Oral B Stages Review

Recently I was chosen to be a host for MommyParties sponsored by Oral-B Stages I & II.  Oral-B sent me a "MommyParty Kit" which contained everything I needed to hold a cute little Winnie The Pooh party for my son and some of his friends (and mine too!)  


I chose to have my party in our church fellowship hall because most of our friends also have older children who are participating in our Church Christmas program which is practicing each Sunday afternoon.  This provided a perfect opportunity to show the movie and have a little brief presentation and snack (and keep some little ones occupied!) while the older children practiced.  Worked perfectly...well for the most part!  So what started out as this...

Ended up as this...

It seemed that the only one REALLY interested in the movie was my little Hayden (who had been looking forward to watching this DVD all week!)

So after a few minutes of trying to reign the others in, I decided I better move on to something else before we had chaos on our hands!  So on to the snacks and brief presentation....and believe it or not, they seemed to enjoy my "flash cards" more than the movie!  The loved answering the questions I had for them and were very attentive and polite when answering...and knew ALL the answers!!  Way to go kids for knowing about your teeth...and a little about Pooh too! : )

I was able to give each of the parents a goody bag filled with a full-size bottle of Disney Lavender Wash, a toothbrush, full-size toothbrush, and some great coupons just for coming to our party!  They were thrilled!  Thank you parents for allowing me to have your children's attention for a little while also!

The funniest part of the party??  Finding the "big kids" enjoying the Winnie The Pooh movie more than the little kids!!   You just never know!  : )

Thank you MommyParties for allowing me to host the Oral-B Stages party.  I am very fortunate to have a little boy who LOVES to brush his teeth, so he is loving having a new tooth brush and toothpaste to use.  He is able to open the toothpaste by himself and can see just where to put it based on the "paste marker" on the brush.  Obviously, at 3 years old, he still needs some help brushing to get his teeth as clean as they need to be, but with "helps" like you offer with your products, he can learn the proper way to have healthy teeth!

FyrFlyz Review

                  


Recently I was asked to review a new toy called FyrFlyz.  This is an incredibly cool little light toy that is really a pretty simple concept.  The FyrFlyz is basically a string and a plastic piece that has a light attached, as you twist and twirl it the light makes all kinds of cool designs!  They are available in three styles (shown above).  I was sent two FyrFlyz...the Blue Angel and the Nyt Fyr. For my review, I was asked to do a video demonstration of the FyrFlyz, so my boys were happy to oblige! : )  Watch this!

FyrFlyz are sold at major toy retailers, including ToysRUs, for under $10.  These would make a great stocking stuffer or extra little birthday present and provide a lot of fun for all ages!  They are marked as 8 years old and up, however under supervision, my 4 year old was able to do quite a little light show himself!  Both of my boys enjoyed this new toy, and the only negative thing my oldest had to say was that when using two of the FyrFlyz together they tend to get tangled and are a little hard to get untangled.  My littlest one just keeps asking if he can play with it...so I would say he likes it!


You can go here for a step-by-step demonstration on how to use the FyrFlyz, but honestly it only takes a minute or two to get the hang of it and you will be making all kinds of cool designs!  However, if you are looking to be extra creative and learn all the cool tricks, here is link to the Trick Gallery. 


You can follow FyrFlyz on Facebook also for more information on this cool new toy!


**I was given the FyrFlyz Toy in return for my personal review and video.  I also recieved a Toys R Us gift card for submitting the video review.**

Pottery and Birthdays!

This past week was my baby girl's birthday. She turned 12!! Oh how times flies!! She chose to have her party at a Paint The Town Pottery.  We had done a pottery party before and she loved it, so it was only fitting to try out the new place in town!  She invited a few of her closest friends to join her and painting we went! The girls all chose what they wanted to paint and I get to pick them up at the end of this week. I also painted a plate with our "H" on it since I had broken the one I made before. : ( 

Mari Cate getting her hand painted to make a handprint for their ceiling tiles.  Such a cool idea!!

On Sunday, we had her "family" party (yes, we do week, sometimes month long birthday celebrations...lol!)  We had family and a few close friends over for pizza, presents, and cheesecake...not just any cheesecake, but Frank's cheesecake...haha!  This was Mari Cate's choice for birthday cake and I was very pleased!  : )

Introducing The Letter A

This week Hayden and I officially started preschool...at home!  He is loving it and has asked to do school each day, although for now I am setting aside Monday's and Wednesday's as our school days.  Of course I throw in some learning for him every day, but right now at 3 years old I think 2 days of a couple of hours of school time is plenty for him.


I kinda of had a change of plans on how I was planning on teaching him.  My original plan had been to use the Before Five In A Row curriculum, but I ended up deciding to just go with a Letter of the Week type curriculum with bits of match, science, reading, etc.  One of my main goals is to have Hayden reading before he starts Kindergarten (whether that be in public school or homeschooled.)  But we have 2 years because of his February birthday to make that decision.


So I came across Confessions of a Homeschooler and fell in love with her whole website and especially her Letter of the Week curriculum.  You can download her Letter of the Week curriculum for just $10!!  That is a steal for all the cool things you get!  She even provides you with a lesson plan to follow for the week.  How much easier does it get than that??  Now I am sure that some of you would prefer to plan your own lessons out, but for those of us that aren't feeling much like a teacher, this works great!!  I have everything I need at my finger tips!  With the download you even get extras, like a set of Bible verses to go along with each letter, Spanish flash cards to go with each letter, reading lists for each letter and many others.  I am in love!!


Hayden has thoroughly enjoyed working through the activities for the Letter A, so I wanted to share a few of the things we have done this week.


We started our week out by going to the Apple Orchard on Saturday.  This is one of our most favorite things to do as a family!  They don't have a huge selection of apples in yet, but we did get some and of course stopped by the bakery and got some apple "treats" and an apple cider slushy (mm--mm good!!)

Our days started with "Board Time" which consisted of saying the Pledge of Allegiance (for some reason he gets tickled when we do this, but he is already learning alot of the words), going over our Bible verse for the week, checking out the weather and learning the date, and learning a Spanish word for the day.  Then we get into our worksheets and activities.

Hayden tracing his "A's"

Putting blocks in the form of an A.

Had to catch this pic...he looks just like Frank working on something!

Then he decided he wanted to stack all the blocks. 

Writing "A" is for ant.

The little video has Hayden making a crazy noise when as he used the Do-A-Dot markers (which we both love!) to make his A.   

We also worked on some exercises where he sorted uppercase and lowercase letters, sorted smallest to largest, some puzzles.  He really enjoyed all the activities we did.  We have some of the same type work for our next letter but also add some new activities in with it.  I am still learning how to coordinate our work and time, but I think next week will go even more smoothly!

What can YOU do with a piece of track?

This morning we did just a little real informal schooling while Hayden was playing with his Thomas the Train track.  You can take almost any opportunity to do some learning/teaching if you will just seize the moment!

Hayden wanted me to help him build (translated~~help him put some track together so his trains can actually work on it..lol).  I am trying to teach him how the pieces fit together to make a track.  It is much like a puzzle really.  He is getting a good hang of the straight and curvy pieces, it is just adding the fun stuff (aka..bridges, tunnels, etc) that makes it a little more difficult for him right now.


So as I was sitting there with him, I got the idea to throw in a little learning into this playtime.  


So what did WE do with track??  

We counted them, we measured them, we compared them (bigger/smaller, shorter/longer  curvy/straight...concepts he already has down pretty well, but reinforcement is always a good thing!). Then I took his bridge and put one train on the bridge and one underneath and we discussed over/under. Simple little concepts but ones that they have to be taught nonetheless.

See learning with a 3 year old doesn't have to be difficult...it can actually be fun! ; )

Getting Ready for School

Well, the summer is coming to end...vacations are over...swimming is done...really??  It is the beginning of August!!, but that doesn't stop my older ones from gathering their school supplies and picking up their new schedules for school.  I can't believe they are in 10th and 7th grades this year!

As for my little guy and me, we will be journeying into our homeschool adventure in just a few weeks when I get settled in the routine with the older ones.  He is so excited and asks me daily if we can do school.  I know he is really ready to start some "structured" learning.  I say structured, but my plan is for to be just as much unstructured learning as it is structured.  By that I mean, I plan on him having fun and learning in our day to day activities as much as when we are sitting down doing a little book work.  My goodness, he is ONLY 3 1/2!!  He needs to have fun, enjoy the day, enjoy playing...but I want him to be like a sponge absorbing everything!  And I know he will be!

I am looking forward to sharing our days with you on here and hope that you can glean a little something from it also!

~~To The Moon And Back~~  

Brown Bear, Brown Bear~~Day 1

Well today was our first "official" day of school.  Kind of weird starting in the middle of the year, I know, but my goal is to try out the "Before Five In A Row" method with Hayden and see how we both do with it.  I want to get a good comfortable learning style with him.  Something that he has fun with, but something that he learns well with.  So for now we are trying Before Five In A Row.  I have not purchased the manual yet, because I keep thinking maybe I can just do this with all the good resources for BFIAR on the internet and not purchase the book, but then, I come across info that says "on page so and so of the book" and I start wishing that I had the manual...so we will see.


So since we have read the book over and over (and since I couldn't locate it in our house ANYWHERE!!), I let Hayden listen to Brown Bear, Brown Bear being read on youtube.  Many, many books are available to listen to (and look at the pages of the book) on you tube.  So that was cool and different for him.  He asked to listen to it twice. : ) 


I had purchased some small wooden blocks at Staples for $1.00 a couple of weeks ago and thought they would work great for learning colors and sorting.  So that's exactly what we did.  He sorted all the colors, then we counted each set of colors.  After a few, he got a little bored with it (he is only 3 after all!), so we changed it up a bit to keep him interested.

Here is a little video of him counting as threw the blocks in the glass dish...hey, it kept his interest a little while longer!!  

Then we moved on to another matching type activity.  I had made a folder game with the silhouetted animals of Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  I also had the animals in color for him to match up with their silhouette/shadow.  I had shown him this when I first made it, and it took him a few minutes then to figure it out.  This time, he easily matched the pieces up.

Next, we did another matching activity with the animals.  This time it was Heads and Tails.  The animals were "split" in half and he had to match them all up.  Again, this was very easy for him to do.  Might have to find something a little more challenging!  But that is a good thing!!

Then we moved on to the fun stuff!!  M & M's!!

We used a pack of M & M's for sorting.  Of course every few minutes he would look at me and ask "I eat one now?"  I had printed off a page that had all the Brown Bear, Brown Bear animals and laminated it (knowing that we would be using M & M's, I thought that might be best if I wanted to use it again!).  We talked about the color of the animals and the color of the candy and he matched the colors to the animals.  He did very well with this!  And of course as a treat when he finished he got to eat them M & M's!!

        

          

           

I believe Hayden really enjoyed our first day.  We spend about an hour doing our activities.  It was laid back and fun and that is what I want, but he learned!  We will continue with some more Brown Bear, Brown Bear activities the rest of this week.  My goal is to spend 2-3 days on each book.  By the way, Brown Bear, Brown Bear is not actually on the list of Before Five In A Row books, but I used the same concept and will be doing a lapbook to go along with our week of learning for Hayden to look back on. Most of my resources for Hayden's school are coming from a wonderful site called Homeschool Share.  If I use other resources, I will try to remember to link to them so that you can use them also!!

Happy Learning!!