Our New Church "Busy Bag"

I know some readers may disagree with children working on activities during church services, but in our family S is allowed to work on quiet religious activities (though that doesn't always keep him quiet).  Here's our new church bag...

Decorated canvas bag with Crayola Fabric Markers (I bought ours at Hobby Lobby for $5.)  I LOVE that S is now drawing our family!  Daddy is holding a heart :)

Lacing cards made from craft foam and shoelaces (Noah's Ark and a cross)

Simple puzzle printed on cardstock and cut (or you could use religious greeting cards)

Coloring books, a small children's bible, religious stickers (Dollar Tree and Christian bookstores) 

I plan to swap some things out and add some vinyl cling, felt, or magnetic biblical scenes...can't decide. 

Cutting Skills

S has had a fascination with scissors for quite a long time now.  We began learning with strips of construction paper and straws so that he could get the hang of one snip.  He has just gotten the hang of cutting across a page independently, so I am introducing some more structured cutting practice.  I plan to begin with straight lines, then zig zags, then wavy lines. After S has mastered cutting this way across a page, I will move onto cutting out a square, triangle, circle...

There are many books on the market that have cutting practice pages inside them.  We don't own any, but I know the Kumon ones are popular. 



A less expensive idea would be to use some of the many free printables offered on the internet for cutting practice.  Here are just a few I came across with a quick internet search:

• Activity Village:  Cutting Skills Printables
• DLTK:  Printable Scissor Skills Practice Worksheets
• Kids Learning Station:  Scissor Skills Worksheets for Kids
• Kinder Printables:  Cutting Practice

Of course an even cheaper option (no printer ink used) would be to draw your own lines on paper.  Workbook pages, printables, or DIY versions would make a great independent activity for trays. 

A fun Easter craft to do would be to have your child cut strips of contruction paper and then cut the strip into little pieces to glue on a cross or egg shape to make a collage.  I plan for us to make an egg with a few different colors.  Directions and templates can be found at DLTK.

I'm (maybe) back!

No commitment or promise.  Let's just see how this goes.  It's been almost a YEAR since I went "on hiatus" and while we have been busy the past year, I'll just catch you up to what we've been up to in the past WEEK...

I is for Igloo.  Since the start of the school year, we've been working on a letter each week...or two weeks...or four when a new baby is born :)  My mom got us the cardboard letters from Lakeshore (can't find an online link), but you could easily cut your own out.  After S paints them we cover them in stickers that begin with that letter.  S looks forward to this each week and wants to race through the whole alphabet.  After we finish these, I plan to do these cute alphabet animals, but wanted to wait until S's cutting skills were stronger for these. 

This past week, we were on "I" (Does anybody else get frustrated with the whole uppercase I that looks like a lowercase l thing?) and since we are also learning about ice, snow, igloos, penguins, polar bears, etc, we made this igloo from a styrofoam bowl and "iceblock" Avery labels.  We also used some packing peanuts as snow.  I plan to add penguin and polar bear figurines to our little play scene. 

We've also been reading two bible stories each week.  When we got this bible, I went through the table of contents and marked which months we would read certain stories, using Easter and Christmas as guides which puts us towards the beginning of the Old Testament right now reading "Miracles of Jesus" stories.  I haven't gotten very creative with these yet, but S is enjoying these coloring pages for each story (the second page of each link). 

Letter Matching.  S has enjoyed matching upper case letters with lower case letters.  We use Fridge Phonics letters and an alphabet chart I made awhile back.  We are also enjoying using these alphabet blocks to match letters on an ABC poster from Dollar Tree. 

I'll stop there for now.  We'll call this a trial period...