Showing posts with label Mom's Thumb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mom's Thumb. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2013

Kids Board Games: Safari Dominoes





Details: Safari Dominoes is a game for the whole family.  With 36 cardboard Dominoes with animals from the Safari: gorilla, hippo, cheetah, zebra, lion, elephant, rhino.  The directions give a few different game options for older children in the family.

My Review: My kids have been playing this game for 2 years now and it is still a favorite.  My 7 year old loves to play games, and loves animals, we have quiet the stuffed animal collection.  This was purchased from Sea Gull Book Store back in the summer time for like $3.  My 7 year old knows how to play this, and can sit and play this for a long time with the family.  But my 4 year old is the one to be watching when we play this.  He loves looking for the animals, and the double dominoes specifically.  His favorite animal is the cheetah in this game.

We have been filming little clips every time we play just to watch Dallen's (the 4 yr old) reaction to playing and looking for his Cheetah.  Joseph (the 7 yr old) loves to trick us, and stick to the rules.  I've been posting our video clips on our Youtube channel, the videos from when my kids were 5 and 3 are the cutest.  Take a look and enjoy some laughs with us and on us.


Pros: super fun for younger kids

Cons: I wish it wasn't card board, but its more sturdy than I thought

My Rating: Thumbs Up 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Home School Supplies: magnets



My kids love magnets, they love things that make lots of noise, and they love hands on anything and everything.  So with a little bit of creativity, especially needed with wiggly boys, magnets can be used 100's of different ways.  All this does is help reinforce learning is fun, learning is using your imagination.

Math: Here is some things that we have created for Math, but can also be used for any educational magnets.  I bought 2 pizza pans at the Dollar Tree, as well as 2 packets of wooden magnetic numbers.  So each boy has his own set.  My 4 year old is learning to count, he can count to 10 in Spanish, and 25 in English.  We also use magnetic  geometric shapes for math time too.


Reading: For reading we use magnetic words to help build sentences, for spelling tests, for reading tests, and reading activities.  We bought a big package of magnetic words from The Teacher Store down the road.  We bought 2 packages from the Dollar Tree (that came with matching pictures).  We bought 1 package from Target in their school supplies section during one of their Back to School Events.  Now with that many packages, we have separated each topic in our magnetic word piles to the topics such as the following: people, word tenses, house hold, food, vehicles, colors, numbers, punctuation marks, site words, and sentence materials.



Spelling: for this subject we do many of the same things as reading, but with a more concentrated effort on learning how to spell words by topics.  We use the packages of magnetic words with the pictures mostly for spelling, because my 6 year old is very visual, and audio when it comes to retaining what he's taught.  Matching games are great, and since they are magnets he can play them on his pizza pan, his cookie sheet, the refrigerator, or on his magnetic mini sheet.  We'll even mix in white erase boards with magnetic words because at the Home School Store you can buy magnetic white erase boards.  Totally Awesome!  For my 4 year old we use his magnetic mini sheet with magnetic plastic letters.  He learns simple words, and really just what the letter looks like, and its sound.


You can buy magnets anywhere pretty much, and use them for so many subjects with school: counting, sorting, reading, spelling, letters, numbers, science, opposites, negative/ positive, extra curricular activities and games as well.  One thing you can be guaranteed is that your children are going to have a lot of fun, and enjoy using magnets for school!



Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Kids Craft for Thanksgiving


My kids just love doing crafts!  They get it from their mom.  So since this week is Thanks Giving here are some more fun Thanks Giving crafts we did together.  On a piece of construction paper we drew a turkey and the words "I am Thankful for...", and every day we'll have our 5 year old write his own thing he is thankful for, and we'll write down what our 3 year old is thankful for, so come Thursday they are really in the spirit of Gratitude.  Then with a piece of yellow construction paper, and a strip of green construction paper, tape, 4 craft sticks, and 2 sheets of pre-printed Pilgrims and Native Americas we set up our second craft.  My kids colored the man and the woman Pilgrim and Native American, then cut them out and taped them to craft sticks to make puppets.  Then to carry them in, we made cornucopias by folding over the ends of a yellow piece of construction paper to make a cone and taped the ends together.  The strip of green paper is the handle.

We do this in conjunction with our Gratitude Tree during our Daily Circle time.  Our Gratitude tree is being decorated with Owls and cloth leaves this month.  Its a daily thing, but really extra special during Thanks Giving Month.


Thanks Giving Craft


Example from book
 Today was a really fun craft day.  We made more Thanks Giving crafts before my library books have to be returned.  We made two crafts.

1. Leaf collages.  My kids and I took an hour nature walk/hike/bike ride through the abandoned golf course in our back yard land.  Its open and the paved path is mostly in tact.  There are hundreds of trees, so we took 2 plastic bags and each child collected different types, colors, and sized leaves.  Then I gave them each a big piece of construction paper and the Elmer's glue.  They covered the paper in glue and put their leaves on how ever they wanted.

2. Paper chain turkeys.  We cut 5 pieces of 8x11 brown construction paper into strips.  Each child stapled about 15-17 brown strips together to form a paper chain.  Then the choose their back ground paper color, then we cut out potato shaped turkey bodies from brown construction paper, drew eyes, a beak and the gobbler, and had the kids color them if they wanted.  Then we cut out feathers in the colors they wanted.  We glued the turkey body in the middle of the paper, stapled the paper chain around the turkey body, and glued the feathers on around the outside of the paper chain.  It was fun, easy on the budget, and easy to clean up after.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Holiday Gift Guide Women's Giveaway


Welcome to our Holiday Gift Guide for Women Giveaway!  We have some great prizes one lucky winner will win through our a Rafflecopter giveaway entry form.



We were able to do product reviews on each of the giveaway prizes.
Blue Steel
Rada Knife Set and Cutting boards
Rada Soup Kit
Personalized Christmas Ornament

Starts November 8th, ends November 22nd.
Open to US/Canada residents only
Entrants must be 18 years or older.