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Great Posts I Came Across This Week- September 25th

Child Related

 

Childhood 101 has a great post on creating Our Toddler-Friendly Sewing Basket. I have the shelf liner they use in their sewing basket. I may have to take it out on a shelf and try this activity with JDaniel.

 

I Needed to Read This

 

Gold in the Clouds has a wonderful post called Higher. It really reminded me about where my focus needs to be.

 

Recipes
Oh my! Sugar High has a recipe for Addictive Vanilla Caramel Corn that sounds great. I really need to try it soon.

 

Fun Posts
Kind of Matter has a free download for her Printable Thanksgiving Fortune Cookies. I think they could be used for lots of fall parties and events.

 

Away to Asheville-Alphabe Thursday: The Letter A

This weekend I am going to be spending my first night away from JDaniel since he was born to attend the Type A Conference in Asheville. I am really excited about getting away with my husband and meeting other bloggers. Yes, my husband is coming too. He won’t be attending the conference. He will be enjoying so downtime along with so couple time with me.
My sister Michelle and her two sons are coming from Atlanta to be JDaniel. He knows that they are coming. He is so excited about spending time with them. What they will do while they are here has been planned by him already. The children’s museum and McDonald’s are things his cousins will like according to him. He will love time with them no matter what they do. (My sister really wants to go to the zoo. He will love the zoo too.)
JDaniel doesn’t know that Mommy and Daddy are not going to be home for the visit. I have been avoiding telling him. By the time this post is up I will probably have mentioned it to him. When I talk about going away, I don’t think he understands what I am talking about. Mommy doesn’t go away. Daddy has had to visit with Nana several times this year overnight due to his father’s poor health and subsequent passing. Mommy hasn’t done it. Once I month when I go to a sorority meeting my husband puts JDaniel to bed. Bedtime rituals have been totally my job. I love doing the bedtime routine.
There are some of you that may go away for a weekend a few times a year to bond as a couple, attend a retreat, or deal with family things. I think that is wonderful. My sister Michelle has always done that. It is good to get some downtime. I just have never done it before.

I am sure JDaniel will have a great time with Aunt Michelle and his cousins. He may only make a scene when I leave for my benefit. He will be happy to see me come home so that he can tell me what he has done. I know will be true.

How I will fair is a different story. I have really looked forward to learning tons at the conference. My husband and I haven’t really had extended periods of time alone together unless JDaniel was asleep in two and half years. That will be wonderful.

It will be fine. Right?

6 Ways to Use Curious George Number Cards

I found some wonderful number cards on One Little Two, Two Little with Curious George on them. They are part of a totbook activity she developed. I brainstormed and came up with several ways to use them to introduce JDaniel to numbers and counting.

  1. Use chopsticks and noodles to count. JDaniel placed a noodle on each piece of fruit to work on one to one correspondence.

Curious George Number Card

2. Put the number cards in a plastic sleeve and cross them out while you count.

Curious George Math Five Activity
3. Place them on the floor and practice jumping or hopping the number times shown on the card.

Curious George Math Activity
4. Lay out the cards and match the right number to its picture representation.
Curious George Math Activity- Matching Numbers and Pictures
5. Select a number and search the house to find objects that are that number.

Curious George Math Activity- Matching Numbers and Pictures

6. Create a concentration game with the cards.

Curious George Math Activity- Number Concentration
What else could I do with these number cards?

 

A Isn’t B! I C!- Letter Knowledge

Outdoor Fun- Alphabet Watering
This is the last post in the literacy series I have been posting on Tuesdays. It will look at letter knowledge and helping your child see that each letter has a name and specific sound.

Birth to 2-Years Old

  • Help your baby or toddler see and feel different shapes as you play. Say, “The ball is round.”
  • Point out letters on toys, food boxes, books, and other objects around the house.

2 to 3-years old

  • Practice making letters from clay, finger paint, shaving cream, pudding, etc…
  • Write your child’s name in the creative ways, like in the air, in dirt or sand, or traced on their backs.
  • Keep magnetic letters on your refrigerator or foam letters in the tub.

4 to 5-years

  • Start every letter in a sentence with the sound of a particular letter.
  • Cut out pictures from magazines or catalogs that start with the letter you are learning.
  • Help your child write words that interest her using crayons, markers, or pencil on paper

How we work on letter knowledge at our house:

  • We look for letters all over.
  • I asked JDaniel to look for letters by using the letter sound. “Where is the letter that says ay?”
  • We have foam bathtub letters that can be used on the fridge when wet or in the tub.
  • Wooden letter puzzles are part of our puzzle collection.
  • We read lots of alphabet books
  • JDaniel has a laptop that works on letter recognition. (I got it at a consignment store for $6.)
  • I write letters all over the driveway and ask JDaniel to dump water from his watering can on the correct letter.

Places to find activities:

 

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Muffin Tin Monday- Shapes in a Sandwich

Muffin Tin Monday- Shape Lunch
JDaniel has enjoyed constructing his own sandwiches lately. I thought he would love to do it with the ingredients in this tin. He was even given a tin with heart-shaped muffin cups. I even made him some sandwich samples. He ate each piece individually. Why? I think it was because he can and he is two.

He had square and diamond-shaped bread, turkey in rectangles, cheese in triangles, apples in circles, and tomatoes in spheres.

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Being Two at the Beach is Wonderful!

Two at the Beach The beach in September is a wonderful place to be. We headed to Myrtle Beach last Sunday for five days. JDaniel had never been to the beach before. I had read him books about the beach and he had been given a set of sand toys by my mom to enjoy at the beach but wasn’t until last week that he actually gained firsthand knowledge of the beach.

We decided to take him to the beach in his street clothes Monday morning after breakfast in the hotel restaurant just so he could see it and maybe walk on the sand. That was a mistake. At first, he just sat at the bottom of the steps leading to the beach and pushed the sand around like he was a bulldozer. Then he ran straight for the water with my husband trailing behind and got drenched sneakers and all. After that, we started wearing our bathing suits for breakfast.

We quickly headed back to our room to change and layer on the sunblock. The sun was still really strong and would have left us beet red. Once we were properly prepared for the water, we headed back for hours of fun on the beach.

The second trip to the beach that the first morning leads to JDaniel’s discovery of shells. He found he loved them all. JDaniel would just start picking up shells whole or in pieces and place them in his bucket as he slowly followed the trail of shells left by the sea. He only made it about 12 feet along the beach before his bucket was full. There were too many shells to pick up and none could be left behind.

He also discovered a joy of sitting on the shore just where three or four inches of water would lap on him, his plastic dump truck or bucket, and his parents. His truck must have been filled with sand hundreds of times that first day. It didn’t seem to bother him that the sand was carried away by the ocean over and over again.

We usually headed in for lunch and then naptime at about twelve. I say headed because we usually ended up having to use the sand rinsing stations outdoor showers several times. JDaniel has found he loves showers now. Following the sand removal sessions, he loved to run around in the baby pool located right by our section of the hotel. We always stopped because it was on the way to the elevator. You just can’t walk by it.

Afternoons were filled with more time in the baby pool or an indoor pool. The hotel had inner tubes that JDaniel loved to play within both pools. I loved the times at the pool. After pool time I didn’t have to scour my son’s body looking for sand deposits. He seemed to get sand everywhere.

The days flew by. It seemed like we would get up in the morning to turn around only a few hours later and go to bed at night. To say JDaniel loved the beach and his time there would be an understatement. We can’t wait to see what he thinks of it next year.

Floating in an Inner tube

 

Great Posts of the Week- September 18th

Connecting with Other Bloggers

And Then There Were 4 hosts Surfin Saturday. Each week they feature a different type of social network follows. It could be Twitter, Networked Blog, etc.. You have the check each Saturday and see what they are featuring.

I Needed to Read This

In the hush of the moon has a great post called Beauty in Hard to See Spots. It really makes you think about all the beauty we see and walk by each day. You will love the pictures she has in this post.

Recipes

Lunchbox Limbo has a great bento box with a five senses theme. I love the rhyme she has to go with it.

The New Hampshire Nanny’s Pork and Apple Meatballs look so yummy. I haven’t been successful with meatballs, but I want to try these.

Child Related

The Imagination Tree has a post-Messy Play-Jelly. It looks like a fun activity, but there must have been jelly everywhere.

Yellow Mums has a great shape activity called Dinosaur Shape Activity. It is a really cute free download.

Mom Related

Sowing Dandelion Seeds has a terrific post on Counting Compliments. Did you know children do that?

 

Answers To Questions About JDaniel’s Teeth

As part of a Oral Health Media Tour, I was able to ask some questions of an expert on teeth care.

Please click, here to view the answers to my questions.

Disclaimer: I was asked to send in questions on children’s dental health and post the answers to the questions. I am not being compensated for this in anyway.