Living Life On Purpose!

I have a goal, I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I want to volunteer in my kids' classrooms or in the community. I want to go eat lunch with my kids on their birthdays or just because. I want to help my husband more with FCA. In order to do these things I need to be at home, although right now I love daycare and thank God for the opportunity, it limits me with my own family. And my daycare kids are really starting to hold a little place in my heart, so I'm going to stick with this profession until they are all in school. But once they are gone I'll have a decision to make, go back to teaching to have an income or get things figured out so I can stay at home without an income! I've already started buying the large majority of my family's clothes from consignment stores. And we hardly ever eat out. Now on to some more ways to save! I've decided to make my own dryer sheets, laundry soap, and hand soap refill.

DIY Dryer Sheets: Bottle of liquid fabric softner and white washcloths!
Put the washcloth in a small bowl and pour a capful of fabric softner over. Let it soak for a little bit then hang to dry! Super easy!!! I've been doing this for months now and still have lots of my bottle left. Make 2-4 of these to have handy. Once you notice the clothes aren't as soft wash the cloth and repeat!

 Here is the blog I got this idea from. I have been very satisfied with the results. DIY Dryer Sheets


DIY Hand Soap refill: Dishwasher soap and hot water!
Put about 1/2-1 inch of the dishwasher soap into a foaming hand soap container. Then turn the hot water on low and pour in. Leave a little room at the top to put the top back on. Slowly turn to mix! Worked great!! I've read that you could also use body wash or shampoo.

Finished product! I think I may have added a little too much dish soap this time around because mine is super sudsy! So next time I'll use a little less.

The dish soap I used, I like the idea of using a hand rejuvenating brand. I can't stand dry skin and I wash my hands a lot with little ones around!

DIY Laundry Soap: I haven't made this one yet since my bottle of Tide Sport isn't gone yet. I'm going to give it a try next week though!! Here is the blog where I found the idea. From what she has posted and people have commented it looks legit!! I'm excited to give it a try! DIY Laundry Soap

 

Preschool: Letter C

Since I don't have a printer at home and live in a small town where the library hours are not very convenient (I'm not about to take all the daycare kiddos into the library, not that brave yet!). I've decided to make tracing pages. This is also nice because the parents get to see what we work on every day/week. 

Sorry, couldn't figure out how to turn this one. But I changed up the tracing page a little so they have some independent letter practice.

Our letter C cloud! I cut out the C on some blue paper then the kids glued the cotton balls on. I didn't have enough cotton balls so I tore mine up, I think it may even look better than the perfect cylinder cotton balls glued on. We used a glue bottle for this project, I think it holds cotton balls on better.

Our C art page. Wish I would have been thinking ahead and checked this book out from the library! Next year ;) I wrote the words and the Husker N. Then the kids followed directions for coloring it. First I had them color the N red. This allowed me to check that they knew their colors and could pick out which color I stated. Then drew green lines on the bottom half of the paper, I did it first while they watched so they could draw the lines in the correct area and direction. Then drew some squiggles for leaves and added some yellow ovals at the top and around the leaves. A lot of them just colored in where they had spaces by their leaves, but it still looked good. Each kiddo had to write their name by themselves on the paper too! Can't believe how good they are getting already!!

Preschool: Letter B

Our letter B bumble bees! I cut the B out for them and the wings, then took a long strip of black paper the same width as my letter B and cut a bunch of little strips. The kiddos glued everything on.

Our fun Bb activity! I blew up a bunch of balloons and wrote "Bb" and "balloon" on them. Also the kids' names so they could take one home. They had a blast with this for days!

Preschool Week 1: The Letter A and Genesis 1

 First week of preschool/daycare is in the books! The kids love it! I didn't really want to do a craft every day, but they ask for it, so I try to find something to do, most are pretty simple and the kids can do on their own. I decided just to do the 'ol ABC order, even though it may not the easiest way to go through the alphabet. Some of the curves might be a challenge, but I'm doing this more for exposure and letter recognition anyway. So this week we worked on the letter A and did Genesis 1 for our Bible study time. Here are our crafts!

Paper plate apples. Let the kiddos tear up the red, brown and green construction paper then let them glue it on a paper plate! Super easy!! I like to write the words on most of the crafts, the more words they see everyday the better!

Alligator A. This one took a little more work on my part, but I did all the cutting during nap time the day before. Drew a block letter A and cut it out, then made a bunch of white triangles, and a few white and black circles. Let the kids glue everything together. 

My day I didn't have a craft planned! We had read Where the Wild Things Are, so when we were done I had them look at the pictures again and draw their own wild thing! I think they are pretty cute! 

Our Bible study craft. Genesis 1. Start with a small coffee filter, have the kiddos color all over blue and green. I explained that's what Earth looks like from way up high, because they were confused. We haven't read/watched too much about outer space. I then sprinkle the colored coffee filter with a small amount of water. A spritzer bottle would work great but I didn't have one. Get them wet enough so the colors blend but not too wet so they take forever to dry and most the color is left on the table. While those were drying and the kids napped I traced the coffee filter on black construction paper then cut about 1/2 inch below that line. That way there will be room to glue the earth on. I wrote the verse and stars with white crayon. They put glue around the circle I cut out and then put their earth on. This project is also great to do on Earth Day.

Preschool: Ready to get started!

Well time to change careers! After a year of subbing I decided I really enjoy staying home with my kids, so when the opportunity came up to do daycare from home I was ready. I loved teaching 4th grade, I love upper level learning, but right now I need to be home with my kids. So after a couple of days of daycare with a 2 year old, 3 year old, and three 4 year olds, I realized we need some sort of a schedule and organization. Because after a few hours of nonstructured play they always seem to resort to running, chasing, and screaming. With a new baby coming in October we needed to get things together! Or I'm fairly certain I would lose my mind, (if I wasn't getting close enough already). To occupy these kiddos for a while in the morning I am doing preschool. You can't make a teacher quit teaching ;) Then in the afternoon we will have a bible study time. (I love this part of daycare over being a public school teacher, I can freely and openly talk about God with these children and fill their little hearts with his love and truth!!) Anyway, here's my set up and a few ideas I've stolen, then changed a little to make work for me!

The green and blue dry erase/magnetic boards are from Target for $7 each. The calendar was from a teacher supply store. The colors and numbers are from Walmart for $.88.  I made the weather page myself on white computer paper.

Our prayer to start our day. Obeying is a huge part of a toddler's life!! And obeying parents, teachers, etc. will help prepare them for a life of obeying God! 

What we will try to fit in each morning. Pretty sure we won't get all of it everyday, but this will help keep me on task. I will do preschool Monday-Thursday and then I think Fridays will be our craft day.

A close up of my weather chart. I need to run to the library and get this laminated!

Our practice pages that we'll do everyday. I put the printables in sheet protectors and bought some washable dry erase markers so I wouldn't have to print some may copies. We will work on 1 letter a week. Here are the links to the pages I got from Pinterest.
Handwriting Practice: Names and Sentences
Bible Study Curriculum
Alphabet Practice Printables

Project Stay-At-Home-Mom: School Shopping on a Budget

Well the kids just keep growing, and with me staying at home, money is tighter this year. So the clothes were getting smaller and I needed to figure out a way to buy them on a budget that has...well...no room for clothes. So I hatched a plan. I would take in some of my clothes (my dressier ones that I hardly wear since I'm done teaching for a while) to a consignment store. There is a great store called Plato's Closet, they only take name brand, in style clothes, but pay you cash for them within the hour!! So I took some of my clothes in there and got some cash, then turned around and took my kids to some other great second hand stores in Lincoln. Here's my haul, all for $84! That's 10 pairs of pants, 23 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes, a belt, 2 skirts, 2 skirts, and 2 dresses! Booyah!!

Going to second hand stores instead of buying my kids new clothes is one of the changes I am making in our lives so that I can continue to be at home with my children. Which I think will be MUCH more important than the clothes they wore as children.

Preschool: Shark Week

So, it's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel!! I LOVE Shark Week, maybe it's because I'm a poor landlocked Nebraksan who, I think, was born to be somewhere near an ocean. I love water, swimming, and just sitting near or having a view of water. Maybe someday (I don't think I'll ever make a lifestyle change to get to live on the ocean) I can get a home near a lake or stream :) Anyway, I am a huge fan of Shark Week, it's on all day, so for preschool this week I thought why not do some mini lessons/crafts on sharks. We took a walk to the library to get some books on sharks for story time. And today we did a torn paper collage. Super easy and what small child doesn't like to tear paper and use glue sticks?

 Materials:
half-2 sheets of blue construction paper (different shades) depending on what size, mine were only 1/2 so we only needed 1/2 sheet of construction paper. But if you did a full sheet you would need one and I think two different shades of blue would look nice.
white paper
cut out shark from black or gray construction paper
cut out fish from various shades of construction paper
glue stick
 
We did half a sheet, since I was low on blue construction paper. It's hard not being a teacher anymore and having a fully stocked supply closet down the hall :( I started with 1/2 sheet blue construction paper (If I had more I would have done a full white sheet and two or more different shades of blue). Told the kids to tear it up. Then I got each of them 1/2 sheet of white computer paper and had them glue the blue scraps onto the white, covering as much of the white as possible. I had cut out sharks and little fish ahead of time. You could let them cut the sharks out, but with preschoolers we usually loose a fin or two when there are sharp corners like that. Gave them the sharks and fish to glue onto the paper. They loved it, purple glue sticks are so much fun :) and it was easy for all of them to do.

The other shark craft. A water color resist. I should have taken a picture of the older kiddos, but you draw/print a shark/sea life scene. Have the kids color it, really well, color white where you want white. Then let them paint with water colors over everything. Where you colored with crayon the watercolor won't stick. Kids love to paint, it was a hit and easy!