Thanks Be to God "thanksgiving turkey craft"

 I wanted to do a cute Turkey craft with my son for Thanksgiving, but I wanted to find a way we could do a little lesson at the same time... While making this Turkey, we practiced: sequencing & patterns, letter recognition, letter sounds, counting, pasting, sorting, and word spacing.

I started by cutting out a white circle (wish I had a brown paper bag on hand...tons of plastic bags, but no paper) and then drawing a turkey neck and face.  My son helped me cut out and paste the turkey's "wattle".  We laughed about the name of the appendage.  I cut out 16 colored feathers while he colored on the back of the turkey.  We also came up with a pattern for the feathers... we chose the rainbow pattern 

(Good 'ole Roy-G) 

 He loved lining them up in a line, and worked hard to make them straight.  He took great pride in his rainbow line.  While he was doing this I prompted him to find the next feather in our sequence by repeating the pattern aloud.  He does a great job with this. 

Then I wrote our Thanksgiving message "Thanks Be to God" and he said "oh no, mommy, this one is missing its letter!"  (see him pointing to the red feather below, so glad I caught that cute moment)  He was quite concerned.  I showed him that if we removed the blank feathers, the whole meaning would change ( it would be thanksbetoGod- which I said really fast) :)

Once we talked about our message, I decided to hide the feathers around our den for him to find.  We worked on counting during this time rather than letters, and he counted to 16 as he found each.

(yep...that's a wadded up sock there on the couch, please excuse it... )

anyway,  when we got back to the table, I wrote the phrase out again on another piece of paper for him to use as a pattern.  He rearranged the feathers to again give our message and then placed them under the turkey's body.

 Once each feather was in place, we lifted the turkey's body, put some glue around the top edges and flipped it back over the feathers and pressed down to set the glue.

Our little guy is proudly displayed in our kitchen, and we are Praising and Giving Thanks to God, indeed this Thanksgiving!

Thank YOU also, my sweet readers, for following my blog :) 

A Blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Impatient Poppers

I hope this post doesn't come too late for those north of us (which is pretty much everyone), but here, it is a time I get very excited about.... Impatient Poppin' time!  I don't know if you have ever noticed, but impatients get little seed pods on them this time of year, and releasing those seeds will help your impatients come back year after year!  

 This is a picture of a seed pod that is ready to pop... nice, big and plump!

 you can pinch them off, like this, so that you can pinch them over a piece of paper, so you can collect the seeds and plant them into little cups, or you can leave them on the plant and let the seeds scatter on the ground and naturally propagate.  

(image from google image search)

this shows how tiny the little seeds are :)

It is so much fun to do, and I hate I didn't get a picture of Dodson and I doing it together, but we sure had fun, he squealed with excitement each time it popped!  Its a great little science lesson, too!

days of the week, days of the week, days of the week!

The other day, on Pajama Projects Facebook page, I posted a question to readers "What do you while still in your pajamas?"
The lack of responses made me realize that most of you, my readers, aren't sitting at the computer like me in the morning :)  Most moms I know get going about their day asap, and use "nap time" to do housework.  Some days I do this as well, but most days this is how it goes around our house...
When I wake up in the morning I need a wee bit of time after I make lunches, to unwind my mind and prep for my day- and drink the large amount of coffee that keeps me going.  I check email during this time, read a few mom blogs, think about my pajama project, what will become of my day, I pray and I do some of my housework.  During this time, Dodson usually watches some Umizoomi and some Little Einsteins and plays in his playroom.  I play on and off with him in this time, too.

I've been trying to organize my housework into daily, weekly and monthly tasks.  I wanted to share with you how I'm trying to organize my weekly tasks (yep... I do them in my pj's), not because you need help organizing, but because I hope you will respond and share how you handle your housework and still are an active parent at the same time!

As for my daily tasks, when I wake up, I...
  1) make lunch for my husband, feed him and get him out the door
  2)  drink my coffee and take a bit of time for myself
  3) start the daily laundry
  4) make beds
  5) unload dishes & wipe down kitchen counters
  6) pajama project
  7) get dressed!!!
  8) get out of the house while its clean!

There are also those tasks that don't need to be done daily, but should be done often, this is how I sort those...
I know this is TOTALLY dorky to do this, but it is how I remember to do everything that needs to be done in a house during a week...
    Mondays:  "Manage it Mondays" = get together budget, meal plans, grocery list, sort through bills and make a grocery run
    Tuesdays:  "Tub and Toilet Tuesdays"= scrub out the tubs and toilets :)  such a LOVELY job
    Wednesdays:  "Wipe Down Wednesdays" = I go to town with my clorox wipes and hit the tabletops, light switch covers, doors and door knobs, counters, bathroom counters, swiffer dust the blinds & window seals
    Thursdays:  "Transportation Thursdays"= clean out the NASTY car (it is like a BOMB goes off in it) and restock all necessities (i keep some snacks, extra clothes in case of accidents, sunblock, wipes, hand gel, socks and shoes, books and some toys, first aid kit, stroller)
    Fridays:  "Fridge and Floor Fridays"  = clean out the fridge & throw away all the left overs that just sit there and never get eaten...  sweep floors and vacuum the carpeted areas
   Saturdays:  "Swiffer and Steam Saturdays"= swiffer the floors to remove dust, and then steam them!
   Sunday:  "Swap sheet Sundays" = put some fresh sheets on the bed... but most of all, Sunday is      Funday!

How do YOU manage it all???  Then, how do you find time for yourself in the mix???