With Heart From the Home

 Baking Unit wasn't as hands on as I had hoped, but we have another week of Christmas festivities to make up for that! We did several worksheets to practice prewriting skills and also decorated a cupcake chef hat! A simple sensory bin was made from oats and some kitchen tools I had on hand. She scooped the oats into the cupcake tins and made 'cupcakes'. The most exciting part of baking week was making gingerbread houses with Grandma. She mostly taste tested but was quite excited about building them! We got started on Christmas books early so didn't check out specific baking books, although a forever favorite of ours is Who At All the Cookie Dough? By Karen Beaumont. We look forward to more baking activities while celebrating the holidays. With heart from our home,  Jordan

Playing catch up on blog posts! We covered Arctic week 3 weeks ago. I wasn't super expectant that it would be that special, but I was wrong! She thoroughly enjoyed it and was so interested in the topic. It helped that Wild Kratts released a few new episodes covering Arctic animals on PBS. The books we checked out were mostly covering specific arctic animals. There are many more, but these she showed a special interest in.  We did a few activities and worksheets. Her favorite was finding the height and width of each arctic animals and then using a measuring tape to draw how big that actually would be. We used white paper taped together to make it more realistic. We also did a very simple sensory bin of cotton balls and Arctic animal figurines she had on hand. Later on I found her collecting any and all arctic animals she owned and lining them up. She added a tiger to it and I asked her if he belonged there. She responded yes, he's a Siberian tiger. She taught me something new! T...

 I had a few hours to myself today and decided to search for a good single serving chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found one by cookingclassy.com and thankfully it turned out so great! It was similar to the taste and size of Crumbl Cookies chocolate chip cookie (they are my favorite!) The dough is a very crumbly consistency so I recommend once you have your baking sheet lined with parchment paper to just dump it on top and form it into a large disc. I had a hard time trying to get the dough to come together so I opted to do this instead. See the recipe below! Ingredients: 2 TBSP butter (I used unsalted) 3 TBSP packed light-brown sugar. 1 pinch of salt. 1 TBSP whisked egg (crack egg in bowl and mix up well then scoop out 1 TBSP and add to your bowl.) 1/4 tsp vanilla. 1/3 cup all purpose flour. 1/8 tsp baking soda. 3-4 TBSP chocolate chips.  Recipe: Melt butter in microwave until only a little left is unmelted. mix together so that all is melted. Place butter in fridge to cool s...

 We had so much fun learning about turkeys and doing Thanksgiving crafts this past week of tot school!  Our time was spent doing free printables, visiting the library, reading books about Thanksgiving and visiting a local bakery for a 'turkey' sugar cookie. She brought her kangaroo along for the treat. A quick activity was making these simple 'sun catchers' with contact paper and tissue paper. We also picked up a library craft packet and made this hat. She said 'GOBBLE GOBBLE' when she wore it. Another simple activity was drawing a turkey and having her use dot stickers to 'color' in the feathers.  She loves to use the library tablets and makes sure to clean up and push her chair in afterward without prompting from her mama.  Books that stood out this week included Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson, The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks and Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes. We worked on prewriting, gluing and placement of paper. She does so great with a...

 I recently made a large crock pot batch of chili on a cold Saturday. We took the pot to my in-laws house and enjoyed it together. My MIL made delicious corn bread (she said it was Zattarans boxed mix) and cajun crackers to eat along with it.  The chili was SO easy, packed with protein, cheap to make and our 3 year old loved it! See recipe below. Ingredients: 1 lb ground beef 1 lb ground turkey 2 onions, chopped Garlic Powder to taste 4 cans diced tomato 1 can tomato sauce 1 can chili beans 2 cans kidney beans 2 packs of chili powder (ours was from Aldi) Recipe: Brown ground turkey, ground beef and two onions in skillet. Add garlic powder. Drain and place in crock pot. Add in all other ingredients in pot and mix well. Cover and place on low for flavors to come together. We left ours on low for about 4 hours. Pair with corn bread, saltines or crusty bread! Easy and delicious cold weather meal. I hope you enjoy! With heart from our home,  Jordan

 The week we are currently in of tot school (week 12) was listed as 'family unit', but when I checked my folder I didn't have any worksheets or plans prepared for it. So, I used this week as a sort of catch up and prolonged the All About Me and Emotions week units.  We had several worksheets for these 2 units and she really liked naming all body parts. I cut the names out, but she glued and placed them. She loves taking ownership of that process! Her tracing skills have dramatically improved. At first I thought it just wasn't a skill she enjoyed or was really catching onto (we still have our moments) but her focus has increased and she is trying so hard at drawing right on top of the numbers and letters. It helps to draw a big dot where she should begin tracing, otherwise she isn't certain where to start. I printed out two pages that showed emotions/feelings and facial expressions and throughout the week had her point to the emotion she was feeling. She nearly alway...

 Our last month has been riddled with sickness (cold symptoms, cough, etc.) so our tot school learning was dependent on how we were all feeling and energy levels. I wanted to blog them regardless of how much we accomplished, because when I looked back at pictures I saved of our activities and learning I was surprised we did more than I had originally thought (and some fun stuff, too!)  There are a number of pictures since I will be covering 3 weeks worth of units in this post.  We started our fall nature themed week at the library to pick up our reserved library books. Our favorite book was 'Leaves' by David Ezra Stein. They had a scavenger hunt set up and we decided to take part in it. After several clues from the librarian we finished it! Tricky to say the least. They told me their 20 year old intern was quite intentional about it being difficult (he's a mopey college boy and that made me giggle). She worked so hard and I made sure she knew it was a good thing to ask fo...