High Maintenance Mom

Happy Mother's Day!

I made a huge amount of salt dough today for kids to enjoy. I was impressed by how easy it was to make and how much fun the kids had sculpting it. I also really like the idea of making something like this from basic ingredients at home so the kids can see the process instead of just going to the store to buy it...

As a parent I love when a teaching moment presents itself. Earth Day is one of those moments. My 4 year old daughter loves bugs & worms and my 2 year old son loves flowers (specifically "mulups" or as we adults call them Tulips) so it is easy to start a conversation with them about nature. Get your kids outside and you'll be surprised how easy it is to start talking about nature....(more)

I love being organized and I love computers so it would stand to reason that I would not only use my laptop computer's calendar, etc but that I would also use my cell phone's organizational components. I don't and I wasn't 100% sure why until I came across a great organization tool from FranklinCovey, the gold standard in organizational planners! The Simplicity for Mom's planner is "part of the company's "EasyPlan" product category, meaning that its design incorporates standard FranklinCovey planning principles, but gives you the flexibility to add your unique perspective to the planning you do. This involves space for recording tasks and events, a design that matches the needs of a mom, and priced to make it easier to stay organized: MSRP $24.95."...(more)

I've found Valentine's Day to be the perfect opportunity for my kids to practice writing. Since I have two boys who claim they do not like to write, I try to start a few weeks before Valentine's Day. In preschool, we left valentines for everyone for fun - my kids would sign the first letter of their name or take days to write out their name on each card. When we started elementary school, I found the kids in our school were very serious about making Valentine's Day into a big deal. I was shocked by the Valentine's Day celebration and by the amount of candy in B's kindergarten class. I've always tried to make the holiday more about doing something fun than sugar so I try to look for fun "activity" Valentine's Day cards. This year, we are trying to make our own. We've already made six so we'll see how far we get. Some schools use Valentine's Day as an opportunity to do a post office unit. The kids address cards to each other and then they figure out how to best deliver them in a classroom. Below are a few fun card suggestions...

Game night is a cherished family tradition in many homes. My husband and I have our friends over for game night so when our oldest seemed ready (she is 4) we bought the usual suspects (Candy Land - Dora The Explorer, Chutes and Ladders, Zobmondo!! Entertainment; The Ladybug Game (a house favorite)) and let the fun begin. What we didn't see coming was how quickly she learned the games, how much she loved them and how much our 2 year old liked them too. Sometimes they even "play" the games together. I am still surprised our 2 year old sits and plays with us (and runs off and comes back and runs off again...but still). During this time of board game awe, I stumbled across a very interesting article in The Washington Post about board games and their benefit to preschoolers (http://tiny.cc/0aW1K) They made the valid points I was expecting about color recognition, counting, turn taking, etc but what I also learned was these games help teach social skills like self control....(more)

I am a huge fan of good manners. I am not talking militant manners but the basic good manners many kids and even adults lack. My 4 year old loves to write so with the Make Your Own Thank You Notes she got for her birthday we have been writing thank you notes for some time now. My 2 year old son likes to add his drawings. Here is how I engage my kids in writing thank you cards...

Our kids have a Halloween homework assignment to make their own Halloween costumes. They are supposed to pick a character from a book they really like, create a costume, and then present a report on the character on Friday morning. My kids picked characters and then we had to find books. N is going to be Sir Lancelot and B is going to be George Washington. Before I describe what we did to make their costumes, I want to mention that making them has been a learning experience for us that we've all enjoyed. It think it's been enjoyable because the kids know everyone else is making costumes, we are spending several hours over three days, and we are not making a Star Wars character where $70 masks are available for comparison. Plus I bought some glitter sticky foam paper for some of the decorations. We've been reading library books at bedtime about knights and George Washington. We've explored patterns for N's shield and tying knots to make the epaulets for George Washington's shirt. I asked both kids to think about what they wanted to look like, we talked a little bit about how we might do it, and then I went to the store to see what I could find. Afterwards we worked with the materials we had to see what we could make...

I have been thinking about what activities to put my almost 4 year old daughter in recently and have been getting a lot of suggestions from friends. She is in pre school every morning and we have a lot of fun post nap with various outings, etc. I just don't feel the need to have her in ballet, gymnastics, singing, etc...all of which have been suggested she do now. That does not mean she wont do them but not today. As I had this in my brain, I can across an interesting article about "slow parenting". I liked the ring of it so I continued reading and also found some articles on line. The term seemed to (from what I can gather from a blog with an email interview with the author) come from the followers of Carl Honore's books, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus) and Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting ....

Rosh Hashanah starts tonight and I am still trying to figure out how to manage a nice dinner, services, soccer, and soccer pictures. Rosh Hashanah is one of two main Jewish holidays. It literally means "head of the year" but instead of a loud New Year's celebration, it is a time of reflection. The Ten Days of Repentance start tonight and end with Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. These days are set aside to think about what we've done in the past year and ask others for forgiveness.

A friend of mine, who is a reading specialist, was explaining the other day how kids who never go out with their families to the zoo or other trips often do not acquire the vocabulary they need to read at grade level. I knew the trips we took with the kids helped them learn but I hadn't really thought about how hard it is for kids to read about animals if they had never seen them in real life or been introduced to them in stories. Of course, kids learn at different rates so showing your six-month old an animal at the zoo might not have the same effect as talking to an older child about animals. And it also doesn't mean that shoving a year's worth of trips into a week is going to have any benefit. We've recently been trying to help explain how concepts are connected and a recent wedding near DC provided a ideal and early opportunity to talk about the formation of the United States...