Happy Aromatherapy Day!

Did you know that June 15th is Aromatherapy Day? Yeah, me neither. But it is. Learning about EO's is hosting a special celebration in honor of it. They are doing multiple giveaways, including a set of Chakra Roll-Ons from Aura Cacia, plus several fun gift cards and more!

Go Check it out!

Alphabet Cookies and Counting Blocks

It has probably been a year since I made this little game. I took an oatmeal can and decorated it to look like a crazy monster. Then I cut out a big mouth and made little circles out of construction paper and wrote the ABC's on them. To play the game the boys take turns feeding the cookies to the hungry monster. I adapt the game to their needs. Sometimes I call a letter and they find it. Sometimes I use flash cards to pick a card, have them identify it, and then find the cookie. Sometimes I let them pick a cookie and tell me what letter it is. My boys like to use thongs to pick them up and feed the monster (so the monster doesn't bite them!), and that is cool cause it is good motor skills practice.

Jet pack especialy likes this game and I'm glad cause we are still working on his letter recognition. Dino has had his letters down for a while now, but if Jet Pack is playing then a lot of times he likes to play too, but he gets bored with it fairly quick, unsurprisingly. 

Another learning activity that we like are these counting blocks. We use them for counting and simple math. Some times I make worksheets for the Dino with simple addition and subtraction, and he uses the blocks to help him solve the problems. He also has an addition/subtraction activity on his computer and sometimes he'll use these to do those problems. Sometimes we just wing it. This day we took turns picking out all of the blocks of a certain color and counting them. Then we'd add them together.

We also lined them up and discussed  more than, less than, most, least and equal to. 

I really like when we are able to do fun and laid back learning activities. Any time when it seems we are getting too stressed, or are too focused on "school" I like to take a day or two to unwind and remember that we actually like learning. Sometimes it is a lot easier to have a set structure for learning, but sometimes we can get too carried away with it.

Essential Oils

I have been semi-interested in essential oils for about 5-6 years. Originally I just wanted a few of them to use for various homemade bath supplies (such as bath salts and lotions). However, considering that I hardly ever use these products, the price for the oils just wasn't justified. When I was pregnant with my first son I started looking at various ways they could be used as home health remedies. In my own research I came to the conclusion that they were probably pretty effective when used correctly. I decided that one day I'd like to try them out, but they have always been too expensive for my tightwad self to be willing to try them out (again considering the fact that we rarely use medications anyway). Within the last year and a half I have had many family members and friends jump on the essential oil bandwagon and begin endorsing them. 

Now lets go ahead and make a little side note here. I am a nerd. In particular I am a nerd from a family of doctors and nurses. I have always been interested in bodily functions and anatomy. I did not choose medicine as a profession, and I did not study it in depth in college. However I did excel in my anatomy class in high school and again in the 200 level anatomy classes in college (I later tutored for them for 3 years). So I am not an expert on all things medicine, but I do consider myself to be relatively well versed on the subject, especially compared to the average Jane or Joe. 

That being said, I have been extremely skeptical concerning many of the claims and recommendations being made, and that are so widespread on the internet and social media sites. Among many various claims, there have been two that are the most irritating to me. The first is that essential oils are all natural and therefore safe. Umm...no, there are lots of "natural" poisons. Didn't our ancestors have to learn how to tell the difference between safe and poisonous berries? Just off the top of my head the pits from peaches and cherries, apple seeds, and tomato leaves are all poisonous. Heck, what about poison ivy? It is natural, but I sure wouldn't want to rub it all over my body. 

The second thing that annoys me is when a person will say how one essential oil can have dozens of uses and then in the next breath say that they have ZERO side effects (because they are all natural!!). Excuse me, but how can something have a multiple uses and yet have no side effects? Now perhaps you mean to say that the side effects are all positive, but that is an individual matter. For example, lets take marjoram. Marjoram is effective in treating asthma as well as for lowering blood pressure. So lets say that we recommend that Jane Doe take it to help with her bronchitis. But what we don't realize or think about is that Jane also happens to have moderately low blood pressure to begin with. Add in the vasodilating properties of marjoram and all of a sudden Jane begins to suffer from dizziness and fainting spells. Whoops....but it is supposed to be all natural and safe, with zero side effects!!

That being said, I have recently been introduced to Plant Therapy while they were having a fun sale for Christmas. I am super excited because I finally found a source for essential oils that I can afford!! So naturally I went ahead and bought several (after all I've been wanting to for 5 years!) The more that I have seen from Plant Therapy over the last two months I am beginning to like them even more. Not only do they have pure essential oils for a quarter of the price of doTerra or Young Living (sometimes even less), but they also have much safer recommendations. 

Here is a recent post from them concerning essential oil safety. Finally a company that advocates intelligence and isn't just looking out to make as much money as possible.

 http://essentialoilblogging.com/2014/01/14/can-essential-oils-be-ingested/


*Note: I am not being paid (or receiving any other form of compensation) for this post. I just happen to like this post and the company in general.

Start of preschool

I have been doing off and on preschool stuff with my boys for a while. I've been wanting to get more structured and organized with it. I have found a lot of great resources on Pinterest. Last night (at about midnight) I found an AMAZING resource and have decided to make that my primary curriculum.

Oh wow, this site looks great! She goes all the way from Preschool through High School! Naturally I haven't had time to go through the entire site, but I skimmed through the Getting Ready 1 and Getting Ready 2 curriculum (Pre-K and K). So far I LOVE what I see.
Not wanting to dither, we got started right away this morning. The first part of Getting Ready 1 focuses on learning each letter of the alphabet. Dino already knows all of his letters and their sounds, but Jet Pack only knows a couple of them. So I figured I'd start Dino on Day 172 to start with (that is when they start learning some sight words and early reading). However, when I was doing the first lesson with Jet Pack this morning, Dino wanted to join in. So I figured it would be a good review and let them each go through the lesson. They loved it, and it was fun for me doing it with them. Then of course when I started Dino on his lesson, Jet Pack wanted to do it with him, so I let him join us. I'm not concerned with expecting him to remember it all, but if he likes doing it, and gets anything from it then GREAT.

Part of the lesson was just to look at some Google image search results for the letter A. We noticed one of the pictures was of an A made with 3 chili peppers. So I asked the boys if they wanted to build some letter A's as well. I let them choose what to make them out of. Dino immediately chose pencils and got to work. Jet Pack chose cars, but was having some difficulty with it. So I made one for him to look at and asked him to copy it. He still struggled a bit, but then saw his train tracks and decided to do that, and didn't need any further help with it. I decided to print out a letter A outline for him to fill up with his cars to make it easier for him and he liked it.

 My car A, Dino's pencil A, and Jet Pack's train track A.

Jet Pack filling up his letter A

All done!

 Coloring Abraham Alligator

 Looking at their first sight words.

I am not going to stick to this curriculum solely. That is one of the great things about homeschooling, you can do pretty much whatever works for you and your kid. This site focuses mostly on the alphabet and learning to read to begin with. I am going to be adding various other activities along the way. My kids love science experiments and we'll do plenty of those, and various other math and social studies activities as well. Dino already likes doing addition and subtraction.

If you are interested, I made a document with all of the letter outlines. I am laminating mine so they can be used for various things and reused. Click here for the free printable.

Easter

On Thursdays we have a learning group with some other friends. I was hosting this week and I decided to do an Easter theme. We've also been trying to focus on a different letter each week, but we've already done E. I was already planning on teaching the real Easter story, so it didn't take long to realize that R would be the perfect letter to focus on this week. R is for Resurrection!

Here are the activities I did and the order they fit together in to lead to one another.

Review-Letter E
E is for Easter
Easter Egg Hunt with Puzzle-
March 2013 Friend Magazine Print out the Picturing Easter picture on page 24 and cut into puzzle pieces. If you do not want to use the lines they provide in the magazine, if you download the pdf, and then copy the picture into word or something it doesn't copy the lines. Put the pieces in the eggs. After the hunt have the children put together the picture and discuss what it is depicting. You can either do one puzzle per child, or have them solve the puzzle together. If you opt to do one puzzle/kid make sure that you separate the puzzles according to each color of eggs. So cut one picture and put all the pieces into green eggs, cut another one and put them all into pink eggs, etc.
Make Resurrection Rolls- I actually chickened out of doing this with all the kids (because my kitchen is a MESS!!) but I had done it with my boys earlier in the week anyways so I'll include it now. Here is a link to the instructions.
Play Easter Bingo-

Click for Free Printable featuring 6 different bingo cards and complete key of pictures used! Cut out each image in the key, fold and place in a hat/bowl/container. Give each child a bingo card and some jelly beans or other markers. As each picture is chosen, explain what it represents and let the children cover their spot a bean. When a child fills the whole board, they yell BINGO and eat all of their jelly beans.




Resurrection starts with R

Find the Letter R worksheet-

Click for Free Printable







Build a Rabbit Game

Click for Free Printable of instructions. You will need a die (aka-singular dice), pom poms (for tail), pipe cleaner or string (for whiskers), googly-eyes, glue, and construction paper or foam. The children take turns rolling the die, counting the dots and then adding to their rabbit according to the instructions. If they roll a duplicate you can choose to make mutant rabbits, skip a turn, or roll again.





(Dino informed me the pom poms were not tails, but rather knees and his rabbit needed two.)