Disney Highlights!

We had a wonderful time at Disney World! Here were some highlights! We took on Disney World with a 2 year old and a 3 year old!

Magic Kingdom was of course... magical, and the girls had a wonderful time exploring. They were all new to the theme park "thing", so I felt like it took us the first day to catch our stride. We spent most of our day in Fantasyland and the adults enjoyed seeing the new addition to the park as well. (Which included Beast's Castle, Gaston's Tavern, the new Ariel ride, and the Snow White mine train ride which was still under construction at the time we were there.)

EPCOT was our second full day at Florida, and admittedly - turned out to be our favorite! We found plenty to do for preschoolers there, they had art stations and a number of rides that were preschool friendly. (Living Seas & the Nemo ride was one of our favorites!) The girls also loved seeing the World Showcase. The highlight that day was the Princess Lunch at Akershus, which also could be said to be the highlight of the entire TRIP! It was wonderful, and will be a must do on our next WDW vacation as well!

Our next day was spent at the beach, and we again had a fantastic time. It was the girls' first time seeing the ocean for them both, and they were definitely awestruck by it!

On our final day, it turned out to be a bit of a rain day, so we took to Downtown Disney and tried to get some last minute shopping in!

We had a wonderful time at Walt Disney World and cannot wait to go back! In fact, we started talking about our next trip the minute we got home and decided we needed to squeeze in one more trip at the end of the year! I'm excited to begin preparations for our next WDW trip in 2014!!

Preschool at Home: Week 15 - Growing Grammar!

For Week 15 we talked about "Growing Grammar" and the letter 'G'!

We had a special play date planned that worked perfectly with our theme, where we painted some garden pots to plant flowers and vegetables in to watch them grow this summer.

Also, we completed some worksheets on the letter 'G', nouns (the part of grammar we were focusing on for the week), and did a 'G is for Giraffe' craft! Since giraffes are a particular weak spot of mine, I had a slight obsession with them while I was pregnant with Cupcake - and decorated the nursery with a jungle animal theme centering around giraffes - we did a "Mommy & baby" giraffe theme craft. I colored the spots on the mommy giraffe and had Cupcake help me glue it together, she colored the spots on the baby giraffe.

I thought they turned out great!

Preschool at Home: Week 14 - Fantastic Feelings!

Week 14 of Preschool at Home was 'Fantastic Feelings!' week, where we talked about different feelings and emotions, since Cupcake has started to show interest in talking more about feelings. I had recently found a number of books to add to our collection on feelings, so we focused on those over the week and also did some feelings worksheets as well.

The letter of the week was 'F' and we did an 'F is for Fox' craft project!

I also incorporated feelings in an upcoming busy bag exchange that we are taking part in, and I will share that project in a future post - but the exchange happened to be the following week so it didn't line up exactly timing-wise with feelings week. We will continue to talk about feelings off and on in the future though, since Cupcake more interested in understanding what different feelings mean.

Pre-School at Home: Week 12 - Beautiful Butterflies

Week 12 of preschool at home was in celebration of Spring - "Beautiful Butterflies"! To talk about all of the wonderful things we could look forward to in the Spring (albeit, no warmer weather where we lived yet) including more animals showing up in our outside environment, warmer weather, and green on the trees!

The letter craft for 'B' was an adorable little bear! Cupcake had a great time putting this one together!

Our Easter parties began this week, so we did have a craft playdate at a friend's house where we did some Easter crafts. The girls also had their pictures taken by our friend and had a great time posing with their stuffed Easter friends!

(Thanks to our favorite crafty mommy for taking these photos for us!)

Be sure to follow me on at the places below, to follow our Pre-School at Home activities and see what inspires me at Pinterest!

www.youtube.com/beingmommywithstyle

pinterest.com/Bags4Bubbles

For week 13 of "Pre-School at Home" we will be celebrating Easter with "Egg-cellent Easter Week"!

Pre-School at Home: Week 11 - Telling Time

Week 11 of preschool at home was all about "Telling Time"! In honor of the "Spring forward" time change that we had this week in the United States, we talked a bit about the clock and what the time change would mean for us.

Our art activity was a "T is for Tree" letter activity:

She was also very into painting this week, so I had her paint the back of a paper plate green... and we made a turtle out of it!

We also had a clock that Cupcake decorated and we practiced moving the hands around. (Since she is still only 2 years old, I focused more on the general concept of telling time... rather than an explicit instruction of it.) We counted up to twelve and talked out our schedule, and how telling time helps us be places... on time!

Here's how our letter wall is shaping up!

Be sure to follow me on at the places below, to follow our Pre-School at Home activities and see what inspires me at Pinterest!

www.youtube.com/beingmommywithstyle

pinterest.com/Bags4Bubbles

Pre-School at Home: Week 10 - Rainbow of Reading!

Week 10 was another fun week about reading! We'll be focusing more on numbers in week 11 since we've been talking a lot about reading, but since we had so much fun during Dr. Seuss week (see our previous blog post) - we decided to keep the colorful, imaginative reading fun going with "Rainbow of Reading" week!

We focused on reading again this week and had fun reading some of our favorite bright colorful books, like "Rumble in the Jungle" by Giles Andraea.

Our crafts included making a fun circle rainbow, shamrock snake, and "R is Rabbit" art!

Create Abilities for Kids Art Activities Review!

We received two fun January art projects to try out from Create Abilities for Kids!

Create Abilities for Kids creates art activities that are age appropriate for your 3 year old, 4 year old, or 5 year old and has a monthly subscription available where you can receive either two, three, or four art projects depending on the monthly amount you're wanting to spend. The projects arrive in the mail at the beginning of the month and have everything from start to finish you will need to complete the project, including brushes, paper to protect your table, and easy to read instructions!

The instruction sheets were one of my favorite parts of the kits, as they were easy to read and clearly laid out - with a section on what you child would gain from the activity, what materials were included in the kit, instructions for how to make the craft, and a bright picture of a suggestion of what the craft may look like. There were even fun facts on the back of the sheet, to share with your child as they worked!

I took some time with Cupcake (who was 2 years, 7 months old at the time of this review) to complete a January kit for 3 year olds - and she loved it! We've been doing more crafts around our house lately, so this was perfect for both mommy and child! Perfect for me that set-up and cleaning up were so easy - and perfect for Cupcake because she got to try some fun new art projects we had not tried before.

She especially appreciated the foam brushes that were included to do the painting work, as she's not big on getting her hands dirty. They were easy to work with and worked better for her than even brushes had in the past.

We created January glitter shapes, to celebrate the New Year:

And our other craft was to make a blue bird, to celebrate National Bird Day on January 5th:

Watch my full review and some footage of Cupcake completing the projects on beingmommywithstyle:

All in all, this art activity kit subscription is a great idea and I will be looking into it for my girls. I loved that it was so easy to clean up afterwards. These projects would also be the perfect projects for weeks that I was a bit more time strapped and didn't have time to do the "pre-activity" work, like cutting out of shapes and gathering materials. Everything you need is included in one neat little box from Create Abilities for Kids!

Get more information about the art activity kits here: www.createabilitiesforkids.com

* This was not a paid review, I've given my honest opinion and assessment of the products mentioned. I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned.

Pre-School at Home!

We're starting a new project around our house at the beginning of the new year, that I'm calling "Pre-School at Home"! It will just be a bit more formal learning time and structured learning activities for Cupcake, as she gets older and gets ready to go off to a few days of pre-school herself, perhaps next year. I thought we could begin working on basic things like furthering her reading, addition, subtraction, calendar basics, learning time, and other foundation learning activities to continue the learning we had already started at home.

I laid out our goals for the year with a brief introduction:

The program will primarily start out with just Cupcake (2 years, 7 months old) and will eventually be a combined learning program for Peanut as well, once she is 18 months old. (We begin reading basics at our house around 18 months old. She has already shown interest in books, so I am hoping we can capitalize on that enthusiasm!)

I also shared our first two weeks worth of lesson plans, which are fairly basic and just to get us started. I'm hoping to continually add to the lesson plans, both in structure and content wise, so that by the end of the year they are an advanced version of what they started out as...

I'm excited to begin this journey of more doing more learning activities at home in addition to the reading skills we were already doing... and looking forward to seeing what the girls' favorite parts of it are. Each week we will have a different theme, different letter focus, number focus, book focus, worksheet activities, art activities, and other motor skill activities or field trips that are related to that week's theme. I think it should be a fun adventure!

Here are Week 1 and Week 2's lesson plan outlines, for your personal use if you would like to gain ideas for your own home!

Pre-School at Home Week 1

Pre-School at Home Week 2

* Lesson plans are for personal use only, please do not distribute. All content above is my personal opinion.

Vlogging our Michigan trip!

So vlogging every day is a new thing for me, but it has been quite fun taking part in "Vlogmas" - vlogging every day on YouTube until Christmas (or the end of December - it seems to vary from person to person and we might actually just finish out the entire month)... Some of the videos I'm looking forward to having to look back on - to see how we decorated this year and that sort of thing, while I'm also thinking it will be great to have some firsts, like Natalie taking her first steps this month, on video to look back on as well.

We also vlogged our recent trip to Michigan - where we visited Somerset Collection mall, Great Lakes Crossing, downtown Rochester, and more. It was great to be back and sight see for a bit. Now we're back and with only one week left to go until the holidays are here... package wrapping and gearing up for the holiday festivities will be in full force!

2012 Toddler Girl Holiday Gift Guide!

It's that time of year to think of what gifts would be great to give for Christmas 2012, or other holidays that you may be celebrating this time of here! I put together a holiday gift guide for toddler girls (1 year old & 2 year olds), to give my opinion on what some of the best gift ideas out there this year may be!

Gifts under $20:
Melissa & Doug Puzzles, from $9.99: Target, Toys'R'Us, and other toy retailers
Book gift sets, from $12 - Barnes & Noble or your local book retailer
Holiday books, from 5.99 - Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, and other book retailers

Gifts for the young toddler:
Fisher Price Magical Music Vanity, $:www.fisherprice.com
Fisher Price Zoo Talkers Zoo, $:www.fisherprice.com
Fisher Price Zoo Talkers Animals, $3 & up: www.fisherprice.com

Gifts for older toddlers:
Fisher Price My First Dollhouse, from $49: www.fisherprice.com
Dollhouse accessories, from $7: www.fisherprice.com

Joint Toddler Gifts:
Fisher Price Disney Princess Castle, from $39: www.target.com
Fisher Price Disney Princess Gift set, $17.99: www.target.com

Pretend Play:
Princess dresses, from $10: www.toysrus.com
Hand puppets, from $1.99: www.ikea.com
Fabric food, from $6.99: www.ikea.com

Stocking stuffers:
Fisher Price Wheelies, from $3: www.fisherprice.com


** This is not a sponsored video. All opinions are my own, all items were purchased by the reviewer.

July randomness!

July has been a busy and crazy month for us! I wouldn't prefer to have it any other way though... it was great to have lots of visitors and do lots of activities! To close out the month, here's some of our July randomness...

Cupcake's new favorite dress-up item... a tutu that she found at her cousin's house! I will be looking into making one of these for her & will post up a tutorial on how to do them at home!

Reading to Luna...

Peanut sitting up:

And practicing standing!

Some sister time!

Ahoy me maties! Cupcake has a new obsession with pirates! (And saying, "Argh"!)

Day in the Life: 2 year old & 6 month old!

Well, technically she's 7 months old today! (Happy 7 months, Peanut!) However I posted this video last week when she was still 6 months old, a quick mini vlog - afternoon in the life, if you will - following us throughout the middle of the day. Day in the life videos are always so fun!

We were just around the house this day... we went out to sign up for swim class and then played outside later in the day. So it was a fairly low key day in the life!

Happy birthday, Cupcake!

Today my little Cupcake turns 2 years old!

She's sweet as can be, and lots of fun too! So happy birthday, Cupcake! Today belongs to you!

Love, Mommy

And the vlog of toddler soccer!

Toddler soccer in vlogging form!