Sticker Tracing

This is fun, and it gets them looking at & thinking about (& therefore remembering) the shapes of numbers, shapes, & letters.


You can find links to number and shape tracing pages that you can print at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Monday Moments #4

A Christmas figurine that I painted at my sister in law's house before she was my sister in law got broken this year. Talia decided to fix it with a glue stick...

"Look Momma, I fixed him!
With STICK GLUE!"


"I am called a fixer
Little girls can fix things, too.
I learned how!"

(then she hugs it, and the head pops off)

"Honestly, guy!"

Shape Sorting

We have a shape sorting cube from Playskool called the "Form Fitter".

In the past we've just used it for fitting the shapes through the holes, but I recently found a few of the shapes that were missing, and with all of the blogs I've been looking at lately, I think I'm starting to see things a little differently, because I thought of another "educational" way to approach the toy (it's not that original I guess, but for me it was ;)

So, I suggested different ways that Talia could sort the shapes (by colour, by whether they had corners or were round, by how many sides or corners they had, etc.) It went well & Talia was eager to keep doing it!

Valentine Toast

Frugal Family Fun posted about this Not So Sweet Valentine Treat, and I copied it except for the icing since we didn't have any on hand.

For this picture I just cut the toast with a knife:

but a few days later I saw this at the dollar store:

Candy Cane Cake

We made Chocolate Candy Cane Cake!

Talia was really excited about mixing the cake:

She got to poke holes in the cake with a toothpick before I poured candy cane syrup over it:

Then we dusted it with icing sugar & it was ready to go! You could use the whole recipe for candy cane syrup that we posted about yesterday. It won't make it too minty! (In our opinion! ;)

Candy Cane Syrup

Storybook Woods posted a great Candy Cane Syrup Recipe that I have seen linked to in a few places on the web. It could be used to make Christmas gifts, or Valentine gifts with leftover candycanes from Christmas. We tried it & it's great!

This is all you need:


My little helper:


We learned that if you want to achieve the beautiful pink/red colour that you'll see on Storybook Woods, then you need to use red & white candy canes! lol Ours had green as well, and we got this lovely shade of brownish black ;) Luckily, we had big plans for adding our syrup to hot chocolate and chocolate cake, so it didn't matter!


Note: If you just don't want to make syrup, we learned one year, that if you stir a piece of candy cane into your hot chocolate, you get some delicious minty hot chocolate as well!

Planning Forms

I found some great planning forms this week and wanted to share them with you. I have learned that it is easiest to be sucessful at doing activities with Talia each day if I plan ahead, and know what I'm going to do each day, and know that I have the materials needed (a lot like cooking dinner, for me).

So, here are a few good, printable forms I've found:

Tot School Planning Form from Homeschool Creations.

Tot School Forms from 1+1+1=1

My goal right now is just to do one planned activity each weekday with Talia, so I've been using this notepad I found at Michaels for about a dollar: