Do you want to teach your kids the story of Easter but aren’t quite sure where to start?  Do you want to spend Lent learning about Christ?

I love teaching my kids about Jesus and even more importantly, they love learning about Him.  As Easter fast approaches I kept wondering how I could make it more meaningful.  How could I make Easter real for them? 

I’ve been working with a very talented friend from Tired, Need Sleep on this Lenten activities e-book and I am so very excited about it!  I’m excited to work through it with my boys and I am excited to share it with everyone else!!

So, what is going to be in this e-book?
Crafts
Activities
Verses to focus on
Some ideas to take it further

And because we want to get the message out to as many people as possible, we are giving the e-book away for FREE!  We plan to have it ready for download on Feb 15 which will give everyone a full week to get any materials necessary before Lent begins!

If you’d like to receive an e-mail when this e-book is released either subscribe to Royal Baloo by using the link on the right side bar (or follow using RSS or facebook!)

Or subscribe to Tired, Need Sleep here! (Or go to her website to follow her RSS!)

Then it hit me to use some old plastic cups!  I used 3 different types of dried beans – lima beans, garbanzo beans, and lentils.  There is a pretty good size difference so I was sure the noise difference wouldn’t be too subtle.  Given that this was our first try, I wasn’t sure how difficult it would be.  I made 7 cups total – 2 of each bean and 1 was empty (Baloo’s idea!)

Then I told the boys to shut their eyes while I mixed them all up.

And we shook them to find the matches!

The boys loved the sound matching and loved being told to make a lot of noise.  We danced with them, sang songs, and played a few silly games. 

When I heard about the 29 day organizing challenge at orgjunkie.com I knew it was time to truly get going on this project.  Nothing is holding me back except for myself.

So here we go, the awful before pictures.  I didn’t pick up a single thing (okay, I did pick up a diaper that had been left out…).  This is what our school room looks like right now – calendar board hanging off the wall and everything.

The table is already a clutter spot, even though it’s only been in the room for 2 weeks!
 

We still have projects from Halloween on the wall – and the budget board that should have been moved when we took the computer out of here!

The closet actually isn’t doing too bad, but it does need some help!
 

I’m excited about getting this room in order!  I’ll be posting multiple times throughout the month with a progress update – mostly for accountability.

I’d love to see how others have organized their school rooms.  If you have a link, please share in the comments!

After reading through our entire collection today I suggested that we make our own.  We brainstormed the topic and decided on brother!

That’s not my brother…his necklace is too shiny!

That’s not my brother…his hair is too rough!

We ended up with 5 pages total.

That’s not my brother…his hair is too rough (sandpaper for hair)
That’s not my brother…his necklace is too shiny (aluminum foil for the necklace)
That’s not my brother…his ears are too bumpy (one side of cardboard)
That’s not my brother…his clothes are too fluffy (wool batting)
Those are my brothers!!  They are so cuddly! (picture of the boys!)

And then they read the book together.

Download to make your own “Not My Brother/Not My Sister” Book Here!

We’ve started working on addition in Math-U-See.  We did a bit of extra practice with trains.  I love that the trains have magnets so we start with them separate.  I said 3 + 4 equals…?

And then Baloo pushed them together and answered “7”.  I really think the fact that they are separate at first, but he can combine them helps him visualize addition. 

Baloo learned to ride a bike without training wheels this week!  He just picked up our neighbors (pink) bike and started riding it.

I’m sure riding the balance bike for so long really helped him! 
 

We’ve been diligently working through All About Reading level 1.  It isn’t Baloo’s favorite program, but he is picking up on it quickly.  His favorite activity thus far was finding rhyming words for the monkeys. 
 

And then feeding them to the monkeys!

Since getting my new camera, Baloo has been very interested in using it.  I very rarely let him – but when he is calm and acting appropriately I will let him try.  He’s really enjoying taking pictures (he does have his own camera which he uses all the time, but using a “fancy” camera is just more fun!)

We’re linking up at:

We call this game “Put the Pom Pom in It” (complete with theme song!).  The set up is simple.  2 cups set up at either end of the hallway.  On one side the cups are filled with pom poms, and on the other side the cups are empty.  The point is to get all the pom poms to the other cups without touching the cups or pom poms with your hands.  For an extra challenge, have them sort the pom poms!

Unfortunately, when I told them the rules, this is what I got.  A lot of pouting.

But pretty soon they were getting ideas and trying some different techniques!  Royal tried to pick up the cup with his foot.

Baloo knocked the cup over and grabbed the pom poms in his toes.

And Royal tried picking up the cup with his mouth.

In the end, they didn’t complete the game.  But they did work together and they did have fun, so I’ll still call it a success!

Royal doesn’t know his letters yet so I’ve decided to make a point to expose him to letters as much as possible.  We are focusing on one letter a week, and we just finished G week, so all my examples will be G’s!

I made this G out of the LeapFrog fridge magnets on the fridge one night.

We made ‘G Street’ and then I added different color houses so we could work on colors too. 

We made G’s out of Duplo Legos, Zoobs, and that is a letter bean bag!

That’s Royals hand waiting patiently while I made a G with his garbage trucks.
 

We made a G with our bodies!  (Forgive me for the super blurry photo but Royal wouldn’t let me try a 2nd time!  He wanted to see the picture!) 

I was able to convince Baloo to make one with stuffed animals.

And then Royal wanted in on the action with his trucks!

I put a big G up on the easel and gave Royal some G vocab cards to glue on

We made a G with play doh

Make shadow letter puppets!  I used a big foam letter, but a simple cut out – or even fingers sometimes – would do the trick!

We have fabric letters (tutorial here!) that we try to have out to play with a lot.
 

There are so many unique ways to expose the alphabet!  Try pointing out signs and letters in books and just have fun with it!

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I saw this idea on Pinterest recently and couldn’t get it out of my mind.  I’ve had many a container of wipes pulled out and I understand that for some reason, babies and toddlers love to pull wipes out of a container.  But let’s face it, it’s not the best idea to spend money on wipes just to have your child pull them out and leave them strewn all over the house! 

But now, thanks to I Can Teach My Child, there is a much better alternative!  Using cloth wipes/rags instead of disposable wipes!!  This is one of those “oh duh!” moments for me.

I did mine slightly different than hers, since I think part of the magic is that a new wipe appears when you pull one out.  How fun!  And it can easily be done with cloth wipes too – it’s just all in the folding.  Start by laying out one cloth.  (I steal my husbands old white shirts to refuse as rags, and that’s what I am using here)

And fold down the top third.

Take your next piece of cloth and lay it on top of the folded down third of the first cloth.  Line up the bottom of the new cloth with the top of the first cloth (that has been folded down).

Now fold up the bottom third of the first cloth.  It should be overlapping the second cloth.

Next fold down the second cloth as far as possible.  Now you’’ll take a third cloth and line it up in the same fashion.

Continuing folding and overlapping until you have a neat little stack.

Then put the rags into your container and fish the first one through the hole.

Close the top and you are all ready!

You can now let your child go nuts and not worry about wasting wipes!
 

Logi-Bear was not nearly as fascinated with this as I thought he would be.  He actually seemed kind of weary about the whole thing.  Right after that picture he started crying and wouldn’t only look at the container if he was in my lap.

Royal however was quite intrigued!

I’ve also discovered that this method isn’t as reliable as regular disposable wipes.  The slower you go the better it works though.

For MLK day we didn’t really do school.  I let the boys hang out with their father and we took it easy.  I did have a few books to read to them though.  We’ve been working on a money lapbook and Baloo was very interested in Lincoln.  We actually read a short biography about Lincoln (the only thing Baloo remembers is how he died though!) and talked about the Lincoln Memorial.  Baloo was thrilled to see the Lincoln Memorial was where MLK made his “I Have A Dream” speech!

So we talked about MLK, abolishing slavery, and most importantly, about how all people are different, but we’re all equal.  I saw this craft idea on Notimeforflashcards.com and just thought it was so perfect.  It’s hard to tell, but Baloo’s people all have random eye color, hair color, and skin color.  Except for the last one.  Baloo insisted that the blue girl from X-Men be represented too.  I guess we are all the same on the inside – red, yellow, black, white…and blue.

We started working on addition in the Math-U-See workbooks.  We started out by noticing that a 6 unit piece and a 1 unit piece were the same length as a 7 unit piece. 

Then we working on solving some problems.  I would have Baloo match up the first 2 unit bars (the ones we were adding together) and then count them all and locate the last unit bar.  I’m not sure that the concept is really tangible to him yet so I’m planning a few activities next week using trains, cars, apples, and the like.
 

Plus, it’s not so easy to concentrate when you’re baby brother is attacking you with a sword!

I decided to be brave and let the boys make their own cupcakes.  I wrote down the ingredients and monitored them.  I had to help with the measuring a bit, because Baloo doesn’t know the difference between a teaspoon, tablespoon, or a cup.  But they did all the measuring, the mixing, the pouring, etc. 
We used this cupcake recipe, which makes just 2 or 3 cupcakes!  The perfect amount to make all the time.  And they turned out really good!  We didn’t put icing on them, but I think that would have made them the best cupcakes ever.

Baloo was very happy! 

I tried to use it as an opportunity to talk about fractions, but we didn’t have a chance to get into it much.  The recipes calls for 1/4 cup flour so I was trying to show him that 4 of those is the same as 1 cup.

I don’t take pictures during our reading time because I don’t want to distract Baloo.  We are steadily working through the All About Reading Level 1.  I won’t say that he enjoys it, but he really doesn’t mind the activities.  He is picking up on the material quite quickly!  We’re on lesson 10 now!  He loves that he can read the stories in the books all by himself.  I probably won’t do a more official review until we are further along, but so far I am very happy with this purchase!

That’s it for our laid back and uneventful week!

We will be linking up to: