Valentine Special

To a lot of people Valentine's Day is a day to splurge on roses, teddy bears, and chocolate, but in this house we do it differently. You aren't going to find expensive gift ideas here. What you are going to find is a way to show your love through thoughtful creativity, and nature. 

I set up this sweet invitation to create on our table. I laid a large piece on contact paper down going from one end of our table to the other. I had bought an inexpensive bouquet of flowers, that I pulled apart and set out in bowls for everyone to use. Then I wrote the word LOVE with flower pieces to get them started. 

Each child spent time decorating the table with words and symbols. They spelled out mom, dad, made hearts, flowers, and designs. We used this beautiful natural masterpiece as our table runner during dinner. It was a hundred times better than any bouquet could have been. So remember this Valentine's day be creative, and think about all of the beautiful things around you in nature that can be used. 

Are you ready for some other Valentine ideas? I hope so! You will want to check out:

• Surprise Your Valentine Giveaway
• A Valentine Surprise Giveaway that You Will Love
• 5 Simple Valentine Gifts for the Mom With Young Kids
• Splurge on a Romantic Dinner at Home and a Giveaway
• Surprise Your Valentine with Fabulous Gluten-Free Treats
• How to Surprise your Tech Savvy Valentine
• Tips for a Frugal Valentine's Day
• The Ultimate Valentine Surprise
• Valentine Giveaway Fairies to the Rescue
• 50 Fun Date Ideas
• Romantic Winds are Blowing Your Way for Valentine's Day

 

Montessori Valentine's Activities for Toddler's

Get ready for a whole lot of pink. hehe!! 

I can't help it pink is my favorite color and when it is getting close to Valentine's Day, I get a little pink crazy. I hope you like pink, and I hope you enjoy our Toddler Valentines activities. 

This is our Valentines table, I set it up when Baby Bell was taking her afternoon nap. I wanted it to be a nice surprise when she woke up. Like most toddlers she loves activities, and learning new things. So I tried to incorporate several different things that are good for a toddler to work on. Sensory, fine motor skills, listening skills, and more. So here you will see building blocks, a felt board and hearts, Valentine play dough, story stones, transferring pom poms, her color pegs, and flower arranging. She loved it all from the minute she saw the table.

These peg dolls I made for her for color recognition and play. For the next couple of weeks as you can probably tell, we are working on Pink and Red. 

The story stones I thought would be fun, since they are very simple. Most contain a picture she can look at or one word, what I do (since she isn't really talking yet) is we look at a stone and I tell her a short story (a few sentences) that has to do with the picture she is holding. If you have an older child that is talking then they can tell you a story about their rock. It is so much fun and really helps the child to use their imagination. If you would like to make your own story stones head over to My Little Bookcase for the easy directions and check out her amazing blog.   

Bells loved her heart shaped play dough, I used my homemade recipe and added a little raspberry extract for smell. The perfect Valentine touch, I thought. In the end all of the hearts were balled up, but that's okay, this was just for her to get those finger muscles working. 

 Working on Transferring pom pom balls was one of her favorite activities. She has been working on this for days, she really enjoys transferring anything.
Of course for pink week I had to put Bells in pink princess clothes. I can't help myself ;)

Flower arranging is considered a practical life activity or lesson in the Montessori education, however I truly believe each child can benefit from arranging flowers. For Bells I wanted to use something sturdy that wouldn't tip over as she was putting her flowers in. So I choose to use a mason jar, I hole punched the lid about 10 times for the holes and added water. Then Little B showed Bells how to take the flowers one by one and place them into a hole.

This was Miss Bells favorite activity of the week. She loves the pretty flowers and she did a great job arranging them.
Don't forget to let your children stop and smell the flowers. Life should not be rushed through, we could all learn from the children by taking time to enjoy the things around us.
Be sure to come back for part 2. It ended with a big surprise to momma.

 

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Homeschooling Room Tour for 2014

I seem to be changing our schooling room around a lot these days. About every six months it seems it's time for a change and that's because our family is changing. The biggest change for us this year is we now have a toddler. As I'm sure most of you know, when your sweet little baby becomes a curious toddler, things definitely change. I try to embrace those changes and adapt our living and schooling space to benefit the children in the stage they are in. Today I am sharing our homeschooling room with you. I hope you enjoy your tour. 

 "Receive the children with reverence, educate them with love, let them go forth in freedom."
- Rudolf Steiner

Looking into the room, you will see,

a perfect place for you and me.

The low shelves hold some of Baby Bells weekly activities.To the left you will see her floor mat and play silks , in the middle she has a new wooden puzzle, and this week we have been working/playing with farm animals. So I added our schleich horses and a few toddler touch and feel books. We also are blessed to have this amazing doll house from Elves & Angels. The children have spent hours playing with it already.

This is our comfy reading corner. The kids LOVE to lay here and read. I keep a basket of Toddler books on the floor for Ms Bell to easily get to. We also have a new Pottery Barn Kids anywhere chair to sit in.
If you are wondering about the posters and maps above you can get all of the information about them here.

A child size table is so important to any schooling or play room. This is the Large Caroline table from Pottery Barn Kids, however I have seen many great quality wood tables from some of my favorite stores..

It is so important to have good quality, natural, open ended toys. Let their imaginations flourish while they build and play. The toys you see here were made by me.

We love our baby dolls!!!
 These are some of the baby dolls in our house.Waldorf doll makers put such heart into making their dolls with quality natural materials, and they each have their own dolly personality. Perfect for those of us that love dolly play. The sweetest baby doll of them all is the one on the right, she's mine :)

These are things you'll see around our room. First is our little teacup Yorkie Peanut, he's always nearby.
The fabulous Barn you see here was the big Christmas gift of the year, and it's also from Elves & Angels  As you can probably tell, Elves & Angels is is one of our favorite stores.
The Grimms Rainbow and hand kite are also favorites.

The bookcases seen in our room are the Carolina bookcases from Pottery Barn Kids. I love them, and if I had more room, I'd probably get more bookcases :) I use lot's of  baskets to help keep things organized.

I love having a kitchen in our space. The boys have always loved playing store and we incorporate it into our everyday learning and play. Unfortunately they are no longer making this farmers market, however I highly recommend getting an Elves & Angels kitchen. We have their Julianna's kitchen and love it.  

We love nature and I feel it's very important to bring nature into your learning space. Every month or so I change around our nature table. This is part of our Winter table. You can see some of our other Nature set up's here and here.

My favorite reading chair is right by the windows. It is so nice to relax there and read with the kids. 

This is what you see as you are looking at the back of the room. (bookcases are below) 

Above the windows are our bird counting cards they are so sweet and I felt they were perfect for our room. We love Eeboo products.

This is how the left side of the room looks as you are walking in.

Little B's Treehaus castle blocks, Stringing beads, and wooden peg dolls are set out to play with for the week.

Looking straight in from the dining room

This is what you see as you look into the room towards the end of the day. 

I feel so blessed when I see the sun shinning in, all of the colors dancing around the room, and the laughter from my children in the background.  

I hope you enjoyed your tour. 

Feel free to visit us anytime, we love visitors.

If you would like to see the changes our room has gone through in the past year, you can see them here and here.

Visit Natural Beach Living's profile on Pinterest.

Teaching Toddlers through Purposeful Play

Today Karyn from Teach Beside Me has invited me over to her fabulous blog. 

Please join me over there, for a special look inside our day while incorporating purposeful play.

 Fun colorful toddler play 

Teach Beside Me

Arctic and Antarctica Frozen Foam Dough

It's January, which means for us it's winter time and cold outside. So what better time to learn about the Arctic and Antarctica with frozen foam dough then now? This was Awesome and the kids learned a lot while they played with this freezing cold dough. 

How do you make Frozen foam dough you ask? 

It's easy, I used a 12 oz box of corn starch, and a 10 oz bottle of shaving cream. 

Mix it up gently, put it in the freezer for a few hours, until it sets. (Our's puffed up some and looked liked frozen whipped cream). Don't eat this batch though, it is NOT edible.    

Along with the fabulous frozen foam dough I added the Safari Arctic Toob miniatures to go with our theme.

Let's explore the Arctic and Antarctica calendar cards from 1+1+1=1 were just what I needed to take our sensory play learning to the next level. We read through the cards and learned a lot of great facts about the Arctic and Antarctica. We spent time in front of our world make and discussed where these places were. The boys taught little B about North, East, South, and West- other wise known as Nobody Eat's Soggy Waffles. (wink) 

Then they played. It was very cold, but they they didn't mind. In fact they loved it. 

It lasted for a couple of hours and then mom was ready to clean up. Thankfully 95% of the dough stayed in the container.  

The next day we finished off our Arctic learning with a few other books and learning activities. 

We studied the animals from Antarctica and used several of the links from Mama of Many Blessings . I just love her Antarctica continent box and knew it would come in handy. I hope you have a chance to explore the Arctic and Antarctica with your own frozen foam dough one day.
But until then, check out how the other co-hosts explored foam dough and make sure to follow me on Pinterest, where I am always pinning great learning activities.
Visit Natural Beach Living's profile on Pinterest.

Meet the Co-hosts

Lemon Lime Adventures~
Look! We're Learning!~
Glittering Muffins~
Still Playing School~
Little Bins for Little Hands!~
Natural Beach Living~
The Eyes of a Boy~
Powerful Mothering~
  Wildflower Ramblings!~
I Heart Crafty Things~
Delightful Learning
The Life of Jennifer Dawn

• Share family-friendly posts related to the month's theme. Feel free to link old or new posts that highlight your favorite recipes for sensory dough. Failures and unsuccessful attempts are welcome.

• We ask that no posts are linked with copy/paste recipes from other sources. If you use a recipe from another source, please link back to the original recipe.

• By linking up, you give permission to share your post and one photograph in future posts and through social media channels.

• Visit 2-3 other posts that others have shared. Discover new ideas and meet new friends!

The linky will remain open for two weeks. On the 12th of each month, all co-hosts will post a new dough with their spin, highlighting at least one post from the month before and pin each post to the 12 Months of Sensory Dough Board.

Top 10 Unit studies from 2013

Going back through this past year, I love seeing the progress in the children and all of the fabulous things we have learned about. 

Here is a peek into our homeschooling year with our
Top 10 Unit Studies.. 

We learned all about Endangered Species and Global Warming, working with amazing Montessori cards, and had a fabulous Sensory play. Find our study here.

We Explored Egypt in depth

We learned all about the Solar System Part 1 and Part 2, plus had fun snacking on the planets.

We learned the Phases of the Moon and enjoyed all of our nights outside.

We studied Shells and visited the largest sea shell store on the East Coast.

One of my all time favorites, amazing facts about Seahorses and made art just like the Eric Carle books.

We celebrated Earth Day and began our Continent study.

We had fun learning all about pumpkins and apples and even more apples.

We ended the year out with our amazing journey through Asia..

I'm looking forward to what the next year of learning has in store for us, I hope you enjoy it too.