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Showing posts from September, 2019

Crochet: Pumpkin Single

This is my all time favorite pumpkin I make. It’s just so adorable with the leave and little vine thing. Price: 10$ + shipping My items are intended for decoration purposes. Not intended for children or infants to play with as some parts can be a choking hazard.  Pattern by HavvaDesigns.

It’s Fall Y’all

A great time of year is coming, Fall! What I love about fall is the cooler weather which we don’t  get a lot of here in Texas. The absolute best thing about fall is pumpkin pie! Yummy. This year we will be making one from scratch; even the dough will be from scratch. It’s a great way to teach life skills like cooking, measurements for math skills and of course it makes great bonding time for the family. Last year we made pumpkins with construction paper. You just cut strips of paper and glue the ends together in a circle, then glue the top ends of the paper together. You can cut leaves and a stem out to glue on as well. It was a lot of fun for our daughter and she took them all around the house for days. Another thing I love about fall is all the decorations. Every year I crochet a set of pumpkins and cross stitch something fall or Halloween related. I’ve made a  scarecrow ,  witch , Mr. Dracula , a  fall theme set  and a  Halloween theme set  as well. But for great fami

Crochet: Bugs

Lear all about bugs with these lifecycle sets Price:       20$ each + shipping Choices: Ladybug Stag Firefly Bee      10$ + shipping Choices: Snail Blue Fly      5$ + shipping Choices: Common Fruit Fly My items are intended for decoration purposes. Not intended for children or infants to play with as some parts can be a choking hazard.  This doll is handmade by me, Daisy Luckey, from a design and pattern by Lalylaland handmade. Lydia Tresselt / www.lalylala.com

Review: Djeco Sweet Nature Felt

Another great art kit we got with our Timberdoodle kit is Djeco Sweet Nature Felt . This one has 4 different boards, all the felt you need and a little instruction booklet. The felt is precut so all you need to do is push out the pieces. Great for me as I am not the best at cutting felt. The manual is all pictures so even a small child is able to understand what needs to be done. If y’all have read my other Djeco reviews , you know I am not a fan of their glue stick but this kit doesn’t need any glue. Instead the felt is sticky on one side, you just peel off the paper on the back and stick it where it needs to go. Simple for even young kiddos.  I definitely recommend Djeco Sweet Nature Felt or any of their other outstanding art kits   Simple, easy to use, comes with everything you need, cute and fun. Our daughter gets a great sense of pride and accomplishment every time she does one. Great for building her confidence and a wonderful bonding experience for us. I make

Review: Day and Night

Smart Games has so many outstanding critical thinking games;  Day and Night  is one of them. Definitely glad that I got this with our Timberdoodle kit. It comes with little blocks that are the perfect side for those tiny toddler hands, a bunch of double-sided challenge cards and a little holder for the card. The blocks are vibrant colors and the cards are a great size for young children to handle. The things I like best are the challenges. The front of the cards are the day sides so your little one gets to see exactly what block goes where. The black sides are the night challenges so all they see is a silhouette; easily self check if the night challenge was done correctly by flipping over the card to the day side. This game is such an amazing way to get those critical thinking juices flowing. I’d recommend this game or any of the other wonderful educational items from Smart Games.

Review: My Very First Reading Library

This is an outstanding collection of first readers by Usborne. You get 50 engaging books for your little aspiring reader. They gradually increase in difficulty and the back of each book has notes for the parent/teacher to guide them in teaching how to read. What I love best about these books is that they have puzzles after you finish the story. It really makes for a diligent young reader. The books start out with you reading with your child. I enjoy this for 2 reasons; they don’t get burnt out trying to read a whole book by themselves and it’s a amazing bonding opportunity. Then they move onto reading alone with assistance from you. Eventually your little one reads on their own with little to no help. I also like that they are small so it’s easy to take them on the go.  I highly recommend this set of reader for anyone who has a young kiddo starting to read or to help a child who is struggling with reading. Usborne has a bunch of other adorable books for all ages. The b

Review: A Whole Bunch of Feelings

Hands down the best book I have found for teaching different feelings and how to handle them for young kids. We got this with our Timberdoodle kit and I’d recommend it to anyone and everyone. Our daughter was a late talker so this has really helped her with expressing how she is feeling and how she handles her feelings. There is a wide variety of feelings in this book. Each has a short paragraph giving an example of the feeling. What I found amazing was after the explanation they have a question related to the feeling. It gave us a great intro to further discuss the feelings and a way to teach our daughter how she could act in different situations.  The illustrations are quite nicely done and easy on the eyes with the colors they chose. I like that the descriptions of each feeling are not overbearing for a child. They explain each one in a way that even a young child could easily understand what the feelings are. After reading about each feeling we talked about a time that s

Review: Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature

I grew up with the Berenstain Bears and I’m so glad I get to share them with our daughter. Timberdoodle includes Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature  with their Pre-K kit and it is such an amazing choice. The book is written in a fun rhyming style and has the classic Berenstain Bears drawing. Such a great easy to help teach months, seasons and weather. It has made our daughter excited about learning the year and what will happen throughout the year as time passes. After you go through the year then you move onto nature. No better way to teach about the wonders of the outside then by reading about it first. After reading each different part we go outside and try to find examples of what we’ve just read about. Since we have poultry it was a great way to further discuss the difference between mammals and other kinds of animals. After reading about planets our daughter wanted to plant some seeds because she had learned how important plants and trees are for living things.

Review: My Very First Our World Book

Another great book by Usborne is  My Very First Our World Book . I got it with our Timberdoodle Pre-K kit and I am so happy they choose it as part of their curriculum. The colors are vibrant, pictures are engaging and it is written in a way that a young child won’t get bored while dreading. I love that Our World Book covers so much from different environments in the world to seasons and even natural disasters. Definitely recommend this book if you want to start introducing the world to your child.

Review: Kumon Thinking Books

Kumon has this amazing set;  Kumon Thinking . We got a set of 4 with our 2018 Timberdoodle kit; logic, creativity, differentiation and spatial reasoning. Each one has 36 lessons that start off very simple and get more difficult with each lesson. What I love about Kumon is that in the back of the books they have certificates for completing the books. Our daughter really enjoys doing these books and always ask to do more. We do 3 lessons a week so one book last a whole 12 weeks for our homeschool. Each lesson is 2 pages long so Kumon has really made it to where your child gets a lot of practice with each skill being taught. I plan on continuing with Kumon books since our daughter likes them so much and I feel she has learned quite a lot from them.

Review: Kumon Cutting

I wasn’t sure how to go about teaching how to use scissors but then I found  Kumon Cutting  books on Timberdoodle’s website. When I got them they were a set of 3 but now Timberdoodle has them as a set of 2. Each one starts off easy with just a couple straight line cuts and gradually gets more in-depth. They end with cutting out an entire picture; straight lines mixed with curved lines. Our daughter loves getting the certificate once she finishes the book. She loves how fun the pictures are with lots of bright colors and adorable drawings. After finishing the first cutting book our daughter was proficient in the skill of cutting. Highly recommend these if you are looking for a way to teach using scissors in an exciting way.

Crochet: Christmas Minis

These cuties would love to be apart of your Christmas decor! Price:      10$ each + shipping Choices: Penguin Snowman Santa Christmas Tree Elf Mrs. Claus Gingerbread Present My items are intended for decoration purposes. Not intended for children or infants to play with as some parts can be a choking hazard.  This doll is handmade by me, Daisy Luckey, from a design and pattern by  AradiyaToys . 

Crochet: Pumpkin set of 5

Autumn will be here soon. What better to get your home looking its best than with these 100% cotton pumpkins. Each one is handmade by me. Price:       30$ + shipping for the whole set   Pattern is by Crochet Village Designs. My items are intended for decoration purposes. Not intended for children or infants to play with as some parts can be a choking hazard.  Mango yarn has been discontinued; I’m still looking for a replacement color. I have 1 set completed that looks like the picture below. 

Crochet: Halloween Set

Make Halloween a fright to remember with these cuties! Price:      10$ each + shipping  Choices: Frankenstein Skull Zombie My items are intended for decoration purposes. Not intended for children or infants to play with as some parts can be a choking hazard.  This doll is handmade by me, Daisy Luckey, from a design and pattern by Lalylaland handmade. Lydia Tresselt / www.lalylala.com

Review: Look I’m a Scientist

This science book  came with our Timberdoodle prek kit And it is just so cute. There are 14 labs in it that are geared towards small children. The things I like best is that the last page has a great introduction to what a science lab would entail when your kids get older. From making a hypothesis to what happens during and after the experiment. Most of the items needed for each experiment you might already have but if not your local grocery store will probably have them. You don’t need that many things for the labs and each one has amazing pictures so that if your child doesn’t read yet they are able to easily understand what needs to be done.  Our daughter’s favorite experiment is one that involves her sea animals toys. I froze them in water and then we use warm water to melt the ice. I love that the book also gives suggestions of other things you can do during the lab to see if there are different effects, like putting salt on the ice. I would definitely recommen

Review: Tiny Polka Dots

There is no better way to teach toddlers than through games.  Tiny Polka Dots  is an amazing way to help kiddos learn counting skills and recognize when they see a bunch of objects together how many there are without having to count them every time. I love that they include different colored cards with different sized dots. There are also a few cards that give you amazing ideas on what games you can play with the cards. The game suggestions vary in age level difficulty so it really grows with your child which I like because then we get a lot of use out of it.

Review: Draw + Learn Faces

Want a great way to introduce drawing faces ? Then this is the book for you. It shows how you can facial features in different ways but allows your little artist to be as creative as they want. I love that it has blank pages so kiddos can draw what they please. The only downside I found was that it is incredibly repetitive. I think if we did more than a couple pages a week our daughter would get extremely bored but since we only use this book once a week and just do 2 pages she finds it fun. It has also taught her that her people need to have bodies and not just heads. 

Review: Italic Handwriting Book A

This is a great handwriting book for anyone not just kids. I don’t have the best handwriting and neither does my husband which is why I wanted a way to teach our daughter now penmanship. This book we got from Timberdoodle does exactly that. The way it’s set up is so they learn to write lowercase letters that are formed in similar ways. For example: h, m, n and r. The uppercase of each letter is on the backside of the lowercase letter page. Downside is there is only one page devoted to each letter so there isn’t a bunch of practice before moving to the next letter. I would love if there was 2-3 pages for practicing each letter. What I do is erase after we do each age that way we can. Them multiple times so she gets lots of practice in before moving onto the next book in the Italic Handwriting series. I really like that they have arrows to show where to start the letters. I would recommend this book for teaching exceptional penmanship with basic writing and cursive (books C-G),

Review: Rainbow Pebbles

EDX Education has come out with  Rainbow Pebbles . They are a bunch of different shaped pebbles in rainbow colors. Perfect sizes for toddler hands. The one we got comes with 20 cards for your child to recreate. I have found they are a great way to help with counting, color recognition and sorting. Our daughter has a little trouble with “does not belong” problems. She’d show which ones go together but didn’t quite grasp the idea of choosing which one didn’t go. I used these pebbles as a physical representation for her since she does better with hands-on work. After a few tries she got the idea and is well on her way to mastering this concept. One downside is I think the colors on the cards could be brighter. They seem a bit dark to me but my eyesight isn’t the best so it could just be me.

Tips & Tricks: Keeping Organized

Between homeschool, pet care, house cleaning and cooking it’s important to stay organized. How do I organize my homeschool curriculum? Well the main bulk is in a big container, the items I use multiple times a week I have in a utility tote, books I actually store in old Pull-Up boxes and for art supplies, flash cards and little games I keep them in a rolling container. As for our pets and house cleaning, I have an amazing planner . What I love about this planner is that I was able to customize everything. The covers, layout and even add list like birthdays were all customized to my liking. The birthday list is awesome because the dates are already printed on that day and even lets me know how old people are. I write in my cleaning schedule, which is pretty simple. I clean 1 room a day, dishes everyday and laundry 4 times a week. I write in what days my pets get their baths or need something health wise.  Cooking is probably the part I hate most. Having to figure out