OneLuckeyWife

Our oldest daughter has always been very advanced so she is a whole grade ahead of kids her age. This is great and I love that she has a passion for learning. Not all kids will be this way. Not all kids will be ready for everything at the same time as their friends or even their own family members. You will need to decided if your child needs extra work for things or if they simple are not ready. You do not want to push a child or force them to do something they are not ready for. If you child absolutely does not like writing and it is a struggle everyday to get them to write even something simple them write it for them. It will get you through the day without a fight. They will eventually learn the skills just in their own time. Our daughter read her first book before she was 3 but I did not read until I was 9 and I went to public school. So delays do not mean your child would be better off in public school or that you are not a suitable teacher for them. Some signs that your kiddo ma...

Yay! Another art kit made by Djeco. This one is called Little Artist - Sticker Medley . Like with most of the Djeco kits we have gotten before this one has 4 projects to complete. The 4 you can choose from are a hot air balloon ride, animals staking shapes, an animal submarine and an outside tea party. As with all Djeco kits the manual is super kid friendly. It is entirely done in picture instructions. Our daughter has been able to follow the manuals in these Djeco kits by herself since she was about 2 and a half years old. I will say that one thing I do not like about this manual is that the glittery red stickers are portraited as brown. But since there is no brown we quickly realized that the "brown" stickers were the red ones. The stickers are nice big foam ones. Because of this I would suggest this kit for young children about 2 and up. The stickers will be super easy for them for hold onto and place. Our daughter noticed that these ones are extremely sticky. These sticke...

We got this new math game called  Bata-waf  which is made by Djeco. This game comes with 36 cards. Each one has a character on it and the numbers 1 through 6 listed on the left side. At first look I thought that this was a simple game for small children to just say how tall the characters were but it is actually the game of war made for kids ages 3 to 6. This is a 2 person game. The designs on the cards are very simple and some of the characters look quite comical. The colors used are very easy on the eyes since they are nice neutral colors. What I like is that not all the same number cards have the same character on them which makes the cards very interesting. The numbers on the cards are very easy to see and they are written very neatly so that children will recognize them. Even if your child does not have a firm grasps on numbers this game could grow with them. You could use it to start out with learning numbers or help them with recognizing a few letters at a time. This is...

We got this science booklet called  Science Lessons and Investigations - Grade 1 . It is by Evan-Moor publisher. This science curriculum goes over quite a bit animals, plants, earth science and physical science. At the very beginning of the book there is a page for teachers to copy so they can ask the parents to have their child bring certain materials and a page for a science journal. So, this great for public school teacher as well as homeschool teachers that teach a co-op. The lessons are done very nice. What I have done is torn out the perforated pages so that I can staple them together at the end for our daughter to have a booklet about the lessons we have done. Each lesson starts with the teacher overview with all the information that you will need about teaching the lesson. Then the work starts with a title page for the child to write their name on. This is why I decided to turn them into booklets I figured it just made sense with the title page. Then you will go over the te...

This is our newest Djeco kit called  Animals & Their Homes Multi-Activity Box . Arts and crafts are always super fun and this kit has 6 different projects to work on. All the supplies you will need come in the box except for a pencil that you will need for one of them. The projects your child will get to complete are coloring, gluing, sticker, cutting, transfer and building. The manual of course is all done in pictures so easy for your child to figure out on their own. I love this because then our daughter can do them on her own if I need to tend our youngest or get some housework done. However, we normally do arts and crafts together. It is really fun and great bonding time. First, we did 1 of the 2 coloring projects. Both are cats. You color it with the 3 double sided crayons then add the stickers. The crayons are a great size for young kids whose hands are still growing. Second, we did the gluing kit. This one only has one to do. As I have mentioned in my other reviews of Dj...

Books are a great way to teach kids so I like to start out reading to our girls when they are quite young. We have a lot of books especially ones with the alphabet. This book is another alphabet book for babies and toddlers but it is different because it is with animals. It is called  A to Z Board Book . The main thing that I like about this book is that it is a board book. They are sturdy and they can stand up to the rough way young child treat their things. Our youngest likes to rip up books so I have to only keep board books out and the rest put away. This alphabet book is a lift the flap book so I do keep this one were our daughter can not freely get to it because she will rip the flaps off. We do read this one everyday while we do school because really likes being able to open the flaps and then say the animal and their sounds. If I had to choose one alphabet book for babies and toddlers I would go with this one. We use this board book in multiple ways. We go over the letters,...

I have been wanting to try out a coding book for awhile now but never got around to it until now. We got this Evan-Moor curriculum called  Smart Start Beginning Coding . It has a handy little two page booklet in the back that explains all the things they learn in the curriculum. Well I call it a booklet but it is two pages that I tore out, they are perforated, and then stapled together. The book is in color which is a plus for us because the black and white ones do not seem to be as fun for our daughter. This curriculum goes over algorithms, sequence, decomposition, pattern, debugging, loops and conditionals. I used the two page info sheet in the back to go over what each thing was before we started on any of the work. Sometimes I have to ask our daughter if she knows what something is but if she finds it to be interesting then she will ask me before I even get a chance to explain things. This was one of those times. She was so interested and by the time we were done with the book ...

We got a huge art kit about dinosaurs. It is made by Djeco and called  World of Dinosaurs . When I say this art kit is huge I mean it is massive. There are 6 different projects to do. Each one is cooler than the last. There are 4 scratch art ones, one painting project, two 3D picture boards, 1 stamp and drawing scene, 1 foam and foil collage and 3 assembly projects to complete. The kit comes with everything that you will need. The manual included has all the instructions down in pictures so it is really easy for kids to know what to do on their own without help. I always hang out while she does art and we chat while she does her projects. Since our oldest daughter is a huge lover of art and all things creative we actually sat down and did one of each art project in one go after school. The scratching art kits each have a different dinosaur. There are rougeosaure, vertosaure, aquasaure and plumosaure which is the one that our daughter chose to do. The manual shows that you just scra...

Up until now we have just been using Story of the World for our history/social studies class. However, I felt like we were missing something so I went searching for the thing that would fill the gaps we had. I came upon  180 Days of Social Studies  so I thought I would check it out. Since we had not used it for kindergarten I decided to start with that booklet before moving on to the 1st grade one to make sure we were not missing anything. What I really like about this curriculum is that it is US based. So, all of the holidays and historical things mentioned are about the US. If you live outside of the states then I would recommend looking into a different curriculum for social studies. A downside to this booklet is that it is in black and white. I would prefer it to be in color so that it comes to life more.  We have done 7 weeks worth of this curriculum so far. Since it is so easy for our daughter I did not see a reason to do just one page a day. Every topic has 1 week...

Our daughter loves loves loves singing. So, when I saw these books called  Baby Gym  by Child's Play I new I wanted to get them. You get a set of 2 board books. Each book has different rhymes in it that you sing to your baby. What makes this set of rhyme books so interesting is that each book has instructions on what to do with baby while you sing the rhymes. The first book is titled Touch and Tickle. This one I would suggest more for babies who are still doing tummy time. The book has you lay baby down and tickle them or make different motions on their back, hands, etc. This will help a young baby understand that they have hands, feet, a back, etc. The second book is titled Bounce and Jiggle . This book has instructions for holding baby on your lap and bouncing them, moving them from side to side, etc. I would suggest this for babies who can hold their heads up or toddlers. Both books can certainly be read/sung to any age baby or toddler. Our daughter is almost 2 and she love...

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called  Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T...