Helpful Mom

You can download Adventures in Odyssey from Focus on the Family’s website for Free!  You can even sign up for a free subscription so all the newest stories will be automatically sent to your account so you can download them when you want more stories.  You can then either upload them to your MP3 player or burn them onto a CD.  The stories are fun and creative, I even enjoy listening to them in the car.

And another idea for an older child that Joel’s parents used in developing the habit of daily Bible reading.  They would have their daily chore list that each child had to do each day and on it would be read a chapter of the Bible.  If they did all their chores each day they would get a quarter at the end of the week, but if they had also read their Bible every day then it would be doubled and they would get 50 cents.

Our family was sick this last week so over the weekend we didn’t do much of anything.  But in an effort to find a few fun things to do that didn’t involve pulling out new toys I was searching through my books for inspiration.  Katrina found one herself on the cover!  I took large boxes and cut one of the sides off so I could then tape the other three sides together into a triangle shape making them each their own “tent”.  They could then draw and color their own tents inside and out.  They spent at least an hour playing with their tents, bringing blankets and pillows from their rooms so they could camp out.  They dragged them around the house.  And somehow Katrina got the idea of turning it on it’s end and called it a garbage can.  They spent another hour running around the house picking up everything in sight to throw in the “garbage”.  It was very funny to watch.

Than later that night I tried out another idea from my book.  I took oatmeal containers and cut out the bottom circle, leaving the top intact so I could still use the removeable lid.  I then traced a circle on construction paper and cut it out, I used scrapbooking punches to make shaped holes.  Then I taped it to the bottom of the oatmeal container.  Then you can put a flashlight inside the container and project those shapes on the walls or ceiling.  In Katrina’s case it was Tinkerbell shaped, she was so excited.  They spent the rest of the night playing in the dark with their special flashlights.  It was simple and easy, taking less than 5 minutes to make, although locating the flashlights was a bit harder, go figure.  You could use shoeboxes instead of oatmeal containers.

Haircuts for Peanuts Waiting Room

I never thought my toddlers or even preschoolers would enjoy getting their haircut so much.  But then I found Haircuts for Peanuts and Ms. April(as we call her).  It’s over in Fairport, which is fortunately around the corner from my mom’s.  They cater to children of all ages.  It starts as soon as you walk into their waiting room which is beautifully painted with large murals of circus scenes and is filled with toys for the kids to play with while they wait their turn.  There is a slide, play kitchen, and even an air hockey table.  And of course nice chairs and magazines for the parents.

Then when it’s your turn you go into one of two rooms to have your haircut by either April, Judy, or Crystal.

Hair Cuts for Peanuts

The rooms are colorfully painted and decorated in themes geared towards the kids.  I always ask for April because she is so good with our girls.  Her room is green with large butterflies and frogs on the walls, which the girls just love pointing out to me every time we go.  There are tvs and dvd players in each of the rooms and a huge variety of movies they can pick from so they are distracted from what April is doing.  They have cartooned aprons for the kids and animal water bottles for wetting their hair.  April is very patient and a pro at getting them to follow her instructions.  The cuts take about 10-15 minutes so it’s quick, letting the kids go before they start to squirm.

I find it so funny when I tell the girls that we are going to go get their haircut, they jump up and down with

Haircuts for Peanuts

excitement!  They can’t wait to go to Ms. April’s.  I will make it into an event since they always want to stay and play with the toys after getting their haircut.  So Katrina goes first, then Mikayla, and then me.  Yep I get my haircut there too now.  It’s just so much easier than making a separate appointment somewhere else and either drag the kids along or waste precious kidfree moments getting my haircut.  The girls play in the waiting room or just hang out and watch mom get her haircut.  If one of the girls has to use the bathroom Ms. April understands and lets me run off with them before resuming my haircut.  When we are all done I will read my book and let the girls play til they are done before we head on to whatever we have to do next.

I just love what April has done in creating this business and I think it’s a great idea for other moms to make as their own business.  In addition to haircuts they also host BeDazzling birthday parties on weekends.  You can check out their website for more info Haircuts for Peanuts

We regularly hard boil eggs for salad toppings, or making egg salad sandwichs.  And I say why should egg coloring be only enjoyed once a year at Easter?  So we can tell the difference between the hard boiled and raw eggs, we’ll color the hard boiled ones.  Now I keep it real simple, using only one color on all of them.  The kids can choose the color and we’ll just use different ones each time.  I will also pick up Easter kits long after Easter on clearance for pennies so we can do fun things to the eggs like wrap them in those shrink wrap things, or add stickers or color them with white crayon(the color doesn’t stick where the crayon is leaving white lines).  This all only takes a few minutes but the joy it creates is well worth the effort.

Last week we had the privilege of having Pastor Mike, our senior Pastor, come do a question answer session with our mom’s group.  It was a great time and brought up a great question of how do we teach our children about the Bible.

Now I’m no expert and I’ve never been good at rote memorization, but there are some fun ways to sneak in a bit of learning while you go about your day to day life that we do that you may enjoy too.

One of the easiest ways is through song.  There are all kinds of cds, videos, and dvds that you can pick up that will teach scripture through music.  We got Katrina a CD player for her room after she turned 4 so she could listen to Adventures in Odyssey tapes after we tucked her in for the night, that way we could put both girls to bed at the same time, but she got the privilege of staying up a bit later.  But for the last two months she has been listening to a Cedarwood Kids cd every day, morning, noon, and night, over and over and over.  And now she has memorized them and will spontaneously break out in “Oh God you are my God!” or other songs on the cd.

In the car we have these books called “My Travel Time Bible Stories”, there is a whole series of them.  The book is the size of a CD case so you can store it in with your other CDs.  There are 20 short stories in each book.  They come with a CD that will read each story, followed by a song that goes with each story.  One day Katrina was listening to it and all of a sudden goes, “the Bible tells us to obey our parents, just like you always say mom!”  So those we listen to in the car and they love to follow along in the books.

Since my girls love music so much I have also picked up Steve Green’s Hide’em in your Heart VHS tapes.  These are songs made straight from scriptures so they can learn to hide God’s Word in their hearts.  They love to sing and dance along, and it gives me a few free minutes of peace, literally.

And Steve Elkins writes all kinds of books such as 52 Bible verses that kids should learn, which is bright and colorful, and comes with a CD that has bible verses set to music.

All of these are suggestions of course, and I always buy them used and search them out at garage sales and thrift stores.  But since to me this is the most important thing I can teach my children I will pay more for them than other things like Dora, or Princesses ;P

A few other ones I like is the Princess Bible by Sheila Walsh.  It’s all stories about Princesses from the Bible such as Esther.  There are stories to act out and everyday stories applying these Bible stories to kids everyday life.   She has also made a Warriors Bible for boys, with stories such as King David.  This we read before bed each night and the girls love acting the stories out.  I figured since the girls are so into Princesses I’d better take advantage while I have the chance.  Katrina loved it right off because it has a tiara on the cover which actually has “jewels” embedded in the cover.

Now that I am thinking I’ll try my hand at homeschooling the girls I’ve begun to see learning opportunities everywhere.  Katrina has begun wanting to kiss me 20times before bed.  Well what mom isn’t going to take that while it lasts ;P  And I began to realize that it was a great chance to help her with her counting at the same time.  Now we have gotten as high as 40 with no tears or formal learning times.

Dot to Dot activities are great too for learning number order and hand control for future writing skills.  Helping put silverware away can be sorting and classification, as can sorting laundry items.  Everything can be counted, and you can do shape of the day and have them look for that shape all over.  And another easy one to tuck away for one of those moments when they are bored and losing it in the car it to try to find the entire alphabet-one at a time in order, on signs, cars, store fronts, whatever.  It gets them working as a team looking for those letters and it reinforces letter order.

Sorry it’s been so long.  Last week was a crazy whirlwind, 3 book sales, the Ronald McDonald house garage sale, and catering dinner for 60, all along with all the normal day to day things with the girls.  Thank goodness for a supportive husband, naptime, and preschool mornings.

So today I was making easy pretzels which the girls absolutely loved making and they were very easy.

The recipe goes as follows from:                                                                   

1 package of yeast and 1 1/2 cups of warm water mixed together until the yeast fully dissolves.  Add 1 tsp. salt, 1 Tbs sugar, and 4 cups of flour.  Mix and knead the dough until it is smooth.  Roll and twist the dough into letters, numbers, or other shapes.  Lay the pretzels on a greased sheet, brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle with salt.  Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes.

The girls really got into it.  They love to help me bake anyways but this had lots of fun steps for them to get involved.  As we added the flour I told Katrina that we needed 4 cups of flour and I had put 1 in how many more do I need?  3!  And so on, she thought it was great and I knew I’d snuck in a little basic math.  They loved helping to knead the dough and of course creating all kinds of letters and shapes.

They come out pretty white not brown like pretzels, so if you wanted to color them it would be another fun opportunity to teach about mixing colors.  Funny the girls now ask me all the time what different color combinations would make, and we buy those Trix yogurts by Yoplait that come with two colors in the package and they want me to mix them together to see what colors it makes.

I was reading in one of my magazines an article about how we should set an example to our children of going to vote and how if you vote they are more likely to as well.  But the way the story began really reminded me of how our children are watching everything we DO even more than what we say, and how we have to be so very careful to make sure our actions match our words.  In it it had this poem by a nun that was given to the author when her baby was born:

“Be careful where you go, young man, be careful what you do.  Two little eyes are watching you now- Two little feet will be following you.”

Isn’t that the truth, no matter where you are no matter what you are doing your kids are sure to find you and want to do it with you.  One day I was dropping my girls off at my moms for the day and Katrina really didn’t want to be left behind, so in an effort to make her not want to come with me I told her she didn’t want to join me because I’d be scrubbing the floors and ceilings.  And she says I want to help you!

The article goes on to say that some of this is obvious but when you’re so focused on giving the essentials-food, love, basic hygiene-it’s easy to overlook that those little eyes soak up so much more from you too.  Things you might not even be aware you’re transmitting.  Like how family members treat one another, and whether respect and affection are part of those interactions even when you are sleep deprived or stressed.  How strangers are treated.  How often please and thank you punctuate the day.  Or even whether you come to a full stop at a stop sign.

The kids might look oblivious, but they are watching.  It’s enough to make a mom self-conscious(which is probably a good thing).  Last spring we had a mom come share at our group about teaching your children manners.  And what she shared wasn’t what you might have expected about sitting them and teaching them here’s what you do in this situation or that one, but is was more about how we should be setting that example.  Instead of saying(or yelling) “eat your food”  we should ask them politely, “Please eat your food”.  Or can you please pick up your cup for mommy, instead of give me your cup.  It’s easy to forget that just because you are in charge it doesn’t mean you get to be bossy, instead we should be modeling the behaviour that we want them to inherit.  Which right now it’s self control and patience, which is being worked into mommy and child.  If they see you fly off the handle how can we expect any more from them?

I’ve been reading this great book called Childwise, it’s by Gary Ezzo, the same author who wrote Babywise.  I highly recommend both books, but that’s beside the point.  What I read that I really liked the other day was his distinction between when a child should say they are sorry or if they should ask forgiveness.  Basically he says that when a child does something accidentally, like spill their drink or bump a friend they should say they are sorry.  They didn’t mean to do it, it was not done on purpose.  But when a child willfully does something that they know is wrong like hit their sibling, that is when they should ask for forgiveness.  There is something in the act of asking for forgiveness that is humbling and can act as a deterrent in the child repeating the behaviour.

OK so sometimes you have to reign in your kids imaginations to protect them from hurting themselves or others.  Take this example: the other day Katrina got out of bed because there was a “bug” in her room.  Joel went up to kill it, but after much looking he couldn’t find it.  So he gave her a fly swatter and told her that if she saw it again she could kill it herself.  Crisis averted.  Fast forward to the next day when two little girls are chasing each other around the house with a fly swatter saying it’s your turn to kill me.  I’m the bug kill me!  Joel says OK no more fly swatters and Katrina says that’s OK just use your hand to kill me.