Happy Valentine's Day from our growing family!

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope you have a wonderful day, filled with joy and love (and maybe even some flowers or chocolates!)!

There are pretty big happenings around here right now.  I am happy to share that I am five months pregnant!  Come this June (right around Little Guy's fourth birthday), we are expecting to welcome a little girl into our family!

Remember all that time from November and December that I went MIA from the blog?  That was due to morning sickness, or, more appropriately, all day sickness.  Due to that fun pregnancy symptom, taking care of Little Guy and Daddy was about all I could handle, so the blog had to take a break.

We are all so excited!  Little Guy will tell you that he has always wanted a little sister, and keeps telling us all the ways that he is going to help with the baby and the things that he is going to teach her!

We are so happy to being adding another member to our family!

iPad and Surface Pro Sleeves

Last week, my sewing machine came back out!  It was so nice to have it back out, like greeting an old friend.  I spent the first weekend sewing an iPad sleeve and a Surface Pro sleeve.

The first project on my list was to make a (belated) Christmas present- an iPad sleeve.  I found a great tutorial at Crazy Little Projects.  I found some cute green and blue fabric at JoAnns and got to work.  It came together pretty easily.  I did make one change, putting a button hole and and button instead of a velcro closure.  I was pretty happy with how it came out!  I tried out Daddy's iPad in it, and it fit!  Quite nicely, too!

The next project was to sew a sleeve for my (new) Surface Pro that Daddy gave me for Christmas!  It is a little bigger than an iPad, so I used the same tutorial and made it a little bigger.  Unfortunately, I did not make it as wide as I should have.  While my Surface Pro fits, it is a tight fit.  Oh well!

I used this cute purple chevron print that I also found at JoAnns, and lined it with the cute floral print.  Even though it is not the best fit, it still makes me happy!

More sewing projects coming soon!

What have you made lately?

Preschool- Pirates Week 2

The pirate fun continued for a second week in our homeschool preschool!  Little Guy had a lot of fun with many of the activities from last week.  He completed many of them again this week, so most of those activities are not in today's post.  Here are some new activities for this week.  Little Guy is 42 months old.

This first activity was syllable clapping and sorting from Homeschool Creations.  We have not really worked on syllables before (although he has been exposed to this concept at story time at the library).  We had a stack of one- and two-syllable pictures and a card with a 1 and a card with a 2.  Little Guy would name the picture, we would clap the syllable together, then he would put it with the correct number.  He did great!  It was a fun way to practice syllabication with easy words!

This roll and graph activity came from 123 Homeschool4Me.  We used some glass beads to show which object we had rolled.  This is great because Little Guy can play on his own or we can take turns.

To practice some fine motor skills, Little Guy did some lacing.  I pulled out a fish and a parrot for him to lace.  Every time he does this, it gets a little easier for him, although he still likes mommy to hold it for him (as you can see).

This puzzle came from The Relaxed Homeschool.  It was originally a four piece puzzle, but I cut each piece in half to make it an eight piece puzzle.  Little Guy got frustrated doing this puzzle, since the pieces can slide around.

I put a few worksheets into a binder for him to practice.  We used sheets from Homeschool Creations and 123 Homeschool4Me.  I put them in sheet protectors and then he used a dry erase crayon to complete the work.

Since we had this treasure chest, we used it to help practice spooning.  Little Guy had a dozen doubloons in a bowl, which he had to scoop out with a spoon and put in his treasure chest.

Little Guy really seemed to enjoy our pirate themed preschool!  In addition to these activities, we checked out several pirate story books from the library to read as part of our preschool time.  Some of his favorites were Riff Raff the Mouse Pirate by Susan Schade, Pirate Pete by Kim Kennedy, and How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long.

More pirate activities can be found on my Pinterest board!

Follow Stacy's board Jake the pirate activities on Pinterest.

Preschool- Pirates Week 1

Hello!  Do you have a little pirate in your house, too?  Little Guy received some Jake and the Neverland Pirates toys for Christmas, and has been loving playing pirates, watching pirates, and learning about pirates ever since.  In trying to keep preschool in line with Little Guy's interests, we did a pirate theme!  Little Guy is 42 months old.

I found a lot of great printables with pirates.  This first one came from 123 Homeschool4Me.  This activity was a great listening exercise for Little Guy, as he had to follow the directions to place the objects in the correct spot.  It also reinforced positional words, like over and under.

This number count and clip also came from 123 Homeschool4Me.  It was great counting practice to 10 for Little Guy.  He needed some support to count past 7, but he is getting better and better at his one-to-one correspondence.

I found some great beginning sound sheets at The Relaxed Homeschool and Homeschool Creations.  Little Guy really enjoyed these sheets and listening to the sounds at the start of the words.  He also really enjoyed using a pencil to circle or cross out the pictures!

This was a fun counting and number recognition activity from Homeschool Creations.  Little Guy pulled a number from a small bowl and then had to put that many parrots flying over the pirate!  As you can see, he was quite proud of himself!

This next activity was a real world activity- sorting silverware.  Grandma A had found this silverware tray at a garage sale this summer, so it was the perfect item to use for this activity.  Little Guy sorted the silverware a couple of times, including separating tablespoons/teaspoons and small forks/big forks.

The next part of the activity was completely him!  He wanted to count all the pieces of silverware.  He laid them out on the floor and counted them!  It was so neat to see him take ownership over this activity and turn it into something he wanted to figure out.

We needed to do some alphabet practice, so I put the magnetic alphabet into our sensory bin, currently filled with peas and beans.  I also put in a dozen gold doubloons- I had to stick with the pirate theme a little!  As Little Guy found the letters, he would name them and then stick them to the cookie sheet that had the alphabet written on it.  I think this was his favorite activity of the week, as he came back to it several times!

We had some gold doubloons, so we also needed a treasure chest to put them in.  I saw this pin on Pinterest and had to try making our own treasure chest!  I only had egg cartons with a dozen spots in it, so we used that and painted it brown.  I added yellow stripes later.   This was the perfect treasure chest to use as he pulled the doubloons out of the sensory bin, especially since it had the correct number of spots!

We'll have more pirate activities next week!  For additional ideas, check out my Pinterest board!

Follow Stacy's board Jake the pirate activities on Pinterest.

What have you been up to in preschool recently?