Category: Other Stuff

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Okay, I know I said I was going to take a break from this blog this month. But my oldest child is starting kindergarten in a week, and I’m a little anxious. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but still, I’m sending my baby out in to the world! Will she be safe? Will she have a kind teacher and make nice friends? Have I taught her everything she needs to know?! Ack!

So of course, as is my habit, I’ve been doing some research to make sure I send my little girl off right. Today I’m sharing some of our preparations, and some of the interesting ideas I’ve found.

School Shopping
For clothes, shoes, supplies, etc. Our school district just implemented a uniform policy that requires shirts with collars and solid colored bottoms. My friend and I were resourceful and dyed our own pink polo shirts to appease our girly-girls and their need for pink!
The Ant Bug picked out her own cute backpack, with attachable lunch box.

Don’t you love new art supplies? My cupboard is now stocked with 7 bottles of glue and 13 glue sticks to fill the Sweet Bee’s need for glue throughout the year.

Making Lunch
We’ve got the lunch box, and we’ve got the containers. Most importantly, I’ve made sure the Ant Bug can open everything by herself.
Have you heard of Bento lunches? They seem to be all the rage now. You can get all the details on Bento Box Basics from the alphamom. Basically the gist of the idea is to make lunch cute and appealing to your kids. Use cookie cutters for shapes and cute little containers to section out the food.

image from Crouching Mother, Hidden Toddler

I’m not a good enough mom to think that I can make some of these impressive cuties everyday, but I think I can handle a star shaped sandwich, some flower-shaped cheese slices, and a little cup of fruit on occasion.

Simply Modern Mom has a great post with lots of ideas for making kid lunches fun and healthy.

I like the idea of the Ant Bug finding a surprise little love note in her lunch box. Teach Mama has some great templates available to download here.

A few recipes that I would like to try:
Family Fun Peanut Butter Balls
Snackpicks After School Muffins

For the First Day (and the night before)
My husband grew up with the tradition of receiving a father’s blessing with the start of each school year. We’ve done this in previous years before starting preschool, and it is an important tradition in our family now. I take notes on what is said to include in the Ant Bug’s journal.

On the morning of the first day we’ll have our camera in hand, ready to document the monumental occasion. I like the idea of having your child hold up a large cut-out letter showing what grade they are in (see an example here).

I’m thinking about holding a special “Back to School” dinner, either the day of or the night before. We’ll serve “alphabet foods” like alphabet noodles or cereal. I like the idea of giving a little gift with a card wishing good luck in the new school year. There is a cute card template here at Sugardoodle, but I haven’t decided what the gift should be yet. I like this Back to School bag idea, but it might be better for older kids.

Reading Books
I just picked up a stack of kindergarten prep books from the library today. There is a plethora of books available on the subject, but one that looks really fun is Miss Mingo and the First Day of School by Jamie Harper.

Routines for School
Once the excitement of the first day (or week) wears off, it’s important to have routines in place to keep things running smoothly. I have plans for a morning check-off chart which will include things like get dressed, eat breakfast, make lunch, brush teeth. We will need to be out the door by 7:15 each morning, so there won’t be much time for anything else.

I’ll also be adjusting our daily schedule, making time for homework, piano practice, housework, and playing. Meck Mom has lots of helpful ideas for organizing your home and routines for back to school here.

Lastly, I was reassured with the Ant Bug’s abilities when I read this article: What your child should know before starting kindergarten.

The list of projects on my “to do” list keeps growing longer and longer, and I haven’t been making much headway on it lately.

Some of the projects on my August “to do” list include:

-get the Ant Bug ready for kindergarten (shopping for supplies and clothes–a good deal on uniform polos is proving to be a challenge!)

-revise our family budget for 2010-2011 (being graduate students, this is the fiscal calendar that works best for us)

-sort through our paper files

-prepare for a new year of teaching piano lessons

-a temporary contract job doing some design work

-clean my house regularly (this has been a little more difficult to accomplish with 5 people in our house now!)

-enjoy the last weeks of summer (swimming, splash park, beach-although in reality the heat will be with us in Florida for awhile yet)

-work on dejunking the living area and master bedroom

But if I’m going to get any of this done, I need to take some time away from this blog. So except for the regularly scheduled LDS quotes on mothering and parenting, you won’t be hearing from me anymore this month. Feel free to browse back and read some of my older posts you might have missed.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and I’ll be back in September!

We’re getting ready for a big vacation out west in just a few short weeks. Can I tell you how excited I am? Really, super-duper, terrifically excited. My husband and I will get to visit with our parents and siblings (many we haven’t seen in over 4 years), our children will be able to get to know their awesome cousins (and get in some serious playtime), we’ll do some camping and we’ll visit our favorite sites in Utah (namely Temple Square and BYU).

But I do have a little apprehension when it comes to the actual travelling time. Driving 2 hours to the airport, hauling all our gear through the airport, and on the airplane for 6 hours (including a stop) with 3 children in tow. It makes me tired to think about it.

So of course…I’ve been doing my research on traveling with kids and staying sane. Here are the best tips I’ve found that I think will work for us:

Snacks are essential: hungry kids are grumpy kids.

Bring the magnadoodle: I bought one for my first flight with the Ant Bug when she was 17 months old. It comes to church with us every week and is still going strong.

Load up the iPod with music and books and movies. (What I would really like is one of these. It would entertain us all).

Play I Spy and favorite finger/nursery rhymes (I think I’ll look for a few new one’s to share).

Crayons and coloring books are a must have.

Encourage creativity. Pipe cleaners can be twisted into shapes or threaded with cheerios. Colored painters tape is fun to stick on bodies and to make shapes with, and it’s easy to clean-up.

Bring out the toys and activities slowly, one at a time. Maybe even wrap them up to prolong the excitement.

Don’t forget the specials: blankies, beloved stuffed animal or doll, etc.

Go on a scavenger hunt through the airplane magazine. On each page, pick one item that your child has to locate. For older children, hand them the magazine and say “can you find a picture of an airplane?” (Idea found here).

Refer to this list on Delicious Baby to help me pack.

If you’re doing any traveling this summer, be sure to check out the links below for a lot of great ideas.

Delicious Baby: Family Travel Tips: everything from packing lists to travel toys to preparing your children for travel. There is a ton of helpful information on this site, I spent almost an hour just browsing there.

Tiffany at Simply Modern Mom wrote a series of posts on Traveling with Children. Her Traveling Tips for Children: Flying Domestically post had a lot of good reminders, as well as her General Children Traveling Tips post.

Simple Mom:7 Ideas for Screen-Free Travel with Kids: Play games (don’t forget I Spy or 20 Questions), sing songs, read books, tell stores, write notes, take pictures, be quiet.

Organizing Your Way: Minimizing the Stress when Traveling with Children: Pack ahead, simplify, and plan activities.

Organizing Your Way: Share Your Best Tip for Traveling with Children: Many great reader suggestions.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend two wonderful meetings.

My stake hosted a wonderful Women’s Conference on Saturday morning. The theme was “Live Like You Believe”. We watched this moving video, with photos set to the inspiring words by Jenny Phillips (really, go watch it, it’s a beautiful song). I attended a great mini-class called “Imperfect Parents Setting the Perfect Example”. The biggest lesson that I took home was the importance of daily prayer and scripture study. Those two practices are so essential, since it is impossible to do everything that we would like to perfectly. Prayer and the words of Christ will help us focus on the right priorities. Ideally, I should be making time for prayer and scripture study first thing in the morning, to help me throughout my day.

Sunday morning our stake had a special stake conference, presided over by Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. It was a very nice meeting. Our stake president and his wife spoke, teaching about the importance of the scriptures, specifically the Book of Mormon. The Orlando Temple President and Matron both spoke about attending the temple and the blessings of it.

Elder Larry Lawrence of the second quorum of the seventy then spoke. He taught that the most important message coming from the leading brethren of the church is strengthening families. He referred to Elder Oaks talk “Good, Better, Best” (go read it again, it is excellent!). Elder Lawrence focused his remarks on strengthening families and the “fundamental 5” things that families should do: family prayer, family scripture study, family home evening, family dinner, and one-on-one time with children and with spouse.

Then Elder Russell M. Nelson spoke. He also spoke about the responsibilities of parents and the things that we should be teaching our children: about Jesus Christ and the atonement and resurrection, about prophets, about the priesthood, about the temple, etc. He said to keep trying to have family prayer and scripture study, even if it’s not a “howling success”. And, don’t quit just because of “more than a little howling”.

Elder Nelson emphasized this scripture from Isaiah: “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isaiah 54:13). The most touching part of the meeting was when he had all of the Primary aged children stand up and sing I Am a Child of God. It was very tender moment, and I know I wasn’t the only one in the room with wet eyes. The Ant Bug stood on her chair and sang her heart out.

He closed his remarks with an apostolic blessing. What a special blessing to have an apostle of the Lord speak to us in our chapel. We waited in line for about 30 minutes after the meeting to shake Elder Nelson’s hand.

I am thankful for the opportunity I had this weekend to be so thoroughly enriched and taught by the Spirit.

During the Easter season it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of coloring eggs, Easter bunnies and spring fun. But I hope that you take time to reflect on the real meaning of Easter, the life and atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Take time to read the scriptures and the words of latter-day prophets about him and listen to music about him. Here is a moving presentation with photos and video depicting the Savior’s life.