Here we come a’gathering…*

While our dry, sunny autumn weather this year, preceded by a very dry summer, has been horrible for most plants, it has resulted in some fabulous leaf colors in the last few weeks. So I decided to drag my kids outside and make us enjoy them!

I’d recently listened to a podcast from Read-Aloud Revival** and the guest, Cindy Rollins, made a point that really stuck with me. The version in my head of her point is: when we start feeling guilty about whatever we aren’t doing with our children that we think we should, stop. Go and do that thing with your kids. Don’t go to the computer and make a lesson plan and research extension activities, just do “it”. 

It reminds me of advice a work mentor once gave me:

Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.

Now, I love fall color.Rainbow of fall colors

Sometimes I wonder if it is an ingrained bias, as I am a fall baby myself. Pumpkin pie spices, egg nog- like mother’s milk to me (and cheesecake, but that is another story).

Our dry, sunny autumn weather this year has resulted in some fabulous leaf colors in the last few weeks. But I just hadn’t taken the time yet this season to actually go out and enjoy it.

With the above words ringing in my head, I decided to drag my kids outside and make us enjoy them together! Continue reading “Here we come a’gathering…*”

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Over the rainbow, or at least San Diego- a DIY color sorting activity

Once again I briefly abandoned blogging for a family trip.  We actually headed back down to the San Diego area, but this time for a wedding reception.

As we flew, and I prefer to NOT be hated by the other passengers, I had to come up with some things for the boys to play with en route as well as while we were there, because I also prefer my extended family not to hate me. :) Continue reading “Over the rainbow, or at least San Diego- a DIY color sorting activity”

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M is for “Mache”

We’ve been working a bit with Br( 3 3/4) on letter sounds on a very casual level, but I decided we needed to get a little more serious.  In wondering the blogosphere I’ve found some awesome suggestions by fellow mommy-bloggers HERE  and HERE and HERE, for example, to make it a whole letter smorgasbord!  One of the general ideas I found most appealing was creating a “memorable event” related to the letter.

The process has been more sporadic, and not as organized or as thorough as I hoped. Br mostly associates our “letter of the day” with getting to watch YouTube videos, which I can’t say was my hope.  :)

I let Br choose our “letter of the day”.  We’ve started with finding the respective letter card in 2 different sets of phonics cards we got at the dollar store or garage sale (with a picture of the letter & various pictures of things that start with that letter) and putting them up on our easel.  Then Br suckered me into asked to watch some videos- “Letter” songs, machines (though I require he come up with a machine that starts with the letter of the day for this to happen- that’s motivation for ya!)

It took us a couple days before we managed to do our “activity”.  I’d seen this idea for a Fabric Mâché bowl over at Red Ted Art.  Ours didn’t come out quite as cute as Red Ted’s, but it was still a memorable hands-on activity for the Letter M! Continue reading “M is for “Mache””

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