Rockin' around Shutterfly, it's a shutterfly-holiday!

For the past three years, I have used Shutterfly for Christmas Cards, Birth Announcements, and printing all of my pictures! I love the quality of their work and their service!! The desiI want to share with you their current promotion, so YOU can get in on the great things that shutterfly is doing, too!!  

Take 20% OFF ALL HOLIDAY CARDS using the link below!

“Shutterfly is offering 20% off all holiday cards” 

The first year I ordered with shutterfly I did a photo card; the color came out just as I saw online and I was so happy. Last year, I went with a cardstock 5x7 with holiday bells on it- I couldn't find a religous card that really worked for us. This year, I am so happy to see MORE of a selection of designs with a Christian Holiday theme! My choices are wider and for our family, that works!! I also browsed the other holiday choices and they are greater this year too!!! Everyone get's more of a choice this year- whatch out tiny prints, shutterfly is coming!!!

We are having our family portraits taken this weekend to use on our Christmas Card from Shutterfly.

I will decide if i want to use ONE or Two pictures on the card once I see our proofs, but i have pretty much narrowed own our choices to these two cards!

I love this one because we are wearing blue and brown in our pictures and this one will coordinate great! There is enough room to write a message not just names! I could do one traditional family picture, one artsy picture, and a picture of each of my sons! I just love this layout!

This one is another favorite! This one also coordinates with our blue and brown theme! This is a little bit more simple, but sometimes that is the best way to go! I love that the 2010 is big because i'll never forget which year this card came from!! The font's for joy and magic are great too! I would use this card as a 'folded' card, so I could have more room to write a message on the inside and really personalize the card for each person we send them too!

Use these links below to find fabulous Hanukkah, holiday-story, and religious Christmas Cards that fit your style and your family!

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/hanukkah-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-story-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/religious-christmas-cards


Please leave me a message on this post if you have any questions about using Shutterfly for your holiday cards this year!

we're about to start tot school again!!!

Preschool started in September and We've been focusing on that, but we are about to start tot school at home on Fridays and also starting tot school for baby brother!!!

exciting things are coming!!!

Tot School This Week:

gross motor skills: riding a bike, galloping like a horse, sumersaults, throwing a football!
fine motor skills: writing letters with mommy/learning to hold a marker properly, woring with bigger puzzels, building train tracks, doing finger games to nursery rhymes, practicing zipping!
memory skills: two new songs this week (jesus loves me and our god by chris tomlin)
spelling: recognize the A sound in words!

tot school with two...

this week is all about squares!!!

1. watching the shapes movie by preschool prep!

2. crafting with squares: gluing little squares in a big square

3. puzzle time

we mixed all the pieces up and he had to find the square and put it in its place- and he DID IT...

as he would say...: REID DID IT! ...lol, we talk in third person right now!

4. coloring our square for a soon to make 'shapes book'

no pictures....but...

we 1. decorated SQUARE styrofoam blocks with golf tees, tooth picks, and feathers

2. played with chalk outside by drawing SQUARES and jumping in the and then putting some trucks into each square

3. played with soapy water and had our first experience with sponges (squeezing and soaking)

4. gross motor skills fun: running through the sprinkler (aka: fountain) - ran in 'circles' (even though it was 'square week' the sprinkler is a round ring that squirts water up like a fountain and he was fixate on running in a 'circle' around it...hey, learning is learning!)

23 months- tot school week one!

tot school this week was all 'on a whim...'

and it was super fun that way!

played with and identified all of his letters and numbers 1-9...

and then placed them in 'lines'- horizontal and vertical!

while i was cooking, he had fun stirring!

memory game- what's under the cup...and do you remember with the 'x' was?

making pretend cupcakes and decorating them with shapes (one or two)

color sorting trains

fine motor skills with the money sorter along with sorting colors

fun with lids...shape recognition, matching correct shaped lid to the correct container

Tot School-22.5 months

The Wonder of Utensils, Pom Poms, and Two Buckets!

practicing fine motor skills with 'tongs' (aka: cheater chop sticks)

-needs a little guidance at the beginning to get the hang of this...

Pouring!

Scooping

Transferring!

Fisher Price Garage used to RACE TWO CARS

#2 reinforcement!

He loves this toy most of all so I decided to play with him and use a little

learning while playing!

Numbers Puzzle!

I have been taking this everywhere this week! It shows up at every meal,

during cuddle time, and randomly throughout the day! He's starting to think of it as a game and is getting super excited when I give him LOADS of encouragement when he find the right number. He is now even 'tricking' me and saying its a number, then shaking his head no, and then pointing to the right one! Fave numbers are definitely seven and three!

We are stressing '2' right now, though.

Drawing:

I left this drawing mat open with shapes drawn on it and a bag of crayons next to it to let him take the initiative of wanting to color...and he did!

He called me over and I encouraged him to color 'in' the different shapes, identifying them and waiting for him to locate it to color at least near it, lol!

tot school- slow while sicky!

Color Recognition with Fruit Loops!!

Fine Motor Skills with toothpicks into foam!

He did this with a lot of toothpicks and got pretty good at picking it up the right way and holding it in a way that gave him more leverage- practice makes 'better' bc it was way difficult at the beginning and super easy at the end.

Loves to dump out all of his letters, identify them and place the on this board.

I haven't focused on letters other than when we see them when we are out and about, but he proved to still know every one of them! (little hesitation with lower case b vs d...)

Now we are working on letter 'sounds'....best way to do this is with a 'toy' from leap frog- seriously, no craft or game is going to teach them as well as this will every time you get in the car.....he's been taking to it pretty well. Some moms are already introducing 'spelling' or at least putting letters together- but I do not want to push memorization on my son at all. Once he understands the phonics of the letter sounds, then i'll let his teachers at preschool take over...this is FUN stuff at home and I don't want to teach him 'too much' too soon because that means he might now 'really' master the information and be moving along too quickly.

Tot School the past week has been slow because baby boy was sick, but we have been focusing on numbers, days of the week, and big vs little.

I tried introducing 'short' vs 'long' but he had very little interest in that! Its a hard concept to find interest in on its own- so i may leave that one up to the preschool teachers next year!

For Gross Motor skills, when he had some energy, we practiced 'jumping over' things...He's got to learn how to jump with two feet- right now it's kind of like jumping rope with the 'gallop'!

February Tot School- Week One at 22 months old!

Beginning stages of counting-

he's still to early in his learning process of numbers for this to be effective, but introduction

is also important- he loved the 'frosty snowmans' and the number 2, 8, & 9

Make Cupcakes and color match and fine motor skills activity!

colored the toothpicks with markers and stuck them in play dough cupcakes (huge hit) then matched the fruit loop colors to the cupcake color and placed them on the tooth pick.

took a while for him to figure out how to hold the loop to get it on the tooth pick...so patience is key and i showed his improve throughout the activity...

Decorating the Letter H!

Painting (colors and x review)

- i guided his hand to make it to the circles and let him do it on his own

independent story time....

'Where Does It Fit?'

he came up with this all by himself and i totally encouraged it

tried putting the ball in different cylinders and would lift it up amazed that it was now at the bottom, then tried putting cylinders into each other and putting the ball in others where it didn't fit- great 'problem solving' activity

Heart Wreath:

he helped glue and name the shape

we kept it at our snack and play table talking about the numbers

and that hearts mean love during the week

end of january- 22 months

'almost' 22 months

Hide and Suprise!

*we haven't done this since his first birthday and he loved it all the more.

took him a while to get 'into' it and really dig to find the shapes, blocks, and letters that i had hid in the oatmeal- but he was happy to label the colors, shapes, and letters once he found them!

'My First Birdfeeder'

Painting fun and talking all about birds- encompasses fine motor skills,

color id, attention enhancement, and outdoor fun!

The Letter 'T' for the day!

-talked about all things that started with T for the day!

- used crayons and stickers to decorate!

Melissa and Doug Counting/Color sorter

- love love this toy!!

-engages tot in counting, color id, and shape id!

'spin spin a LETTER'

-he got this for christmas LAST YEAR and plays with it totally different now!

-learning new and refreshing already known animal sounds and letters

Shape Sorting!

-can never go wrong with going over shapes over and over if the tot likes them!....

then go around the house and try to find another shape just like it!!

1:1 correspondence!

-putting ONE letter in ONE empty hole

-I want to start working on counting correspondence, but figured I should make sure

he could master this first....and he can!

-of course it was fun to see what letters we found in a big bowl as we went along, too!

.... continued the correspondence and fine motor skills on a whim when i found him unwrapping an orbitz gum package- those things are HARD to get into!!!...so then we took the gum out and put them into the ice cube tray and counted them....yes, i let him 'taste' the minty gum too! now chewing- just licking like a lollipop! lol

Tot School- january week 2

21 months

Gluing Practice! Color Identification!

(used an old OJ box....i let him decide what he wanted to do as we went along, so grass became flowers and the feathers to represent birds never made it on there bc he didn't like their texture!- great for following directions, enforcing 'lines', and letting child make own decisions on where to put things, colors

Pretend Play: making airplanes with sticks (crossing two sticks together and flying them around...this is something he remembers doing in music class with bigger sticks)

Fine Motor Skills and Color ID: choosing a color stick out of the bag and placing it in one of two bottles, naming what color and which bottle he has chosen...

Lacing Beads! Great Fine motor skill activity, color enforcement, and improving attention span....i found that when he successfully held a bead and pulled the string through all by himself, he was so proud of himself and the encouragment provided was definitely helpful, but he recognized on his own, his success.

Letter Fun...Somewhere New: take letter fun outside, we had a little snow left on the driveway, so we used chalk to write and identify letters- well, i wrote letters, he id'd them and scribbled around...he has started scribbling, calling out a letter, thinking he has written it though! good try, buddy!