Winding down into fall....

Thank goodness for this cool autumn air.. I am absolutely relishing in it.

This past week Rowan and I have started our homeschooling Pre-k Lessons back up as well as her starting at a local preschool 2 days a week. She really needs the interaction with other children, she is positively starved for playmates.

Today was her first day... and she was just bubbling over with excitement. She practically jumped out of my moving vehicle and ran down the driveway to get to the front door of the school haha.

At pickup time, her teacher told me she was given Kudos because she approached a very shy unhappy little boy during art time. He had not uttered a peep all morning to adult or child alike. Rowan apparently went over to him t share her art project and then proceeded to make funny faces at him until he started giggling and talking to her. When I picked her up they were happily playing firemen in the outdoor playhouse. ADORABLE!

I asked her on our drive home what made her want to approach the boy, and she said that "God likes us to be nice people to others and he looked sad and alone."

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW I love that little girl.

Check it out! Our Abacus in use!!

I'm bound and determined to raise a math genius. Rowan shows a huge affinity for math, and the fact that she gets it and I taught it to her is making me unbelievably excited.

I have daydreams of hauling her off to kindergarten only to receive a call from the school to advise me that she needs to skip a grade or two because of her geniusness-ness.

(OK, so I'm obviously a little full of myself, I pray for humbleness often)

Working out a problem



Oh the pride, I can hardly contain it.

Abacus!! Abacus!!!!

(say abacus like the guy in Monty Python says Albatross, it makes me giggle hehe).

I made this! With my bare hands and power tools and stuff! I'm so stinking proud of myself I can't even put it to words!

Total cost 8 dollars in wood supplies from a craft store... way cheaper than the ones you can buy online!


Supplies gathered



Unfortunately they didn't have beads with holes as large as the dowels I was using, so I had to drill them all out to a larger size... all 50 of them!



Measured, pre-drilled, and ready for painting/assembly



I just couldn't stomach the thought of pain stakingly painting every single bead, so instead my daughter and I threw them into sandwich bags, added a few drops of food coloring an rolled them around. They got the coolest looking tie dye effect!



TA DA!!!!

Getting my dollar store craft on

Who doesn't love the dollar store! And when I saw this cute little box, the educator in me had to turn it into a fun number game!

A little paint, a magic marker and some dollar store foam squares.. Voila!

Rowan an I are sure to get hours of enjoyment out of learning math and counting practice!



PS head on over to Sevin Family and check out what my friend Katrina did with the same box! We went shopping together and its amazing how two crafters can come up with such totally different things to do with the same object. (hers sort of puts mine to shame lol)...

Dollar Tree Store Valentine Craft project

We're getting together next week with our fellow homeschooling friend for a little Valentine's Day party with her three children.

We can't wait! We've agreed to swap valentines so today Rowan and I had fun making them. I got this foam and the foam heart stickers at the dollar store.... so this was a nice inexpensive craft. We also laced the hearts with yarn I had on hand, which was great fun and practice for Miss Rowan. :)

ISpy Math Jar

I've seen quite a few ISpy jars online for preschoolers to play with and the idea came to me to make a math jar for Rowan. She's very into numbers right now and has them pretty well memorized from 1-10...

So here's what I did... I filled an empty spaghetti sauce jar with rice and added 6 dice to the jar.... I had her swirl it around until some dice popped out from the sea of rice. (be it one or two or three die) She counted how many dots she saw... and then picked out a number from a pile of flash cards I had lain out for her.

It was a big hit!

Snippets from our week homeschooling

Rowan is really starting to grasp alot of the topics we work on in school and it excites me to no end! Her ability to write is really blossoming and she's also learned all the numbers from 1-10. Letters are a bit more challenging.. I mean lets be honest, there are so many of them! But I know exposing her to the idea of letters and the fact that they all make sounds is laying a good foundation for her learning.

Here are a few snippets of our last week.
Moons and stars cookie cutter painting

No Time For Flash Cards Letter of the Week M

Letter M worksheet... I'm so proud of her!


"M"ailbox!

Playing with homemade puffy paints to make a "M"oon also seen on No Time for Flash Cards

M&M candy experiment, this was a huge hit! Mostly because she got to eat the rest of the M&M's haha