OneLuckeyWife

Need a less messy way to let your kids paint? Then Do-a-Dot Art! is the answer. The brushes are already preloaded with paint and you get 10 colors. Two different books are included one with letters, numbers and shapes then second one has different pictures to be pained. The paints are easy to get started that even my 3 year old can do it on her own. What I really like is the pages you paint on are a really think card stock so the paint doesn’t bleed through to the next page. The pages are also perforated so it’s easy to tear them out to display them. My daughter just loves these. She was excited the moment she saw them and immediately told me they were paints even though we’ve never had marker paints. It was very easy for her to get the hang of using the paints and she wanted to do lots of pages. These will be a great way to have a reward she looks forward to  for a long time. Another huge plus is that the paints are washable! These amazing art projects are from the Timberdoodl

Getting hands-on with education is always my go to. Both my daughter and I learn better when we fully involved in the activity. Bananagrams are an awesome way to learn letters, spelling, reading and letter sounds. They do include instructions for a game you can play with them but we haven’t played the game yet. Instead what I use them for are spelling and reading words.  I use them a lot when we doing spelling . My daughter also like to use them for reading . She really likes to build the words we are learning to read then read them. I hope that when she’s older that we can play a form of dominos with them. Another good way to use them with younger kids is to have them pick a tile and say the letter or its sound. 

We are currently using Spelling You See . Level A is the one we are using. It goes through letter sounds, dictation, different rules and ends with spelling 5 letter words. It’s a complete spelling curriculum that comes with the student book and teacher manual. What I like is that they have the student practice writing the letters at the beginning and say the letter sounds when writing them. However, since we use Italic Handwriting  I skip the part of practicing their letters. I also incorporate Bananagrams  into our lessons. I pick a few words from the pages we do that day and give my daughter the tiles to make the letters herself. Another way I make it more hands on is say the sounds of the letters and have her spelling the words with the tiles. However, I will not be using Level B next year. I plan on switching to All About Spelling  because we are very much enjoying their reading curriculum . 

I love that mazes are both challenging and fun. In this amazing book,  Around the World Mazes , there are so many different places to go through while having the enjoyment of mazes. The best part is that this book is filled with hours of places to talk about. I always like to talk about the things we’re doing while we play. Since there aren’t that many descriptions it’s a great way to incorporate some dialogue.  My daughter is having a lot of fun with these mazes and they are more challenging than other ones we’ve done. The main reason they have a higher difficulty is because the “borders” of the mazes aren’t as defined like starter mazes are. However, I think it’d good to challenge her because then she can problem solve better. 

I really enjoy items that can help with multiple things. Geopuzzles  do just that. Fine motor skills, puzzle solving, matching and just overall fun. There are 6 puzzles included in this set; world, USA and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. What’s amazing is that they include bigger pictures of the puzzles so your child doesn’t just have to rely on the box for where the pieces need to go. What I don’t like though is that not all the pieces are jigsaw style. A good majority of the puzzle is just placing them next to each other not actually fitting them into each other. However, my daughter does enjoy doing the puzzles and then after I ask her to pick a place and I tell her a little bit of information about it. I also ask her where she would like to live on each puzzle we build. So far, she has decided she would like to live in Australia.

Perhaps one of the cutest ways to learn some emotions is with Happy, Sad, Feeling Glad . There is a little description of what is going on in the picture and then the child gets to draw in things to help the scene. What I think is great is that it’s a way to get hands-on with learning which helps a lot of kids. The pictures are cute and the emotions are portrayed very well. Since my daughter is still pretty young (3) this is another way to help her learn to draw better. She loves art so this book is something she really enjoys doing. She knows her emotions very well from reading the book A Whole Bunch of Feelings last year so this is another way to reiterate feelings in a hands-on way with something she loves; art. 

Happy 2020! Around this time most people are settling goals to better their lives. I’ve got a couple for myself and then homeschool goals for the year. I’ll start off with my personal goals. The first thing I’d like to do is keep up with house chores. Sometimes I double up chores on one day instead of doing them on the day I was supposed, too. So this year I want to get the chores done on the day I set them for. Since our home is small I have enough rooms to clean one to two rooms a day. I do laundry 4 times a week and the trash goes out 2 days a week. I have a planner I write down the chores I want to do each day, things we’re going to, meals for the week and a list of the week. The planner stickers I use are from PinkiesPalace but now I use the ones from Happy Cutie Studio . My next goal is try and get back to pre-pregnancy weight. I’ve tried this every year but the last 10 pounds is very hard to lose. I have a Fitbit now so hopefully that will help me. The first day I did

Fat Brain Toy Co. has really creat an amazing little game that touches on a lot of math concepts that are normally harder for students to grasp. Bugzzle goes beyond the fun of regular puzzles. It is a great way to get kids excited about math. The pieces are a nice size but don’t have much weight to them. The colors are bright and the challenge cards have the solutions on the back. My daughter has really been enjoying this game. She loves games in which she has to solve a problem. I have noticed however that this game isn’t difficult for her. She can easily complete the challenges. So in an attempt to get her brain moving when she plays I ask her about each ring within the circle. “How much of the outer circle is orange?”, “How much of the center circle is green?”, when she answers I give her the fraction equivalent so she starts saying them in fraction as well. 

Everyone knows the story of Little Red Riding Hood  and Smart Games has turned it into an educational game. Grandma’s house has 2 doors on it; one for the wolf and one for Red. The object is to have a path for both character to get to a door. I love that included is a little picture book that tells the classic story. At first this game was a challenge for my daughter because she didn’t understand why Red couldn’t just walk on the grass to get to the path. I had to explain how Red’s mama said “stay on the path”. With that in mind my daughter got the hang of this fun thinking game. 

Everyone loves animals! Smart Farmer has a barn load. You place the animals and water troughs on the board then the player goes to use the fences to separate the animals so that each species has access to water but cannot take water from smoother kind of animal. The pieces are a wonderful size for small hands to grab easily. I really like that there are so many challenges in the booklet to complete. My daughter has actually found this one to be difficult. I have to remind her that the fences have to be placed into the board not just on top. Once she is finally able to figure out the solution she likes to play with the animals on the farm land. I love seeing her creativity when she moves the animals around so they can get to the troughs.