What My Child is Reading (The Farm)

One of J's favorite activities is reading books and I absolutely love cuddling him on my lap and reading. I like to link up to What My Child Is Reading blog link-up. Not only is it a great way to record the wonderful books we've read, but I've found so many new good book ideas by visiting each week.

We have started doing home preschool and this week was a unit on The Farm. Our books followed that theme.

Click on the button below to see what others have been reading!

Richard Scarry's The Animals of Farmer Jones



Richard Scarry books are always a favorite in our house. This was such a sweet and simple story. All the farm animals are anxiously awaiting Farmer Jones and wonder why he hasn't come to feed them. Happily, they all end up with their food.

The Noisy Farm by Marni McGee

This book was so much fun for us as it takes you through a day on the farm with all the lovely sounds the farmer hears. Very fun making all the cute animal noises together.

Picnic Farm by Christine Morton-Shaw

We love picnics and what's great about this book is it shows kids the different types of foods that come from a farm. The kids visit the farm and all the animals and then they have a picnic with the food from the farm.


Let's Go to the Farm by Vermont Story Works

This book was very educational. It's a real working farm and the pictures are photographs that are painted over. Pretty neat and I like the detail about farm life.


Thanks for visiting!

Our First Week of Preschool - Robots Unit (Homeschooling)

I am so excited to be starting preschool with J! He responded so well to Tot School (linking up at Carisa's blog 1+1+1=1) that I decided I will continue to teach him at home. I have read so many different curriculum ideas, and feel so blessed to have all this wonderful information and free printables at my fingertips. I can't justify spending hundreds of dollars on preschool when I have all the tools I need, and he is involved in several different social outlets throughout the week. I decided to start off doing unit work instead of doing a letter of the alphabet theme. Lately, J has been enthralled with anything related to robots, so I decided that would be our first unit. I used the Robots Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations and am linking up to her Preschool Corner linky. I also found her planning form to be very helpful. Although we got off to a rocky start (J wanted to sort by COLOR not SIZE, which he already knows how to do) we had a great conversation about the teacher-student relationship. It seemed that something clicked, and then he listened to my instructions and we had so much fun. He kept asking to do preschool with me, so I'm glad we are off to a great start.

Click the button below to see what other moms are doing:

Robot Size Sorting

Our first activity was sorting robots by size. After a little argument (he wanted to sort them by color) he ended up doing this activity a few times in a row. This has expanded to him finding things in our daily life that he is distinguishing by size too.

Robot Coloring and Letter Tracing

The tracing is very new for J, so it took some step by step instructions from me. I would use a pencil and show him how to trace, then he would do it. He followed along very well. Notice the example of coloring within the lines and NOT ;)

I Am a Color Robot - You Tube video

I took a break from our activities to do a Robot learning video I found on You Tube. In this video, the color robot shows pictures of different colored things. The goal is to say the name of the color before they told you what it was. Although it was easy for him, he really liked dancing to the music.

Create Your Own Robot Sticker Activity Book

I found this cute little sticker book on Amazon (Create Your Own Robot Sticker Activity Book), where you have all the robot parts and get to mix and match to make several different robots. This was one of J's favorites. He took this to bed with him too.

Tracing Different Lines

We did this project a couple times. At the top of the page was an oil can and he had to trace the line so the "oil" could get to the robot. He was really excited about the idea that he was "feeding" the robots their oil. He had trouble the more complex the lines were and was frustrated when I would stop to show him the correct way. It ended up being good in that we were able to talk about why he was getting frustrated, and he was learning to make it fun, and that he needs to be patient with himself as he learns new things.

Tracing the Letter R and Robot Coloring

J was very happy with his finished product. I could see his improvement as he moved from one set of R's to the next. He always has fun coloring, but was especially proud of this picture for some reason.

"Toasty" the Robot

As the final project for our Robots unit, J got to help make his own robot. We used an old coffee can for his head, old Jif can for his torso, milk lids for eyes, mouth, buttons, toilet paper rolls for arms and paper towel rolls for legs. J liked him so much, he wanted to sleep with him. He named him "Toasty". Since he's delicate, he sleeps on the chair and we put a little blanket over him at night.

Verse of the Week:
Matthew 22: 37-39 The Greatest Commandment

Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

I found this Robot video on Vimeo with a creative display of the verse.
This video was a nice short version of the verse breaking it down to "I will love God, and love others."

Books We Read:
The Robot and the Bluebird by David Lukas


Me and My Robot by Tracey West


The Robot Book by Heather Brown

I am also linking up at Get Crafty - Red Ted Art's Blog

and Our Country Road - Pinterest Tuesday

and to Play Academy!

And finally, Monday Madness:

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Next week's theme: Farm Unit

Thanks for visiting!

Welcome to My New URL

My URL has changed! It is http://musingsofthemonroefamily.blogspot.com
It is no longer http://lantytracey.blogspot.com

I have been wanting to do this for a while, and from what I've read this should not affect my followers. You will need to manually update the URL in your blog reading list and/or re-do the RSS feed. I do hope you tag along!

When I first start blogging, I had NO IDEA what I was doing when I made my URL. Now the URL finally matches the name of the blog!! It is hard to believe that in 4 months I will have been blogging for TWO YEARS! I am so blessed by this blog and this continues to be such a wonderful experience.

I will be back soon to update with a new post! In the meantime, please leave me a comment if you have ANY problems with the new URL.

Blessings!

Picture Credit: Microsoft Clip Art

We Love to Learn Through Play and Tot School (August)

I love being a stay-at-home mom and feel really blessed spending my days with my son in this way. I also love taking pictures of all the things we are doing and sharing them with other moms who are doing the same. We've been on the go a lot this summer, so for this post I captured the highlights of the month of August. I love that we have so many fun things to do where J is learning too.

**J is 39 months old**

Favorite Activity; His Books

We spend lots of time at the library turning in the old books and getting the new ones. J spends hours each day "reading" them. His comprehension of these books is really good, and anything we read together he then spends his time "reading" aloud on his own. He has even started reading them back to me, which I love. He loves to take his books and line them up on this chair, his favorite reading spot.

PlayDoh Set

I finally found a good set of PlayDoh tools to purchase. There are so many fun things to do; using the scissors, using the shape outlines and rolling pins. This is an activity daddy and mommy enjoy too!

The Hungry Box Man

We got this activity idea from Stef Green's Refresh newsletter. My son loves playing with boxes, but this one was even harder to resist. I made a face and cut a hole for the mouth, then we got all his play food and he had fun "feeding" him. Then he would dump it out and start all over again.

Making a Library

J actually came up with this idea, taken from the back of a "Lego series" book! In the back of the book, it says "Make your own Lego library", so one day J decided to do that with his own books. He laid them all out on the floor and then took turns reading his favorites.

Tent Making

This has been a favorite activity of late; making tents. J can spend hours in here with his books, his "cuties" (stuffed animals) and anything else he can think to bring in there. It's a real bonus when he convinces mommy to squeeze in there too!

Learning Letters and Sounds with the Computer

We've had this toy computer for a while now, but J is taking much more interest in it of late, even asking to keep it in his bed when he sleeps. He can now play the games for real, instead of just pretending. He loves a phonetic game where it is "raining" letters and he needs to catch them in the bucket by pressing the matching letter. This has really helped with learning letter sounds!

Music and Marching

We always love things having to do with music, and J likes playing his piano horn. He had me play the little accordion while he danced and marched around with the horn. We had on a "Boz" music CD while we were marching and playing. (Boz is a green bear with a Christian message in his CDs and DVDs.)

Preschool Workbooks

We're preparing for starting home school in the fall starting with a preschool program, and I've found a few activity books to get us started. J couldn't wait to get started on them right away. One of his first activities (not pictured here) was drawing a line from a number and connecting it to the eggs in the nest that matched that number. In the picture above, he was doing a tracing activity, drawing different shapes like a circle for the sun and a square within the sand castle.

Enjoying Time at the Lake

One of our favorite places to go during the summer is Devil's Lake in Baraboo, WI. (Learn about the lake's name lore here.) My husband grew up in the area, worked here when he was in high school and even remembers when his mom carried him piggy back during times they visited when he was growing up. We enjoy swimming in the lake, playing on the beach, and just hanging out in our chairs reading books.


See what others are up to at The Play Academy on the Nurture Store blog.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Fixing Our Eyes on What is Unseen

It is 4 days now since my husband got out of the hospital, and we are experiencing God's hand of grace. The struggle has not ceased, but my husband has had the strength to return to work and has worked the past 2 days. We had a wonderful weekend together as a family, spending time at places we love like The Memorial Union Terrace off Lake Mendota and taking a day trip to Devil's Lake State Park. We have had some good times of prayer, and the Lord has blessed us with many friends and family coming alongside us for prayer, support, encouragement and fellowship.

Now this is strictly my opinion, but from my experience, depression with intense anxiety is a medical issue that can be hard to put into words and explain to others. If I hadn't gone through it myself in a severe post partum time, I really could not empathize very well with my husband. It's the kind of "being sick" that is difficult for others to understand if they haven't experienced deep depression themselves. When my husband had this kind of depression in the past before I had been through my own, it was actually really hard for me to understand how his thoughts were debilitating to him. I pictured him being able to have more power over his thoughts, and more ability to "get better". It is just not so. I now know first hand that these thoughts can have a life of their own, and you really feel like a different person since you're so far from your "normal" self and feel like you may never again get back to "normal". There can be so much pain in that, especially when you're a person of faith and feel you should be able to "trust" your way out of it. It so different from having a broken arm or something visible like that where people can imagine the physical pain and have such an easy time relating to you. That in itself brings a lot of anxiety.

We have found our greatest weapons in this are prayer and praise. It helps us to step outside of our situation and focus on the Lord by laying our requests before him in a spirit of worship. We have had several sweet times of fellowship together getting out a song book and singing praise songs. It is such an intense reminder that truly we are spiritual beings moving through this human world, and the Lord is holding our hands as we are poised to enter eternity with Him. I love this verse taken from the chapter in 2Corinthians 4 "Treasures in Jars of Clay":

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

So there is victory through suffering, and we wait on the Lord in this. In the meantime, I have this post from Ann Voskamp's blog A Holy Experience to share. It caught me off guard, the video she shares at the bottom had the caption "This is grace." It tore me up. I was left sobbing with an overwhelming sense of His true grace in all our trials, especially the one my family is in right now. The words the man speaks at the end of the video affirmed everything about my Savior. I think that's what tore me up; to have this shared truth and seeing someone else living it out in the midst of such intense struggle. But they count it all grace. Thank you Lord, that you are Grace poured out.

Here is the video:

This was grace - short film from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

Thanks for visiting!

Picture Credit: Microsoft Clip Art

Few Words Right Now

These are just a few quick pictures that I really like showing J feeding some ducks at the lake.

We are going through a rough time on the home front and I haven't given a lot of thought to writing lately. I have all kinds of pictures I'd like to put together and do a post showing some more fun we've been having this summer, but I'm just laying low for a while. We're in the midst of a storm with my husband and a bout of depression, so we ask for prayers and hopefully I will return here soon.