Kindergarten, oh my!

One night at Church my friend gave me some paperwork that someone had given her. Requirements that children need to know as they enter kindergarten. BOY was this list a thorn in my side. I instantly stressed out. How in the world was I going to teach all of this to Abbie, she won't even sit still for more than 15-20 minutes at a time (on a good day!)

But in my worry, I made an effort to slow down, say a prayer and think for a bit. Abbie is 3 and she can already tell me 3 colors and 1 shape and she knows 4 or 5 letters of the alphebet, among other things. I'd say that's pretty good considering the very strong-willed child she is. So I thought I'd share these requirements for you today, incase like me you're running out of ideas to try with your young one's or you're just getting started...

When they enter kindergarten children should be able to...

Say their own first and last name
Say their parent's names
Hold a pencil or crayon like an adult
Hold scissors correctly and cut simple shapes
Button and zip down own clothing most of the time
Work on learning to tie own shoes
Identify 8 basic colors
Name shapes: circle, square, triangle, rectangle

Understand opposites
Big and little, long and short
Up and down, in and out
Front and back, top and bottom
Empty and full, hot and cold
more and less, fast and slow
over and under

Ready to read
Have been read to often and look at books
Pretend to read, like to listen to stories
Know some nursery rhymes
Say the ABC's, can name and recognize letters
Understand the words are read from left to right
Print own first name and recognize it in print
Understand simple words
Can repeat 6-8 work sentence

Don't worry, we are a child's first teacher. Teach in small doses and use a LOT of repetition and no pressure. Besides if you're homeschooling, you're going at your own pace anyway. This is just to give you some ideas. Today we're going to work on the Letter D and cutting shapes and some matching/opposites.

She can cut! Tot School Tuesday

Good Morning friends! During my "forced break" my children and I explored new and different fun territories. Today I want to share with you something my daughter really really enjoyed.

I have been afraid of scissors for Abbie. I didn't want her any where near them, I was afraid she'd cut off a hand or a finger or an ear or something. She's a little hyper active, but I overcame my fears and she did great.

For this activity you will need:

1 or 2 sheets of construction paper, making them two seperate colors make it fun for them and gives you an opportunity to teach about colors.
Adult scissors (because those kid scissors are a PAIN!)
A marker or pen
A ruler, or the edge of a book, just to make straight lines.
A pair of kid scissors

All I did was cut the paper in to strips and then draw squares on each strip. We were working on colors and letters for this activity so I drew the letter P on the pink paper, and if you can see it, I drew the letter O on the orange paper.

I gave Abbie one strip of paper at a time so she didn't get overwhelmed. If your child has never used scissors before, just drawing squares without anything else on them is fine. That's what I did too. The activity I'm telling you about today is actually the second day we worked on cutting.

At first she was so confused, the child is left handed. Her mother is right handed. I had to figure out how to show a lefty how to cut but after a while she was on a roll!

Abbie is 3, I would not recommend teaching scissors any younger than 3 but that really is your choice. My son is 2 and during this time he was coloring on the pink and orange paper and then he worked on the hard puzzels so it worked out. I wanted to give you a close up of the type of scissors Abbie used for this, just incase you want to try it too...

She's so stinkin cute on a good day isn't she ;). I love this project because you don't need hardly anything to pull it off and Abbie LOVED it so give it a try with your young ones. Enjoy!

It's a game, it's a craft ~ Apple Bean Bags

Good Day, Friends!

Last week I told you that I would show you how to make the Apple bean bag game so here you go. This would be great for kids learning times tables, or Bible verses, ABC's, or numbers, for these we are going to use them for numbers but I think I wll put on the back of our apples, some ABC's too. I made 10 of these bean bags for this project.

For this project you will need:
A black marker
Red Felt, Green Felt and Brown Felt
Hot Glue Gun (you can also use yarn and thread, fabric glue or double sided sticky tape)
Dried Beans
Scissors

A hubby that can use scissors (hehe)

Unless you are good at free hand, you will need to find an apple picture to use as a stencil to trace.
Trace and cut the apple on the red felt, you will trace 2 apples (I was able to get 2 on one peice of red), cut out a leaf from the green and a stem from the brown.

Take one apple you will use for the bottom and place your stem and leaf at the top then glue each down, the stem to the apple, the leaf to the stem.

You do not have to wait till the glue dries, it's really really quick! Then carefully glue around the edges of the apple but DO NOT glue the top of the apple yet, you will need to leave some open space to pour the beans in. When you've glued the edges place the 2nd apple on top, making sure the edges line up (this doesn't have to be perfect, it will still stick)

Remeber, leave some open space at the top for the beans..

Once you've done the glueing, pour in the beans about half way full or your preference, then glue the top of the apple completley shut. Use your black marker to place the number (or whatever you're going to use this game for) on the apple, and tada! You have an apple bean bag!

 You can see on the red one, I had some issues with the glue, like I said these don't have to be perfect. For my kids this is going to be used as number recognition and hand eye coordination. The plan is to have them be able to throw these in the little basket I have as well as count, my daughter is already doing really good at the counting part, now this will get her comfortable with what the numbers look like. I think this would be a good memory game too.

Here is our finished classroom. My parents gave us the carpet and we put a sheet up separating the basement part from our nice classroom part hehe. This is half of our basement, cement walls, cement floor and cobwebs, water heater, washer and dryer and lots of collected junk, the usual basement stuff. You can't even tell can you? God is good!!!

ABCJLM and other Ideas

No, I didn't forget how to say my ABC's (smiles) ABC Jesus Loves Me is an awesome website that I've been getting ideas from. It's a Christian Bible Curriculum for 2, 3 and 4 year olds. They have all sorts of fun and exciting printables as well as week by week lesson plans and a list of all materials you will need for each week. The best part of this website...it's FREE! Can't beat free can you.

I've been researching and printing like a crazy person, while I'm not using this website for everything, I am using some ideas from it.

(I'm not getting paid or was I asked to endorce any of these websites,
it's just my personal oppinion that I wanted to share with you today)

The other websites I've been looking at for ideas are:

Tot School 1+1+=1 They have some really cool printables.

Confessions of a Homeschooler - This site does a letter of the week and all the things you can do with that letter, she also has TONS of printables.

A kids heart I don't believe this is a homeschool website but they have tons of Bible Verse pages you can print and the kids can color.

Right now my husband and I don't have the money to buy actual curriculum. My children are still young so if you're like my family and don't have a lot of money, anything you have in your house can be used as a learning tool, that's mostly what I've been researching about. I also visited our USToy Store where they have TONS of learning toys that are awesome for young kids. I'm so excited to start school with my kids. I've been keeping all of the toys and things secret from them so it's new and fresh when we start. Their attention span is so short that if they saw the toys now, they would be bored with them by the time we started.

Here are some more pictures of our school room!

This is our play area. I got these blocks from my parents house, they were mine and my sister's when we were young and probably haven't been seen in YEARS, so my husband and I hosed and bleached them and set them up like new. They have little compartments in them where I've put some of the toys.

The stacked blocks you see have numbers on one side, and pictures on the other side that coorespond with the number and on another side it has a shape cut into it so the kids are learning numbers and shapes it goes from 1-5.

In the B cube I have huge blocks that the kids will learn matching, sorting colors, and counting.
On top of the A are apples I made. I'm so excited about them. They are numbered 1-10 and they are made out of felt. I will share the directions on how to make them and a close-up picture next week.

I'm so excited about the tree haha. It's made out of construction paper. No glueing or cutting, it's held up with a type of puddy thing we got from Walmart that comes in sticks and you just tear off and stick. These walls are cement and this tree is heavy, the puddy peices are holding really well. The paper is held together with scotch tape, it's the only thing I felt comfortable enough that would hold because the paper is heavy all put together.

I just made the green part on my kitchen table where I put green construction paper out and overlapped each piece of paper until it made a circle, I think there's about 15-20 sheets of paper to make this part.

The brown part is also really easy I first posted the green part and then, posted brown sheets all the way to the floor, again no cutting and each sheet is overlapped a little.

The tree will have apple cut-outs on it numbered 1-20 and each week we finish a letter I will have a foam cut-out of the letter the kids will hang on the tree. I plan on making this whole wall an out door scene the kids will create themselves (of course with my help) We will have a sunshine, flowers, a pond with fish in it, bugs, birds, and anything else we can think of. By the end of our "school year" we should have the whole wall covered. it's not a huge wall, but it sure is exciting!

This is their work table. My husband found it on the side of the road, someone was throwing it away! We hosed it down, bleached it and set it up, it's the perfect fit. It is glass top, so I put white construction paper on it that way when we use glue, crayons, markers it won't get on the glass. The chairs we got from a garage sale. They came with a small round Dora table, that we will bring down if the kids have issues sitting together. They are young so anything can happen (smiles)

As always, if you have any questions about what you see here, you are welcome to email me at mandysnyder2@yahoo.com.

Tot School Tuesday - Preparation

Welcome to the first Tot School Tuesday. There are a lot of new people to my blog lately, (Thank you so much I LOVE LOVE LOVE all my readers and am deeply  humbled that anyone would want to read my words) So I've decided to give you a little background about myself. 

I used to work for a bank. I was there for 6 years until God called me out. My husband had just fallen off a roof but that didn't stop God from whispering to my heart that He wanted to start something new with me and my family. It was a day in December, I was sitting at my desk and an overwhelming sense to quit my job came over me. I disliked that job very much and had daydreams of walking out too many times to count but this time was different. It was one of those little nudges from God that tells you something amazing is about to happen. From that first day on, there was nothing but arguing with God (God I promise I'll start liking my job, don't make me quit where's the money going to come from) to being impassioned with faith, to telling people about it and getting some really weird looks and some downright anger and also some amazing support from sweet sisters. In March I finally gave my notice and walked out of my job of 6 years. I had no idea where I was going, what I was going to do or how our bills would be paid but I did it because my Heavenly Daddy told me to and after the wild roller coaster He had just brought me out of I wanted nothing more than to please Him and I wanted every bit of what He had for me.


It was shortly after that, that I took my kids out of Daycare and we began our journey of mom and preschoolers learning to get along. My kids had only ever gotten me for weekends and 2 hours a night while I worked so I had no idea how to be a full time mom and they had no idea what I was getting them in to. It's been a journey to say the least. There were (and still are) some days that end in tears and it's not my kids that are the ones crying. There are days where I throw them at my husband and run upstairs to scream into my pillow and my Bible. My Bible has more tear stains than my pillow most days. I got some great advice from my sweet sisters, I got awesome encouragement, God filled divine appointments with friends but I believe this journey is more about God showing me who I am than me being the "perfect mother" whatever that is.


When God told me to start "Tot School" I thought He meant start another blog but He set me right and here we are. I don't pretend to be the perfect mother, the one who has it all together. There are some days I really want to lock my children in their rooms and eat a gallon of chocolate peanut butter ice cream, there are days where I scream and cry to God asking Him to fix my children because they are crazy then there are even more days where I cry and beg Him to change me so I can be the mother they deserve. God is working on me and I'm learning.


Tot School Tuesdays are what my preschoolers and I are learning in our day. Tea Parties and Cops and Robbers wasn't working for us so I've decided after much prayer and research to start homeschooling them. I'm not a patient person, but I know I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I don't know what is going to work and not work for us, I've never done this before so we're going to experiment and I'm going to share with you what we're working on.


We're starting School in September but my husband and I have been hard at work getting our room ready. We don't have an actual house so we're going to be learning down in our cement floor/wall basement/laundry room. My husband has found some carpet, and I've been making posters to hang on the walls to make it as homey and colorful down there as possible. All of the printouts/cut-outs you see below, I've gotten from here listed under "Bulletin Board" They are sooo easy to make and so much fun! That website has things for kids and parents of all ages, it's meant for Sunday School Teachers but I can't wait to use it for our classroom! If you have any questions about things you see on Tot School Tuesdays or my blog in general feel free to contact me at mandysnyder2@yahoo.com. I love hearing from my readers. I am sorry for the pictures being so dark, I couldn't find my camera so I used my cell phone for this post. I will look for my camera and get some better pictures for you asap.
Join me for another Tot School Tuesday next week as I reveal more of our school room and share the lesson plans I've made for my children! It's going to be great!!


This picture says "God Created" and it has the stars, planet earth, trees and a river. Under the river I'm going to put pictures of our family so "God Created...the stars, earth, land and water...and US!"

 I love this poster. It has the "Jesus Fish, and following "Jesus" are 4 other fish and I added the verse: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. John 8:12 

I love this picture, "Following Jesus Rains Blessings" the flowers are so cute.