Fall Scavenger Hunt Printable

I always love exploring outdoors in the fall and spring with my kiddos. We go on tons of hikes, nature walks, and to lots of parks. We are always finding fun things to look at, so I thought it would be fun to put together a little scavenger hunt printable to use this fall. If you use it with your little one(s) I hope you enjoy! 

(Right click and save image as to download and print)

10+ Learning Gift Ideas for Kids

A few years ago we started doing the "something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read" thing for Christmas gifts. I liked the idea of it, because otherwise I just go crazy buying so many cute things for Christmas and it's overwhelming, but after a couple years of it, I found I was really just buying certain things to try to fit into one of those categories. It wasn't working for us anymore, so we switched up the categories a little bit. What's working for us right now is: something you want, something educational, something to DO (or use for something you do), and something to wear. The 'something educational' can seem kind of boring, but I've found SO many cute learning toys and books and items that I had to share some! These gifts are perfect for challenging little one's brains and I promise they'll be having so much fun, they won't even know they're learning!

1. Science Lab Set  

We got these for both of our daughters last year for Christmas and they are obsessed with them. They get them out all the time to use different parts of it and love having their own science kit. They come with a cute little set of cards that have different (easy) experiment ideas on them. 

(Here's a cool science activities book we love to go with it!) 

2. This playground design building set looks so cool! I think kids would have such a fun time building things and letting their little people or finger puppets or something like that use the playground they built! 

3. Picasso tiles are a hit in our house! Just like magnatiles, but a lot easier on the pocket book, my girls love using them to build castles for their characters, or shelters for their animals. My toddlers enjoy messing around with them and building towers with them! They are fun for such a wide age range of kids, I think that they would be a good investment for any family. 

4. Beautiful book sets are always such a nice gift. Our family loves reading series of books, and I love aesthetically pleasing sets! Here are some of our favorites, or ones we have our eyes on: Mercy Watson, Roald Dahl, Puffins Classics, Ordinary People Change the World, Chronicles of Narnia, Oz, Winnie the Pooh , The Little House , and for when my girls get older, I'm coveting this Puffin in Bloom collection.  Of course you also couldn't go wrong with an American Girls set for girls 2nd-3rd grade and up or so. 

5. My girls saw this Project Mc2 Ultimate Spy Bag when we were browsing in Barnes & Noble and were over the top excited about it. There may have been tears from one child who didn't want to wait until Christmas for it. The thing IS pretty cool. Upon further investigation, I found out that this is apparently based on a Netflix Original show, and that there are a bunch of other really cool kits as well, including: nail science kit, spa studio, create your own lip balm kit, crayon makeup science, and more! I'm going to see if I can talk my girls into each requesting a different kit, instead of 2 of the spy bag so we can check out a couple of them! 

6. Usborne Big Books are SO cool and a great way to learn about a specific topic. We have both the human body and sea creatures big books, and many more on our wish list! They have giant fold outs and are just huge with tons of details in the beautiful pictures and awesome facts. At only $15 a book, these are a great investment! 

7. I saw this ALEX future coders kit the other day, and thought it was a really cool idea! There is a whole line of them for ages 4 and up, and all are under $30! My kids have several friends who would absolutely love these (parents, too)!

8. My daughter has had {a similar} magnet kit for probably 3 years or so, and all of my kids still love it! They like to try to duplicate the pictures, or just make up designs of their own. It keeps them busy (and quiet!) for a long time. 

9. My kids really enjoy learning about geography it seems, and I think one of the learning globes could be a really cool addition to a homeschool room, or even just a kiddo's bedroom! They have some really cool options out there, but here is one of the more reasonably priced ones that still has really cool features. 

10. This Art Lab for Kids book has been on my list for awhile, as I've thought of using it to "teach" art in our homeschool. I think paired with a little art kit, this would make a great gift for a budding artist! They even have a version for younger kids! 

There are a few things on this list that I think my kids are going to be getting for Christmas this year! What other great learning gifts have you been given, or gotten for someone else that were a hit? 

I'll see you all again tomorrow for Blogtober day 4 where I'll be sharing a favorite recipe!  

Brain dump-Homeschooling Preschool

We are about halfway through our preschool year, (I think. I am not really keeping super close track as we don't have to do anything this year) and I'm having lots of feelings.  We have been having a ton of fun this year, and I have loved watching my girls grow and enjoy learning.  Last summer, I meticulously did tons of research on preschool curriculum, preschool programs, units, styles of learning, etc. and chose some things I thought would fit really well for my girls. We have dumped about half of that stuff I meticulously researched, ha. Just goes to show you can't always tell how good of a fit it will be until you are using it every day.  The Bible curriculum I chose, I loved because each week had a story, character of God that went along with that story and letter for the week, a verse, and some activities to go along with it all. It looked like just what we needed-not a full blown Bible curriculum yet, but something to supplement what we were already learning about the Bible, and to go along with the letter we were focusing on that week. Well, that was all great, but once we actually started doing it, it was not a good fit. I still love focusing on the character of God each week, but one of the things we were doing each week was a page with the verse to trace, and a picture. Well, my girls can't read! So while it was good handwriting practice, it certainly wasn't helping them hide the verse away in their hearts since they mostly didn't know what they were copying at the time. So, I've stowed those away for future years as something additional to do for memory verses.  The main curriculum we chose has been about what I expected it to be. I pick and choose a lot from it, where things apply or don't apply to my kids, what we are learning, what we have time for, and their ability and interest. That has worked out pretty well.  The additional sight word "curriculum" I chose, has gone pretty well. My girls have memorized the words they've learned very well, and are able to read the reader each week with no help from me (after I teach them that week's new word), which I think has been very empowering for them! My oldest daughter LOVES pointing out words she knows when we are reading books together (which interrupts our story 997897234 times each book, but ya know...she's proud and I'm proud of her!)  We have abandoned about half of what we were doing in our binders each day. It was taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R. for them to get them done each day, and it wasn't the bulk of what we needed to be doing, so we cut way back. Now we just fill in a square for the 100 days of school count, they do the weather for the day, what they're thankful for, and how they're feeling. We basically stopped all the calendar pages and just go over our calendar area together for the day, date, month, etc.  Lately I have been having a hard time being motivated to get things ready each week. The girls have been so imaginative lately and they just get SO into playing these make believe games with their toys, and it is really hard to want to ask them to stop to come do school. So lately, more often than not, I've been letting them do their thing and if we don't get school in, oh well. I've had to really loosen up the reigns on this for myself, because I hate feeling like we're getting behind. But you know what? This is my oldest's last official year before we really start school. And then it will be school for the next 13 years. So I'm just feeling all the feelings right now and feeling like if she wants to play, I should let her play. She is plenty ready for Kindergarten already, that I am just trying not to worry about it. I guess that's one of the beauties of homeschooling-we can adjust where we see fit and do what works for us in that season. That's hard for my type A personality to be ok with, but it's a little easier when I see how much they've been enjoying themselves lately.  It definitely feels like Kinder is approaching rapidly. We will be registering with our local HSAP (homeschool assistance program) soon, purchasing curriculum, and getting ready for her first official year of school! I am excited and she is more than ready, I think. We are debating about whether to send her to the HSAP options program once a week which is a class of homeschooled kids and they go to music, art, P.E., history, science, lunch and recess. I think it's about 4-5 hours once a week. I think she would really enjoy that and I would love for her to get more out of some of those specials areas than what she might get at home the first few years, but we have a few reservations as well, so we will see which way it goes!  I was going to try to find some recent school pictures, but I think I am going to just leave this as a true "brain dump" post and end it here! 

First Day of Pre-K

Today we had our first day of Pre-K for the girls! We were all very excited to get started. I have been working a lot over the last few months on getting everything set up and planned for this year, and today was finally the day! We got through *almost* everything I wanted to do today. 

Both of the girls will be doing mostly the same thing, which you can read more about here. Today things took a bit longer than I anticipate it will on other days because we were getting acquainted with supplies, their binders, and how to do everything. I won't lie, there were some tears, and some frustrations, but I think it will be a great year! I had not really thought through what to do with the littles super thoroughly and that did prove to be pretty difficult, but hopefully it will get a little easier as we get into the swing of things.  Here are just a few phone pics from our morning. We did a lot of other things as well, but I was a little busy teaching to take pictures ;) 

Working in their binders took f-o-r-e-v-e-r today!! They were wanting to use a different color for every little detail on the thankful page, color the clothes on the temperature page in such detail, etc. It was really cute to see them getting so into it and really taking their time, however, I think we'll have to speed that part up in the future ;) I didn't anticipate it taking quite as long as it did.  We did a Bible lesson. This week we are learning about the Tower of Babel and the trait of God is that He is Glorious. Our verse for the week is Psalm 111:3. We also learned more about the letter Tt and did some reading and activities with that, as well as our sight word for the week which is the word 'a'. We did a few other things and then moved onto the more active stuff. They both loved this muffin tray activity which was just fine motor practice of them transferring the pom poms with tongs. 

 I just LOVE watching them learn and seeing what their little minds come up with! I kind of just left them to it for awhile since they were having fun and when I came back they were sorting into each cup by color...love it! Who knew such a simple activity they would love so much.

We also did a craft involving a tiger and contact paper. They turned out pretty hilarious!
I am excited to watch my girls learn and grow this year and blessed to be teaching them! 

Homeschool Curriculum Choices- Pre-K

My girls will be doing Pre-K for the 2016-2017 school year!
We are in kind of a funny position because my oldest daughter is about 10 days after the cut off so maturity and knowledge wise she is ready for Kindergarten, but she is technically not old enough. Which is ok with me because then it feels like she's growing up a little less fast ;) And then my younger daughter is only 3 but knowledge wise she is several years above that, and even ahead of my older daughter in some areas. So, we're just in a funny position.  Last year, we got really bored with school because all of the preschool packs I found were so repetitive. I am so thankful that so many awesome and hardworking homeschooling mamas have made so many preschool things available to other people, however they are almost all the same more or less. Each week has the same activities with a different letter or theme. I think this is really great for some kids, and I could see my little ones really benefiting from the repetition of those in a few years, but my girls just got bored. Once they had it they had it. They didn't want to keep doing the same thing week after week, so we just kind of stopped schooling and learned through play and life and that was great for us last year! All that to say, I wanted to find something for this year that avoided the repetition, but didn't really want to splurge on a box curriculum for preschool. So here's what I came up with after scouring what felt like millions of preschool packs and programs and curricula online!   The girls know majority of their letters and I would say close to most of their letter sounds, but are still mastering sounds. So for this year, my main focus was that I wanted to really get them down pat so they can begin putting sounds together to read words. I am also going to be introducing sight words (I'm going to take the approach of doing both phonics and sight words as I believe them both to be important in different ways) and some basic early math skills. So a large focus and large amount of the activities are going to be on language arts.  The "main" curriculum I chose was this Letter of the Week curriculum from the Measured Mom.

 What I really like about it is that it does have some repetition, but you can really break it up into what you want the lessons to focus on. Each letter has 4 days and bonus activities. I can go through and know immediately that I want to skip over an activity, or that we will definitely do it and it'll be beneficial! Some of the easier ones we will just skip right over and not look back. I also love that she incorporates so many different kinds of activities. I'm not a huge worksheet person...there's a time and place for them for sure, but I didn't want to just give them a workbook for Pre-K and call it good. This is a good balance of activities, which I love and I know the kids will, too! I like that she has compiled activities from around the net to give so many options. I am supplementing it with activities from Reading the Alphabet from This Reading Mama.

 I am following her order for letters and sight words because I love the way that her sight word readers build on the sight words each week! Each week I've printed off the sight word book, and the things for the pocket chart and we will do activities with those. I didn't want to use this whole curriculum because many of the activities in it are things the girls have already mastered and it would be a waste of our time to do them, and this is one of the very repetitive curricula. I do think she has laid it out VERY well and it will be a great benefit to us this year with sight words and reading!  For Bible, I wanted something more than just reading a Bible story every week, but we weren't quite ready to dive into the theology in many of the Bible curricula. So I chose this Bible ABC extension pack from the Crafty Classroom and we will use the corresponding letters. Again, I am not using all of the activities from the pack and I will be doing the Bible story and lesson with my girls at the beginning of the week and then using these resources to help them retain the story and information. I love that this pack has a character attribute of God each week. I have been coloring those so that we can post them each week and pray about and remember who God is throughout this year. I am so excited to teach the girls more about who God is so they can really understand Him better. I also love that there is a memory verse and definition each week to go along with the story, letter and attribute of God. I think this is put together very nicely and also very child friendly so I know the girls will love it!

I have also been putting together Daily Notebooks for both girls. I am using a lot of the sheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Daily learning notebook, but again not all. We are not using the letter, number, or shape pages as they will be practicing writing those separately and already identify them. I think , but haven't decided for 100% sure yet, that I am going to do a little calendar time with them to start the day, then have them each work independently on their notebooks. I think it'll be great to get them started being able to work individually on something without much guidance from me and give them that sense of accomplishment as well! I have added a few other things to the notebook that I am excited about! Each day they'll also do an "I'm thankful for..." page and an emotions page to identify how they are feeling that day. I have a few other things I want to add, as well, so I will probably do a full post on the binders when I have them all the way done!  For right now, I am thinking that I want to do read alouds as a regular part of our school time, starting this year. I have found some easy, early chapter books that I think the girls would like that I may purchase and then read 5-10 minutes per day while they journal or color or something. I haven't quite decided for sure on that, yet.  I have been scouring pinterest and the internet for other learning activity ideas, science experiment, art ideas, and more sight word and phonics practice and am excited to add some things here and there as well. I also picked up the little curriculum pack books from Sam's Club last spring and I think I'll use a sheet or two from those each day, possibly in their daily notebooks, just to reinforce letters and numbers and some of those skills.  That's about it! I am super excited for this year! I've been busy over the last few weeks planning,  getting supplies, printing everything off and getting things prepared for the year!  This weekend I'm going to try to get things situated in the school room which I am so excited about--it's been slowly coming together over the last few months. I will be back with more homeschool related posts soon! 

One Spot Homeschool Haul

I went to Target the other night to get a few things and ended up browsing the One Spot (because, duh) and finding a bunch of things for our homeschool! I was super excited about it and thought I would share! I also got a bunch of things for our road trip coming up to keep the kids entertained that I may share at a later time. I actually didn't find what I went there for and only walked away with things from the dollar spot...whoops! It was fun though. I am really excited to see what kinds of things they will put out when it's back to school time!  This year I will be doing home preschool with both of my daughters. They will be 5 and 3 1/2 in the fall. My older daughter would likely be ready to start kinder, but her birthday is right after the cut off here, and I think long term it will be really nice having them only one grade apart in school. My younger daughter just turned 3, but is very into school, reading, numbers, letters, etc. and has picked up almost everything she knows just through play and conversation so I am excited to see what she will do this year with structured learning! In many ways, they are close to the same skill and ability in certain areas so we will do a lot together! Because of where they are both at, we will do a more structured preschool year this year and my largest focus will be on learning to read (I think as of right now, at least). I am excited to share more about our homeschool plans for this coming year as I iron out the details!  Ok, onto the stuff.

(sorry in advance for the not great lighting. It was getting dark and I had the ceiling light on, so of course, weird shadows...)
This little chalkboard clock was so cute. Telling time is one of the things we will be working on this year, so I think this will be perfect! It also gives them the opportunity to write the time so I think that will be great for practice writing numbers as well. I like how it has all of the commonly used time phrases as well, so they can learn those eventually (probably not until they master the actual telling of time!)  {$3}

LOVE these clipboards!! They are super thick and feel very sturdy. I think they'll be handy on days where we have worksheets to just clip their sheets onto their board for them to do that day. One of my girls favorite color is green and the other is pink, so these are perfect! Love the pretty shades of mint and pink! {$3 each}

I actually got these magnetic letters for an upcoming road trip. I always give them circle cookie sheets on road trips to do activities on, so I thought these would be perfect for that. I can call out from the front seat different letters for them to form words, they can try to create words, their names, etc. But I thought they would be a fun way to mix things up with school some days, as well! {$1 a piece}

These pencils and erasers are so cute. I mostly got the pencils because there were pink and green in the pack, so I figured each girl would claim their favorite color and then we always know whose is whose ;) They had so many cute eraser options, but I thought the fruit were fun! {$1 each}

One day at the library, I was reading the girls a book that had a map in the front of it. My younger daughter asked me to show her where we lived, so I showed her our state and some states she is familiar with (where extended family live) and she memorized their location right then and has had them locked in since then! I have been wanting to get her one of the state placemats, but I can't find one and don't really want to pay like $8 on Amazon for one. So I saw this book and thought it would be fun for her! Not at all necessary to learn at age 3, but she thinks its really fun, so we might learn more about states this year! This little book has facts about each state...it's actually really cute! They had several other books as well, like presidents, dinosaurs and I think a few others. I thought they might think the solar system is interesting. They ask a lot of questions about why the sun stays out later in the summer and that kind of thing. {$1 each}

They had several different sheets of these window clings (map, numbers, letters, animals and I think some others). The girls know their letters well, but are still getting the last few numbers so I thought these would be fun. I also thought even in a few years when we are learning addition and subtraction these would be an easy way to mix it up with math on random days they are bored of it. "Hey, go do your  math problems on the window"...what 6 year old wouldn't love that?! {$1}

This window cling map will be a hit with my little one, I think! For now, I think we won't probably use the state labels and I'll just teach them to her and have her point them out as she is learning/wants to. Maybe if we still have this in a few years when they are able to read, they can use the labels :) {$1}

I also got her this giant felt USA map to play with. I'm not sure if we'll keep this hung up all the time, or just get it out occasionally. I feel like I sound like we are going to be hitting states hard this year, but we really aren't! She has asked about them a lot and thinks they are fun, so I just figured we will do them at our leisure and if she gets sick of learning about, that's totally fine! I thought this one was neat that it has different attractions around the country you can place. {$5}

Just over $20 for a bunch of great learning tools for this coming year! I am super excited to go school supply shopping in a few months. It was always my favorite day of the year growing up, and let's just be honest...it still is one of them! 

Apple Orchard Visit

The apple orchard is one of those things that goes on our bucket list every fall, and I have been saying that I want to do it every year since we've had babies, but for some reason, we never make it to one. Well, this year, we did!  We have been learning about apples for the last 2 weeks in preschool (which I will share more about soon), so I knew it would be the perfect tie in. We learned all about the life cycle of an apple a day or 2 before we went, so the girls thought it was really cool to actually get to pick the apples off of the trees. It's the little things!  Here are some photos from our fun morning at the orchard! 

Got their buckets and ready to go! No time for pictures, Mom. 

Checking out her loot!

A rare photo of me with my sweeties! My little one has developed an awesome cheeeeese face recently! 

It was super hot out the day we went, of course. We had to take plenty of breaks to hydrate!

I love these rosy cheeked apple pickers!

We went back inside to get an applesauce popsicle and wait for the tractor to return so we could go on a ride! 

We explored around a little bit outside while waiting on the tractor.

And we finally got on the tractor ride. I was taking a picture of the girls when a nice woman asked if we wanted a family picture, which we do not get enough of! The tractor broke down half way through our ride and the guy had faked it once before, so we thought he was kidding, but then it really died, so we made the trek back up to where we parked and that was our day! It was super fun and I love being able to have the girls connect with what we've been learning in such a tangible way!