Home Made Fish Tank

A few years ago Zachary and Scott made this fish tank as a fun project while I was on bed rest in the hospital.  The extra projects with Daddy and the grandparents definitely helped him cope with me being away.  The nights away from him were of course hard on me too so I enjoyed seeing the activities they worked on.  I'm very thankful we had great hands to help out during that time. 


I believe this beautiful tank contained leaves, rocks, sand, plants and plenty of pretend sea creatures! The container was an old drink container of some type....tea...lemonade...


Zachary lately has begun asking for a fish tank again. Taking care of our dog is plenty for me right now so I plan to bring this up again! :)

Lent Table

My mother-in-law gave us a packet of different church season activity ideas.  For advent we had a centered area for our nativity and advent wreath.  The kids both loved that and benefited from it and so I wanted to make one for lent too.  We were able to incorporate the lent color, purple with a piece of fabric from my sewing area.  We also used palm branches from previous Palm Sundays which we put in the vase in the back.  We got a lent calendar from Catholic icing to provide a visual for the kids.  Lent can feel like a very long time for the children so the calendar is very helpful in giving them a sense of time. The other paper you see is a quote I liked about improving yourself from Thoreau.  The seashell has the Out Father on it and the picture in the back has three children signing "I love you".  

When Easter come we will replace the palms with pretty flowers and replace the purple with white.  I think I like this table for myself as much as I do for the kids! 

Game to Search for Sight Words

I made this cube last night for Zachary. I probably should have taken more time because as you can see it's not as sturdy as I would like. I came up with this because Zachary prefers to search for words in his books rather than sound them out and some of these words are not words we sound out such as "the". He likes the idea of playing a game while reading and he has a picture of the word he is looking for instead of me just telling him "look for i-n". Hopefully he will recognize the words more quickly as we play the cube game more often. 


An alphabet cube can also work for toddlers learning the ABCs.  I have some of those that I actually purchased at a teacher supply store.  Maybe these will work for others too!

Picture Schedule

This picture schedule has been amazing for my own kids and my music therapy clients.  This is a sample of our home schedule.  The rainbow at the bottom was our theme for the week. I do not always put the theme there but we happened to have a picture of it for that particular week. We learn as parents that our young tots or pre-schoolers are still developing their memory skills.  They do however build confidence and feel more in control when they know what is coming next during the day.  Consistent routines are of course great for that and a picture schedule to go along with it is even better! It is especially helpful for the days when something out of routine occurs. 

This blue scheduler comes from Lakeshore Learning and makes a triangle so there are two sides showing and it can be placed on a table/desk. It also folds up and has a pocket to hold the pictures in. Lakeshore also carries plenty of charts that can be hung on the wall. I needed the table top in order to bring it easily to my music therapy sessions and then back home.  These pictures came from Google images and I added color to some of them through the program paint.net.  

Tectonic Plates

Here's a creative way to teach kids about how tectonic plates work! My husband found this idea online. I'll have to ask him where he found it.  

1. Take a shoe box and cut it in half.
2. Put one side inside of the other for sliding closed and apart.
3. Add dirt to the entire bottom.
4. Push boxes together or pull them apart to make mountains, valleys, earthquakes, etc

Happy Learning!

Recognizing Words Through Labels

Family and friends who come to our house do not ever have a hard time finding their way around the kitchen.  Yes, it is indeed because of what you see in that picture.  Our house is labeled with words of all kinds.  

I know this is not a knew idea and is in fact it is a popular one among families with new readers and those hoping to learn another language!  Peggy Kaye is one person who recommends this idea in her book Games for Reading Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read.  

When we first put up our labels, our son was just turning 4.  He definitely noticed at first but a lot of the words were more complicated than the beginner words.  For a while it seemed that he had forgotten about them completely.  They had just become lovely decor.  He has, however, begun to realize that the beginning sound of the object matches the first letter of the words. He may also be recognizing the whole word itself and the object it's paired with or that some of the letters are often next to other particular letters even if he does not know what all of these words say.  

I've also been meaning to brush up on the French I had learned at one time and then help myself learn Spanish as well. We may have words covering most of our house but if it's stimulating all of our brains I'll take it.  :)

Volcano Experiment

Here is the ever popular volcano eruption experiment.  I remember doing this one as a kid.  My brother had a dinosaur birthday party and Dad asked us to make a small volcano out of clay.  It was tough working with the hard clay but we made a small one.  Next Dad surrounded our little volcano with a lot of dirt and a few twigs to make trees. We thought it looked just like a real volcano.

Here in this photo I attempted to re-create Dad's volcano.

1. I found part of a box to build the volcano in. We used half a box that clothing is gift wrapped in.  The sides are flimsy so we taped them straight. 
2. Here I made a small volcano with model magic.  That stuff is much easier to use than modeling clay/air dry clay.  Model magic is stretchy, soft and light weight.  
3. The dirt in our yard did okay.  We (Zachary and I) poured dirt in the box and shaped it around our model magic volcano.  
4. To make the volcano erupt I put baking soda in the bottom.  I was not sure how much to put but the more vinegar you pour in later, then the more baking soda you will need at the bottom. 
5. Next I squirted the red food coloring in. The more the better.  
6. Last is the vinegar. Once you mix it with the baking soda it's all coming up. 
7. We erupted our volcano at our dinosaur play group. It was definitely the highlight of the day.