Preschool At Home & a Little Bit About Me

I stay home full time with my kids, so I get to spend a lot of time with my son while my daughter is in school. We never just sit around watching TV all day; I'm just not made that way and besides, it's just not a good thing to do.

My son is too young for preschool and so I do preschool-at-home with him. It is something I did with my daughter before & during preschool. We are our children's first teachers and will continue to teach them throughout their lives. But I digress; I am not trying to get on a soapbox right now.

Here is a picture of me with the kids while camping. Not a very flattering picture of me since I have no makeup on and am dressed in my camping gear, but it's the real & natural me.

Part of my preschool-at-home with my son is to do crafts/activities/worksheets/puzzles/songs/games/play that encourage his development of fine motor, gross motor, communication, and academic skills.

So, when you see projects on here of my kids doing them, you also see THEIR finished project. Not a mom making something that looks perfect for a blog post (yes, I see those projects & pin them because they are still good ideas and I can have realistic expectations of what my child's finished product will look like.

I don't follow a specific curriculum but I do have several workbooks I use. I try to continually reinforce learning his colors, letters, numbers but I only give him 1-2 worksheets a day. Often though, he will ask for more. He really likes to do them, especially when his sister has her own homework to do. But I also reinforce learning those academic concepts by incorporating in activities and games and projects that get him using different motor skills at the same time.

I also include lots of stories and songtime, interactive time with other kids, physical play, pretend play and yes, I we do watch educational shows. Most shows we watch are on PBS.

And I don't stop teaching my daughter, yes she is in school and has homework and reading charts and tests and spelling tests to practice for, but she loves crafting at home and taking field trips with us when she can. We should never stop learning.

You know what is funny, this was supposed to be a post about some last minute Halloween Crafts (yes, that will still be written & posted next week) but I just decided to go with this post and let know a little bit about me and what I do.

Try It Tuesday: Preschool at Home Theme - Monsters

If you know me personally, you might be wondering why the preschool at home
still when my son is in preschool. Well, first of all he is only in it 2 mornings a week. 2nd of all, I am a SAHM so I feel it my responsibility to help him to continue learning through the day and on his days off from preschool. And thirdly, I just like to stay busy and creative. Ok, I do have a 4th reason too - I really feel we all need to take part in our children's learning even if they are in a school system. (soap box warning!) I see too often that parents except all the learning to happen within school doors and get upset with teachers or the school if they don't feel their child is learning enough or is struggling to learn something but are not trying to help their child at home or in the community. I think we should not be sitting idly by relying on others to teach our children. We are our children's first teacher and will continue to be life long teachers to them even then school staff is no longer present in their lives. Enjoy your kids and learn with them! (ok, getting off my soap box because if I don't get off now I could stay there for a while.)

So, with that said, I am sharing with you some of the ideas we did for our theme on Monsters (my son's pick):

Here is what we did:
* "M" Monster Tracing
* Packing Peanuts Monster
* Monster Playdough
* Dress up like a Monster with Monster Feet
* Play with Boogs the Boogie Wipes* Monster
* Halloween Counting Yarn Monsters
* Monster Painting
* Monsters Inc Pancakes
* Read Monster Books

You could also try:
* Monster Puzzle Magnets
* Monster Time App
* Make Monster Stuffies from Old Sweaters
* Counting Monster Puppet
* Repair a Monster Hole in a Pair of Jeans

I am a Saline Ambassador for Boogie Wipes, so I was given samples and this stuffed toy to help promote and demonstrate their products. I receive no monetary compensation for this program.

Thrifty Thursday: Mix Up Your Playdough

You don't need fancy gadgets, rollers, cutters and toys to play with your playdough. While all those things are fun, sometimes kids want to change it up and make something different and it doesn't have to cost you extra, look at what you have in your home. For our Preschool at Home Theme of Monsters we made monster playdough using googly eyes (you've hear me mention how much I love those!) and when he was done we took out the googly eyes and will use them on other projects.

For an upcoming preschool at home theme on dinosaurs we will be making dinosaurs tracks with his plastic dinosaurs in playdough.

Also - save yourself some money and make yourself a big batch of playdough. I have a ton of different recipes for playdough on my blog.

Preschool Science Experiment with Frozen Dinosaurs

This was part of our "cold" day from school last month. It was as low as -35 below with windchill and so there was a 2-hour delay from school which means no morning preschool for my son. In that case, we needed to plan some learning activities at home. Given that he had just done some melting of ice in preschool with warm and cold water and salt water in preschool, it was fresh on his mind, but being the ever dinosaur fan that he is, he wanted to excavate some dinosaurs from the ice (because that quite possibly be how some of them died.)

Although we took it all a couple steps further than he did in preschool for some additional learning and more science fun. We knew about the 2 hour delay the night before, so we were able to get the dinosaurs in water in advance.

So, we gathered all of our science equipment (some day I should tell you all about what is in our science kit), a plastic bin, warm water, cold water, salt, baking soda, vinegar and boiling water.

Then let the fun begin! It's mostly trial and error to see what happens. We added the baking soda and vinegar so he could see if that chemical reaction would create heat and melt anymore than the same temperature water.

For more SCIENCE FUN, try these out:

• Below Zero Science Experiments (2 experiments!!)
• Solar Pizza Oven
• Sun Prints
• Fun Science Experiments for Preschool Kids (4 different experiments!!)
• Simple Science Fun with Kids (6 different experiments!!)
• Marker Tie-Dye
• Groovy Lab in a Box
• (Non-Paper-Mache) Volcano

For more DINOSAUR FUN, try these out:

• Ultimate Dino Dig Kit
• Preschool-at-Home Theme on Dinosaurs
• Triceratops Costume
• DIY Clay Dinosaur Bones and Dino Dig
• Birdhouse Gourd Dinosaur Cave
• D is for Dinosaur Art Project
• Dinosaur Feet from Shoe Boxes
• Fossil Cookies

Thrifty Thursday: Make Your Own Preschool Worksheets

Unless you are able to purchase Dollar Store workbooks, it can be quite spendy to purchase workbooks to do preschool at home. Consider printing off your own at home or drawing out your own.

Printer ink can be drained fast if you are printing a lot, so if the worksheet is something you can quickly make on your own with a marker, then  do it.

Sometimes I make my own worksheets just so I can avoid using more ink, like in the caterpillar project above. I made a big C that my son first had to trace and then glue on pompoms, googly eyes, and craft foam head to make the caterpillar, that way I got more use out of one worksheet. Some of those pompoms  were reused art supplies from a previous project and I will reuse the ones that can be when this project had been hanging in our home long enough and it is time to swap out projects.

Other times I make my own worksheets is out of necessity when my son requests a particular theme that no one else has made worksheets of (or even though of as a preschool theme.) LOL!

Try It Tuesday: Preschool at Home Theme - Dinosaurs

It's back to school and for those of you doing preschool at home, I want to continue sharing so ideas of what we have done. Let's start out the year with my son's favorite - DINOSAURS!!!

We did a fun door hanger activity kit, played with dinosaurs, did some Dino Scratch Art, made dinosaur tracks in playdough, got out all our dinosaur books for storytime and did some worksheets from this FREE Dinosaur Printable Set.

Some other fun dinosaur activities we have done:

• Bird House Gourd Dinosaur Cave
• Ultimate Dino Dig
• Letter "D" Dinosaur Art Project
• Prehistoric Volcano
• Dinosaur Sun Print
• Dinosaur Feet Made from Shoe Boxes
• Egg Carton Dinosaur
• Fossil Cookies

Reading Bright Start! from Nemours Children's Health System

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a webinar sponsored by Nemours Children's Health System to help educate bloggers and the public about their new program called Reading Bright Start! They sent me the above Reading Readiness swag bag to use at home and encourage literacy skills among my children (note: disclosure). Now, this webinar wasn't that new of information to me as I have done ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education, it's a MN Dept of Ed. program) with my kids since they were infants. I started reading to my kids the same day I brought them home from the hospital and made a routine our of reading before nap time and bedtime. I nursed both of my kids for the first year of their life and it was the perfect opportunity for them to listen to me read. I had their full attention while they were nursing and when I had my second born, my older child would hold the book for me while I read to both of them.

We still read with my kids before bedtime, even my 8 1/2 year old. If they still want you to read to them or with them, DO IT! It won't be long before they might say they don't want you there an you don't want to look back wishing you had read to them more. Not only are you reading to them, but you are giving them sensory input by touching them while you sit/lay next to each other. Some kids are very sensory in nature and find it calming to be touched while they are learning and for some kids being touched is one of their love languages and they are receiving information that they are loved and cared for while they are also learning words and increasing their vocabulary. There is SOOO MUCH good to come from sitting with your child or grandchild and reading to them.

But we didn't read at bedtime, nap time, or during nursing. We read all the time. I have books in each our cars (don't tell me you are bored while we are driving somewhere! read!) When they were really little we had those little waterproof bath books we read to them, and we had a couple of books (an Alphabet one and Nursery Rhyme one) that we read while they ate in their high chairs. We encourage literacy every chance we get because it is so important to helping them become good students and having an opportunity at more success in many facets of their lives. It's no wonder that my preschooler is sounding out short words already and my 3rd grader is above reading level for her grade.

Now that I have shared with you a bit about how literacy is important to our family, I also want to tell you more about how you can use Nemours Reading Bright Start! online program to help your family. You don't need to live in an area where Nemours services to use there online resources, plus it's FREE! Their website is targeted towards providing literacy tools to help children between the ages of 0-5 reach reading milestones. They have 8 separated sections based on different age groups from birth through age five to help you learn what skills you can be working on with them and milestones they should be reaching during this age group. Each of they sections includes milestone information for  motor skills and language and cognitive skills, as well as a section on helping at home and another on warning signs, as well as fun ideas for books to be reading this age group. This is the 5 year old page (since I have a new 5 year old.)

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One of the more interesting tools I found on the website is the Preschool Reading Screener for ages 3, 4, and 5. At the end of the screener you are provided instantly with the results and an action plan on how to help your child develop their literacy skills. I think this is particularly useful if you are unsure of where your child is at or if there is no screening in your area before they start kindergarten. It is important that we help equip children with foundational early literacy skills so that we can set them up for possibly future success in school.

This is a picture of a slide in the  Nemours webinar I participated in that I found particularly interesting that says "If a child is not reading at grade level by the end of first grade, that child only has a 10% chance of reading at grade level by the end of fourth grade." WOW! That really struck home to me since I have a preschooler and 3rd grader. I go in to volunteer in both of their classrooms and see how some of the third graders are really struggling with reading and if they are struggling with reading they are likely to be struggling with other subjects as well and I see how important it is that I am in volunteering with the preschoolers and reading to them.

Just check out the list (in the green box) that states what other types of negative consequences there may be for children who are struggling with their reading and not reading at grade level. I bet some of you didn't think that problems with reading can result in some of those consequences, which is why it is so IMPORTANT that we encourage early literacy skills in our youth before they enter school and give them foundational skills that they will continue to build upon.

This is a little chart I have seen in an area library and after this webinar I thought it was such an impact to see visually what it looks like to read to your child 20 minutes a day. Imagine how many words will be in your child's vocabulary if you started reading to them at birth. Don't fret over if you didn't start reading to them at birth, just start reading to them now. Check out the Reading Bright Start! website to get ideas for books and learn about early literacy milestones that your child should be reaching.

Review: Piano Lessons from Hoffman Academy

Piano lessons have been on our list of things we wanted our daughter to participate in, but we were having a hard time fitting it in. When she was in kindergarten, I bought some teaching materials and asked my husband to teach her. Even though I can read music and played an instrument in my youth, I did not take piano and I did not keep up with playing an instrument after high school, whereas my husband did both and is an amazingly talented musician. The problem is that my husband did not have the time to sit down with my daughter or plan out lessons regularly. And so, her piano lessons were few and far between, even though she did learn to play a few songs and seems to have retained much of the information taught to her. We discussed again, as a family, about taking lessons with someone else but I really don't want to over schedule my child and want her to have some time to play with the neighborhood kids when she is not at swim team practice or gymnastics practice. I did not want to be running my children to more than one activity in an evening ans so we tabled paying for piano lessons for another year.

That was until I had the opportunity to review Hoffman Academy. Before I decided to review piano lessons from Hoffman Academy I checked out what they had to offer, how much it cost and what kind of time investment was required from a child and parent.

What Hoffman Academy offers is 60 FREE online video piano lessons! Yes, you did read that correctly! It is free. They also offer a FREE download of supplemental materials from Lesson 1 from Unit 1. Then if you like what you used for the lesson 1 supplemental materials you can purchase the complete materials for Unit 1, which is 20 lessons for only $19. This also includes mp3s of the songs they will be playing in both a practice CD and playing CD. It's not hard to do the math and realize you are paying LESS THAN $1 a lesson! When I looked in to lessons around us, the cost for lessons were an average of $15 for a half hour lesson plus the cost of workbooks/CDs/software.

But it's not just the fact that these lessons are completely affordable that I love, but that they can be done in the comfort of my home and I don't have to pack up the kids and drop my daughter off at a lesson for a half hour and try to figure out how to entertain my son during that short time. All the lessons are between 5-15 minutes and you can pause the video whenever you need to in order to practice a skill or rewind it to hear it over again. Lesson 1 is only 11 minutes and at the end they are playing Hot Cross Buns! My daughter was so proud that she couldn't wait to show her dad what she just learned. You can watch her play it below.





The supplemental materials help reinforce the information they learned from the video lesson and is presented in an easy to understand format that is interesting. Once your child has finished the 20 lessons in Unit 1, you can move on to Units 2 and 3, each which have 20 lessons in them and each unit has the supplemental materials and CDs available for $19.

I do recommend watching the video alongside your child to help them keep their focus and be assured that they are understanding the information being presented to them. But like I said, lessons are 5-15 minutes each. Whereas my husband isn't able to regularly sit down and give her a lesson he prepared, I (or he can) sit down with her while she take a video lesson. She still receives live verbal feedback and personal interaction, but more importantly it is a nice parent child togetherness opportunity. I think I will be learning piano myself.

My 4 year old son decided to join us for lesson #2 which was 10 minutes long and we learned the musical alphabet. He picked it up just fine and was very interested in it. I think I may add this program in to the preschool-at-home day I do with my son. He does have a high interest in music and if he wanted to try learning now, I am not going to deter that interest, but help foster it. Now, we're talking teaching 3 of us to play piano for $19 for 20 lessons.

We have been enjoying these lessons so far and I hope that enjoyment continues for all of us.

I encourage all my readers to check out the FREE online video piano lessons from

Hoffman Academy!

I love that they are making music lessons more accessible and affordable for all children!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Thrifty Thursday: FREE Kids History Detective's Club at Steele County Historical Society

Last month my son and I attended the first Kids History Detective's Club for the 2014-2015 school year. This class is held the FIRST THURSDAY of every month at the Steele County History Museum. They took the kids back in time to learn about the railroad and the general store. It was an awesome program (did I mention FREE!) where there were 2 volunteers dressed and acted in character to teach the kids about how the train station and railroad, as well as the general store were used in a different period in history.

Each month there is a different topic that you can find out about on their website or on their Facebook page. We attended the morning preschool class, but they also have an evening school-age class as well.

Please scroll through these pictures to get an idea of the fun that the kids had while learning over the course of the 1 hour glass.

My son and I have been able to attend a few before, but because he had preschool last year on Tuesday and Thursday morning, we were unable to go. Some of the things we learned about was "History of Owatonna", "Old Fashioned Games", "Old West Trail" and "How Yarn is Made".

They were able to use their imaginations and go on a ride back in time as they left the country and journeyed 10 miles north to general store in town. They boarded the train with a ticket they had punched (and got to take home too) and started their journey to barter eggs for vegetables at the county store and buy penny candy (the "station master" gave them pennies to buy some penny candy at the end)

Here you can see a picture of the station master secretly giving the kids pennies to go to the general store with. It made me giggle they were buying "penny candy" as it was this ancient thing because when I was a kid (ok, guess that is making me old) there was a bar at the end of the road (yes, I said bar, it was Wisconsin, things are different there!) and they sold penny candy. I was always thrilled when I had a dollar and was old enough to walk down there by myself to by the candy. 100 pieces!

Here they are buying their penny candy at the end of the class. It was easy to tell that all the kids had a wonderful time. The volunteers who were acting did such a great job engaging the kids and helping them learn about history.

This was the first of this year and during the first week of school, so I think that was why there was not as many kids as we had seen at others we attended. I hope we have a lot more friends the next time.

I had typed this post the day we attended and they told us our next class was going to be about Pumpkins. Check out the SCHS website to find out more details. They have these classes the FIRST THURSDAY of every month. At 9AM for preschoolers and at 6:30PM for school-age children.

The NEXT ONE is next week on OCTOBER 2, 2014. Mark your calendar!

Thrifty Thursday : Egg Carton Preschool Snack Game

 I first came up with the idea to do this when my daughter was a toddler and I did preschool-at-home with her. When you stay home with your kids, everything can be an opportunity to teach them something.

So, before you recycle your egg carton let it serve as a counting container for snack time. The idea is simple, just label the inside with the number 1-12. Then fill each one with that number of items. For example: 11 raisins in the spot labeled 11 and 2 mini rice cakes in the spot labeled 2. The dump all the snack in a bowl and have your child sort them by like items. Next ask your child to count how many there is of each like item and them put them in the labeled spot that has the matching number.

Once they are done sorting & counting, they can dig in.

This little idea cost you no additional money but help teach your kids sorting and counting.

Try It Tuesday: Paint & Stick Art Canvas

This was a fun project to do with my son. I think it's pretty good work for a 3 year old! I have found that kids get super excited when you let them paint on a stretched canvas. It is a magical medium to paint on because normally only "artists" use a canvas and things on a canvas stay up a lot longer in a home than something just on a piece of paper. The kids have each painted a couple things before on canvas and they hang in their rooms and they are very proud of these works of art.

I bought a 10-pack of 8x10 stretched canvas at Michael's craft store a few months ago for $10, so each one cost me $1. We used paint and brushes that we already owned. The "stickers" are a raised cardstock quality picture with a foam sticker on the back, I bought that sheet from the Dollar Tree. He didn't use all the stickers and later we will make a couple cards using the remainder.

I had him start out by painting the entire canvas in blue and then we let it dry and did some pirate worksheets in the meantime (check back on Friday for my Preschool at Home Theme on Pirates to see what we used). Then I had him paint in the sun, clouds & island.

When it was mostly dry (we were just impatient, but you could wait until it was completely dry) I let him pick out what stickers to use and where to place them.

He was super excited that he has a new painting for his room. When we were finished he asked for a snack of crackers because parrots eat crackers and pirates have parrots. Smart boy!

GIVEAWAY and Review: Hot Dots Let's Master Reading and Math Sets

I had the pleasure of spending some time the last few weeks reviewing the Hot Dots Let's Master Reading and Math sets from Educational Insights with my son. We reviewed the Kindergarten sets, even though he is in preschool. (Braggy mom moment coming up!) Maybe my kids are just super bright (might be because I do these extra programs like the Hot Dots Let's Master programs with them), but I have always found that any workbook or game I get I need to go up a grade.

The Kindergarten programs in both reading and math are the perfect level for him to feel both successful and challenged. Each program has 2 workbooks with it with a combined total of 85 lessons in each with 15 advanced lessons for a total of 100 lessons in each program.

The sets work with "Ace" the talking dog that says a variety of phrases or sounds or a combination of phrases/sounds (you choose which kind as well as you can change the volume or to have no sound). There is also visual reinforcement because Ace's eyes with glow green if you are correct and red if you are incorrect. I think these options for sound reinforcement are great because some kids are bothered by sounds or loud sounds, but they can also receive the feedback on their answers visually. Each set comes with it's own Ace that needs 2 AAA batteries.

I found that in both programs my son could easily get through 1/4 of the reading program easily and now he will be learning new skills he was not familiar with. In the math program we got through almost the first book before he started to become challenged. Both sets are something we are going to keep using as part of our preschool-at-home curriculum.

He just loves using the dog to pick his answers. It makes it even more fun to learn by having this talking, flashing dog to work with. Also, he thinks it is great when he gets three in a row right and Ace starts vibrating to show he is proud of you. My son gets really excited because he knows he is doing really well when it starts vibrating.

Watch below as he demonstrates how to use the Hot Dots Let's Master Kindergarten Reading Program. This has really been a lot of fun to do these programs with him and I love how excited he is to "play" with them.



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I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Monsters Inc. Pancakes

Just a sneak preview of a theme that will be occurring in several posts over the next 10 days and that is Monsters. This past week, our preschool-at-home theme was Monsters and I ended the week with making Monsters Inc. pancakes, or at least my best attempt at them. To make Mike I just put some green food coloring in some batter I took out and decorated in whipped cream, blue sugar sprinkles and chocolate chips. My less impressive Sully is a different kind of blue sprinkles (I was trying to make him look fuzzy, hindsight I would have done blue batter with the sprinkles) and chocolate chips eyes. Come back Tuesday and I will share a Monster craft with you! I promise it looks much better than my Sully pancake. LOL!

Just What You Wanted - MORE Pinterest Ideas I Liked

1-10 Number Worksheet - A worksheet I did with my son for our "preschool-at-home". This website is filled with a bunch of great printable worksheet.

Triple Chocolate Chunk Muffins - Mine did not turn out like the picture, but they sure taste fantastic, although part of that may because I used raw sugar instead of an artificial one. Maybe I will buy a box of stevia and try these again with that.

Reese's Peanut Butter Bars - I did do this recipe just slightly different because I used my "clean eating" homemade graham crackers to make the bottom layer, even though the rest of this recipe is not at all clean.

Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven - This is not necessarily a quicker way to make hard boiled eggs, but I wanted to try it just the same. I really wanted to see if they were easier to peel and if it actually worked. Plus, this would be handy to throw some eggs in the oven if I am already baking something at this temperature and use the additional oven space rather than turning on the stovetop. They were indeed easy to peel.

The Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven Recipe is as follows: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove immediately. Allow to cool to touch and peel.

Caramel in a Can - I actually first read about this in the book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People by Amy Sedaris and then I found it on pinterest and thought I should try it because it seemed simple enough and I love caramel.

Miracle Bread - I plan to try a multi-grain miracle bread recipe next. I am a big fan of homemade bread!  (Guess I have my great grandma to thank for that.) And an even bigger fan of bread that doesn't take much work, like my Artisan Bread.