This is so excited….my little one’s FIRST Day of Pre-pre-school….

That September 7 2011 morning she was so happy when she went to the living room and found this poster mommy did for her the night before….!

She said: Look..that’s me! I am going to school!

With mommy and daddy!

First day of school breakfast!

I am ready…Let’s go!!!!!

Arriving at school!

After a long day at school!!!

What a First day of Pre-pre-school….!!!! Mommy expended the whole day waiting for the time to go back and look for you, my princess. You are growing so fast….but mommy loves you everyday and everyday more and more!

For my Princess’ birthday party, I tried to make fairy decorations without expending a fortune on them, plus including the family.

Here’s what we did together:

• Re-used furniture cardboard drawing fairies and painting them with acrylic and adding glitter for a great ending. After I made my “drawing”, I cut them with an utensil knife, later painted and added the glitter mostly on the wings and dresses. Glitter makes them to look great for the party decoration but it is so messy…if you don’t want to have too much mess, there’s paint with glitter on it and it’s less messy but less pretty.

• The workshop- including the whole family: even the birthday girl helped with the decoration! Kids love to paint so my little one and my niece helped painting the name letters and flowers plus they added some glitter (really MESSY but fun for them so you need to do this OUTSIDE!)

• Birthday hats: The big kids helped decorating the birthday hats with stickers and glittered glue. My mom did these ones coping a pattern from one store brought hat into a cardboard paper (3 of them made 32 hats). Since they were handmade, all of them were different and too CUTE!)

• Yes…you’re right! That’s a placemat which I added my baby pictures: newborn, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years old and, now, a big 3 years old girl. Those are the letters painted and glittered by the little ones. They were feeling so proud and needed!!

• The cake: Just a simple one but delicious with our decoration theme colors and I added 4 fairies I got at a store (they were intended to use as my little girl gift, too!) plus Tinker bell and number 3 candles.

• Balloons: Don’t forget to add LOTS of them….they are cheap and make every kid birthday party a magical one. Just use the same theme colors (Mine were of different colors since were the cheapest ones!)
• Just need to add your own Thinker bell fairy princess:

Have fun celebrating your VIP birthday!!!

Hey if you LOVE Montessori Print Shop materials as much as I do, but would love it more if it is for free, here’s another giveaway for you. Go and check this amazing blog Chestnut Grove Academy (which I just hop into for the first time- lucky me because it has great ideas!).

The giveaway is for the Classified Cards Bundle from MPS. This Bundle is valued at $63.40 and contains 41 sets of printable 3 part cards! That is over 589 images and you can WIN IT HERE!

Click HERE for a full list of what is included in this bundle.

Check them out since the giveaway ends 9/22 12:01am!

But, I really want to win it!

The idea for our beanbags came from the Martha Stewart show. One night I decided to search my On demand tv channels and found some videos from this show (which was the first time I watched it). For a long time, I was looking for an easy and not-sew-needed beanbags for those rainy and cold days.

So, what’s better than duct tape beanbags??? Easy duct tape beanbags made by my 3 years old girl….She made them!!! (with some little help from mommy)

Here are our beautiful beanbags (and discovery bags at the same time):

How did we do them?

• Recycle those rice and beans from your sensory box. Bye bye farm animals!

• We recycled some vinyl bags we got from plastic toy animals I bought a time ago at a dollar store (I knew I would use them some day!) But, Martha used a clear vinyl shower curtain and cut it in squares. Also, 2 Ziploc bags (one inside another) can do it, or not? Grab some foam stickers, beads, small toys or treasures for your discovery bag or you can leave it plain.

• Fill it up!!! Great fun Montessori practical life practice for your Kid….

• Put your treasures inside (we got some bottle cap with her first name and last name written on them for name recognition practice)

• Now is mommy’s time to help closing the bags with some duct tape. If the kid is older, maybe can do it by him/herself. Put duct tape by all the sides front and back.

• And you are ALL SET to enjoy your hard work.

First attempt!!!

Second, third, fourth….attempts!!!

SCORE!!!

This is such a FUN game and it’s better when you made it ALL BY YOURSELF!!!

For mommy, it was an opportunity to teach my baby to Don’t GIVE UP after trying to score 5,6,7,8 times. She was getting FRUSTRATED but with just a POSITIVE stimulus she learned to tell herself to keep trying…(it was such a cute moment hearing her to tell herself to keep trying) until she got it! She was so proud!!! The last 2 photos are her victory dance moment! lol

Other DIY bean bags resources:

1. How to do your own Bean Bags (if you like to sew) and a cute recycled toss box.
2. Tutorial and pattern: Counting bean bags from Chez deeper bebe. Good for learning your numbers tossing your bean bags around the house.
3. Bean bag toss game for fourth of July carnival from Roots and wings have a great tutorial for DIY.
4. DIY bean bags from old jeans pockets at Chica and Jo. Cute bags.
5. And if you have a baby or a toddler here at The Spaghetti Westerner is a great twist to bean bags using plastic bananas plus a cute sock monkey theme DIY toss board.

Take care and have fun on your rainy, sick or next to come cold days!!!

Linking to:

Here’s just an easy and fast lesson: Hot or Cold!

Pinky knows this for a long time now but practice makes perfect and with these great cards and the pointer it was fun pretending she was my teacher.

The first set is from Filefolderfun.com.

The second set is from Montessori Print Shop. Sorry, it was a Freebie when I got it but the price is reasonable. We love their products because they use real pictures (this one has a control sheet) and you can find almost every theme that you can imagine to complete your unit. Furthermore, every now and then they have amazing FREEBIES and kindly host great GIVEAWAYS (we won one already, yupi!!! but I am so lazy didn’t have the time to post about it, yet). So, check their blog and sign up their mailing list…therefore, you won’t miss any opportunity.

In the last picture, I was using the light color stick to check with Pinky her work while she was checking with the brown one (I know this isn’t a great thing to do but following MY child, she loves it!)

We did some easy activities like talk about what things she thinks are cold and which are hot. I use for reference our refrigerator and freezer for cold (she was happy to keep the door open and had liberty to search inside it) and the microwave, stove and oven for the hot things (don’t worry, she didn’t got to search inside them, lol…..she uses to help me sometimes when I am cooking, so she knows already that they are hot).

After that, we used her play kitchen to check which food might be cold and which one might be hot. (Beware, later you can find some plastic food inside your refrigerator!!!!)

Here are other great sites with activities about Hot and Cold:

• At Glitterful Felt Stories- How to do your own cards using index cards and hot/cold items from magazine's or newspapers. Also, how to play an Hot and Cold preschool opposite game with a video.
• Ice cream toddler and Preschool unit from Spell Outloud. There’s an easy Hot and Cold sorting activity for a Toddler plus other great printables about ice cream (cold).
• At Preschool Printables you can find some ideas for a Science Center Fun with hands on activities, questions about Hot and Cold things, opposites, etc.
• If you have a toddler that you want to start teaching about Hot vs. Cold, at Fun & Engaging activities for toddlers are some amazing ways to teach about cold.  

Be warm my friends!!!!

Linking to:

 

Here’s a great article at Living in the Family Room Blog- Martha Stewart. and very useful for mommies like me whom have kids classmates with food allergies. Also, there's a great book giveaway!!!

Check it out!!!