanted to capitalize on her interest by creating these Montessori-inspired 3-part cards. > > > Click Here to Download the Printable < < < The pictures came from Wikimedia Commons and are from a few different types of mosquito breeds.  I have included male and female cards to show that male mosquitoes drink flower nectar and females drink blood.  The cards are match the Safari Ltd Life Cycle set. A study of mosquitoes could lead to their place in the food chain.  Or perhaps a look at preventing and treating mosquito bites.  Or diseases carried by mosquitoes and why they carry them. I also highly recommend this mosquito life cycle book for kids.

The Best Group Games for Camping (with free printable)

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I've been enjoying Travel Time Tuesday so much and have been posting so much content (twice a week lately) that I decided to move all of it to it's own blog.  The Group Games blog post is now at my new site-  Party Through the USA . Click on the picture to go to the camping games post.

What I've Learned in 4 Years of Blogging

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Every year on the founding of my blog, I like to take some time to review what I've learned and look at how the blog has been doing.  For example, last year I talked about using Inlinkz to organize the blog and figuring out HTML.  I'm sure that I've learned more than I am listing here, but here are the few newsworthy items that have caught my attention. News Tailwind I recently have began using Tailwind to organize and schedule my Pinterest posts.  I have only been using it for a month, so I don't have a lot of data on it yet.  One thing that I love about it is that it allows me to spread out my pins to go out on different days and times.  I can set intervals to space them out evenly or even have the same pin go out at the same day and time every week or month.  At the moment, I have 12 pins scheduled a day. I often pin each blog post and all its pictures to more than one board, and Tailwind allows me to select which boards to put them on all in one place

Planting Good Spiritual Seeds in Your Kids

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Once a month, I got to a mom's encouragement morning, where we do a craft, talk about everything, and listen to a lecture.  This week, our topic was on "feeding our kids healthy foods, physically and spiritually.  There's a lot of information online about getting your kids to eat good food, but there is less available for helping your kids get good spiritual food.  I thought I'd share a few of the resources that we've used with our kids.  My kids are still young (6, 5, and 4) so the recommendations are going to be geared toward younger children. One of the easiest ways to get good information into our kids minds and hearts is through music.  We often have music playing in the car or in the house, and while it's not always "Christian" albums, we still manage to play quite a bit.  I love hearing my kids singing good doctrine, reciting Scriptures, and humming hymns. Our Favorite Music Seeds Family Worship - Scripture verses around a them

Easy Circular Felt Food with Patterns

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Continuing my celebration of this blog's fifth birthday, I've made a bunch of felt food!  And, I'm offering the patterns to you for FREE! (fun fact- did you know that the first felt food I ever posted was on this blog's 1st birthday ?) The items in these pictures are quick mock-ups of the patterns that I made in a day.  They're put together with hot glue mostly and some machine sewing and hand sewing.  I used simple, cheap craft felt. If I was going to make these pattern for long-term use or a gift, I would use a nice wool blend felt from Prairie Woolens .  They have over 150 colors, and give you the option of buying the felt in sheets (9" x 12") and double sheets (12" x 18"), and by the yardage (36" x 9/18/27/36" AKA 1/4 yard, 1/2 yard, 3/4 yard, and 1 yard).  At less than $10 a yard, it's a great option for the felt crafter. My absolute favorite part of buying from Prairie Woolens is that they include the DMC floss colo

A Celebration of Bees- Ideas and Printables for Kids

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I LOVE bees.  Every since I was a little girl and first saw the hive through a window, I've been hooked.  Of course, it probably helps that one of my names means "industrious like a honeybee" (which also might explain the flightiness). As part of my blog birthday week, I'm bringing out all of my favorite things.  I recently joined the Kids Blogger Network, so this "Celebration of Bees" is a collection of all the best from those writers and creators. Nearly everyone loves to color, draw, or doodle. Here are some bee themed ideas. Maya the Bee Coloring // Kiddy Charts Adult Coloring // Arts Crackers  How to Draw a Bee // Easy Peasy and Fun Honey Bee Coloring // In All You Do

FLUSH! Finding Nemo Bathroom Sign for Kids

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For my countdown to my blog birthday, I've declared today to be "Wordless Wednesday."  Of course, I can't get away with writing zero words, but I'm going to keep it very short. My kids have a Finding Nemo/Dory bathroom, which was recently reopened to them after almost two years of being forbidden.  I decided to add some new printables to their decor- starting with this one. Can any moms relate? (I am not Disney or Pixar and do not own these images.  They came from Disney Wiki, and I am making this printable available as a free service for my blog readers). Click on the Picture to Download the Printable I'll be posting every day this week leading up to the grand blog birthday post on Sunday! Thanks for hanging out with us in the pond! Oh, and did you know we had a Finding Nemo adoption party?  You can get the free printables by clicking the picture. Pin It!