Muffin Tin Monday- Labor Day Picnic Tin

JDaniel has a picnic meal in a muffin tin. There were potato chips (We never have chip in the house. He was thrilled.), hot dogs, potato salad, cantaloupe in the shape of 6's since it is the 6th day of September, blueberries, and watermelon.

I don't think he got that it was a picnic meal. He ate while inside the house at the kitchen table. I do know he loved it.

Happy Labor Day!

Shutterfly Photo Book Winner

Combatboot Mom won the Shutterfly Photo Book Giveaway!

Great Posts I Came Across This Week- September 4th

Mom Related

Wisconsin Mommy has her son’s perspective on his K5 screening. I loved his insights.

The Funky Mama Bird has a fun post with great stick figure illustrations called How to Feed Gunne Bear.

Good Day Regular People has a fun post called Historys Longest Post.

Child Related

Mom-ology has a fun post on I Spy Bottles with Rainbow Rice.

Life of a Pastor’s Wife has a great Tot School post. I love her activities. The color matching activity with cookie cutters looks like fun.

The Toby Show has a great storytelling activity called Cheap and Easy Story Dice. I don’t draw as well as they do. I wish I did.

Recipe

Our Family Treat has an amazing recipe for Asphalt Pie.

Be Different …Act Normal has a really fun Fruit Salad Ice Cream Cone that would be great for a Labor Day picnic.

Winners from September 2nd

Tina 12312 won the $90 CSN GC. The Robbins Zoo won the I Know-Rhino Toddler Applique Shirt. I have contacted both winners.

Thank you to all who entered these giveaways!

My Words are Stuck Mom

Just last week my little clear speaker started getting his words stuck. He starts to say something like “What are you doing?” What comes out of his mouth is “What, What, What.” He gets so frustrated with himself and his words. This isn’t all the time. Sometimes it’s when he is tired. Sometimes it is when he has just gotten up. Sometimes it just happens.

I got worried and talked to my mom and my husband’s mom about it. My mom said that it was just a stage that he was going through and it would pass. My mother in-law remembered that both my husband’s sister Angela and her great granddaughter MK have trouble with this too. “Their brains were processing things too fast for them to speak their thoughts,” she said.

It is so hard to hear him struggle to get words out. I try to stop him and have him count 1, 2, 3. Then I have him try to start the sentence again sometimes that works. If it doesn’t I try to get him to slow down and focus on something else. That seems to work sometimes too.

We were at my mother in-laws over the weekend and she go to hear the what whats and the I I Is firsthand. When got ready to leave, she mentioned we might want to talk to a speech pathologist that we know. It is easy to say that it will pass. It is hard to hear him struggle. This is probably just a stage. We hope it is.

The Indigo Haired Boy Taught Us about Vaccinations

I really struggled with what to write about using the color indigo. Mrs. Matlock’s Summer School class is studying the color indigo this week. JDaniel and I went to Lowes to find an indigo paint chip to help me think about things that are indigo. I thought about making play dough or finger paint that was indigo. Since color mixing has never been my forte, I feared someone would come along and point out my indigo wasn’t really indigo at all. I tried finding pictures of indigo things on Google and found some people have purple things the call indigo and others have blue. That search wasn’t much help to me. While watching TV., I noticed Sid the Science Kid has indigo hair. I decided to tell you about Sid a boy who has indigo colored hair if your television tint is just right.

We don’t watch a lot of the television each day. We do watch Sid the Science Kid periodically in the morning. Who is Sid? He is that Indigo Haired Boy that has a cartoon science show for preschool age children on PBS. On Monday Sid announced at the beginning of his show that his grandma was coming to his school to give he and his friends vaccinations for the flu. He wondered what vaccinations were and why he had to take one. His parents told him it was something that parents decide to do to keep their children and the people around them healthy. The show proceeded to explain ways to avoid getting and passing on germs along with more information about vaccinations once Sid got to school. Hand washing, elbow coughing and keeping your house clean were three of the ways to stay away from germs covered. It was really informative episode for JDaniel and me. There were lots of opportunities for us to talk about germs, antibodies, and shots.

We as a family have chosen to get flu shots. I know not everyone makes that same choice for their families. If you choose to get them, the episode of Sid the Science Kid may be a good one for you to watch with your child.

How to Work on Print Awareness

Birth to 2- years old

• Have your child hold the book.
• Point to words in books with few words
• Have them track the words on the page while holding their finger. Go from left to right.
• Read aloud labels, signs, menu, etc..
  

2 to 5- years old

• Point to some of the words as you say them
• Have your child turn the pages
• Have your child walk you through the story and tell it to you
• Hold the book upside down and see what they do
  

I don’t have a lot to add to these ideas. They are all basic skills needed to interact with a book and the written word in the world around them. They just need to be practiced over and over again. I don’t mean until your child is bored with them. I do mean until they seem to own them.

Muffin Tin Monday- 1,2,3 More Pizza for Me!

I won two wonderful Kellogg’s Real Fruit Pizzas from Tammy’s Two Cents and thought I would surprise JDaniel with a few pieces from one of the pizzas along with his muffin tin breakfast. “This not pizza,” he said. “It is wonderful,” I said. That got him to take one bite and that was all. I think he thought pizza needed cheese and tomato sauce and not yogurt with fruit and granola. That left a lot of it for me. Hooray! I really liked it. I guess I won’t have to share the second pizza with JDaniel.

What did he eat? He had one cup of cottage cheese, two cups of raisins and three cups of cereal. This is what he usually eats for breakfast. Yes, he loves cottage cheese. He saw my husband eating it for breakfast one morning and decided that was what he wanted too.

Reading Kingdom Review and Giveaway

We have been working with the online reading program called the Reading Kingdom every day this week. The program is designed to be used with children from the ages of four and up. JDaniel is only two and half, but he met the criteria the program has for getting started. The program starts with mouse and keyboard training. JDaniel isn’t great with mouse. The program shows you how to hold your hand over your child’s hand to help them click. They call it handholding. The keyboard is was a whole another kettle of fish I will tell you about later. JDaniel really loved listening to the program say a word and clicking on it. He knows all his letters so saying the letters with the computer wasn’t hard. We moved from the mouse training to the Skills Survey Part One. If he had struggled with an area, the program would have customized to work on the challenging areas. JDaniel has been doing well. He has gotten one wrong so far. He would love to work on two sessions at a time. The program doesn’t allow us to do that. It is set for a certain amount of time. You can go back and work on it later on the same day. I like that neither he nor I overdue it. You can go back later if you would like to work on it again later in the day.

The animation is not busy and or complicated. It looks a little retro 80’s or 90’s. JDaniel loves having the thumbs up or praise from animal that comes up when he gets an answer correct.

I love that this program gives me the choice of two ways to work with him at the beginning of the program. I can continue to work with JDaniel or let the program know he has learned the keyboard skills and is ready to move on. Older children would move quickly through this section of the program. JDaniel doesn’t know where the letters are on the keyboard yet. He is also having a little trouble finding the capital letters on the keyboard while seeing the lower case letter on the screen. So far I have been having him tell me the letter and telling him where to look for it on the keyboard.

As a parent I like that this program has a forum, tutorials, and videos to help guide me through the it. Reading Kingdom goes out of their way to support both children and parents.

If you are looking for an online reading program, this is worth checking out. They are covering so many areas of reading. I have placed their skills chart below for you to look at.

Subscriptions to Reading Kingdom are $19.99/month with no monthly minimum, or $199.99 if you purchase a 12 month subscription. Additional children are $9.99 a month. They do offer scholarships.

Would you like to try it out? Reading Kingdom is offering the winner of this giveaway a full year subscription worth $199.99.

How to win:

*Go to Reading Kingdom and tell me something you learn. ( 1 entry)

For additional entries to any or all of the following:

*Share what someone said in their testimonial about the program. (2 entries)

*Tell me one of the nine reasons Reading Kingdom says you should sign up. (2 entries )

*Follow me on Twitter or Networked Blogs (4 entries for each)

*Write a blog post about this giveaway. (3 entries)

*Enter another giveaway I am hosting. ( 1 entry for each giveaway)

*Leave a comment on Mom Loop (A BlogFrog community I am a part of) (1 entry per day)

*Follow me on Twitter. Copy and paste:ReadingKingdomGiveaway @JDaniel4#giveaway (1 entry per day)

*Add my button to your blog. Please leave a link to your site.(3 entries)

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*Leave comment on non-giveaway blog post. (1 entry)

This giveaway begins August 29th and ends September 29th.That is 11 ways to win. The winner will be selected randomly using Random.org.