Thursday, April 28, 2011

Little Hero's flight





Here is a little superhero book to go along with my superhero preschool unit. Have your kiddos color the pictures, attach the puppet to the end of a Popsicle stick, staple the book together and them have fun while reading!


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Superhero preschool pack

We're back from our vacation to North Carolina - wow.....such a beautiful drive and a GREAT place!! Thankfully we survived the trip without Sully having any problems with peanuts anywhere - we found that people were pretty helpful wherever we went and had to ask about about "traces of nuts" in anything.

I've been soooooo excited about this pack! Everything is about superheroes in our house right now (Channing wakes up as spider man and goes to bed as batman). He was jumping up and down when he saw the clip art.
All of the clip art used to make this pack was found at Mygrafico.


If you're looking for another preschool pack with superheros, Carisa (from 1+1+1=1) has a "Batman" pack that you can find here.






I'm going to link this to:




abc button

Monday, April 18, 2011

Allergies

Once again it's been an interesting day in our household! Last Friday night as we were driving along deciding where we wanted to get a bite to eat, part of my front tooth decided to "pop" out of my mouth - I wasn't even chewing anything!! We called the dentist right away and I had it fixed today (thankfully!)........no sooner had we come in the front door when we got a call from the Sully's doctor.

We had taken Sully for a blood test last Thursday to find out what he's allergic to and had been waiting for the results. Let's back track a little...........at Christmas time he had started itching really badly (at one point his face was weeping) so we took him to the doctor and they told us that he had Eczema probably due to the dryness in the air from the heat etc), we were given allergy meds to take twice a day. Sully didn't get any better with the allergy meds so I took him back and they pretty much said there was nothing else we could do but lather the kid in Vaseline all day (which we also tried).

Last month (about the time I lost the baby) Sully was really sick with a vomiting bug and didn't eat for 5 days. During that time we noticed how beautiful and clear his skin was and how he hadn't been scratching at ALL!! The day he started back on food, he was a mess.....his eyes swelled up, he was scratching like crazy and had a rash (I had been worried enough to almost take him to the ER) we took him to the doctor and was told that it was "going around".........

THEN we found out he had asthma and about 2 weeks ago had a bad asthma attack. I took him back to the doctor again and asked if this could be food allergies (I have no idea why I didn't think of this sooner!!) Sully was sent for blood tests and now we were getting the call with the results (on the eve of our vacation)..............in the doctor's words, Sully is "severely, extremely allergic to PEANUTS, soy and shrimp"...they called in for an EpiPen right away and we went and got it 10 minutes later!

To be honest, I'm kind of sitting here in shock - I had convinced myself a few weeks ago that he was allergic to dairy and eggs and had taken him off those things (and haven't had to give him an allergy med since)....unfortunately as a substitute for milk, I had been giving him SOY MILK!!!!!!! I feel terrible!!! I am also praising God that nothing serious has happened to my baby boy because a few times in the last few months, both Mike and I have made him a peanut butter sandwich and each time, he has pushed the plate away and wouldn't even try it - Thanks you Lord for protecting him!!!

Right now, I'm not really sure what I can feed Sully - looking at labels, a LOT of what we have in our house either contains soy or a soy product or was made in a factory that also has peanuts!! If any of you have some good suggestions or website for me, I'm open to hearing them............of course I've had a million thoughts running through my head like "how can I keep my baby safe" to "that means he can never eat candy" and "how can he ever go to a friend's house to eat" and "he'll never get invited to play at a friends house"......ugh - I know God loves him and will help us navigate through this new curve.......I'm a little scared though to be honest.

To top it all off - the fix that the dentist did on my tooth today fell out - looks like I"m headed back there first thing tomorrow! Apart from all of that, we're leaving for vacation tomorrow!!! YAY!! Off to visit my brother and his family in NC. I won't have my computer with me so I hope you all have a FANTASTIC Easter. When we get back, I'll be posting a superhero unit that I've been working on, so look our for it :-)


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Two little bluebirds


Channing had a "spring party" at his little preschool group this morning. I took in this poem to do with the kids - they LOVED it.

Twitter

Ok, so I set up a twitter account.....this should be interesting - I don't know how to make the profile "pretty" but you can follow here if you're interested :-)

Friday, April 8, 2011

Happy Birthday!!

As I mentioned earlier this week, Maureen from Spell Outloud is having a birthday (both a blog birthday and a real birthday).........she has been having give aways and party favors all week. Check our her facebook page TODAY to download the Happy birthday unit I created for her.....make sure you check out the other great printables that you can download too :-) It's my birthday today too!! I woke up this morning to a hallway filled with little post-it notes with cool things about me and for me written on them........so thoughtful of my hubby!! Right now enjoying the KINDLE I got....tonight I'm going out with my lovely husband to celebrate.........hope you guys are having a wonderful day too.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Another spring craft - daffodils

I LOVE daffodils! Here in PA, when I see a daffodil pushing up through the earth, I KNOW spring is just around the corner. In Australia we have a special "Daffodil Day" to raise money for cancer (although it is in late August - almost spring there). Here is a quick and simple craft I have always enjoyed doing with my kindergarten kids - just use construction paper and some yellow cupcake liners!! I'm going to link this to: Photobucket

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Trekking across The States - Colorado (finally)

Hi Everyone, it has definitely been a while! We are so far behind in our State study that it's not funny! We have just had so much sickness in our house over the last 2 months it's not funny...........anyway, we finally made it to Colorado and learned some pretty interesting things:



First off, we did our little introductory page where we touched on the state shape, the state flower and the ski slopes.








We made our own Colorado state flag.












We learned that billions of coins are made at the U.S. Mont in Denver each year so we did a little coin counting activity.







We discovered many interesting things about the Rocky Mountains like the fact that there are more than 1000 Rocky Mountain peaks that are over 10, 000 feet high and 54 peaks that are over 14,000 feet high! We also found out that in 1893, Katherine Lee Bates wrote "America the beautiful" after looking at the view from Pikes Peak.




we also learned a little bit about some of the animals that live in the Rocky Mountains.










There seems to be a lot of debate about where the "cheeseburger" was officially thought up.........we went with Colorado as Louis Ballast (Humpty Dumpty drive thru) was awarded the trademark name for "cheeseburger".








In the 1970's, two of the biggest dinosaur skeletons were dug up near Grand Junction. Since Dinosaurs are a HUGE hit in our house, we spent most of the week doing a dinosaur theme. I have LOTS to share with you about that (in another post).












Some other things you can do with this state:




Coin rubbings












Don't forget to check out Get Down and Get Your Hands Dirty (Kristalyn did an amazing little ski race with her little guys) and Montessori Tidbits (Leann made a super cook skiing dice game for her son) for some other neat ideas!




The cute graphics you see in the "Trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thanks, Denyse for allowing us to use them!







I am going to link this to:









Monday, April 4, 2011

Hey everyone, head over to:
and join in Maureen birthday bash (it's a celebration of her blog birthday and her actual birthday)........each day there will be party favors given away on her FB page....don't worry if you don't have FB, the favors will be here to (just a day later). Some of the people that helped Maureen out with the favors are: Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1, Mama Jenn, The Crafty Classroom, The Notebooking Fairy, 2 Teaching Mommies and me. There will also be lots of give aways. Head on over and check it out!! It's also my birthday this week (on Friday)....I'll be the big 3-4! Happy celebrating :-)

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Come and Join the fun- The 2011 Ultimate Blog Party!

Ultimate Blog Party 2011


This is my first year at joining the fun over at 5 minutes for mom and their "Ultimate Blog Party". How fun! I am so excited about checking out some blogs and meeting some great moms (and hopefully making some new friends too).


For those of you that have stopped by from the party, let me introduce myself:


This is me (and my darling hubby)! I'm Michelle and my blog is all about creating fun things for you to do with your little learners. I am an elementary teacher who currently lives and works at a residential school - (although right now I'm not teaching - I'm "house parenting" with my husband. we have 12 middle school boys that live with us and our own two little boys).


I LOVE being creative but HATE the mess that this usually entails so I decided to teach myself some graphic skills and found that I REALLY enjoy sitting at the computer (once my two boys are sleeping) to create some free units of fun! What a huge blessing to be able to create yet have no mess to clean up! My latest unit is a SPRING unit which you can check out here. Also make sure you check out my printables page as it has all the other units I've completed too.


I also began doing a state study with my preschooler (and two other blogging friends) which we call "Trekking across The States". I provide printables and ideas for hands on learning that you can use with your own little ones. You can check out my "Trekking" posts here.


I can't wait to check out your blogs and meet some of you amazing moms! If you haven't joined in the party, click here to join in the fun!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Put your umbrellas up!



It seems like the weather has to decided to play a little April fools trick and taken us back to winter!! Ugh!!! It's freezing outside and raining buckets (when it's not trying to snow).



Due the the fact that it's so rainy, I made a little color/counting activity book ..........hope you can use it too. You can find it in my TPT store.