Bible Stuff for Little Ones

I told you how I was so in love with our new Bible curriculum in this post. I still love it, but Little Bit was getting discouraged by it. So I just use it every now and then with her and use other things here and there.

I renewed my membership to Danielle's Place. It is worth every single penny in my opinion. It is especially worth it if you also teach Sunday School. There are great crafts, lesson ideas, even homeschool stuff (that might be a different subscription--can't remember). It's worth checking out. You can see lots of things without a subscription so it might help you decide if a membership is right for you.

The woman who runs Danielle's Place just announced that her sister has launched a site called Bible Kids Fun Zone. This site is geared for very little ones, ages 2-5 to be exact. It looks really neat and worth looking into if you have children in that age range.

That site is also associated with Sunday School Fun Zone. Haven't figured out the difference there. They both look really neat.

A free site that I go to often for ideas is this one. You just chose from the sidebar and find tons of links to Bible stories. There is a lot of stuff for older children on this site as well.

Anyway, just thought I'd share....

A Little Bit of Entrepreneurship

One thing I regret for a fleeting moment every now and then (don't worry, I get over it quickly) is that Little Bit hasn't had a really great preschool experience. She went to daycare when she was 2 and 3 so she does know what it's like to be herded like cattle part of a classroom of children. But she didn't like it.

It's just that I know some GREAT preschool teachers and I would love for her to get to experience their classrooms. My friend Mischelle used to change out one center all the time. One week it was a McDonald's, the next week it was a "bakery" full of play dough and cookie cutters. I've also seen some great preschool classrooms online. This is one of my favorite sites and I also love looking at the things she does with her students.

Little Bit is way ahead of me as this week she has been making her own fun. I'm very proud of how she's been playing lately. She used to be so dependent on one of us to pay constant attention to her and now she is learning to play by herself for a while. She spends hours taking care of her baby dolls lately, pushing them around the house in their stroller, building a car out of the piano bench, child-sized couch, and a chair so they can go places....she's really using her imagination!

So her latest thing is stores. I mentioned in this post that the newly arranged closet inspired her to open a shoe store. A few days later, while I was busy on schoolwork with Sweetheart, she set up a "water store." She did all of it on her own, which impressed me SO much. She flipped over a plastic tub, filled up 10 or so little Dixie cups from the bathroom sink, grabbed a baggie of cookies from the pantry, paper towels, her cash register...and she was open for business. Grandma happened to come down just then and with Sweetheart and me for customers also, and Daddy when he got home, her store was a big success.

The next day she set up a bookstore. Look! She sounded out "bookstore" and made this sign without even asking how to spell it. She got the first and last sound right and I'm so glad she thought she could do it!

Here's the whole set up.

She has quite a selection.
Here she is scanning my purchases. We go through the self check-out line at Kroger enough that she knows how to look for the bar code.

This takes great concentration.

At one point, it occurred to her she needed sacks to sack up our purchases, so she got her sister to grab one for her.

She's a great store-owner.

Let's See If I Can Explain This Better

So I was explaining what the Tea Parties were to Sweetheart today. While driving in the car. To drive by our city's Tea Party (that we got to just as it was ending but we walked up there anyway so we can say we went.) Maybe I shouldn't multi-task in this way.

I began by reminding her of the dilemma in the Felicity books about her father not selling tea in his store. I quickly went through my very thorough knowledge (end sarcasm) of the original Boston Tea Party. She actually knew quite a bit about this from the American Girl books.

Then I tried to explain what was going on around the nation today. I was pretty impressed with her understanding. I explained that the Bible tells us to follow the laws of the land and render unto Caesar and all that.....but that we didn't want MORE taxes and that we wanted the new president to be responsible with the country's budget like our family has to be. She knew what "debt" meant and "cash on the barrel." (Thank you Little House on the Prairie). I was amazed at how much she has learned during these last 2 years of homeschooling.

I supposed one shouldn't swell with too much pride though. When we got home she asked me if I was "cooking tea." I guess she saw the pot on the stove. I told her I had already made tea today.

"But isn't that illegal today, Mom?" she asked.

Oh dear.

Let's hope I can do a better job explaining Fitness Friday!!!

OK--first of all.....I AM SO GLAD TO KNOW YOU GUYS ARE BACK ON!!!!! We all kind of drifted off for awhile and I honestly wasn't sure it was going to be worth it to dust off Mr. Linky. But it seems he will get some use this week! Glad you all are back.

Since we are all feeling motivated, I'm going to give out a simple assignment this week. As usual, you can follow the assignment, or talk about whatever you like--about fitness of course, not how badly you need to vacuum or memories of your great Aunt Edna's cat because that just wouldn't be appropriate, you know?

We're flexible around here. So this week, I'm asking you to:

1. Introduce yourself. We have some new faces joining us and it's just polite.
2. Tell us why you are joining/rejoining Fitness Friday. (Keep it short--my pants won't button, it's almost swimsuit season, my children don't fit on my lap anymore....whatever.)
3. Rank these in the order of importance to you.....

*overall health
*weight loss
*eating healthy
*specific health issues (got to do this or doctor will be very angry)
*encouragement
*toning/shaping/muscle development
*fitness stamina (like to be able to climb stairs without half dying)
*pregnancy health
*clothes (feeling and looking better in them, or changing sizes altogether)
*anything else I've left off

Of course you can word them better and all.

And just to be perfectly clear....you CAN drink tea while you blog about all this, m'kay?

Thanks for joining us and I'll see you all on Friday!!!!

WE'RE BACK ON!

Because it's back on....the weight, that is.

Ladies, Fitness Friday resumes THIS WEEK!!! Please help me by spreading the word. I really needed a break with all the Spring Break and going out of town and mad rush to actually complete 3rd grade within a year....so thanks for letting me have some time off.

And I've grown a lot over the break. Not in a good way.

It's time. We're back. Are you in or are you out?

Let me know and please spread the word!

And I'll Find That Picture to Go With This Post Soon...

I have no idea what made me remember this story this morning, but I thought I'd share. In 1988 or 1989, probably my Senior year of high school, S and I had been dating long enough for him to make a trip with my family to my grandmother's house.

We spent the weekend at Nanny's house and visiting other relatives who live nearby (her house was located where "the trailer" now sits.) On Sunday morning, we all got dressed up and went to the little country church. Actually, we went to the "in town" church. There is actually a smaller, more countryish church further out of town. I was wearing my new feed sack dress. I am not making this up. My mom had sewed for weeks on this thing and I LOVED it. It was just fabric printed to look like feed sack, you understand. Not with flowers like real feed sack dresses, but with the label of the feed sack all over it. Which in depression era times, folks would have only used for underwear. But I wasn't aiming to be historically correct. I was aiming to be cool. You know, like the folks with farm animals in their kitchen.

So at this church, when they pass around the communion trays during the Lord's Supper, you are supposed to take your little cup of grape juice and pass the tray on. Then you drink the juice and put the cup in a little holder on the back of the pew next to the song book rack. Kind of like this picture, except there was nothing under the communion cups on the pews where we were sitting--they just hang there in the hole.

Anyway, this is different from how our church does it so we were all bumping each other to remind one another to pass the tray and keep the cup and S looked down at his cup and there was an eyelash floating in the grape juice. EW!!! He shuddered and put the whole cup, juice and eyelash intact, in the cup holder on the pew. Then we went on with church.

When it came time for the sermon, someone reached down to get their Bible off the floor and bumped that juice cup up out of the holder and STRAIGHT ONTO MY NEW FEED SACK DRESS!!!!

I spent the rest of church back in the little bathroom scrubbing my dress with those brown paper towels that are resistant to water. There were only like 400 spots of grape juice on my dress. My mom came back to check on me and I thought she was going to be sick. She did save the dress, by the way. Every spot was out after she worked on it at home.

There really isn't a moral to this story. And despite the grape juice stains, S married me even AFTER he had met the whole crazy family. So I suppose the weekend was a success after all.