Mama Of Many Blessings

DIY Balance Beam

2012-05-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

We have been using our Sensory Tables tons lately, one of the other projects I had for Jake to work on was a DIY Balance beam

I originally gave Jake a couple pictures of DIY balance beams I found on the internet to look at, he ended up not using them because he didn't have a saw to cut a notch in the wood, he came up with a way of his own to make one using the saws we did have.

Total cost to make the balance beam? Only $3 (we had the screws, saws, and sandpaper on hand) well worth the investment!!!

Time needed: about 30 min to cut, screw together, and sand it down.

Materials needed: 1-2x4x8, 4- 2" wood screws, saw to cut the wood, sand paper to sand any rough spots.

Directions: First start by cutting your piece out for the balance beam, we cut ours 60" long which is a great size in my opinion, next cut 2 pieces off the 2x4 4" long, and lastly cut 4 pieces off the 2x4 3" long. Below is a picture of one of the ends so you can see how it was screwed together, you can't see in the picture that there are 2 screws from the bottom up into the beam to hold that in place as well. It is that simple!

Here is a picture of the finished balance beam.

Ethan giving it a try, him and all the boys have very much loved the balance beam, it will be a great addition to our sensory room! It has held up so far to all the boys playing on it and I'm sure it will get many years of use.

If anyone decides to make one I would love to see it, leave a comment with where you posted it and I will stop by and check it out!!

Stop by and check out all the other sensory ideas I have pinned on my Sensory Pinterest Board

Stop by and check out all the great blogs I am linked up with for other great ideas to try with your kiddos.

Astronomy: The Sun

2012-05-25T05:00:00.000-04:00

We studied the sun for our space unit. We have done lots of projects and hands on learning, and the kids learned about lots of new information.

We started by watching a couple videos about solar flares, in looking for videos we learned about the solar flare of 2012 that is supposed to be a very bad flare this year, they are predicting that it will be so big it will resemble the 181828 solar flare and will reek lots of havoc on our technology and power systems. Serena has been researching more in depth about the solar flares, as this has been very interesting for her!

We went outside and traced our shadows on the driveway at different times through out the day, this was a great activity to let the kids really see the sun moves during the day (which I did not get pictures of) The kids used our Sun puzzle from our space book of puzzles.

The kids each made their own solar flip book I printed out.

We made a solar oven out of an old pizza box and cooked marshmallows in it, using nothing but the suns energy!

Here is an awesome video on the Aurora Borellas in Norway due to the solar flare that has already started on the sun, check it out it is an amazing video, it so very beautiful!

Amazon.com Widgets

Stop by my Outer Space Pinterest board for other great ideas for your sun studies!

Dont forget to stop by all the great blogs I'm linked up with for other great ideas to try with your kiddos!

Practical Life Projects For Upper Elementary

2012-05-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

We have been working on getting our garden area ready for the season, I hoped to have it already finished for the year, but better late then never :) Serena and Dustin are the ones in charge of our garden for the year for their summer science project Jake helped them get everything planned out.

Ethan has been more than glad to help prepare the garden area in any way he can from digging, to carrying wood he loves being outside more than anything and is where he is happiest!

Serena worked to get the planters filled with dirt, flowers, and some strawberry plants!

Dustin has officially passed "Jake's driving school"and is now able to use the tractor to mow the lawn!! Part of mowing the yard means learning the matience the tractor requires. Here is Jake teaching Dustin how to do an oil change on the tractor.

Checking the dipstick to see how good the oil level is.

The kids found Monarch Butterfly eggs and have been observing them the last week.

Their first egg hatched this weekend and they have a VERY tiny caterpillar, they have been very much enjoying watching the process so far.

Dustin and Ethan made a fort in the yard during their lunch break on Friday, and then they played in in for hours after school.

Dustin took this picture of Gabe and Ethan in front of their fort!

Stop by and see all the other blogs I am linked up with for other great ideas to do with your kiddos!

The If / Then Board

2012-05-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

With the fact that Ethan was born with a cleft palate, he did not talk much when he was younger, and when he did talk he was so difficult to understand no one but me could understand what he was saying most of the time. We taught him sign language very early on, and he was able to communicate with everyone in the house so much better, but unfortunately most people outside the house didn't know sign language and there was a huge language barrier.

We finally got Early On to come in and evaluate him right around his 2nd birthday, and they diagnosed his speech at about a 5 month old level, because his speech was so delayed they immedietly started him on weekly in home speech therapy services. Upon starting speech we slowly introduced visual cards, first was our visual schedule, which I posted about previously. Once he mastered the visual schedule, we worked on the If, Then board. Now before this board we were frequently having battles about Ethan wanting to do whatever he wanted right then, and if he couldn't there was very BIG fits that would sometimes take literally HOURS to get him to calm down from! I was at a very big loss as none of my other 4 children would have never been acting like that over such little things.

One big thing I have learned is that giving him choices is always the best way to go and makes our battles so much easier. The if/then board was just another way to let him do the things he wanted after he did what mom needs him to do first, in a visual way. After the results we seen with the visual schedule we were more than glad to give it a try!

Here is a picture of the if/then board very similar to the visual schedule board, there is a left and right side each a different color. On the left side is the "if" side and the right is the "then" side. An example of something you would put on the if/then board would be, Ethan loves to go outside without shoes and in our yard there are to many things for him to step on and get hurt, telling him to put shoes on before going outside was just not going to work so we took our if/then board and put it on the back door so before he would go outside he would see his reminder, "if" you get your shoes on "then" you can go outside. We do have to remind him every once and a great while to come back and look at the chart but most of the time we don't! This is just one more tool that has made our lives so much easier!

Here are some resources for free printable picture cards to make your own Visual Chart or If/Then Board.

Do To Learn has a bunch of different printable picture cards, most of them are free.

Use Visual Strategies has emotion and behavior printable cards.

Trainland has tons of different printable pictures, about half way down the page.

Speaking Of Speech has resources sent in from other teachers and therapists and has a very large resource of picture cards

Our New Classroom!

2012-05-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

As I have mentioned a few times in the last couple weeks, I have been making some changes to our school room. My plan was to cut our school room down by half and have the other half be an area be our "sensory room." Slowly but surely this project has come along, and last week we were able to do school down in our school room again!

Here is a snapshot of what our room looked like before, It was great to have a big open area for the kids, but it was also very inticing for the little ones to come and trash while we were not doing school. Which was one of the reasons for our

Here is a look at the left side of the room,

Here is the look at the right side of the room.

Here is a picture of the wall of shelves that house all of our Montessori Materials now. The very top shelf on the right is our Test Tube Division board, Multiplication Board, and Dot Board. To the left is where we store lots of different kinds of paper, and on the far left of the top shelf is 4 different storage boxes that hold teachers manuals and workbooks that are used weekly.

The far right of the shelves is mostly our Montessori Math materials, except for the Leap Frog reading card games

The middle shelves have some of our Math materials and then other misc. Montessori materials. I am only keeping a couple Practical Life trays in the school room, the rest have been moved upstairs to the shelves in the kitchen.

The far left shelf is the rest of the Montessori Materials, the top shelf is 2 of the 3 practical life trays and our magnetic rings that are very loved by all the kids.

I decided our Science shelves get used regularly, so that is something I wanted to keep in the new class, it has been moved, but will be used for housing all of our current Science study materials.

This shelf I decided to keep for our Misc. work that I have for the kids to work on. These are non Montessori except a couple of the materials

These are my storage drawers, I purchase 3 of them from Michaels when they were 50% off and then used a 25% off coupon, so I purchased them for about $15! Each child is assigned to a color of drawers and whatever workpages they have to do for the day are added to those drawers, as you can see near the end of the year some of the kids need to go through and clean their drawers out!

Here are 3 of my storage drawer systems labeled with what is stored inside them.

Here we have our Peg Board wall, a desk for the kids to work at, and on the far left are Gabe's Tot drawers.

The desk was extended out which makes only a small walkway between the school room and the sensory room, but it has been a wonderful way to deterr the little boys from trashing my school room while they are playing ;) It also adds another desk to the room.

Stop by and check out the blogs I am linked up with for other wonderful ideas to try with your kiddos!

Montessori Monday In Our New Classroom!

2012-05-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

On top of the 5 ER trips we had last week we also had 4 check ups for different kids at the doctors office (2 separate visits) all of which went good for the most part... We discussed with the doctor the fact that Anthony has been having horrible night terrors. Now if you have never experienced a child having night a night terror, let me tell you it is a pretty scary thing to have to go through just as the person helping him, I cannot imagine how it must feel being the one stuck in something so scary! My friend explained it to me as the worst dream you have ever had and not being able to get out of it! So the Dr told us to wake him up every night about 2-3 hours after he falls asleep and then let him fall back to sleep, for about 10 days and that will reset his REM sleep cycle and hopefully stop them. She also told us that our foot specialist and the rehabilitation hospital are doing everything they can do for Anthony's slight case of club feet, he is currently wearing special made inserts all the time except when he sleeps. Our goal for now is to make the pressure from his feet not hitting the ground properly work more properly with the inserts and hopefully slow down the damage to his hips.

We also had Ethan's yearly optometrist appointment. For any one who hasn't noticed if you look carefully at Ethan, he has 2 different colored eyes, now he wasn't born like that, around a year old his left eye changed from blue to green. It is not uncommon for a child with DiGeorge's syndrome to develop different colored eyes. You do, however have to monitor it closely because DiGeorge's Syndrome can cause retinal problems which is why we go in every year to the optometrist and get it checked out. During our last appointment we discovered that Ethan is also partially color blind, he can distinguish between colors but he struggles with distinguishing different shades of colors. They also let us know that his 1 eye that changed color has developed an astignatism, not bad enough for glasses now, but I know from plenty of experience that means he will be more than likely need glasses by his next appointment.

We have been enjoying our new school room the last week and the kids have been loving being able to use our Montessori materials that have been put away for the last month for our remodel.

I added our x-ray bugs to our Light Table, and the kids really enjoyed matching the x-rays up to the pictures!

Ethan has been wanting to help with so many chores around the house it just amazes me. The other day he wanted to wash the table after breakfast

Watching the washcloth sink into the water so entertaining!

He even made sure to get a towel when he was done and dry the table off!

Ethan has shown and interest in snapping and buttoning so both of those dressing frames have been added to the shelves and have been used a lot!

I love the look of concentration on his face in this picture :)

After working with the button frame, by the end of the week he has been able to help undo half of his buttons on his shirts, he has been so proud of himself.

We added Who's My Baby? Memory Matching game to our shelves and Ethan played it a couple times last week. I purchased this game from Carson Delosa during a sale for $5, well worth the investment!

I love the fact that all the pictures are real life images, they are very beautiful!

Hammering shapes is a tray that is constantly on our shelves, Ethan has enjoyed it almost every day and now Gabe has been enjoying it as well!

Gabe has been working on colors so he matched the colored shapes to the same color peg. This is a very simple set that both the kids always enjoy, and once they learn colors you can move onto shapes!

He has loved exploring the Pink Tower!

Gabe started exploring the number cards very intently this week a few times, so I am going to be starting the Montessori Math Sequence with him this week, I'm so excited!

Anthony was helping him by telling him the correct numbers as he laid them out.

Knobless cylinders were another favorite for Gabe this week.

Cody played a game of Money Bags with his stuffed animals hehe.

Stop by and see the great blogs I am linked up with for other wonderful ideas to try with your kiddos!!

Long Week and The Nature Center

2012-05-20T21:09:00.001-04:00

Last week was one of those weeks that just seemed to never end, we have been down to the hospital 5 different times since Monday, which I know is just how life goes sometimes with 6 kids. I can say that through the years I have learned so much, I can now look at just about any cut and tell if it needs to be stitched or can be left to heal, I can say injuries in the head and feet bleed so much worse than they are, and make moms like me freak out a little more than we need to sometimes ;) , and I can say we have been through just about every illness or injury with one child or another at some point and time in our journey.

On Friday Gabe tripped on the back porch and landed just right on his nose landing on the shopvac, and cut his nose pretty bad, he went into ER and ended up getting a stitch at the tip of his nose. Jake finally got home with him, and after being home for about 10 minutes the spot they debated putting another stitch in wasn't staying in place anymore, so Jake had to take him back down to ER and they ended up skin gluing the other part... Today he fell on the cement and ripped the scab off his nose and it started bleeding really bad again, right after possibly drinking a small amount of gasoline (thank goodness for poison control!) So I decided I may have to put him in a bubble or I may just have a heart attack lol, not really but the thought has crossed my mind.

Even with all the stress that we have had we are still enjoying the nice weather and taking advantage of the local Nature Center, as usual. It is somewhere the kids all love being and I love bringing them because every time we go, not only do they have so much fun but they also learn so much!

They have set up an area at the nature center, it is a fenced in area for the kids to play in, almost everything used to build the area was made using something from nature! We decided to stop and let everyone play for a while.

Gabe wasn't willing to keep his hat tilted back further so he could see. The boys loved crossing the bridge!

They also loved to balance on the logs in the water, they have an area set up so the kids can turn a faucet on an play in the water, and make a river. Unfortunately it wasn't working for the day but there was still some water.

Since Dustin wasn't with us for the day, Anthony took the job of showing the little ones all kinds of fun things he caught. Here he is showing the kids a snail.

He also showed them the frogs he caught.

At first Ethan wanted Serena find him a frog but after her shoe got stuck in the mud, she didn't really want to help anymore lol. But that was ok since Ethan started trying to catch them on his own.

Gabe loves to lay on the dock and spot all the frogs.

He loves to try to sneak away on the paths to :)

The pond was quite muddy the day we were there, Anthony, Serena, and Ethan lost their shoes a couple times in the mud, and Anthony was pretty muddy by the time we left. They have an area the kids can wash off before we leave!

Ethan caught his first frog in his net, look at his face he was sooo proud of himself!

You cant catch a frog without inspecting him with a magnifying glass!

Stop by and check out the other blogs I am linked up with for other great ideas to try with your kids!

Practical Life: Woodwork

2012-05-18T14:06:00.000-04:00

Ethan is one of my kiddos that really enjoys anything hands on and working with wood has been no exception, he still loves his hand held drill that he is allowed to use with supervision and scraps of wood Jake sets aside from previous projects for the boys.

Ethan has been having fun using small pieces of wood we have to make his own creations, he found the wood in the garage and just kept going back for more pieces and coming up with new things to make. It kept him busy for quite a while! I'm sure Jake making thing from wood has something to do with this new interest :)

Here are his creations. He made a house, 2 letter "E's", and a flag, the older boys helped him in the end use the hot glue gun because the elmers glue didn't hold the pieces together very good.

Stop by and check out my Practical Life board on Pinterest
for other great Practical Life ideas for your kiddos!

Smokie Link Casserole

2012-05-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

This recipe is a a winner in our house its easy, quick and everyone will actually eat it! You can't imagine how hard it can be trying to find recipes that are quick and easy to make, by the time we are finished with school for the day and the chores have been done around the house, I am beat and don't usually have much energy to spend on dinner, but I still want my family to eat as healthy as possible. Also trying to make something for dinner that 8 people will eat can sometimes be harder than you would think and has taken a lot of trial and error :)

Smokie Link Casserole

Ingredients
1 can creamed corn
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 large baking potatoes peeled and cubed
1 package of smokey links

Cube potatoes and boil in water for 5 min then drain the water. Cut smokey links into small pieces about 3 or 4 pieces per smokie. Mix all of the ingredients together making sure to put the whole can of creamed corn and not to drain the juice, then bake at 350' for about an hour.

When we make this, I end up making a triple batch of the casserole and freezing half of it for dinner another night, we usually add a bread and fruit to our meal as well.

Stop by and check out the blogs I link up with for other great recipes!

Plans For Next Year For Ethan

2012-05-12T17:14:00.000-04:00

God has lead us down a long road and we have learned so much through this journey with surgeries, IEP's, Special Education Services, Physical/Occupational/Speech therapy in the last 2 years with Ethan. At the beginning of the school year I thought it was the worst thing ever to put him into the public school systems for anything other that strictly this therapy and to just keep him at home for his school. But after much prayer and talking to professionals we decided that not putting him into a special education class would only make him further delayed. Now I see all the improvements he has made and don't know what we would have done without his in this program!

We went in last week and made his new IEP for next year, he will continue to qualify for Special Education services due to his speech apraxia, along with his cleft lip/palate, at this point and time he is not even needing PT or OT therapy services in the class anymore, WOW have we come so far in the last year! He will keep the same teacher, which is such a blessing since his teacher has been such a perfect fit for him and one of the main reasons he has made so many improvements in school this year. He will continue to go to school in the afternoon, same time as this year, and work on different activities in the mornings and on Fridays with us at home.

With only a couple more weeks left in the school year they had his end of the year family picnic at school the other night, it was a lot of fun they had so many wonderful things for the kids to do, I did manage to get a few pictured despite all the craziness to share!

They had face paining for the kids.

Ethan and Gabe enjoyed watching the Safety Bus and getting a bus stamp.

DIY Sensory Table

2012-05-11T08:47:00.000-04:00

The last couple weeks there has been lots of behind the scenes work going on around here! Last weekend has been the start of some new projects, I have reworked the school room and ended up splitting our school room into an area 1/2 the size we had before, and then turned the other half into a sensory area. Jake has been so wonderful and built everything that I have asked him to build some way or another! I did this project for a couple reasons, first Gabe has pretty much given up his naps and it will hopefully keep him busy on the afternoons it's to cold or rainy to go play outside, with him busy, we can still get our afternoon study time in without so many interruptions. Second with 5 boys in the house, they really just need somewhere they can go and get their energy out during the cold or rainy days. So with that being said I have a lot of DIY projects my wonderful hubby has helped me to get accomplished this this past weekend and week, to help fill the sensory room that I will be sharing in the next couple weeks!

Our first project I'm sharing is our Sensory Tables, I have had 2 different pins on DIY sensory tables on Pinterest that looked easy and inexpensive enough to build, that gave us inspiration to build our tables.

The first one is from Teaching Preschool,

Source: teachpreschool.org via Nicole on Pinterest

The second came from Bumble and Bean

Source: bumbleandbean.blogspot.com via Nicole on Pinterest

I printed off both posts gave them to hubby and he went to building. My goal was to make 2 different sensory tables, 1 for the sensory room downstairs, and 1 to be able to use outside.

Both of our tables were built the same way, the only difference was that on one of the tables we put 2 sensory tubs and the other has 3. Here are the steps we followed to build both of the tables.

Materials Needed:

2'x4' sheet of wood we used a birch 1/2" sheet of wood

2 - 2x4's

2- 2x2x36

Saw

box of 2 5/8" Screws

Wood Putty

Paint (in whatever color you want the table)

Cost of the project was about $40, for both tables. We also has extra wood left of our sheet of wood and will be able to do a couple more projects using that wood.

First we cut all the boards to size, he cut the table top to the proper size of 2'x4', next he cut 2 2x4's 48" long, and 2 more 2x4's 24" long, lastly he cut 4 2x2's 22" long (for the table legs)

After the boards were cut he put the frame together, using the screws to attach the 2 long (48") 2x4's to the 2 smaller (21") 2x4's making the rectangular frame for the table. After the frame was made he attached the legs to the frame, we purchased 2x2x36's so he was just able to cut both of them in half and had the 4 table legs, each leg being 18". You could also get prefab table legs, but they cost to much more than the 2x2's for me to go that route.

After the legs were attached he added 2 more 2x4's to the frame of the table for stability, making sure to leave enough room for the tubs to still fit in place.

After the frame was put together he laid the top in place and secured it with the screws. After the top was on he drew the lines where he needed to cut out the holes where the tubs would be placed.

Here is the first one after Jake is done with his work on it, he was so wonderful and sanded around the edges for me so I didn't even have to do that part. My job was to fill the screw holes in with wood putty, sand the putty down, and then paint both of the tables

Here is the first table, I chose to paint it Red and have white legs, this is the one that will be used outside, I wanted 2 different bins in this table with a work area in the middle, so the kids can set their toys and work somewhere other than the ground.

Here is the second table, we chose sea green for this one, it will be kept down in the sensory room in the basement.

Here the boys are having fun with the sensory table on the back porch before it got brought down to the school room. I have a feeling the sensory tables will be used on a daily basis, both of the little boys and even the older boys have so much fun playing in them!

The one in the basement has 3 bins to put things in, I am using each of the side bins as my filler and for the play area and the middle tub as storage for all the tools that can be used!

Ethan had lots of fun pretending to "plant" flowers!

Gabriel loved pouring the dirt.

We counted the petals on the flowers, counted how many scoops it took to fill each container and talked about what colors each flower was.

Stop by and check out all the great blogs I am linked up with for other wonderful ideas to try with your kids!

Astronomy: The Moon Phases

2012-05-10T14:14:00.000-04:00

With our Astronomy unit we started in on our studies on the Moon. We started by reading The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons.

I seen this great post and used one of her ideas for our moon phases project. We used a 12x18" sheet of construction paper folded it in half length wise, and then divided it into 8 sections (1 for each moon phase) and cut a flap for each one. The label will be on the front and when the flap is lifted up they can read the definition of each phase.

The kids cut out each phase of the moon out of yellow or white construction paper, then glued them in order onto each of their flaps in order of the phases of the moon.

They labeled each phase on each flap

Here is the front of a couple of them, under each flap they glued the definitions for each phase of the moon. I typed the phases of the moon onto a document so they didn't have to write about each phase.

Here is the Moon Phases definitions download if anyone is interested, it is just a basic printable with the definitions I had the kids use for our Moon Phases project.

Stop by my Space Pinterest board for other ideas to go along with your moon studies.

Take some time to check out the other great blogs I am linked up with!!

Spring Sensory Bin

2012-05-07T08:33:00.001-04:00

I have made a new sensory bin for spring that for now, is in our big sensory bin, but it will be put into our new Sensory Table that Jake so wonderfully made for me this weekend once that has dried completely.

Whats Inside:

Dirt from our yard as a filler

Fake flowers

A few bugs

2 metal watering cans

1 metal flower pot

1 small scoop

2 gardening shovels

1 garden spade

I stored the flowers under the bin so he could add them as they wanted. First we had to dig in the dirt for a little bit, and then fill the flower pot and watering cans.

Ethan ended up digging in the dirt for quite a while before he decided to add some more flowers!

After he filled the flower pot and watering cans he added the rest of the flowers to the pots!

And then he said "here mommy this is for you" how sweet! I have a feeling this sensory bin will be used a lot by all of the boys!

Here are a couple of the Spring books we have been reading about spring.

Stop by and see what other spring ideas I have pinned on my Spring Pinterest Board!

To find other GREAT ideas to do with your kids, check out the blogs I am linked up with.

BLT Dip

2012-05-05T20:26:00.000-04:00

My mother was an amazing cook, and this was one of the recipes she would take to parties and was always a hit, so I figured I would share it with you.

Kathy's BLT Dip

Ingredients:

1 Cup Sour Cream

1 Cup Mayo

1 Package Bacon cooked well and crumbled into small pieces

1 Tbs Dried onion

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic

1 Tbs Parsley

2 medium Tomatoes

1/2 head of lettuce

Directions:

In large bowl mix together Sour Cream and Mayonnaise, add in 1/2 cup of crumbled bacon, dried onion, salt, garlic, and parsley, stir well till all seasonings are mixed in good. Pour onto serving tray, cover and leave in refrigerator overnight (thats how the flavor soaks in)

The next day before you are ready to use the dip take it out of the fridge, chop the tomatoes and lettuce, layer the tomatoes on top of the dip

Then the lettuce,

Top off with the rest of the crumbled bacon. We eat the dip with pretzel crackers from Sam's Club, I have seen the crackers at regular grocery stores as well.

Stop by and see find some other great recipes on my Recipes Pinterest Board.

Find other wonderful recipes and craft ideas at the Great blogs I am linking up with!!

Friday Art: Stained Glass Butterflies

2012-04-30T15:23:00.000-04:00

This past Friday we did a Friday Art project, and of course it was butterfly themed to go along with our Butterfly work for the week. This project was found in my Spring Idea Book (purchased for $1 during Scholastic Dollar Days)

We printed off our butterfly template from our Spring Idea Book, but you could use any butterfly pattern. I taped the butterfly to the table and then laid saran wrap over the butterfly making it as wrinkle free as possible and then taped the saran wrap to the table as tight as we could get it.

Next we outlined the black lines using our black permanent marker.

These were the colored sharpie markers they had to choose from.

Next we colored inside the butterfly using our colored sharpie markers. We did learn if they press down to hard at all it tears the saran wrap, but it didn't show up at all on the finished project!

Ethan's butterfly all colored in, with mommy's help to finish.

After you finish coloring the butterfly in, you take a piece of tin foil a little bigger than your paper plate, and crumble it up, carefully open it up and tape in place over your paper plate. Next very carefully peel off the tape holding the butterfly to the table, lay the saran wrap over the tin foil on the plate and tape into place!

The tin foil makes them look like they are stained glass.

Cody's and Ethan's on the window in the dining room.

Here are all of the kid's finished on the window in the dining room. They turned out so beautiful!

Stop by and see some of the other butterfly activities on my Butterfly Pinterest board.

Fun Butterfly Resources to go along with a butterfly unit.

Stop by and check out all the great blogs I link up with for other great ideas to try with your kids.

I selected this post to be featured on Top Mommy Blogs. Please visit the site and vote for my blog!

Sleeping Issues and Visual Schedules

2012-04-26T14:10:00.000-04:00

With 3 children that suffer from Sensory processing disorder there has been many different accommodations or modifications made to our daily life that make things easier. I wanted to share a few of the changes or things that have made our life easier, today I am touching on Sleeping Issues for any child but especially for the children who suffer from autistic/spd sleeping issues!

Ethan for years has struggled with going to bed, when he was a newborn he didn't nap at all, as he got older getting him to go to bed was always a major battle. He often wouldn't fall asleep till almost midnight despite running and playing all day, and having a long period of relaxing things to help him get sleepy before bed. Our speech therapist at that time helped us put together a life saving tool for us, it was a Visual Schedule. Because sensory, autistic, and even visual kiddos do sooo much better with a regular predictable schedule due to the fact that their world feels so out of control to them it is one thing they can control and they like to know what is coming up next, and the visual schedule does just that. We started using the visual schedule for Ethan when he was about 2 and it was the difference between night and day, he was excited to move the marker after each task was completed and would actually go to bed without all the battles. I was just willing to try anything that might work!

Below is a picture of the visual schedule that was made for us. It is just 2 sheets of construction paper cut to size and then laminated together so that there are 2 different color sides. And then a strip of velcro going down each side so you can place your picture cards on the velcro strip.

Here is a picture of our visual schedule (missing get pj's on, brush teeth.) The left side is where all the activities that need to be completed are stored. We used the schedule every night for almost a year, and I am proud to announce we don't even need to use it anymore, because it helped that much!

As the child completes each task, they move the picture cards from the left side to the right.

I cannot explain to you how much the visual schedule helped us through such a rough time, it was such a blessing that I am hoping me sharing it can help someone else looking for ideas to helping their SPD/or any child fall asleep better! Our next blessing after he was a little older was deciding to give him melatonin every night, which makes him fall asleep within 20 minutes and on top of that, he rarely wakes up in the middle of the night either! Amazon has a strawberry flavored chewable that makes taking it so much easier!

Here are some resources for visual schedule cards.

Do To Learn has a bunch of different printable picture cards, most of them are free.

Use Visual Strategies has emotion and behavior printable cards.

Trainland has tons of different printable pictures, go about half way down the page to find them.

Speaking Of Speech has resources sent in from other teachers and therapists and has a very large resource of picture cards.

Lots Of Butterfly Work

2012-04-24T23:49:00.000-04:00

We have been taking a break from our space studies last week and are working on our butterfly studies to go along with our trip to the Butterfly Gardens. I have been collecting butterfly themed work for a few weeks now from online, I have included a link with each activity below so if you are interested in using they can be easily found.

Here is a quick look at some of the activities that were stored in my Butterfly Themed Folder for the kids Butterfly Unit!

Ethan's favorite as usual is still the cutting strips, which have been changed to butterflies for now.

After he cut out the butterflies he glued them onto a page and made a collage out of them

Gabriel used our Power Magnets and added them to our Butterflies.

Ethan wanted to try it out to! I love how colorful they are when completed.

Ethan put together a Butterfly Book about the Lifecycle Of The Butterfly. Then made it into a caterpillar.

I cannot believe how well he is writing his name now!

Ethan decorated a page using our Butterfly stickers

Ethan played a caterpillar game and matched the number of flowers to the correct number on the caterpillar.

Here is what the finished caterpillar looks like!

Serena, Cody and Anthony did a Butterfly 100 chart.

Ethan used the shape blocks to make a butterfly.

Cody and Anthony worked on a Butterfly Book I printed off. (Purchased during Scholastic $1 Days Sale)

Butterfly Symmetry is a new file folder game I made for Ethan, it was downloaded from Kids Soup.

The first time Ethan played the butterflies kept sliding around, so I ended up adding a piece of velcro to the folder and the pieces.

Here is the game completed. Ethan has enjoyed this game so far and has completed it a few times already!

Anthony played a caterpillar addition and subtraction game.

The circles contain the problem and the caterpillar has the answers.

I printed off 6 different butterfly coloring pages and the kids made a butterfly coloring book, at the end they wrote a paper on their experience at the Butterfly Gardens, and added it to their coloring books.

Cody showing off one of his coloring book pages! He has really enjoyed having the coloring pages to do in the morning when he is finished with all of his work for the day.

One of the things that Ethan's teachers send home for parents is the Scholastic Let's Find Out it was something a fundraiser paid for, 1 for this month was about Butterflies, so we read through and answered all the questions.

The work page on the back he had to count the legs to see which ones were insects, he needed my help a little but completed most of it independently.

A butterfly maze with the hint of following all the numbers through the puzzle, which he did no problem.

Ethan also worked on the extra work pages on skip counting, getting all the answers right. I cannot believe how well he spelled his name on this page!

Here are a few other activities we did this week on butterflies that I didn't get pictures of.

Anthony used our Butterfly Compound words game to practice his language a couple times.

Ethan worked on lacing the butterfly.

Ethan laced the butterfly while we were waiting for our eye doctor appointment this week.

Ethan used our Montessori Butterfly Match game, and Anthony and Cody played a game of Butterfly Memory.

Stop by and check out my Butterflies Pinterest Board for other great Butterfly ideas to do with your kiddos!

Stop by all the great blogs I am linked up with for more wonderful ideas to do with your kids!!

Lesson Learned!

2012-04-22T09:15:00.000-04:00

I am guest posting today at His for Homeschooling on the wonderful series, Lesson Learned Series, where blogger moms are sharing a lesson learned from things in life/classroom don't go as planned and how we learned and changed from that lesson. Stop by to see which of the many life lessons I chose to share, and check out all the wonderful ideas on Sierra's Site!!

A Fun Way To Get Your Kids To Eat Healthy and Giveaway!

2012-04-21T15:25:00.000-04:00

Do you struggle getting your children to eat healthy fruits and veggies? If so then have I got an awesome product to introduce you to! As a mom of 6 children I know I am always looking for different ways to make eating healthy fun and exciting for my kids. So when we were given the opportunity to review Copy Kids DVD I was very excited!

What is Copy Kids?

Copy Kids is a video with children having fun while eating 12 different fruits and veggies. It contains 12- 7 minute chapters, each about a different fruit or veggie with different children eating them, the video contains children eating Apples, Avocado, Banana, Bell Pepper, Blueberries, Broccoli, Carrots, Cucumber, Orange, Raspberries, Strawberries, Tomato. The creator of the video is the mother of a child who noticed her child was not willing to eat a lot of different foods, but when she would see other children eating them she would herself eat them. So she made a video to see if it would have the same effect, and it did! Copy Kids DVD runs for a total of 115 minutes and is geared towards children 6 months up to 5 years (my 8 year old enjoyed the video as well)

What Did We Think of the DVD?

We loved it, Ethan especially enjoyed the video and would not only copy the children, but was laughing and naming each child as they came up. He loved the fact that he got to choose what fruit or vegetable off the menu he was going to watch next! He now asks to watch the DVD frequently and it has been added to our list of top watched DVD's! Gabriel loved watching the kids and just stares at the video but did not stay interested for to long. I love how the video lets children eat and play as they want, it's really unscripted and it makes it a real life video! I also loved how excited the kids got over fruits and vegetables!

Here is a short video about Copy-Kids.

To find out more about Copy-Kids

Check out all the other moms who have tried Copy-Kids and see what they had to say about the DVD.
Stop on by Copy-Kids website for a look around.
Copy Kids was selected by Dr Toy as one of the top 10 audio/visual products of 2011, saying "It’s a unique tool for parents who want to encourage healthy eating in their children".
Copy Kids is approved by the USDA and added to their Education and Training Materials Database for pre-school nutrition.
Stop by Copy Kids Facebook page to see all the wonderful feedback from parents all around the world!
They have been given a MACT exelence Award saying "Copy kids is an exciting and fun way to get your children to eat healthy."

Where Can I Go To Purchase The DVD?
You can purchase your own Copy-Kids DVD from Copy-kids.com for 19.95. It is one DVD that is well worth the investment!

OR

Enter The GIveaway from Copy-Kids below to win a your free copy of the Copy-Kids DVD!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stop by and see the wonderful blogs this giveaway is linked to for other great giveaways!!

Disclaimer: I was given a FREE copy of the DVD to review and another copy to be sent to 1 of my lucky viewers. That however has not affected my opinion about this product and are my honest opinions.

Astronomy: Gravity and Black Holes

2012-04-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

We started out our Astronomy unit learning about Galaxies, after we studied different galaxies for a few days we moved onto Gravity, and finished off our week learning about Black Holes and playing a Free printable Black Hole Game!

Gravity:

We watched the following Magic School Bus video on youtube to learn a little bit about gravity.

We did THIS worksheet, the kids had to take their weight here on Earth, and figure out what they would weigh on other planets. It was a great way to see that weight is the measure of gravitational attraction. They had fun doing this, especially when Dustin realized he would weigh 2800 lbs on the sun lol.

Black Holes:

We finished off our week studying about black holes, and started by reading our Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space Book.

The kids watched the following video about Black Holes.

When we were done watching out video, we worked together to make our printable Black Hole Game

Falling Into A Black Hole: Here is a picture of all the game pieces. There are 4 space ships on the bottom, those are playing pieces, the little squares on the instructions are anti-gravity cards, and the rectangular cards on the board are the activities.

Here is just the board, and the activity cards.

It was a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon :)

Stop by and check out all the other fun space ideas on my Pinterest Space Board for other space themed ideas to try with your kids!

See the awesome blogs I'm linked up with for other great ideas to try with your kiddos!

Life Cycle Of A Butterfly Up Close

2012-04-16T16:45:00.000-04:00

We are so lucky to have one of the biggest temporary exhibit of butterflies in the nation very close by, so we have taken advantage of it just about every year for the last 10 years. Since our family has grown we now purchase a family membership to the Gardens and enjoy all the great things they have to offer year round!

Here is a look at our group pictures over the years of going to the gardens.

The Arid Garden

The kids always enjoy looking at all the different cactuses.

The Carnivorous Plant House

Serena exploring the Venus Flytraps that actually have bugs inside some!

A tropical Pitcher Plant

Caterpillar and chrysalis stages:

Caterpillar munching on a leaf.

A chrysalis at the top of a mirror!

A caterpillar in the process of turning into a cocoon.

Gabriel was very excited to watch the caterpillar moving around on the flower pot!

Ethan exploring the different stages of the butterfly with a magnifying glass.

The kids enjoyed throwing pennies in the wishing pond.

The Butterflies exhibit:

Here are some of the beautiful butterflies that we seen inside the butterfly exhibit!

Inside the butterfly exhibit there is a small area set up where they keep all the chrysalis, there are tons of them, and chances are one will be emerging from the cocoon when your watching!

Did You Know?

A very cool water wall, it is very hard for the little ones to just look and not touch the water!

The Children's Gardens:

After visiting the butterflies we headed down to the Children's Garden to do some exploring in there.

The little door to get into the gardens is always a fun place to stop!

One of the kids favorite places on warm days is the Great Lakes exhibit. It is a large water area that is in the shape of the Great Lakes, and the ground around the lakes are the different states! The kids can play with boats in the water, and we always bring a change of clothes for this special area!

Behind the Great Lakes exhibit there is a large water wall the kids can play in.

The Senses Garden:

After the Great Lakes we explored the senses garden, it is a children's garden set up for the kids to explore their 5 senses!

The sense of smell, turn the dial and smell under the nose for a nice smell.

Then explore the hyacinths beautiful smell.

Sense of sound: Listen in the ear...

To your friends playing some music

Sense of touch: Each finger tip has a different texture for the kids to feel.

The lambs ear plant is so soft and nice to feel!

Sense of sight: Look into the periscope and see all over the gardens!

Spin the senses wheel!

Stop by and check out lots of butterfly themed ideas on my Butterfly Pinterest Board

Stop by and check out the other blogs I am linked up with for lots of ideas for kids!

Outer Space Sensory Bin

2012-04-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Because we will be involved in space studies for the next month or so I made an Outer Space Sensory Bin for the boys.

What's Inside The Bin?

Grey Moon Sand

Safari LTD Space Toobz

Misc Glass Vase fillers

Glow In The Dark Stars

3 Different bowls

I took it out and it was a hit! We took the astronauts from our Space Toobz and made prints in the moon sand. I would suggest putting the moon sand onto a surface that can be swept up, the moon sand is crumbly, but was very easily swept up.

We also counted backwards from 10 and then blasted off the rockets.

We counted out "moon rocks" while making space pies.

The "moon rocks" had to be pushed into the sand which was great fine motor skills!

Of course we scooped and filled the bowls with our Moon Sand

We also enjoyed taking the stars off, sorting them into small, medium, and large stars, and counting them out loud as we put them on. He is working on counting to 100 right now!

Stop by and check out my Pinterest Space board for lots of other great ideas to add to your space unit!

Amazon.com Widgets

Our Space Shelves

2012-04-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

We have been having lots of fun getting into our space unit, here are some of the things we have added to the shelves for our space unit.

We added some solar system window clings to the dining room window for the kids to play with.

We added some of our space books.

Here are our science shelves changed out from our Human Body unit to our space unit. I will be adding to the shelves as our studies continue.

We have a layers of the earth puzzle.

I found this awesome book at the thrift store, each page is a puzzle of each of the different planets.

We have a robots activity book and a Create Your Own Robot both are Little Dover activity books.

Space information cards in a basket, the front of the card contains a picture

The back contains facts and information. I found these in the Dollar Section at Target a few months ago.

Space stamping using space themed stamps

We added a couple new posters to the classroom walls.

Space Practical Life:

With the work the kids have to take the stars and put them into a star ice cube tray, the hard part is that the stars fit perfectly into the ice cube tray!

Tonging astronaut/ satellite/ planet erasers from the star bowl into the black bowl.

Using the mustard spoon to pick up a "planet" and add it to one of the suction cups on the stars.

Ethan was very excited to get this off the shelf while I was setting everything up!

This was a wonderful work for fine motor skills, he really had to concentrate!

Stop by and get some great ideas from the blogs I am linked up with!

Amazon.com Widgets

Resurrection Egg Folders

2012-04-12T15:00:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, through the 12 days before Easter we went through our Resurrection Eggs every day and the kids really enjoyed them. While I was on Pinterest I seen this awesome idea, Resurrection egg folders and thought it would be a fun way for each of the kids to have their own set of Resurrection Eggs! I printed off the free pages, and the kids got to work on coloring their eggs.

Here is the cover to the folder.

Inside at the top are the verse references, and below are the 12 resurrection eggs.

Here is what they look like on the inside, they have a picture on the bottom and the meaning of the item at the top.

I will keep them in our Easter Themed Folder for next year.

Amazon.com Widgets

To The Zoo!

2012-04-12T07:00:00.001-04:00

Last week all the local schools were off for spring break, including Ethan's school. With the time we had taken off of school with all of our family issues last month, I decided the kids wouldn't be getting the week off from school. I did however decide to try to make the week a little more interesting and take the kids to the zoo. Apparently it was also every other moms idea in town to go to the zoo as well because it was very busy! I was amazed at how well Ethan did with so many people, we still have our struggles but it has become a more manageable task now, as long as we go somewhere he can be doing things he enjoys! I remember a time not long ago when I would have seen the parking lot that full and would have turned around and found something else fun to do with the kids (with less people around)!

Because it was spring break week, they had a few different activities set up for the kids to do. One of the activities was making lion and tiger masks.

They have a clubhouse set up for the kids to play in, Gabriel loved it and chose to skip snack to keep playing in it!

The inside of the clubhouse.

Next off was the petting zoo, which we didn't stay in for very long. Because it was so busy there were tons of children all trying to pet the animals, and it was just to chaotic to stay in for more than a minute.

All the boys enjoyed driving and "trying to start" the tractor.

Ethan was very excited to go inside the frog house, we have enjoyed lots of frogs in nature, but most of those are not quite as colorful!

Ethan and Gabriel listing to different frogs inside the frog house.

Anthony examining the turtles in the "swamp"

Inside the aquatic area the boys enjoyed the tidal wave pool, and were so amazed every time a giant wave came up.

Dustin enjoyed trying to see how high he could jump, he made it higher than any of the other boys.

We watched a bird attacking a capybara every time it moved, and the it started squawking very loud at it.

The lion sunbathing on a giant rock, directly in front of the viewing window.

It was a wonderful day, unfortunately about half of the animals were not out because it is to cold for them yet, so I'm sure we will be back for another visit before the end of the summer.