Some linky appreciation

This is a really mixed bag of stuff, but I have been saving a few links and recommendations that I have wanted to share for a while and have not gotten round to putting it all together!

Firstly, there is this post from Motherhood and More in which she shares her prayer box idea. I love this idea, we have used something similar in the past for learning virtue quotations during our circle time, but I love the cards she has put together. They are great for children’s classes or for family use.

Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations, has been putting together fun preschool packs under a number of different themes that children will love (and she is making more). I plan to use some of them for Damian.

Two items which are making my housekeeping SO much easier. One is this nifty cordless vacuum cleaner that my folks bought for me (thank you, Mom and Dad!). I love this thing – it is light weight, swivels to get under and around things easily, does not break my back like those little handheld dust busters, and best of all no cords! I keep it in my laundry room, which is right off my kitchen, and it is easy to whip out and do a quick vacuum after meals or the end of the day. It works well on carpets too, which is fantastic for when I pull out a sensory tub in the school room!

The second item is my new bread machine which my hubby got for me. I prefer to make our bread, rather than use the store bread, but making it was taking too much time in my already too busy days. But this thing is awesome, it takes me 5 minutes to put the ingredients in, press a few buttons, and a few hours later I have a perfect loaf of healthy, fresh bread.  This model has two kneaders, which I have been told makes all the difference, though I wouldn’t know, since this is my first bread machine.

This post from Deb at Living Montessori Now that provides a great list of free Montessori materials online.

And tell me these art supply pouches are not just the cutest way to organize your kids pencils and crayons?

In celebration of Ridvan

Our family attends our local Baha’i children classes on weekends, and I have to say I feel blessed to be a part of this great group of parents and kids. The class is co-op style, so the parents take turns teaching the classes and they come up with the most fantastic ideas. This weekend the class was taught by my nephew’s wife, Elizabeth (in case you are wondering - my nephew is not that much younger than me and our kids are the same age), and it was the most wonderful class, so I asked her permission to share it with you all.

We arrived for class in the morning to find that their entire living room had been turned into a tent (chairs, sheets, and a big, tall tube in the centre to prop it up and give it shape), complete with twinkle lights around the edge of the tent, comfy cushions to sit on inside, and the sounds of birds chirping (on CD).

The children were welcomed into the tent, and after prayers and a welcome song, Elizabeth brought out a handful of fabric roses and a styrofoam base, so each child could “plant” a rose in the garden that was used to decorate the interior of the tent.

She gave them a blue sheet and river stones to create the Tigris river alongside the tent, and then brought out a bowl of rose water so each child could rub some on their hands and soon the room smelt of roses, birds were chirping, and we were sitting in a tent alongside the Tigris river.

Elizabeth’s mom (Grandma Julie) then climbed in the tent and told the story of Ridvan, at the end of her story she asked the kids to close their eyes, smell the roses, listen to the birds and imagine how they would have felt at receiving that wonderful message. They all sat there quietly, and soaked in the atmosphere, and I could see their little faces shining (the parents too!), when they opened their eyes Rylan even commented about how wonderful it felt.

I think what I liked most about this class was how it appealed to all the senses, I try to do this a lot in our homeschool, I am trying to do this with our growing Holy Day book, because if you can draw on all the senses, children make more connections with what they are learning and it leaves a lasting impression, a lasting sensation.

It made me think about how to use such ideas for the other Holy Days – the stained glass windows of the home of the Bab, candles on the Ascension of Baha’u’llah, and my mind was racing…

Would love it if anyone posts about a such a themed Holy Day celebration, if you would come back here and link up in the comment section below, so we could build up a collection of ideas together.

Hope you all had a wonderful Ridvan period!

Preparing for Ridvan and other Baha’i Holy Days

I wanted to create a special book on the Baha’i Holy Days with the boys, one that we could look back on every year in preparing for the Holy Days as they approach. We have been working on this over the past week or so, finding the information, quotations, prayers, and putting it all together. Here are our pages for the Festival of Ridvan. You will notice the little velvet pocket on the top of the second page, in which I placed a paper scented with rose oil, I also plan on adding a few rose petals from the Shrine of Baha’u’llah, which we received during our last pilgrimage, to our pages for the Ascension of Baha’u’llah. I felt sensory touches like these would enhance their understanding of and connection to these special days of the year.

We also did a spring inspired set of pages for the Baha’i New Year.

I will continue to share more throughout the year.

Happy Ridvan to all! :)

Preschool fun: Review of letter E week ~ elephants and earth

We actually did letter E about three weeks ago! Sorry, my blogging time is limited these days, but I do eventually get things posted! :)
Since we cover a lot of the same activities every week, simply changing the letter, I will refer you back to our previous weeks to see some of what we have done, such as sandpaper letters, playdoh mats, building foam letters, learning numbers, patterning, sequencing from biggest to smallest, sensory tubs, do-a-dot letters, collages, puzzles, peg boards, chalkboard writing, etc, etc: letter A, letter B, letter C, letter D.


But I did want to share some highlights of this week that we have not shared before:
~ Sorting by first letter sounds with our alphabet box. I laid all the objects from our alphabet box for letters A to E on the ground, and put the drawers for those letters out as well. I asked Damian to pick up each object one at a time, same the name of the object, then say the first sound of the object’s name, then put it in the right letter box based on the first sound of the object’s name. We will do this exercise again periodically, adding more objects to it, as we go through the alphabet.

~ We made elephant masks!

~ We colored a picture of the earth with people holding hands around it (kind of like my “Nurturing Virtue” image) and memorized the following quotation from the Baha’i Writings:

The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. ~ Baha'u'llah

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I am most happy because my hubby will be home after being away for a week on business. Next week I will be sharing more details on our solar system study, including a printable game, highlights from our fishy letter F week, as well as a special project we are working on to prepare for Ridvan (and other Baha’i Holy Days in general). Hope to see you there!


This has been added to: Show and Tell and Preschool Corner & 5K too!

Geography: the North American Continent

We just completed a week long study of the North American Continent. Here is a summary of what we covered:

We read various books on North America, some of which appear at the end of the post. Added to those at the end of the post are: Atlas of North America by Karen Foster and North America by Katie Bagley.

Rylan completed this North American themed math worksheet which I made for him. It can be downloaded here if you would like to use.

We made and ate Mexican food. We were out running errands all day Thursday and had to stop at McDonalds for lunch, I suppose that could count as American food, right (or just bad food!)? :P

We listened to various Putamayo CDs, the selection can be seen at the end of the post.

Rylan put together a North America poster based on our learning, which included a map, people of North America, animals of North America, and a fact sheet. We also added the USA flag that Rylan had colored during the week.

We made dream catchers (Native American) and read about what they are and how they are used (here is a tutorial on how to make them).

We added the Baha’i places of significance in North America to our wall of Baha’i Holy Places and Houses of Worship around the world.

We read about children of North America in Children Just Like Me.

We read the story from North America (the American Southwest) entitled “She Who Is Alone” from the book The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales. We also read a few stories from Around the World in 80 Tales, which I have to admit I edited somewhat, since some of the stories in that book are a bit (or a lot) mean spirited.

Rylan completed some pages in the Around the World Coloring Book.

To see our previous continent studies, click on these links: Africa, Asia, Europe.

This has been added to: Show&Tell and Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Nurturing virtue: The Adventures of Mali and Keela

I know it has been a while since I did a Nurturing Virtue post. There are two reasons for this, one is that I am working on a rather large project related to our virtue studies, which I will eventually share as a whole on this blog, and you will understand where my energies have been going (I just don’t have time at this point to duplicate my efforts into the project I am working on and posting it here too, but it will eventually be available to all of you in its completed form).

The second reason is that we have been taking a little break from our usual routine to work through the book Mali & Keela: A Virtues Book for Children.

It is a chapter book filled with stories about the adventures of these two friends. Each chapter/story incorporates four virtues. At the end of each chapter there are review pages where you can read the definitions of the virtues used in the story, reflect on how/when they were used in the story, and then questions which foster further discussion of the virtues and how we use them or what they look like in our own lives.

The book was not written by the authors of the The Family Virtues Guide, but it is based on this program and can definitely be used in conjunction with the Virtues Project cards and books.

We read a chapter once every 2-3 days, then spend the time in between chapters going through the review section and thoroughly discussing each topic and learning quotations related to these virtues (this part I have added myself).

This book provides another enjoyable way in which you can discuss and share virtue learning with your children. There are also many fun activities you could do with your children, building on the stories and discussion.

On a side note: for those of you who do not follow this blog on Facebook, I shared a link to an interview on Oprah with Linda Kavelin Popov, the co-founder of The Virtues Project. So, if you are interested in seeing that, hop over to my Facebook page.

Happy weekending to you all! We will be out enjoying the first wonderful signs of spring and celebrating the Baha’i New Year (March 21st) which completes our 19 day fasting period and ushers in the new year and new season…a change I have never experienced quite this acutely, spring here is really like a re-birth after a long, cold winter. It is truly a celebration!

Preschool fun: review of our letter C week

• We started the week reading our Baha’i Alphabet Book in which the letter C was for courtesy, so we spent our virtue time for the week learning about courtesy. For ideas on teaching courtesy, see this post.
  
• We made the letter C using our new Haba peg board which Grandma gave to Damian recently (both boys love this peg board).

• We went through the C items in our alphabet box. We practiced the phonetic sound of the letter C using the song from Leap Frog’s Letter Factory DVD.
  
• We completed many of the “C is for caterpillar” activities from the Letter of Week curriculum by Confession of a Homeschooler.
  
• I printed 2 copies of the Do-A-Dot sheet from the “C is for Caterpillar” post and made up this activity to add some pincer grip exercise: I put a glue dot into each of the dots on the sheet, provided Damian with chopsticks and container of pompoms, then asked him to tweeze the pompoms and stick them onto each glue dot.
  
• We practiced writing Cs in rice. Damian loves this activity, so when he is finished I just leave him with the tray of rice and he draws and plays for while.
  
• Damian sorted these little pompoms by color.
• He watched the scholastic DVD version of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”.
  
• We did the “C for caterpillar” exercise from Yoga for Kids, Vol. 2: ABCs.
  
• We wrote Cs on magic scratch paper. I bought our pack of scratch paper from a local store, but I found this on amazon too.
  
• I gave Damian this matching upper and lower case letters sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler to complete (it is laminated, so that we can re-use it).
  
• We read Farfallina and Marcel going with the caterpillar theme.
  
• We completed the week with our ceremonial reading of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and added our Cs to the palm tree.
  

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Learning about the Baha’i calendar

The boys and I start most of our days with circle time (the reason I say “most” is because some days we have activities in the morning outside of the home, like Damian’s Music Together class, so those days we only have prayers together). Our circle time has always included calendar time, during which we learn about the days of the week and the months of the Gregorian calendar.

I have taught my boys about the Baha’i calendar before, but I wanted to make it a more regular part of this calendar learning time. I made this Baha’i calendar to add to the circle time area of our school room to illustrate the 19 months of the year (each made up of 19 days).

I decorated a clothes pin which we will use to mark the months as we go through the year. On the first day of each month the boys will take turns moving the clothes pin to mark the new month. We will learn about the name and meaning of the name of that new month (the months of the Baha’i calendar are all named after the attributes of God, such as Splendor, Glory, Grandeur, Knowledge, Love, Mercy). On a regular basis (maybe daily, because the boys love the singing part of our circle time) we will sing the Baha’i calendar song “Song of the Months” by Doug Cameron so we memorize the names and order of the months. I have other calendar activities planned for the year, which I will share with you as we go through them.

I printed the calendar from this site, glued it on to cardboard and laminated it for more durability (please note: you must glue the paper and cardboard together prior to laminating them, because if they are not glued, when you cut the calendar out, the paper and cardboard will separate, each being laminated on only one side).

For the clothes pin: I took a regular wooden clothes pin, colored it blue using a permanent marker, wrote “This month” on it using a black permanent marker, and then made and laminated a small 9 pointed star, which I stuck to the end of the clothes pin using a glue dot.

A beautiful, colorful addition to our circle time.

Geography: learning about Europe

As always, we started our new continental study with looking back on our travels, this time through Europe – Rylan has travelled in England and Italy (oh, how I would love to spend a few weeks in Italy again…).

{Rylan (18 months at the time) pointing to the intricate ceiling inside the Vatican, Rome, Italy…I believe his exact words were, “Mommy, WOW!”}

Our learning activities included:

• Reading the True Book “Europe”. I read it to the boys over the course of the week, we stopped to discuss and research more in depth certain aspects of the book as we went along. At the end of the week I gave Rylan the assignment of reading the book again himself while I put Damian down for a nap, then I gave him a short oral quiz (styled like a game) to see how much he remembered.
  
• We made and ate European food…to be honest this is no great thing in our home! A lot of European styled dishes are a part of our ordinary diet, especially Italian pastas!
  
• We watched Celtic Woman and the Riverdance together.
  
• We listened to various Putamayo CDs with a European flavor, you can see the list at the end of this post.
  
• We put together a European poster based on all our learning, which included a map, places of significance, people of Europe, and a fact sheet.

• We practiced our Spanish (since this is the second language we are learning in school) and learned how to say hello in other European languages.
  
• We added Baha’i places of significance in Europe to our wall.
  
  
• We read about children of Europe in Children Just Like Me.
  
• Rylan built the Eifel Tower out of Lego for fun.

To see our previous continental studies click on these links: Africa and Asia.

This has been added to Preschool Corner and 5K too.

Ayyam-i-ha and some of our handmade gifts

We had a wonderfully fun Ayyam-i-ha weekend, filled with lots of family and friends. I am amazed my kids kept up with all the parties we were invited to (one every morning and afternoon), although I must admit we were all kind of tired the first half of this week (but it was definitely worth it!). We have also had Grandma and Pa staying with us since Thursday last week, so it has been a very special time.

As we have done in the past, one of our days of Ayyam-i-ha was themed as a handmade gifts only day. Here are a few picture frames the boys made for Grandparents and Daddy: {the top one is made of foam, decorated with foam stickers and glitter glue; the bottom two are wooden frames decorate with permanent markers and wooden animals/beach theme added on with the help of glue dots (can I just say that I recently found and now love glue dots!)}

Over the next few days I will be sharing other handmade gifts that we made, in between the posts I promised for this week, including our European study, our human body unit, and the layout of our new classroom…with the late start I am getting on the week, however, these posts may carry us into next week as well!

Right now the adult members of this family, along with all the Baha’is over the age of 15 around the world are beginning on a month (a Baha’i month, which is 19 days long) of fasting. No food or drink from sunrise to sunset. The Fast is a period of spiritual focus and renewal. Since pregnant and/or breastfeeding women are exempt from fasting (for obvious medical reasons), this will be the first time I am fasting in 7 years! My husband is most happy to have company again! :)

Wishing all my Baha’i friends a truly blessed and inspired Fast!

Ayyam-i-ha and all our spring time crafts

To all the items we made last year, we added a few more this year. It was not so difficult to achieve a spring feeling living in Hawaii, because it was pretty much spring and summer all year round there, but here it was a little more challenging, so we needed to add some more spring-time crafts to the mix!

Working on and putting up these decorations was all done while listening to the Ayyam-i-ha CD, and was part of our “countdown to Ayyam-i-ha activities”, among many other fun activities (which are pulled out on a daily basis from our countdown star calendar).

• We found a new place for our Ayyam-i-ha banner, which I made out of aloha fabrics last year in Hawaii.
  
  
• And a new home for our Ayyam-i-ha virtue tree, above the boy’s teddy chair in our reading room (which is right next to the play room. I think we need to add some birds and other creatures to brighten up the surrounding bare, white walls…hmmm).
  
• We created a flower garden along the floor trim in our entrance area using pre-cut flower boards. We decorated them with markers and glitter glue.
  
• We made an “Ayyam-i-ha garden” of flowers and butterflies using pre-cut craft foam flowers and then I cut out leaves, stems and grass to go with them. The butterflies were cut out of cardboard. We decorated everything using markers and glitter glue.
  
  
• We made a bouquet of tissue paper flowers to put on our dining room table.
• We strung butterflies from the hanging lights around the house.
  
• The boys made flying foam butterflies, which we attached by ribbon to doorframes and from the ceiling in the play room.
  
• We made butterfly finger puppets to play with too!
  

To all my Baha’i friends, wishing you a very happy and joyful celebration!

I will be away from this space for a few days while I spend time with family and friends, see you next week when I will be sharing the details of our European study, our science unit on the human body, and a look at the layout of our new school room.