Friday Favorites and Freebies-House Edition

Friends, I have big news! We are buying our FIRST HOUSE! I've been combing the web for fun ideas in decor, storage, and more. In celebration, here are a few fun findings to share on this fabulous Friday!

Need a corner shelf? Look no farther than your closet door! A neat idea!

If you have a fabric obsession like I seem to (thanks Mom!) you'll love this idea for storing fabrics! hint: the Dollar Tree store is the least expensive place to find the foam board :)

Luckily, we don't have a big remodel on our hands, but this one will knock your socks off!

Looking for a FUN way to display your books? Check THIS out! (And it's cheap too!) And try out this one too!

Do you have old countertops? If so, CHECK this out! Amazing!

Try out these PB look-a-like pillows too-way CUTE!

Have an old dictionary? Have fun decorating in at least 6 different ways HERE!

HAve a Fantastic Weekend!

Edible Tree Art

Do you want to know a trick for teaching kids to draw a tree? Start by drawing a seed at the bottom and then "grow" the tree up with a straight line from that. Then start at the seed again and move up the tree trunk to add more branches. The trunk will naturally get thicker as the tree "grows" bigger and ends up proportionate to the tree.

Cool huh?

No more tree trunks with a bushy top for you. You get the real deal with this trick. I learned that little trick in 2nd grade and had fun teaching Jay and Kay. Kay added some other "decorations" too :)

The next part of our {Little Project} was inspired by this song about blossoms looking like popcorn. Kids love this song and it's so fun to sing while doing this activity!

We turned art-time into snack-time after we glued popcorn onto our trees with Elmer's glue. Just put a little pool of it on a plate and let the kids dip and place it on the tree.

(I have no idea what is up with this photo going sideways.)

When the trees are done "blossoming" you can go outside and take photos of the blossoms on your trees and have a yummy snack of left-over popcorn blossoms.

It's a yummy {Little Project :}

A Postcard Project

I am really excited to be joining in the postcard swap being hosted at Playingbythebook.net If your kids are like mine they LOVE getting mail. We're also excited to have a {Little Project} creating and then writing about our favorite books, and mailing our postcards in the exchange.

I hope you will join in too! Go here to learn how to join in, but hurry because the deadline to participate is April 30th! (You'll find out who you get to mail to the following week.)

We're looking forward to This Little postcard Project!

Earth Day Catch Project

In honor of Earth Day, {This Little Project} is about reusing. With some scissors you can turn a milk jug in to a ball catch. Jay is starting T-ball this weekend and I thought we could use some catching practice around here. This is what we came up with (courtesy of the invention box):

To make {This Little Project} you need:

a plastic milk jug

electric tape (probably not totally necessary so go ahead if you don't have it).

yarn

ball with lots of holes (ours is from dollar tree)

Just cut the jug in half below the handle. Use electric tape to cover the top. (If you are wondering what to do with the bottom half, we put soil in and are using it for a planter.)

Tie one end of the yarn to the jug and the other through the holes on the ball.

Now play ball with this earth-friendly toy and feel good about planting seeds in the other half! Happy Earth Day!

How to make a Sieve (via the invention box)

In anticipation of Earth Day tomorrow, let me share one of my favorite things:

the invention box.

{This Little Project} of a box has brought us lots of fun and given new life to the word "reuse" at our house.

Also, known as my "junk box," it's organized by categories: wood, fabrics/fiber, metal, paper, plastic, etc. Inside are things like thread spools, metal circles from cans of frozen juice, toilet paper rolls, fabric left from previous little projects, etc. To learn how to make your own, go HERE.

Today's {Little Project} comes from the insides of the invention box!

This Reuse Little Project is sieve made from the red plastic topper from a box of clementines and an old bracelet. The second sieve I made (I didn't want the kiddos to fight) was made from the white mesh wrapping that a toy came in. You will also need a needle and thread (I used 3 strands of embroidery floss.) If you are wondering what this sieve is used for, check out this post about our Sensory Box.
For the white sieve I used two layers of the "mesh." For the red one, just one layer. I simply sewed around the outside of the bracelet to secure the mesh to it and then trimmed the excess off.

Ta Da! These sieves will help little ones find treasure now!

Easy. Fun. Reused. Earth Friendly. Kid Friendly :) To see other things that have come from this fun box, go HERE and here.

Also, {This Little Project} was featured on the Family Education.com blog. Go check out the other great earth day ideas featured there with the crayon shavings project from This Little Project!

Linky Love at This Little Project

Projects are always fun, but having a theme somehow makes doing a project more like having a party for me.

Check out these AMAZING blogs that have featured my Little Projects lately with Earth Day and Mother's Day coming up. I love to get inspiration from these fun round-ups. I hope you have fun checking these out too!

Thanks to manualidadesinfantiles.org for featuring the felt flowers at This Little Project.

You'll find a great Mother's Day round-up at luvinthemommyhood that features the felt flowers from This Little Project too!

Family Education.com is featuring one of my Earth Day Little Projects.

Thanks for the Linky Love!

Muffin Tin Monday

Somehow Monday sneeks up on me and I forget until Tuesday how fun it is to do muffin tin lunches on MONDAY! But today we remembered on the right day to join in with the theme of "leftovers" at this blog. Today we had bagels, yogurt, applesauce, apples, grapes, pretzels, and cheese. They think eating lunch is a treat this way, and it's easy to personalize for different tastes too.

If you haven't tried using muffin tins for lunches, give it a whirl.

Your kiddos will LOVE {This Little Project}.

By the way, the IKEA cups fit perfectly inside :)
Have a yummy {Little Project}.

Happy 100th Day of the Year!

We've been gearing up this week to celebrate the 100th day of the year-today! It's a great excuse to LEARN and have a lot of FUN!

Jay learned about counting by tens using tiny pon poms to make ice cream cones with this worksheet.

This apples stamping worksheet was a fun way to count to 100. You just use the top of the pencil eraser and a stamp pad to color the "apples."


We graphed our jelly beans (from 2 Easter egg hunts) counting them by tens. These egg dishes work great for separating the colors.

And then compared how many of each color came from each hunt. The yellows won with the most at each hunt! Who knew that yellow was so popular?

I drew easter eggs of different colors on paper to separate the candy by the colors on the first hunt. As soon as they finished finding eggs we dumped all the candy into a big bowl and they separated the candy by color. After they were done we put the candy away and they haven't asked for it since! I think we will be doing this game again next year :)

We learned how to count by 10's using the first half of this tune (thanks Elspeth)
singing: "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, that's how we count by tens."


This Hundred's chart is a great visual for all the counting. It's fun to cover some up and practice writing the missing numbers too.

And of course we finished off by doing a 100 piece puzzle!

I hope you have fun celebrating learning about 100 too!

Friday Favorites and Freebies-learning edition

Enjoy some fun free learning freebies!

A great math game resource to print for your kiddos here.

Tons of great ideas-including math via baking a cake and pizza (yum!)

How to make a BOOK bag literally!

Fun songs to sing and fingerplays to do here.

Something I'm learning about: freezer cooking :)

Free learning resource everyday Homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com

Happy Weekend!

Springtime Sensory Skills

We've had fun with These {Little Projects} for springtime. If you have little ones around they may enjoy these too :)

Fine Motor Building Skill: Easter Egg transfer
The little eggs and baskets are from Hobby Lobby. You could also use jelly beans (but I knew ours would be gobbled up). Use a spoon to transfer the eggs from the bowl to the little basket. Count as you go. You can also do addition and subtraction using the baskets to hold different numbers of eggs.

Springtime Sensory Box
Make colored rice and add bottles, baskets, buttons, beads, beans, scoops, spoons, and little treasures. This never gets boring at our house! I will post how to make your own rice sieve next week. It's a fun addition to your sensory box.

Alphabet Matching with Plastic Eggs

Kay has got her capital letters down and we are working on lowercase letters. {This Little Project} was a fun way to practice matching them.

I picked up a bag of 2 dozen smaller plastic eggs. A sharpie marker works well to write the uppercase letter on the top half and the lowercase letter on the bottom half. With 24 eggs you get almost the whole alphabet. You get to choose which 2 letters get left out :)

Since 24 is a lot for a little person to sort through, I split the group in half and gave 12 to Jay and 12 to Kay. After awhile we switched eggs.

(sorry I can't get this photo to turn)


Just put the "bottoms" in one pile and the "tops" in the other pile. The played for a long time on multiple days with this game!
Enjoy!