growing & learning with him
Steps:
“Aladdin,” she said to him, “was a young boy who was sent to search for a magic lamp in a dark and eerie cave. Once he found the lamp he realized that the man who had taken him to the cave was going to take the lovely jeweled lamp away from him. Aladdin knew that this special lamp maybe magic and he wanted the magic for himself so, he found a way to keep the lamp for himself.”
“Was it magic?” asked his mom.
“It was magic. Aladdin discovered that it contained a genie while trying to clean the lamp. In a puff of smoke the genie was released from the lamp,” his mother replied.
“What did the genie want?” the boy wanted to know.
“The genie was grateful to be free from the lamp and gave the boy three wishes. He could ask for anything and it would be his,” his mother told him.
“What did he wish for?” the boy asked.
“First he wished for food to eat. He and his mother didn’t have a lot of food. Next he wished gold plates and they were sold by his mom to get money for their family. Finally he wished to be with the one he would love and he married a wonderful princess,” his mom answered.
“I’m not tired. Can I have one more story?” the boy asked looking up at his mother with hopeful eyes.
“Yes, I have an even better story about someone who gave people more than three wishes that would be gone in a short time,” the mother said wrapping her arms around her son to cuddle him close.
“What was his name?” the boy wanted to know.
“We call him God. Remember how we pray to him at meal times and in the morning to start the day?” the mother asked him.
“Yes, we have to thank him for the things he is doing in our day and we can ask him for things too,” the boy responded.
“Well, God has told us in the Bible that we can ask him for things whenever we need them. He didn’t say that we could only ask for three wishes like Aladdin did,” the mother explained.
“He doesn’t answer every prayer the way we want him to the way the genie did,” the boy said adamantly.
“No, he doesn’t answer every prayer the way we want him to, but he does hear our prayers,” he mother answered slowing leaning her son back until his head hit the pillow.
“Thank goodness! If God were like the genie in Aladdin, we might end up with things that we wouldn’t want in a short time or things that we would want to change later. God seems to know what we need and when we need it,” the mother stated pulling the blue blanket her son favored up to his slowing dropping chin.
“Right now I think God thinks it would be best if I got a puppy,” the boy announced.
“Let’s pray about it,” his mother said slowing standing up and walking to the door of her son’s room silently praising God that a puppy hadn’t just appeared at the foot of her son’s bed.
We have toys tumbling out of crates, closets, and baskets at your house.
There more toys than one little boy can play with at our house. We have toys for small children and toys for school age children JDaniel isn’t old enough to play with.
Every time we get a box of hand me downs from my sister Kate or my sister Michelle comes to visit we get more toys. I hate to say no to them. JDaniel will grow into the toys for older children eventually. The age appropriate toys always look like fun.
I am just running out of room for toys. If you could look into my closets and under our beds you would find toys stashed away.
Some of these toys are things JDaniel has outgrown but, still likes to play with every now and then some as little as once a month. Yes, those I should let go.
I have a wonderful idea for those extra toys. It will help you sort through all toys you have and do something special with them.
Stay tuned next month to read my Genius Tip on how I beat this challenge!
Recently I was blessed to get to talk to her on the phone. It was such fun to hear her children playing in the background and to chat about our blogs and families.
Quirky Momma’s take on the phrase Pause Life for a Moment is share with us a fun learning activity to do at the table with your children. She kept the ideas for this activity in a jar by the table.
As a mom of four kiddos, three of which are preschoolers, meal times at our house are chaotic, at best. While talking to the kids doesn’t make the rush to spoon-feed a hungry baby while filing kiddos cups any easier, it does engage my preschoolers so they aren’t fighting over who got which plate or who is kicking who under the table and it lets me intentionally use the time we are together as a family to learn more about my kids, their day, their likes and dislikes. Maybe these dinner time conversation starters will help give you enough time to have Daddy chat with the kiddos. Thanks to my facebook fans,I was able to come up with 99 different conversation starters including:
How many animal noises can you make?
Who can count the highest?
How many hugs do you need each day?
Along with many more questions to help you as a parent intentionally get-to-know your kids and help your kids not remember the pre-dinner time as chaos but instead treasure the joy of talking to you, their parents.
Do you have any tips or ideas of ways to engage your kids and limit the chaos in your lives? Leave a comment with your tip!
Instead of filling his basket with sugar I am going to try an alternative idea. The plan is to give them this bunny shaped deviled egg tray of eggs with healthy snacks. (Least you protest he must have something sweet. He will also be getting a small chocolate bunny from my mom along with a Curious George DVD, and a small plastic bunny game.)
I found a bunch of health organic snacks at Whole Foods to fill his eggs with. I found Honey and Chocolate Grahams from Annie’s Home Grown, Annie’s Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks, and Barabara’s Oatmeal Snackables in animal shapes, and an organic fruit strip (not pictured in the tray).
Oh! Please think about joining the 
that The Activity Mom and I was hosting this week. Here is the box JDaniel and I put together for an activity we are doing for this Friday’s Read.Explore.Learn post.
We are so excited about getting to see the projects you have created! There were so many ways to approach this challenge. We have no doubt that each of your creations will be unique and special.
Here are the Tissue Box Challenge Rules:
What are the prizes?
The first prize winner will receive a learning kit from Time for Tots.
The second and third prize winners will win book collections from Tiger Tales Books.
Please link you creation below!
Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! 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 the ways you have learned with and explored books.
Steps:
Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.
Counting
I yearn when I see sensory tubs on sites like Counting Coconuts and Totally Tots to create them for JDaniel. The moms add all kinds of wonderful thematic objects for their children to explore to household items like rice, sand or dry beans. There are Easter and spring related tubs all over the learning blogs right now.
JDaniel loves to dig and explore. He would love to find hidden objects in a bin I thought when I first discovered them. I decided I really had to make him one so I did.
I gathered rice and a few object to hide in the bin. Following the directions about sensory bin play I placed a tablecloth under the bin and declared to JDaniel that his was the area the rice would need to stay in. It was okay if it came out of the bin, but it needed to stay on the cloth. The other moms said this would keep the mess in one area.
Someone forgot to mention that my son would think it was fun to see how faraway the rice could get from the tablecloth before his mom announced it was time to put the bin away. The activity wasn’t supposed to be stress out mom and it get rid of the bin it was supposed to be enjoy exploring it.
I decided I needed to rethink this idea. Maybe larger objects would be better. I wouldn’t be stressed out about all the rice I kept finding all over the kitchen for days and JDaniel would get to take part in this wonderful learning opportunity that children across the web seemed to enjoy.
Before I could plan a bin, JDaniel got a hold of birdseed I had placed in a plastic tub with some vases while cleaning out the space under the kitchen sink. He had a wonderful time with the birdseed. It went everywhere including into the vases. Pouring is a basic life skill. He was learning something I thought as I scrubbed under the sink trying to ignore the pinging of the birdseed across the tile floor. I was reminded when I finished under the sink that sweeping is a life skill I will continue to get a lot of practice at.
I finally planned a tub using noodles in the bin and some scoops and construction equipment. He loves construction equipment! I decided noodles were big enough objects to find and clean up. JDaniel played with it a little. He didn’t really get interested in it until his friend Bryce came over and decided he liked it. Maybe playing in tubs just isn’t his thing.
This has led me to an epiphany. I want to be a relaxed mom that doesn’t break into a sweat when I find rice, birdseed and noodles all over the kitchen, but I probably am not that mom. Sensory tubs just stress me out.
I am going to keeping trying to work on this quirk in my personality. It may require playing classical music in the background while sipping on a tall glass of sweet tea to do it, but I do want to be able to have JDaniel enjoy super messy activities and not worry about the clean up.
