Mommy School!

I am a Mom of a two and a half year old and a four year old, AND I nanny for two little boys that are the exact same age. I am always trying to think of fun ideas to get them off the couch and elbow deep in creativity!!! My daughter is always asking to do a craft and I love being able to find a new activity that also teaches her something!
So because of her constant requsts and not wanting to squelch her desire to create, I did what every Mom would do… I headed over to Pinterest 🙂 Not only did I find a TON of great crafts and activies but I stumbled upon a FANTASTIC resource called Mommy School! This mama who writes a blog called Oopsydaisyblog started homeschooling and shares her lesson plans! There are a bunch of educational options to connect crafts, teaching and outdoor activities with school! This Mama is amazing and she has opened my eyes to what the world of homeschooling has to offer. Now, we have not decided to homeschool in PLACE of private school but I am more reviewing what my oldest learns each week at school to make sure it sticks and makes sense to her!
I so love how sets up her lesson plans! She chooses a letter, color, number or shape to work on each week. So five days of focusing on the same thing allows for new options of creativty, but also helps secure the learned information each day.

She gave me the letter A
Words to remember: apple, ant, alligator, airplane
Craft: Alligator made out of letter A
Song: Ants go marching
Life Application: Go outside and lay on blanket looking for airplanes
Color: apples are RED
Another thing she adds is her “Muffin tin meal” for lunch on mondays she fills a muffin tin and each lunch item starts with the  letter A. For example, Apples, Applesauce, Avocado, and animal crackers!

By using her outline I put together the letter B for the following week.
Words to remember: ball, bear, Briella(my youngest daughter’s name) bubble, baby
Craft: We made a bubble blower from this Pinterst idea!
Song: Baby mine
Life Application: We went outside and blew bubbles and kicked balls around.
Color: bears are BROWN
Muffin tin meal: bananas, bagel, berries, beans

If you wanted to focus on shapes then for your muffin tin meal you can use, square crackers, square cereal, cheese cubes, etc.. Or you can focus on colors. Make a GREEN muffin tin meal with jello, peas, pickles, avocado, kiwi! There are so many fun options to the meal ideas, and it gets the girls excited to eat their lunch!!

You can see how fun it is to put these lesson plans together!! If you are looking for a craft pinterest is a great resource, otherwise go check out oopsydaisy blog it is a fun read and a great place to get some new ideas for teaching your kiddos!!

Do you find yourself struggling to come up with new activites? What are some of your favorite resources for ideas?!