Deirdre, Author at JDaniel4s Mom

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Hugless Douglas

July 29, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to week four of the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge- July Edition! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Remember each post you link up counts as an entry in the the July edition of the Summer Reading Challenge. One post linked up to Read.Explore.Learn during the month of July will selected to win a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card. I will select the July winner and announce them next Friday

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

Almost every night Jdaniel crawls out of bed and stands on the stair with his arms outstretched. “Mama, I need a hug!” he declares. I give him a hug and walk with him back upstairs.

Hugless Douglas wakes up in the spring needing a hug. After getting dressed to seek a hug, Douglass finds something big to hug. The rock he finds is too heavy. Then he looks for something big and tall to hug. The tree he finds gives him splinters. He looks for something comfy to hug and he finds a bush. The bush is filled with sheep that don’t want to be hugged.

After much trying on his own, he asks an owl for help. He even tries to hug the owl. The owl doesn’t want a hug either. He finds a rabbit and tries to hug him. The rabbit doesn’t want a hug, but he know someone that does want Douglas’ hug. The rabbit leads him to cave that was his mama’s winter home.

In the cave Douglas finds the perfect person to hug. His mama loves his hugs. She even hugs him back.

We love this story by David Melling. The pictures are filled with humorous animals reactions to being hugged. The owl covered in band aids is so silly. This warm book makes you want to reach out and hug someone you love.

What did we do?

Card Making

We made two special ladies cards this week to let them know that they are special. My mom will be seventy one next week so, we made her a birthday card. I love that he has eyes or are they ears. One way or another I love details in this picture.

My friend Elizabeth’s mom is not doing well at all. She asked if I would send her a note. I was more than happy to write her a note and include a lovely card from JDaniel.

I hope both ladies enjoy their cards. If you get a minute and would like to lift up a prayer for Mrs. Showalter, I am sure Elizabeth and her family would love it.

Disclaimer: I was sent this book to review by Tiger Tales Books.

Over Near the Tree Sits a Memory

July 27, 2011 By Deirdre

Mary Lee sat on her favorite white rocker watching the day turn to dusk. Her grey curls has begun to hung down low on her forehead. The summer air was still warm. The temperature earlier in the day had been hot and steamy.

Beside sat Frank her husband of fifty years. He had starting to doze in his rocker. Mary Lee loved to listen to the crickets chipping and Frank’s light snore fill the air around her.

She loved this time of day when things slowed down and she could just remember.

Mary Lee had such wonderful things to remember.

She and Frank had met in college. He was football player and she was the math tutor that helped him pass the required math classes for his major. Frank was actually a very good student. He just needed someone to go over things with him a few times. Frank loved to say that had met over the pluses and minuses.

After college they had gotten married and moved to Simpsonville, South Carolina. It was a small factory town. Frank had gotten a job in the business office of one of the factories and Mary Lee had worked as a bookkeeper for the local elementary school.

They had lived in a small house and saved money for several years to move to this big old Victorian on main street. On Sunday nights they had walked by this house and dreamed it would one day be theirs.

Mary Lee had fretted about the train tracks that lay only 100 yards away. Would it be a dangerous place to raises the children they would have? Frank had assured her that the picket fence around the house would be a deterrent and the backyard is where their children would want to be to play ball and chase butterflies.

Chiildren came quickly once they had moved into their dream house. First Sarah arrived and then Martha. They had hope for a boy too, but God closed that door and they had just the two girls.

Sarah and Martha had become their world. Mary Lee stayed home to raise them. She loved taking care of them.

On laundry day she enjoyed hanging their little dresses up on the clothes line in the backyard. The girls loved to grab onto the drying clothes and spin the circular clothes line around and around.

There had been many hours of creating special cookies and pies for dinner along with tiny cookie bites or fruit tarts made with the leftover dough.

The girls had loved to ride their bikes and trikes all over the yard. One would have thought the hard Carolina dirt and lumpy grass would have been hard for them to ride on, but it hadn’t held them back.

Mary Lee slowed her rocking and shock her head sadly remembering how quickly time has passed.

It seemed to her one fall that the girls had been in elementary school and by spring they were all grown up and beginning families of their own. How that had happened? Mary Lee couldn’t recall. It seemed like they went from little girls to ladies in mere minutes.

Each of the girls had stayed in town. They lived with their husbands and children not faraway. Mary Lee and Frank saw them often.

Mary Lee loved being a grandmother. She loved getting to see her girls as moms. They were wonderful moms.

Rocked slowly back and forth again. Mary Lee glanced across the yard at a tricycle covered in green by the tree near the front gate. One of the girls and forgotten to put it away one night and there is had stayed.

Frank had offered to take it out of the green tangle that surrounded it and Mary Lee had insisted that it stay. When he had asked her about it ,she had replied that it was a lesson. Frank had wanted to know about the lesson the tricycle had taught her. He loved to listen to her share her thoughts.

“The lesson,” she replied, “is that time is fleeting. You need to enjoy each moment and cherish each memory. That tricycle reminds me of our girls when they were little and loved to ride. It makes try to guess what must have caught their attention and drew them away from it and on to something else. It reminds me that for a time the white picket fence contained their whole world and they couldn’t bike beyond it.

Frank had a tear drop slowly from his eye after she shared the tricycles importance and agree that it needed to stay right where it was.

Mary Lee now wiped at tear from her eye. What a wonderful memories she had to think back on! What a wonderful lessons she had learned from them

End Note:

We walked a house on the 4^th of July and I snapped a picture of this tricycle tangled near the tree. I had know ideas what story I would be able to weave based on it. I just knew there was one. It took most of this month to find Mary Lee and glean what reason there might have been for tricycle to be there.

I have no idea who lives in this house or why the tricycle is there. I am thankful that it was. I have loved getting to know Mary Lee and her story this month.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

Pause Life for a Moment-Little Bit Quirky

July 26, 2011 By Deirdre

I love visiting Little Bit Quirky’s blog . I try to get there more than once a week, but I always read her post of Thursday. She is one of Mrs. Matlock Alphabe’s students. It was through Mrs. Matlock that I first found her site.

Little Bit Quirky writes about her life as the mom of a wonderful young lady with autism. She is a valiant supporter of her daughter and seeker of what will be the best for her.

Below she questions why I asked her to write a Pause Life for a Moment. Here are some of the reasons:

1. She is a wonderful writer. Her words flow.

2. She is a mom I would love to sit down and chat with about life. I think she would have a lot to teach me. She already makes me pause for a moment and think about what is best for JDaniel.

3. She is so real in the way she writes. I wanted you to get to read her words and get to know her.

JDaniel4’s Mom asked me to write a post about how I take small moments to keep my sanity in this crazy life we call motherhood.

My first thought was, “Write a guest post? Is she insane? Who has the time? I can barely hobble together posts for my own blog!”

The truth is, I only have one child, who is now 7 and has been going to school full-time. She has Asperger’s, so I chauffeur her around to her speech and social skills appointments after school. I had more free time than I knew what to do with!

Because of this, I took a part-time job that allowed me to work while my daughter was in school, but be with her after school to be sure she does her homework correctly, arrange play dates, and take her to her appointments.

While I love working again, I have no “me-time” anymore. None. Zilch. Nada.

Why did JDaniel4’s Mom ask me to write a post on this topic? I’m so not the person to be doing this!

Anyway, over the summer, my daughter is attending camp 4 days a week. She stays home on Tuesdays because she has her speech therapy and her social skills class scheduled for that day. It’s the one day I don’t make the 2-hour commute (round-trip) to work. I don’t even work for the most part on Tuesdays! We use this day to sleep in and live life at a slower pace. It’s nice to have a day where we don’t have to run around non-stop like crazy, headless chickens!

Another interesting thing happened. On one of these Tuesdays, my daughter had an opportunity to play with a couple of sisters she’s never met before. In order to accommodate the long play date, I had to cancel her speech therapy. The play date was loads of fun, and my daughter had much better social interaction than she would have in speech therapy.

We did go to her social skills class. Interestingly enough, the behaviorist pulled me aside after class to tell me that my daughter did an amazing job in class. She had never seen her do such high-level communication skills such as read her peers’ body language to determine if they were listening to her, then change her approach to get her peers’ attention. The behaviorist was floored!

Me? I really thought the 6-hour play date had a huge influence on my daughter’s success in her social skills class.

Sometimes, slowing life down a bit can bring great developmental leaps!

Please stop by Little Bit Quirky and read more of her wonderful words.

Muffin Tin Monday- Brunch on a Stick

July 25, 2011 By Deirdre

I am been asking other bloggers to share their recipes with me this summer. I promised to feature them in one of JDaniel’s muffin tin meals. I had three bloggers share their recipes. Two of the recipes have been featured already. The other will be featured next week. Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas shared an idea rather than a recipe with me. Her idea was to spell Jdaniel’s name in French toast. I only have large letters in cookie cutters. The amount of French toast is would take to spell his name would be more than he would probably eat.

I decided to take her idea of French toast and search Pinterest to see what recipes came up. French toast on a stick stood out to me among the rest of the ideas I found. I had previously found a pasta salad on a stick recipe on Pinterest and pinned it to one of my boards on the site.

That gave me two meal ideas on a stick. Both ideas could be served at a brunch or a lunch. Voila! Brunch on a stick became the theme for this week’s tin.

JDaniel has fruit with French toast served on a coffee stirrer rather than a real stick. The pasta salad on a stick is made of cold cheese ravoli, pepperoni, and grape tomatoes.

There is a cup of syrup and a cup of Vidalia onion salad dressing and a cookie in the second row.

You may be asking what is Pinterest? It is a booking site that allows you to bookmark links you love and displays them on small boards. The boards are like bulletin boards. You can set up board for specific areas of interest. I have a board for Muffin Tin Monday Ideas and one for Read.Explore.Learn. Ideas.

‘

If you are interested in joining Pinterest, please let me know. It is by invitation only right now, but I can give you an invite.

I would still love to try some of your recipes! If you have one you want me to try, please include the link to it below.

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.

Eating the Eifel Tower

July 23, 2011 By Deirdre

Last Saturday JDaniel and I headed to the French Celebration in Fountain Inn ,South Carolina. The celebration was in honor of Bastille Day which was earlier in the week.

JDaniel noticed the giant Eifel Tower in front of the festival right away. He loved that he could walk right under its arches.

We then moved to the food area inside the building. They were serving coffee and but, what really caught Jdaniel’s attention was the Skittles Eifel Tower project set out for kids to work on. At first he didn’t realize that Skittles were candy and he just placed them on the outline. Then some other children came over and one of them announced that Skittles were their favorite candy. JDaniel’s ears heard the word candy and suddenly he became less interested in the building on to the design.

There was also a display of children’s book on a table with an accordion. JDaniel loved playing the accordion. I am not sure the other people that came in for coffee and a pastry were really into his musical presentation.

A lovely lady with samples of various vinegars and oils was also in the food area. We really enjoyed trying out some of them. She mentioned that she gives tours in her shop and would love for us to come by. I think we will be going. It will be fun to see her shop and try more of her products. She said that they serve ice cream with some her products at the end of the tour.

Our final stop at the festival was the French Dog Parade. We watched stuffed dogs, little dogs and big dogs cross the stage with their owners. JDaniel loved sitting in the front row and clapping for the participants as they marched by.

Read.Explore.Learn.-Dressing Up with Books

July 22, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to week three of the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge- July Edition! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

It has been really hot here in South Carolina. We have spent a lot of time in the house playing and reading this week.

The books I selected to share this week are about pretend play. Jdaniel has been pretend playing for awhile. He has a shelf in the pantry for his grocery store. The couch cushions have been used to make forts, an ambulance, a consignment sale area, library shelves and more.

When I came across No More Cookies by Paeony Lewis and Lola Loves Stories by Anna McQuinn, the main characters reminded me of my little pretender.

No More Cookies is about a little girl and her stuffer monkey who inhale a tin of cookies. Mom tell Florence and Arnold that there will be no more cookies for the week. Florence is shocked. She loves cookies. All she will really need is one more.

Florence and Arnold devise plans to get cookies from Mom.

First they dress up as tooth fairies that need a cookie before they fly home after a night of teeth collecting. Mom gives them apples instead. Which isn’t fair!

Then they dress up as witches and threaten to turn Mom into a frog. Mom loves the idea. Frogs don’t have to do laundry.

Arnold is dressed as a patient who has been in an accident and Florence dresses as a nurse. Mom gives Arnold a bandage.

Finally Florence and Arnold dress up as chefs. Mom still says, “No cookies.” She does suggest making chocolate covered bananas with sprinkles.

Florence decides that they are better than cookies.

Lola Loves Stories is a wonderful tale of a little girl who totally gets into the books she gets at the library to read with her dad.

They read a book about princesses and the next day she dresses as a princess.

Then she and her mom read a book about a journey and the next day Lola pretends to fly her stuffed animals to a foreign land.

She reads a story about friends and the next day she has her friend Ben over for tea.

The story continues with Lola pretending to be a farmer, a tiger, a builder, the owner of magic shoes and Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

I love the imaginations that both Lola and Florence have. They find ways to pretend to be such a wide array of things.

What did we do?

Kids’ Meal Toy Animal Game

JDaniel got this toy in a kids’s meal over the weekend. When you push the button the name of an animal will appear in the window. JDaniel can’t read, but he can tell us the first letter on the animal when it is his turn to select an animal for us to act out.

We played this game in the car on the way back from my mother in laws in Georgia. It was such fun to make noises and flap our arms around as we pretended to be the animals.

Decorating a Robot with Junk for the Craft Drawers

JDaniel loves to go through the craft junk drawers and search for treasures. We used some of the treasures to dress up a robot.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Play .

Needle Nosed Pliers Were the Right Tool!

July 20, 2011 By Deirdre

When you are doing yard work, you need to right set of tools. It is only through the vast experience you have working on your Cozy Coupe and watching your father do work on the house that you learn about the right tools to use. You will still need to bring your tools out of the garage and sort through them to make the right choice.

Once you have selected the needle nose pliers as the right tool, you have to get down low and get to work. The pliers will need to be aligned with the bottom of the weeds instead of the top. If you try to pull them from the top the pliers will slip of and the weed will remain.

You may even have to stand up slowly from your low squat to give yourself some leverage. Your arms and legs working together can help you yank the weed out by its roots.

There are other times when you have to wretch the pliers into the dirt to loosen the weed from it. It requires that the pliers are dragged in a circle to create a moat around the weed.

When a really tough weed is loosen and deposited in the pail your father has given you, you may choose to celebrate by taking a clump of dirt over to your worms in their compost box. They will probably want to celebrate youy achievement with you.

Pause Life for a Moment- My Thoughts on Fear and Swimming

July 19, 2011 By Deirdre

I sat against the wall in the pool area watching JDaniel participate in his first big kid swimming class last week. We had take the Mommy and Me class when he was about one. Now he declared he didn’t need me. He was one of the big kids.

He maybe one of the big kids in the age 2-4 swimming class, but he also one of the most fearful of the water. I am not sure why he is afraid of it. I have a fear of water, but I have tried really hard not to pass it on to me.

I don’t fear water totally. I just fear having it in my eyes and ears. It first filled me when I was sent tumbling in waves at the beach when I was little. It interfered with my learning to swim well in Girl Scout Camp as a 3^rd, 4^th , and 5^th grader. I would try to learn to swim identifiable strokes. By the end of camp as a 5^th grader could identify my elementary backstroke but the other strokes continued to allude me.

I ended up having to take a swimming class in college . The teacher’s college I attended required you pass a swimming test to graduate. You had to dive in and perform four identifiable strokes . I passed the test given at the end of the class, but only because they counted the froglike cannonball I performed as a dive. After a semester of practicing I had finally learned those four strokes.

Now I sat watching my little guy fussing at the instructor when she pried his hands away from the wall to practice making ice cream scoop hands while she held him like a football at her side. He was supposed to be trying to kick that the same time, but it was hard to scoop, kick and fuss at the same time.

When he was returned to the wall he was supposed to practice kicking while facing the wall. Every now and then one little foot would lift high enough to create a small splash in the water. The other children had tsunamis flowing from the wakes of their kicks. JDaniel never seemed to notice them.

I wanted to jump up and encourage him. I wanted to praise the tiny kicks and challenge him to create big splashes , but I remained by the wall. It wasn’t time for me to teach him. He needed to learn from his swim teachers and the other children around him.

As class wore on they shifted from stroking and kicking on their bellies to lying of their backs when it was their turn with the instructor.

JDaniel struggled to trust that the teacher would hold on to him. He would pull his head up and try to twist onto his belly. The patient teacher would turn him back over and carefully pull his head back. While I am sure she wanted him to kick, she slowly glided his still tense body around the pool encouraging him to relax.

When he once again return to the wall, he would look towards me and I would give him virtual high fives and thumbs up. I wanted to him to know I acknowledge the small victory he had achieved by laying in the teacher’s arms and relaxing if only for a few minutes.

During JDaniel’s time in the pool I had a chance to pause and think about this fear of water that I have and the other fears that I have carried at various times in my life. They are just like JDaniel learning to float on his back. He tries to hand over the fear to the teacher and trust that she will keep him safe, but he can’t completely. He ends up with one arm wrapped around the teacher’s neck. He ends up trusting himself and the his ability to hold on tight to her.

I hope for his sake and for mine that we can both let go of this fear and the others that come up in life. I hope we will trust that we will make it through them and be able to let them float away.

I am linking this post to Pour Your Heart Out on Things I Can’t Say!

Muffin Tin Monday on Sunday- National Ice Cream Day

July 17, 2011 By Deirdre

Today is National Ice Cream Day! Today’s muffin tin is filled with frozen treats! There is an ice cream cone toasted cheese sandwich, scoops of grape tomatoes, frozen banana pureed with a blueberry (see recipe below), breaded chicken, a cupcake with created with cake mix and melted raspberry sherbet (see recipe below), and frozen grapes.

National Ice Cream Day Muffin Tin Lunch

JDaniel ate everything! The cupcake did disappear first! The frozen banana went second. The chicken went last.

He thought the ice cream cheese sandwich was really cute! I just love it when he digs into lunch! I don’t know if it loved that it was National Ice Cream Day or the fun foods he liked best.

We love ice cream at our house. We couldn’t let the holiday slip by uncelebrated.

Frozen Banana Puree

Ingredient

3 bananas

Directions:

1. Freeze bananas for about 3 hours.

2. Take the peel off the bananas.

3. Slice them into chunks one to two-inch chunks

4. Puree the bananas in a blender.

5. Pour banana puree into a freezer container.

6. Return to freezer for 2 hours.

7. Eat with a spoon from a muffin tin lunch or as a cool treat.

Ice Cream Cupcakes

Ingredients

1 Orange Supreme cake mix or mix of your choice
3 eggs
1 1/3 cups of melted raspberry sherbet or ice cream of you choice

Directions:

1. Mix the ingredients together.

2. Pour the batter into cupcake cups.

3. Bake according to the directions on the cake mix package.

4. Eat along with a muffin tin lunch or on its own.

If you like this food creation, here are some more muffin tin meals and bento lunches you will love serving to your kids.

Apple Chicken Salad Bento Lunch

Lunch Ideas with LEGO

Pirate Bento

Minion Lunch with Blueberry Overalls

Star Wars Food Creations for Kids

Flower Themed Bento

Bento Lunch with Cracker Sandwiches

Summer Sunshine Bento Lunch

What is your favorite kind of ice cream?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Counting Chickens, Ducks and Marbles

July 15, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to week two of the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge- July Edition! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

JDaniel can count to ten on his fingers and loves to count objects. I thought we would look for a book on counting to feature this week.

The book I found at the library is called the The Missing Chick by Valieri Gorbachev. It is a fun story about a wayward chick and the lengths his mom will go to when she thinks he is lost.

At first Mother Hen didn’t know the little chick was lost. She was busy hanging laundry and watching her other six chicks to notice.

When Mrs. Duck stops by to chat, she points out that there are only six chicks.

Mother Hen searches in her house without finding him.

She get neighbors, the police, the firefighters, a helicopter, and no one can find the chick.

Finally Mrs. Duck notices something moving in the laundry basket. Can you guess who it was? Yes it was the little chick. He had fallen asleep.

Mother Hen is so happy to have her little one back.

The little chick promises he won’t get lost again, but before the story can end he is sleep on the clothes line and his mother is heading back into the house with his siblings.

While the one little chick stays hidden until the end of the book, JDaniel and I had fun counting the six little chicks that appeared on most of the pages for and over again.

What did we do?

Counting Marbles

During the speed dating session at the Type A Parent Conference, I met the wonderful people from Marble Jar. They have created an application for iPads and iPhones that allows you to designate a jar for a certain area of growth or goal and decide how many marbles can be added to the jar when a behavior is exhibited that a part of that goal or area of growth.

I have heard to real jars with real marbles for goal setting. The beauty of this program is that it makes the jar mobile. You don’t have to wait to get home to add a marble to the jar.

JDaniel and I set up a jar for successful potty training events and have been adding marbles to the jar when he has done them.

He really enjoys just adding marbles to the jar and counting them. So, we do. We created a few jars just to add marbles to and count.

Counting Ducks

We don’t have any chicken to count, but we do have ducks. I took out the Valentine’s Day ducks to count on the measuring tape. We put one duck on each number starting with one and then counted how many ducks we had.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Play .