SEWING, QUILTING, and CRAFT projects made with a lot of love.

Love this post? Then pass it on!

Threading pasta or wooden beads are standard preschooler activities. But what other threading activities are there? Here are a few we've used over the years, from twelve months to four years. We know that threading is good for concentration, coordination and developing fine motor skills. Activities that strengthen the muscles in the fingers and the hand and have the child use the little pincer grip (when the child uses the index finger and the thumb to pick up and manipulate small objects), help to prepare the hand for writing. All of the ages listed are very general and are to...

The website BabyccinoKids.com was acquired by SLOTXOGAME88.Net on March 28, 2023.

What kid doesn't love parachutes? My boys have gotten so many of those parachuting army men as party favors, I've lost count. And forget trying to untangle the strings. (Ain't nobody got time for that!) The weather may not have been on our side, but with so many rainy days this summer, eventually you just throw caution to the wind and do outdoor activities anyway. And so it was the day we made DIY parachutes. Making these was simple. We had all the supplies we needed around the house. What You Need Disposable plastic (or paper) cup Plastic garbage sack String (we used some tightly twisted yarn) Paper punch Scissors Tape Measure or yardstick How to Make It First we punched holes in the top of the plastic cups, just under the rim. You'll need to punch four holes equal distance apart (approximately). Next we cut one plastic kitchen garbage sack into a 14-inch square. Since we made two parachutes, we measured and cut the bag with it flattened (i.e. two plies) so we had two squares with only a few cuts. Now we cut four 14-inch lengths of string for each parachute. Our oldest son gathered a corner of the plastic square and tied one length of string to it, leaving only a small tail. He repeated this with the other four corners. Then we tied each string to a different hole on the cup. (TIP: Try to keep the tails all the same length so you don't get a lopsided parachute.) Now all that was left to do was to go to a high place and drop those puppies. My sons perched on the landing of our deck and later our yard's play set. They LOVED watching them gracefully float to the ground. My oldest son tucked the parachute in the cup and dropped it to see what would happen. It sank to the ground with lightning speed. That's gravity for ya! How Does a Parachute Work The cup glides slowly down thanks to something known as air resistance (or drag). When air gets under it, the plastic parachute fans out for maximum coverage; this air resistance slows the fall of the object tremendously. This great activity came from Patricia A. Staino's wonderful book Magic Moments: Super Science with Your Kids. Check it out!

Preschool art with tea bags is the ultimate process art! It also involves fine motor and using the sense of smell. AND, it's super easy to set up!

Here’s a simple open-ended building activity for kids of all ages – Colored craft sticks, wooden cubes, and small plastic cups! Simple materials, and yet

🌈✨Activity: Repeat the pattern of the snail shell shape 🐌, using digital pressure 👌🏻. . 🟣Skills: Use of the pincer grasp to manipulate small objects, coordinate object manipulation movements,...

* I just started a flickr group for any projects made using my tutorials. Please feel free to stop by and post your finished or WIP! If you want to make your own here is how you do it. You will n…

Students will LOVE practicing engineering skills with this hands-on STEM Jellybean Structures. Best part? The taste-testing afterwards!

Hey All! Time to prepare for Science Night! Science Night is a big deal at our school and we spend so much time preparing for it. I thought I would share some ideas and information so you can take a look at this fun event. I just finished and posted my newest Totally Teeth Printables packet and I am so excited to share it with you. I created this packet to go with my Totally Teeth Student book pictured below. On Science Night, I hang a giant toothbrush for students and their parent to walk through. The kids LOVE this! To make sure my students are motivated to attend Science Night, and I am not spending the evening alone, I created this fun Guess Who??? Tooth Edition activity. We practiced doing some toothy smiles and I took each students picture. I crop the picture so only their tooth grin is showing. I open the template in Powerpoint, insert a table and randomly put each toothy grin into a cell. I copy one page for each students and they write their guess of who each smile is below the picture. Here is the catch: Students can only find out if their predictions are right when they come to Science Night. I hang the "key" on the board and the first thing they do when they walk in their room is run to the board to see how many they got right. So fun! The best part, most of them don't even correctly identify their own smile. HA! This activity is highly pinned on Pinterest and so many teachers have asked for the template so....I have included it in my Totally Teeth Printables packet :) Students display their Totally Teeth Student book on their desk. They share this book with their parents and discuss: Parts of a Tooth, Dental Do's and Don'ts, Tooth Traditions for Around the World and Tips for keeping their teeth healthy. On the back bulletin board, we display their Tooth Fairy craftivity and writing prompt. They tell their parents all about Dental Health Vocabulary with their Vocab book. They tell their parents all about our January Math Tubs with Dental Health Measurement, Graphing and Data Analysis, Roll, Add and Color and Build-A-Word Scrabble. They also share our class graphs: How Many Teeth Have You Lost? Have You Had a Cavity?

These Children's Play X-Rays are perfect for kids interested in skeletons! Includes 9 play x-rays that can be printed on vellum and enjoyed!

The best toys and gift ideas that any 4-year-old will fall in love with, including books, balance bikes, bath toys, STEM toys, and more.

The past month we've been in full science project mode around here. In honor of my science-lover-7th grader finishing up her science project last night, I bring you 20 Easy and FUN science experiments you can do at home. 1. This Walking Water Science Experiment is a great indoors activity that will impress everyone around! 2. You know how oil and water don't mix right? Well, this Glowing Oil & Water Experiment is a great hands on way to teach that to the kiddos. 3. Make an Overnight Crystal Garden with simple ingredients and instructions. 4. This one will definitely need

Here are some building instructions for making a cute little LEGO® Lizard! My 9 year old son designed this LEGO® lizard, and I thought he did a great job! Here’s how to build it: Step 1: Start with a 1 x 2 – 1 x 2 inverted bracket (green), a 2 x 4 lime green […]

VBS- "By the Sea" lesson- Nets full of fish snack- nets with fish made using waffle pretzels, hershey kisses, and goldfish. Place kis...

paper anniversary gifts. These are the best 1st wedding anniversary gift ideas on Etsy and beyond made of paper! Unusual, creative, funny,...

I think I am reaching the end of the crafts we completed before moving. This was a simple little craft we made using paper towel rolls. Start by taping up one end - I found this fun tape in the dollar bin at Michaels. Have the children add about a cup of dried pasta, beans or rice - we had leftover pasta from another project. Tape up the other end and paint!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. I'm bracing myself for a few very busy weeks at school before Christmas break. One of the best parts about the holidays are all of the wonderful children's books for December. There is honestly not enough time to get through them all. One of the stories we'll be working with next week is Mooseltoe. This moose dad is just an amazing father, running around to make Christmas special for his family. Next month we'll be talking about Random Acts of Kindness, so I thought we could brainstorm ways to do something special for someone. I made this chart as an example of what we'll be doing next week. The "light bulbs" are sticky notes, so that you can just take them off when you're done and use the cute poster next year. You can write character traits of the father as well. If you want the title and label just click here. Grab the title and caption, here. We'll finish the week off with this cute little craft. I love including the kids hands in their art work. Splash a little glitter and sequins and you have a project the kids will love. I'm always wanting to reinforce the Common Core Standards any way I can. One of the tricky ones is Shades of Meaning. This activity doesn't put the words in order of intensity, but it does reinforce that words have synonyms and some work better than others in certain situations. I'll be squeezing this in between one of my Daily 5 rotations. Grab this here to give it a try. Grab this freebie, here. If you like any of these activities, check out my unit about Mooseltoe and Olive the Other Reindeer. If you want to check this out in my TpT store... Here's another fun option. Before we left on break I wanted to have some artwork I could hang up for the winter season. Why do bulletin boards take so long to put up? I know I'm going to be busy, so I picked something I could keep up as long as winter is here. Runde's Room had a really cute example of this, but I believe she used oil pastels. They were so vibrant! Honestly, I just love how these turned out, so different and cute. There was a Cold Lady that Swallowed Snow goes perfectly with catching snowflakes. The kids love all the stories in this series. They always seem to sing along with me as the story progresses. You can use this sequencing activity as the story is read. They can have the squares cut out prior and the glue as the story is read. I used it as a parent run station. The story is quick and easy for a parent to ready. Then the kids can spend about 10 minutes completing the task. Grab this freebie and have fun with the story. Grab this freebie, here. Have a wonderful week!

The Development of Appropriate Pencil Grip & Drawing Skills - 1 to 6 Years Old - PLD develops teacher resources to improve literacy levels in classrooms across Australia

WOW kids with this easy dancing raisins science experiments for kids teaching about chemical reactions between baking soda and vinegar.

Literacy Center Ideas - hands-on literacy center activities perfect for 5-8 years | you clever monkey

Third graders will be starting to hone their cursive writing technique next week in art class. The kids are always so excited about learning to write cursive. Last year I tried a cursive writing pr…

Created by a teacher for teachers. Teaching resources, worksheets, activities, e-books, and crafts for pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade.

I have decided to take a little inventory on my blog to make sure it’s as helpful and resourceful as possible. As it turns out, I have over 50 art projects for kids ages 3 to 5 that are super duper amazing and awesome right here. I took some time to round them all up […]

Ebi-kun has had an interest in ancient Rome and gladiators recently so we decided to make some Roman coins. We used a basic salt dough and...

Ya'll know I've been obsessed with making paper bag saint puppets, so today I bring you Saint Patrick! :-) The one above is made with just a lunch sized paper bag, paper, glue, and

This year our local library (Commerce Township Community Library) is offering special children’s programs that emphasize Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, they use the acronym STEM…

What “rule” would you add?

Little Brother (our 4 year old middle child) is doing K4 this year. We started K4 back in the early spring using The Gentle + Classical Preschool Level 1. This was a terrific program designed for 2-4 year olds, and we really had a lot of fun using it through the summer. This post does contain some affiliate links, and should you decide to make a purchase after clicking one of the links I have provided for your convenience, I will receive a small commission at absolutely no extra cost to you. Thank you for blessing our family this way! Then in August, we were given the opportunity to borrow the entire set of 4 Teacher's Manuals, phonics audio CD, and phonics flashcards for A.C.E's Reading Readiness Program, Kindergarten with Ace and Christi, from a friend to use with Little Brother this year. It was a deal I simply could not pass up, and then the Lord provided the finances for us to get Little Brother the set of PACEs (workbooks) to complete the program! Although I had never used this particular program before (I used ABeka's K4 with Big Brother), I had heard and read great things about it and was very eager to give it a try. My husband learned to read using A.C.E. curriculum. It was so funny, he came home from work the evening I had gotten the flashcards, and his eyes lit up with recognition when he looked into the box: "Hey, where'd you get Abby Antelope?!" He STILL remembers the names of all the little animals that the program uses to help teach the letter sounds. And now, here we are 6 weeks into the Kindergarten with Ace and Christi program, and I wanted to share our review. Kindergarten with Ace and Christi is a full-year program from A.C.E. designed to help 3-5 year olds get ready for learning to read. This program is what we might call "old-school" Kindergarten as it does not expect students to begin reading or to begin writing letters or numbers just yet. So although the program is called "Kindergarten," it is more like a modern Pre-K program. I find it to be at the perfect level for Little Brother. As I stated, the program requires the use of a set of 4 huge Teacher Manuals. These manuals contain all the daily stories and lessons, detailed instructions for completing all the students' PACE work, scheduling suggestions, P.E. activities, songs, Bible memory work, craft ideas, reproducible games and bulletin boards, and much more. The daily lesson plans are so well-organized and very detailed so that almost anyone could read through a lesson and be able to teach it right away. The curriculum was originally written for use in a church-school setting, but it works great as a homeschool program! Little Brother has 5 PACE (workbook) subjects, and each subject has 12 PACEs to complete for the year just like in all the other levels of the A.C.E curriculum. The subjects include Word Building, Math, English, Science, and Social Studies. Little Brother has been so thrilled that his workbooks look just like Big Brother's on the outside, they simply contain work that is on his level. I even created Little Brother his own goal cards so he can keep up with his daily work just like Big Brother does. The PACEs are all conveniently color-coded by subject. Little Brother likes putting a sticker in each box as he completes each subject for the day. He uses basic Crayola markers and jumbo crayons to complete his PACE work since these are best suited for his little hands. He will be slowly transitioning to using a pencil, but he still will not be writing letters or numbers yet this year. He has a child-sized folding chair that he brings to the coffee table each morning, and we work together there in the living room. Most days we are able to complete all his work in less than an hour. Word Building is where the phonics sounds are introduced using fun stories about animal characters. Each week we meet a new animal friend. These animals all have alliterated names like Abby Antelope and Sandy Sunfish. The weekly animal's corresponding flashcard gets placed on our living room wall, and we listen to the phonics sound on our CD. I read the animal story each day while Little Brother follows along with the illustrations in his PACE. Letters are not introduced in alphabetical order and letter names are not used so as to focus on the sounds in preparation for phonetic reading instruction later. (Little Brother already knows all the letter names, though, thanks to Leapfrog Letter Factory!) Through songs, stories, simple PACE worksheets, file folder games, and crafts Little Brother is getting a rock-solid foundation in phonics through the Kindergarten with Ace and Christi Reading Readiness Program. His English PACE activities further drill the letter sound of the week while also working on important vocabulary, concept of left and right, simple cutting and gluing skills, tracing, and more. Here is a fun macaroni project we did when we were learning the Mm sound with Milton Mule. Bible stories are beautifully illustrated in the Social Studies PACEs. Scripture memory work is also built into the curriculum. Little Brother is currently learning to recite Psalm 100, and I love that the lesson plans give fun hand motions for each phrase of the memory work. In Social Studies there are also fun stories and simple worksheets about families, homes, community helpers, etc. As each animal is introduced in Word Building and English, we learn a bit about that animal in Science. So far we have also covered the days of Creation, hot/cold, and weather. Math is one of Little Brother's favorite subjects because he loves to count! Right now in his PACEs we are reviewing counting and number recognition from 0 to 10, and he has had fun learning how to do simple matching, color-by-number, and dot-to-dot activities. By the end of the year he will be doing some simple addition and subtraction problems. (We are also still adding in activities from the book Preschool Math at Home because they are so fun and simple to implement.) The Science and Math PACEs all have extra "homework" pages included in the back for extra skill practice to be used as desired. Little Brother loves his PACEs so much, he asks to work on these pages many afternoons on his own. We slide each of his current PACEs into page protectors and keep them in a binder along with his weekly goal card. On the front of his binder is his progress chart where he places stickers for completing PACEs and reciting his weekly memory verses. Here are some final pros and cons I'd like to share about the Kindergarten with Ace and Christi program: Pros: Provides a solid foundation in phonemic awareness and early math skills Teaches from an unashamedly conservative Christian worldview Activities are developmentally appropriate for the students for whom it is intended to be used Multisensory approach makes it an excellent choice for any learning style Lesson plans are extremely well-organized and easy to use; very much "open and go" Lessons can be easily "tweaked" so that adding or substituting other activities as needed is simple Provides gentle school structure and important skill practice without taking up the child's whole day with academics Beautiful full-color illustrations in the PACEs help to make the stories engaging for the child Cons: The Teacher Manuals are pretty expensive. That's why I was so thankful we were able to borrow them! (There are many homeschool buy and sell groups on Facebook as well as on eBay where you can often find folks reselling their old manuals for a cheaper price, or you might ask around in your local homeschool community to see if anyone has a set you could borrow.) The Manuals are also quite bulky. (Not really a bad thing as they contain such great lesson plans for the entire year. I just pull out each day's lesson plan and put them in my own binder so I do not have to flip through hundreds of pages all morning long.) Some stories and activities were obviously written with church school students in mind. (I would love to see ACE come out with a homeschool version where all the children in the stories are homeschooled haha!) A few of the stories can get a bit long for younger attention spans, but we can usually solve that issue by either taking a break or giving Little Brother something to color or a puzzle to work on while he listens. Also, be sure you check out this video about Kindergarten with Ace and Christi from veteran homeschool mom Andrea Mills! In all, I am extremely happy we get to use Kindergarten with Ace and Christi with Little Brother for K4 this year. He is loving it! He asks every morning (even on weekends!) if we can "do PACEs." And I feel like we are setting positive habits while he's getting some great preparation for good things to come in Kindergarten/K5 next year (when we plan to transition him to Masterbooks curriculum). Do you have any questions about Kindergarten with Ace and Christi or how we are implementing it in our homeschool? There's really not a lot of information about this program online, so please feel free to drop your questions in the comments below. Here I should mention that I am not being paid or reimbursed in any way by ACE to give this review, nor did they ask me to do so. I am just a homeschool mom/blogger simply sharing my own personal experiences and opinions in hopes of informing and inspiring others.

I took a few photos of what is new in our classroom and of the most popular activities we have at moment in school. Have a look: Mushroom dabbing I got some bingo dabber in the shop last week (I had been looking for them for some time and got lucky!) We are still talking about harvest time but we have moved on from pumpkins to mushrooms. So I drew a plain mushroom template for the kid to colour. The I showed them how to use the dabbers to make dots onto the hat of their mushrooms. Oh my God! They were QUEUEING for this activity: I laminated the finished product, cut it out, punched a hole on the top and added a string on it. Great little decoration!. 2. Punching activity I have had this puncher for a while but I had put it back in the cupboard as the children were not that interested in it anymore. It is now back again on the shelf and the kids love it (for another while!!) 3. Practical activity Now, the children are getting such a kick out of this exercise. They spray a bit on water on the mirror and have to rub it off and polish it. What fun!