Right now on Amazon you can get a set of 10 finger puppets for only $2.49 with free shipping! 
This is great for younger kids or any age that enjoys puppets. I think we are going to order a set and stuff them to make mini stuffed animals.
Here is the link: 10pcs Velvet Animal Style Finger Puppets Set
I apologize for the lack of posts recently. The last 3-4 weeks have been crazy for us! We decided to move across town to an area we just seemed to enjoy much better. I had some issues at my old place and just didn’t feel comfortable living there anymore. We LOVE where we live now! We are right by the mountains and go hiking every week. It’s been so great for us to move. However, packing and cleaning the old place, plus moving and unpacking at the new place along with our other regular activities has kept us extremely busy! We don’t even have internet set up there yet. I will get a new post out as soon as possible!
Homeschooling With the End in Sight
Developing a Family Bible and Devotional Time that Works for You
Project Simplify: drawers & shelves
7 Tips For A Healthy Marriage
Time to Organize the Linen & Laundry Areas
Women in Church Combat: A Cautionary Tale
The Revolution that Paul Started
Are Lil Wayne, Zombies and Minecraft Raising Your Children?
Cardboard Tube Growing Game (Instructions in Spanish and in English)
Making Music with Kids
Get Out: Go Bird Watching
Fifth Grade: Greek Myths
When we received our Magic School Bus Young Scientists Club Kit both of the plastic petri dishes were broken. There was no way to use them so I decided glass petri dishes might be a better idea. I found some on Amazon here: American Educational Flint Glass Culture Petri Dish, 107mm Diameter, 20mm Height (Bundle of 5)
On Sunday we got started with our experiments. Experiment 1 was simply preparing the agar to go in the petri dishes. I got together all the needed items for this part. Our kit came with the needed agar and bouillon so all I needed was a pot, my 2 petri dishes and a spoon to mix it. I added one cup of water to the pot, though the instructions had a misprint saying 8 cups (200ml). Obviously that was very incorrect!
This is what the agar looks like mixed with the water before it started boiling. As my 6 year old said it, “It looks like dirt.” It kind of looks like muddy water.
This is the agar after being boiled for a bit. As you can see it looks more clear and more gelatinous. The info says it won’t turn totally clear but it needs to be more translucent and thicker like wet jello. The yellow stuff above the spoon is where I poured the chicken bouillon into the pot. It was yellow and needed to be mixed it until it dissolved.
This is the mix after everything has been mixed in and dissolved. It became a lot thicker and looked a lot more like jello. I let it simmer for a couple minutes just to make sure everything was fully dissolved.
Lastly I poured the agar mix into the 2 petri dishes. This is what it looked like. We then put the lids on the dishes and set them to cool down before continuing with the next experiments. This concludes experiment 1! Pretty simple start. These 2 petri dishes will be the main component to our next few experiments. Once they’ve started growing their bacteria and fungi I will the results share another post.
My daughter went from learning how to read last January to reading chapter books by the fall. I was surprised how quickly she picked it up and how interested in reading she became. I wanted reading to be important so I made sure reading was involved with her daily school work. She started off reading smaller chapter books or reading one over a period of a couple days. Now she will read 1-3 chapter books a day! I try to get her to pace herself but she really does love reading. For this reason we keep lots of books on hand and I’m going to share some of our favorites with you!
Cam Jansen books by David A. Adler are great mystery chapter books especially for girls. Cam is a little girl with a photographic memory that she often uses to help solve crimes and mysteries. She is usually with her best friend Eric. A lot of the Cam Jansen books got an updated cover but we don’t really care which ones we have. These are books we are trying to have all of.
Pony Pals books by Jeanne Betancourt are great chapter books for kids who love ponies and horses! These books revolve around 3 best friends who all have ponies. They have adventures together and kids who read these books will learn a lot about both ponies and horses. These books are thicker chapter books which provides more reading.
I love most of the kids books by Ron Roy. We have books from Calender Mysteries and Capital Mysteries as well but we have almost all of the A to Z mysteries series. These books have 3 main characters: Josh, Dink and Ruth Rose. They go pretty much everywhere together and they solve a lot of mysteries. These books have one for each letter of the alphabet which makes them fun. There are also several super specials as well and those even have clues in the pictures for kids to solve.
My daughter likes books with female characters and I like books with healthy depictions of females. Thea Stilton books are full of a variety of female mice all with differing personalities with positive qualities. These books are a spinoff to the Geronimo Stilton books and they are set around his sister Thea Stilton and her group of friends. What I love about these books is not only the group of strong girls, but in each book they travel somewhere exciting and they fill the books with info on the place. Kids get to learn about the place the mice are in while they have an exciting adventure – you can’t beat that! I love when educational stuff gets slipped in something fun.
In our house Scooby Doo is well-known and very loved. I grew up watching Scooby Doo and I felt it was tame enough to pass on to my kiddo. The chapter books are great to have if your kids like mysteries. There are several different kinds of chapter books but the ones we like are the Scooby Doo Mysteries and the Scooby Doo and You books. In the Scooby Doo and You books kids get all the info and clues, and then they have to guess who the bad guy is. The Scooby Doo Mysteries are written just like regular books. These books are mostly written by James Gelsey but some of them do have different authors.
I grew up on Nancy Drew. I think I’ve loved Nancy Drew since I was old enough to read her books. I own every single one of the original books and I often re-read them. When my daughter first started reading smaller chapter books I discovered Nancy Drew Notebooks. These books are set when Nancy was a child, and involve her solving smaller mysteries with her friends Bess and George who are also kids in these books. These are great to start kids off on Nancy Drew and they have fun mysteries involving puppies, ice cream, haunted restaurants, etc. – All of which are things most kids enjoy. And of course, I love that it’s full of strong female characters! These books are written under the pseudo-name Carylon Keene same as the other Nancy Drew books.
The Three Cousins Mysteries are thinner chapter books written about 3 cousins who solve mysteries together. These books have a Christian theme to them which is unique and kind of nice to have. These books were written a while ago so the styles in them definitely look like the 90′s, but most younger kids probably won’t care about that. The cousins are two boys and a girl so these are good for kids of both genders. These are written by Elspeth Campbell Murphy.
I will add another post with more books later! We have a lot of books I haven’t gone through yet. We find most of our books used at thrift stores which saves us a lot of money. And I read my daughter’s books first to make sure they are appropriate for her. Some parents may not do that, but I feel it’s important to know what your kids are reading and getting exposed to. So not only are these books kid approved but they are parent approved too!
9 Cool Storage Solutions for Arts & Crafts Clutter
46 Ways to Serve Fruits & Veggies at Snacktime {Eat Well, Spend Less}
18 Reasons Why Doctors and Lawyers Homeschool Their Children
Banishing Spiritual Loneliness
Don’t Have Time to Bake Cookies? Make Cookie Bars
Stock-up on Fresh Spring Produce {and what to do with the extra}
Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs by Farmhouse 38 ( I know it’s after Easter but you can dye eggs any time, kids love it!)
Homeschooling as an introvert: the blessings & challenges
The extroverted mom homeschools: a survival guide
On the introverted mom homeschooling extroverted children
Spring Cleaning Your Pantry: Eat Well, Spend Less
Spring harvest: what we’re making with our maple syrup
9 Ways To Encourage Your Kids to Live Simply
Heal-All Skin Salve
Chocolate Body Scrub
What If This Year Were Your Last?
How to Use Acrostics for Homeschool Lessons
Travel Games: Fun Ways for Kids to Pass the Time on Road Trips
Dress Up Felt Board Tutorial and Template
35 Gifts Your Children Will Never Forget
A Book Writing Center for O
Meet The Ingalls Family… – This is one of my favorites!
Dr. Seuss Makes Me a Better Person
Velcro Blocks
Transitioning into the Big Kid Years
Ya’ll Have a Good Time Now, Ya’ Hear!
15 Conversations to Have with Your Parents
Mamapedia had a deal in February for a one year subscription to The Magic School Bus Young Scientist Science Club and it was at least 50% off. I am all for the educational deals they have and I know how much kids love to get mail, so I decided to look into it. There were a couple people on my homeschool groups who said the price was still too high, but for us I thought it wasn’t a bad cost. You get a kit mailed to you each month with several experiments in it. And to be honest, with running a home daycare and all the other things I have to do (like raising & homeschooling my daughter and taking care of our home and outside activities), I really loved the idea of a kit being mailed to us each month for us to work on and remind us to make time for fun science experiments!
Our first kit just arrived and this was what was inside. You get an instruction book with all the info and you get most of the tools you will need. They actually email me a few days before they send it out and they include extra tips as well as a list of items you’ll need from home. I found that to be very helpful! My daughter was SUPER excited to receive her first package! She ripped it open (with assistance from mom) and asked to do them immediately – always a good sign! I was disappointed that both of our plastic petri dishes were cracked upon arrival. I put in a call to the company about it. I think we need to invest in some glass ones for future experiments.
In the booklet you get info and instructions for your experiments. This kit has 7 experiments which I liked, and they are spaced out to make it last for a while as well. You get a small space to record results and conclusions, but I made my kiddo a science notebook for her to record info on our experiments in more detail and keep the info from all the kits we get in one place.
Above is her science notebook, decorated by moi. In our house we love decorating with stickers and pictures and I wanted to make this a special surprise for her to go along with her new kit. She loves it! This provides a lot more room for kids to write and draw after experiments.
At the back of the booklet they have more instructions for parents to assist with the experiments. It’s pretty much the same info you get on the other pages.
I’ll post again when we’ve started the experiments so you can see what they look like in action and decide if this club would be good for your kiddos! Groupon and Mamapedia have offered the half off deal so keep an eye out for it to save a lot of money. You could also follow up each kit at your local library with books on the topic covered. We plan to go in this week and get books on bacteria and fungi to help with our learning. The great thing about this resource and most others is that you can cater it to your needs and supplement if you want to. If you have tried The Magic School Bus Young Scientists Club let me know what you thought of it!
I like good deals and I like educational things. So when we were at the thrift store and I found this Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade software for .69 cents I was thrilled! We got it home only to find that it won’t work with any version of Windows newer than Windows XP. Thankfully I had an old laptop with Windows XP on it so we were able to actually use it. I’ve got a lot of pictures of it while my daughter was playing it so you get to see what it is like.
There is a map for kids to navigate the different areas of the game. This is when my daughter first started the game and hadn’t completed any levels.
In this section kids have to follow the list of clues to put together bugs with the correct parts to label the bug jars.
After each bug is completed correctly, it gives some information on each bug.
This area has math problems. It starts off with basic addition and subtraction, then moves into double digits as they go along.
In this area kids have to spell words with a selection of letters given at the bottom. Words start off easy and then get bigger as they go along.
In this area kids find antonyms, synonyms and create compound words.
In this area kids are in a mine car going down a track. While in the car they have to catch certain numbers as instructed and skip any other numbers. The pictures is blurred because the game was moving the whole time so I couldn’t catch a clear shot.
This part has kids working on telling time by matching up the time on the clock and the time on the bottom to open the doors.
This is in the same tunnels where the kids work on the clocks. The kids also have to put together words into a proper sentence to open other doors. The sentences get a little longer as they go along.
In this last part of the game kids complete different fractions following the instructions given. After this kids win the game.
I am very happy with this software! I love the variety of things it has kids working on. It started off with easier problems and tasks and then worked up to harder ones, so it didn’t make it too complicated or too easy either. The way it was set up seemed pretty fun for my kiddo to do and the story in the game was silly and fun. My six year old daughter really liked playing it and had few complaints about it. one issue was that it did freeze every now and then, which could have been because we bought it used and it had a few scratches, or because it is an older game. Also, if you are playing it on a laptop like my kiddo was, I recommend plugging in a mouse to use instead of the touchpad. It seemed to take her longer to do things using the touchpad and the mouse made it much easier for her to maneuver and complete tasks.
All in all it was a good game, though my daughter completed it in about 3 hours. There are 3 different levels so if they complete one they can work on the others. You can find the game online from about $5 and up.
I am a firm believer in living as simply as you can with the things that you need and the things that enrich your life. I don’t live a life full of expensive things and extravagances. However, I do believe there are some things that are worth spending a little extra. One of these items for our family is our newly acquired Blu Ray DVD player with built in Wifi. We had a simple and very basic DVD player that I bought used for $10. It was all we needed for a while. A few months ago I had internet installed at home and signed up for Netflix’s unlimited streaming program as well as Amazon Prime. I may end up not keeping both in the long run, but I wanted to try them both out to see which one we preferred. I was reading on the Netfilx website that you can stream to your TV with a compatible device. I had been interested in upgrading to a Blu Ray player for a while but wasn’t sure it was worth it. Let me just say – it is SO worth it!
I rarely pay full price for anything anymore, so of course I went deal shopping. I wanted on with built in Wifi so I wouldn’t have to buy any extra things for it. And I wanted a pretty good brand because I feel with an investment of this sort it’s better to buy a little nicer for better quality and because they tend to last longer. I found a Sony Blu Ray player with built in wifi on Ebay in an auction and I won it for $59.87. I researched them and the prices and I was very happy with the amount. If you have the time try for auctions first on more expensive items because sometimes you can get them a lot cheaper.
It took maybe 30 minutes to get all setup, which wasn’t bad at all especially since it didn’t come with instructions. I followed the info on the screen as well as on the website. The thing I love the most about it is how many things I can link to it! We have Netflix and Amazon Prime linked as well as Pandora radio. Since I run a home daycare I am often using instrumental music for the kids to sleep to. It helps a lot and usually I just grab CD’s at the dollar store. Now I have my Pandora account linked so I just press a few buttons and a huge variety of classical and instrumental music plays for my kids. I love it! And my little girl also gets exposed to beautiful music and composers as well, which I love.
With Netflix’s unlimited streaming I may not buy many DVD’s anymore. I can find just about every kids movie or cartoon that my kids would want to watch. We’ve even found some new ones that the kids really enjoy. Another huge perk is that I can watch a show for me on my laptop and my daughter can watch a cartoon on the TV. It is so convenient!
I highly recommend Netflix’s streaming program! It’s $7.99 a month, which is less than what it would cost you to buy a new DVD each month, and it’s unlimited with a massive variety. I love that I can now cut down on our DVD’s because we don’t really need as many of them anymore and about half of them were purchased just for the daycare kids. Now we can keep just the ones we want and Netflix everything else.
If you don’t have a Blu Ray player with built in Wifi, I highly recommend getting one especially if you have children!
