Random Acts of Christmas Kindness 2014 - Free Printable

I realize I have been away awhile - life is crazy in my house right now with holiday season in full swing, along with the celebration of a 1st and a 3rd birthday. Basically, we are running non-stop right now!

However, I need to make time for this post so I can share with anyone who might need this.

If you've been reading my blog for awhile (anyone? Bueller?) then you might remember my thoughts about the tragic events that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. Just knowing someone who has lost a child to something so heartbreaking really struck me and since then I wanted to make an effort every year to honor Olivia Engel, and each of the other 25 lives lost that day.

My older daughter just turned 3 and she is at an age where she can really absorb the concept of kindness and how to share that with other people. Recently I shared with my Facebook and Instagram friends the Random Act of Kindness cards I put together for December. My plan is to involve my children as much as possible when we prepare and share these random acts, and spread some kindness both inside my home and around our community in honor of the Sandy Hook Angels.

Meanwhile, several people have requested the cards I made, so it makes sense to attach them here so anyone can have access to them.

Please print these out, and start sharing the kindness - it can be anything from paying for someone's coffee at Starbucks to cooking someone dinner - be creative!

I hope to post pictures soon of our experiences with this effort, and I'd love to hear how others have used the cards!

Download Random Act of Kindness Cards .pdf here!

Homeschool-ish

Bugga wearing her backpack around the
house because she is "going to school to
eat pizza and read books".

Since my daughter is on the back end of the calendar as far as school start dates go (she was born in November), she gets "extra" time before she officially needs to be enrolled in school. As it is, she has been a sponge for months and months now, and I feel I really need to start teaching her some school skills since she loves what we've done so far. And maybe along the way she will use her parrot act to regurgitate some cool facts, versus just something I said when I didn't think she was listening. Oops.

As I posted recently, we started surrounding Bugga with All Things Alphabet and she loves it. I want to take advantage of this while I can, so I have been researching ways of creating age-appropriate lessons for her to learn more about what each letter looks and sounds like, and how they work with words. She's not quite ready to start using a writing device to draw the letters, but I have found a way to modify the concept to her abilities and still make it fun and educational.

My thought is to focus on one letter per week, and have 7-8 approaches to learning all about that letter. Each week we then choose 5 or so lessons to learn, allowing for a variety. After a month or two, when we have covered several letters, I hope to have lessons that focus on the combination of the previous letters learned to work on word construction.

By doing it this way, I am able to create a lot of the materials in advance so I can just print out what I need or whatever and run with it. Parenting doesn't give you a lot of time to prep, so I needed the tools for the lessons to be quick and easy. This is also useful for short attention spans - my 2-year-old will only watch me setup a project for so long before she no longer cares and would rather play with her Legos.

With regards to creating the materials, I have gathered ideas from many resources, and then ultimately I decided to create my own version so it fits the idea I have in my head. I plan to share these materials as free downloads wherever applicable, so hopefully they can be of some use to other back-of-the-calendar toddlers. 

I'll post the links to the post with the printables as soon as I get them uploaded!

Happy learning!

Activity: Winter Playdough Development Fun! (With Printables!)

I have been swamped lately with all the crafts I am doing for both Bugga's Big Girl Room and the nursery for #2 (posts to come, I promise!), but in the midst of it all (and while currently 35 weeks pregnant), I am hosting a playdate this coming week for our little group of kiddos. I racked my brain to come up with something easy, and landed on PLAYDOUGH!!!! Who doesn't love playdough? Even the little ones can have fun squishing it in their hands!

I have a great recipe for homemade playdough that Bugga and I have used ALL THE TIME and lasts forever. I will post that soon too.

This post is about activities you can do WITH the playdough!

Now obviously, the kiddos are free to build whatever they want with the dough. For the playdate specifically, I am not about to run out and buy (like I have the time anyway) all the play-do accessories they have in stores that "help" kids play. Instead, I plan on using playdough mats!

These are a GREAT idea! 

The problem I found is that I didn't like the ones I was finding on the web, so I just made my own! And I included the links below so you don't have to do the fruitless searching either! Now, so you are aware, these are winter-themed, since we are in Canada and it is currently dumping snow on us every weekend. I will likely have posts in the future with other themes.

All you need to do is print out the PDF files, laminate the pages, and tape them down to a table - let the fun begin!

Download the Snowflake Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowman Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowy Hill Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Tree Playdough Worksheet here.