Roses for Our Lady-Saying the Rosary with Little Children

Kimberlee at Pondered in My Heart shared this wonderfully creative way to help little children learn, and take a special part in the devotion to the Holy Rosary. She has provided all the links and directions she used for this activity at her blog---I will not share them here---I want you to head over to Pondered in My Heart and meet this beautiful family for yourselves.
It is so simple, yet so meaningful. I explained to the children that saying a Hail Mary is like sending a beautiful rose to Our Blessed Mother. I made a red set of ten roses for Kimberly and a set of blue roses for Luke. I also made each a bigger white rose, that represents the Our Father prayer as we say the rosary.
The link to the mysteries of the Rosary printables can be found here. We have started "learning" to say the Rosary, saying one decade at a time. This is just for my 3 and 4 year old. We also try to say the whole Rosary as a family in the evening.

When we say a Hail Mary, Kim and Luke each put a rose at the base of our Lady of Grace statue.
When we finished just one decade, we were so pleased to see how many roses we had sent to Mary with our prayers.
Grace is also working hard with our cards depicting each mystery, learning all four Mysteries in order. (I have written 1-5 on the back of each card so she can check her success.)
I have also gotten each child this coloring book.

This is a wonderful coloring book to help learn the meaning of each mystery.

If we can make it

through one more day we will hit the JACKPOT!!

Wordless Wednesday

Our camo-Easter basket wearing-rock star

We picture {this}

I decided to play along on another photo blog. This weeks theme is a picture of daughters.
I wanted to put on this beautiful photo of my oldest daughter, Becky.
Head on over and join the fun.

Celebrate Earth Day by remembering the Creator

We talked about Earth Day today and why it is celebrated.

The kids made me very proud when they simply stated, "We celebrate the earth, because God made it for us."

How simple, so easy to understand.

The earth is a gift from God and He expects us to take care of His gifts.

We need to remember this.

I found this fun suncatcher craft on the DLTK website. Of course, as with every melting crayon craft, you need a small pencil sharpener to make crayon shavings. We couldn't find our little sharpener, so Mark had extra fun, and hammered the crayons--a very good substitute for shavings.

The DLTK site provided a template on which I placed a piece of waxed paper, waxy side up. I taped this down for the kids, because it kept sliding around. Carefully put the green and blue crayon pieces onto the waxed paper, filling in the pattern.
I then placed another sheet of waxed paper, waxy side down, over the crayon, and on a low temperature, carefully ironed the crayon.

Make a frame with 2 pieces black contruction paper with a circle cut out of them and glue the finished "earth" within the circle.

Mark's finished product.

They have provided a lovely addition to our windows.
I also found the idea for a Earth Day Handprint Wreath at DLTK Kids. Instead of cutting handprints out a contruction paper like the directions say, I decided that we would make paint handprints---just because we LOVE painted handprints.

And for extra excitement, I told the kids to paint their own hands, even the littles. Look at Luke's face, that say it all---this was a great idea.

The only problem with this was that the kids took so much time carefully painting, the paint would start to dry and they would have to start over before making the handprint onto the paper.

Gracie's reason for why the earth is worth protecting.

Thank you God, for giving us our beautiful earth.

Happy Earth Day!!

You have to go visit my niece and her beautful family.

My lovely niece Jenny has a blog My Four Girls--she has also just had her fourth gorgeous daughter. Daddy is on his was to a team full of girls.

They are enjoying their first year of homeschooling and are an amazing family--check them out!

April's Shower of Photos--On a Rainy Day

What should we do on a pouring, rainy day: watch a little tv with Daddy.

Tot-School

Luke is 47 months old

Kimberly is 35 months old

It was another busy, busy Tot-School week, as is usual. It also was a beautiful, warm sunny week, so we spent a lot of time outside.Both of my "tots" learned to blow bubbles.

It was kind of tricky, but they finally got the hang of it!

We visited the playground nearby.

The bravery climbing, swinging and sliding has improved quite a bit since last year.

We headed out for a hike at nearby Mount Hike. This is one of out favorite destinations, and just perfect for little hikers.

Waiting for snack, always a highlight of hiking.

I just love our Classic Books with Holes, and Luke's favorite has to be Down by The Station.

I printed this out from the DLTK site. I added the letter T to the page. I then laminated it for durability.

I cut out foam piece to match the picture and the kids have been putting it together, following the printable, like a puzzle. They both have been enjoying this a lot.

I got the Wikki Stix back out this week. Before playing with them freely, I drew letters on a piece of paper and Luke made the letters with with the Wikki stix.

Kimberly also discovered that Wikki stix make great hippie headwear,

and nifty pencil holders.

We have started learning about seeds this week.

Above, Kimberly is getter out planting discs ready for planting.

These planting discs were fun all on there own. The kids were amazed at how big they became after they had absorbed water--I was a little amazed also.

In go the seeds. Hopefully next week, we will have little sprouts.

Kimberly looks very scientific with the magnifying glass.
I have found the magnifying glasses can keep little children busy for quite a while, just hand them out and stay back, and they do a lot of discovering all on their own.

Kimberly made foam flowers this week. I cut many, many flower shapes out of foam. I them provided pick cleaners for stems and then the flowers were created.
Kimberly admiring her work!

A beautiful springtime bouquet.

We have a new "tot tool" that we used this week. Alphabet Mats.

It has cute little foam alphabet bugs. It has both upper and lowercase letters and we spent some time matching a few "partner" letters.

It also comes with mats that are used to practice letter matching. You can match the capital letter to the lowercase letter of just match the letter that is there. This is what I did with Kimbery, because we are still working on just naming each letter.

Luke especially liked stack the letter bugs up and then running over them with his trains--he is all boy!

My absolutely, most favorite new tot tool is the Leapfrog Tag Reader. Make sure you check out the link that I provided because there is a lot more to it than I can explain. I will tell you that you use the computer to load an accompanying book onto your Tag reader and then your child can listen to the story and then also do many, many interactive activities on each page of the book. They also have a wonderful assortment of books available for the reader.

All four of my youngest kids, 3-9 have been enjoying this everyday.

Make sure to check out everyone's great ideas for Tot School activities this week.