Frugal Friday - Family Fun on for Cents!

This week, Opa took Tinkerbell to the Bach for a sleepover. It was special time away from Cupcake, who, often through her natural exuberance, tends to steal the show.

To give Cupcake a little special Mummy and Daddy time, we decided to have a fun dinosaur themed night, based on the recent release "Dino Time".

This was $1 from the local Video Ezy on weekly hire.

 



I then had a look through my time-wasting friend, Pinterest, for dinosaur themed party ideas. Nothing was really sticking out, given we had a budget of....well....nothing. So I decided to get creative!

 

I decided, that since dinosaurs are green, I would make some green jelly and sprinkle some chocolate sprinkles on the top once it had set. Cupcake called it her "Dino Jelly". Then I made some meatballs wrapped in scone (biscuit for you Americans!) mixture and named them "Dino eggs". Add some watered down lime juice, and you have......

 

 

And look at the smile on her face!

 

All these things were made with items from in the pantry and freezer, so the cost of the entire evening was $1, time and lots of love.



Baby Discovery Bottle

This week, I have been teaching Toto about the concept 'in/out'.

 

To do this, I made a simple toy with items from around the house.

 

All you need is an empty milk bottle, scissors, and items to put in the bottle.

 

 

Firstly, I showed Toto where the toys were. Then I let him explore.

 

 

Following that, I showed him how to put the toys into the hole in the top of the bottle.

He struggled a little bit more with this concept - more with the co-ordination than with putting it into the hole. To help him, I guided his hand to the hole and he would let go of the toy. After a few times, he was able to do this alone.

 

 

After that, I let him play by himself. He enjoyed turning the bottle around and re-finding the holes to take the toys out and put them in another area.

 

Toto was able to extend himself further by taking toys out of the bottle, turning to a nearby basket, and depositing the toy into the basket, then returning to the discovery bottle and repeating the exercise.

 

What an entertaining half hour we had!

Counting Clouds

During the past week, we have been learning about weather (espeically clouds).

 

For maths, the children enjoyed this activity the most.

 

Again, to ensure total focus, I ensured that the materials were all available and organised in containers for ease of use.

 

There were a lot of skills that the children learnt in this activity, from fine motor skills, to number, and basic school readiness skills such as using the correct amount of glue.

 

Cupcake

 

• Is already able to recognise numbers 1-10 and count one-to-one up to 10.
• Needs to learn how to use runny glue (PVA) and show restraint with materials
• Struggles to show focus and follow instructions. This will be the lesson focus for her.

 

• She was able to use restraint with the glue up until the last two numbers.
• Because she enjoyed the activity, her focus was excellent again, up until the last two numbers.

 

Tinkerbell

 

• Can rote count (using her memory) up to 6.
• Is beginning to count 1 and 2 items.
• Needs to develop one-to-one counting up to 4.

 

• To take the focus off school readiness skills, I squeezed the correct number of glue dots onto her page.
• She was able to count (with assistance) each cloud as she put it on the glue dots.

This activity was a great success. The girls both wanted to put their cloud pictures up on the wall to show Daddy when he got home. This is also teaching them to take pride in their work.

Book-making - Part 1

My girls love books. They love to read books. They love to make books.

I have lately found that Cupcake is struggling to cope with boredom when at home. This struggle is usually expressed through misbehaviour. So I decided to teach her some sight words and challenge her in an area she seems to excel - reading and languages.

Firstly, I chose four sight words for her to use from the Ready to Read series taught in New Zealand schools. The sight words were from the Emergent/Red level books and were words most likely to be used by Cupcake in everyday life.

like                     it                       the                      I

 

I then thought about what Cupcake liked that I could apply to colours. At the moment her passion is eating apples. She would eat them all day if she could. So "apples" was the chosen theme. Its important when teaching children to make the learning relevent to them. If they do not see a reason for the learning, they often put less effort into their learning. It must be real to them and contextual.

 

Thirdly, I needed to make it easy so that I would not turn her off learning. I did this by typing the words and printing them out. They were then sorted into a partitioned plate. If the activity contains not enough challenge, or too much challenge, a young child is less likely to take risks with his or her learning.

 

Lastly, I needed to make it her own. To do this, I taught her how to draw a simple apple and helped her to colour it in.

 

Here she is writing her first sight word book:

 

 

Everything was prepared and ready to use. If you are fumbling around for materials, younger learners are more likely to 'tune out' and lose interest in the learning activity.

 

She loves her new book so much, that she chooses to read it at least once a week during our bedtime routine. She is now reading it - not just to me - but to her siblings.

 

Success!

Quiet Time Workstations

Every day, at approximately 10am, Toto has a sleep. Not a nap. A sleep. 2.5 hours of bliss spent in the land of Nodd.

 

Except for when the girls are home.

 

Then, he wants to join in the fun. And the noise. And there is usually a lot of it!!

 

One day I was struggling with this (and a very overtired, grumpy 8 month old baby) when I came across a solution.

 

Workstations.

 

I talked with the girls and discussed their favourite quiet-time activities. Then we picked three, and set up a 60 minute rotation. The children had 20 minutes per activity, with special mummy time doing each one to keep them ontask.

 

Here they are:

 

Laminated Playdough Mats

 

 

Colouring Station



 

Puzzles

 

 

 

What quiet time activities do you do with your children?

Allergy Alert

Where to start????

 

We have had a crazy fortnight with the children. We took Toto to the doctor to find out where to begin looking at intolerances and allergies, and were referred to the same specialist Cupcake has been seeing at the Specialist Centre in St Heliars Bay.

 

Pretty straightforward, right? Ring the specialists, make an appointment, wait for the appointment, attend the appointment and get some answers. Right?

 

A few days later, Plunket visits to look at Toto and asks what weight Tinkerbell currently is. The children all started to plateau in their growth at approximately 9 months so we look at her old growth charts to get a view on what to expect for him. Hang on a second, you said she was 11.4kg?? But last time we weighed her 5 months ago she was 11.9kg. Oh dear....

 

Another doctors appointment made (happening tomorrow).

 

To make a long story short, we visited the specialist for Toto and certainly got some answers.

 

Toto

 

 

Toto is officially intolerant to oatmeal. Because his reactions are delayed and a skin prick test came back completely negative, the specialist does not think there will be allergies. He has a 7% chance of having the same allergies as Cupcake. So the way that we will go forward is to give him a piece of bread (causes eczema around Toto's mouth within the hour) every day. Hopefully that will help him become more tolerant of wheat/gluten. We are to avoid oats and start introducing him to egg, peanut butter and other high allergen food ASAP as per latest research findings.

 

 

Tinkerbell

 

 

Upon being asked whether Tinkerbell had shown any allergies, we mentioned the really horrible nappies she has experienced since having a 6 week bout of runny tummy when she was 15 months old. And the important fact that she also experiences this after consuming even small amounts of milk. The specialist confirmed that this could be her body having a learned lactose intolerance from that bout of sickness. But. Big but. I hate big buts. A lot of her symptoms are also signs of celiacs disease so we are to ask to have her skin prick tested, RAST tested, and also screened for celiacs. In the meantime? Take her off milk immediately. See if that helps. And get to the doctor.

 

 

Cupcake

 

 

So how is Cupcake going? I asked if I could please have the email of the immunologist who we saw at Starship Hospital. Why, can I help you, she asked? So I explained the long doses of antibiotics we've had her on and the struggle to keep her staph infections at bay. Apparently it shouldn't be returning so quickly. Really?? So we need to get her nose swabbed to figure out if THAT is what is causing the infection to continue. Certainly the easiest outcome.

 

 

Wow. A lot of things to get through in my busy little mind!

 

Can you see why things have been so quiet lately!!

 

Look out, dear readers, as I've got a lot to catch you up on what we've been doing!!

Ways to Stay Sane in a Crazy World

When I was planning my week on Sunday, I had a specific list of blog topics that I wanted to cover and what day I was to write them. Nothing could be simpler, I thought. Wow, was I wrong. I had it all planned. Todays blog would be about authors that my children enjoyed reading. A nice, light, educational post with a strictly PG rating.

And then it happened.

The crash.

A little background information

When I am pregnant I am sick. Not just throw up once or twice sick, but on medication sick. In hospital sick. Miserable sick. My hormones are in overload, which creates hyperemesis, an unusual and debilitating form of morning sickness. Nothing I eat stays down for nine months. The only way to get nutrition to both me and the baby is to take a colourful cocktail of drugs to suppress the nausea and allow me to keep at least half of the food I eat.

As if that isn't enough, the influx of hormones creates what I not-so-fondly refer to as my "black cloud". During pregnancy I suffer from antenatal depression. Coping becomes a daily struggle. Getting up is (some days) like climbing Mount Everest. I become tired, isolated and extremely down.

Usually this depression disappears on the birth of the baby. But not this time. This time I was so determined to cope. Not only cope, but to be a super mum. Not just ANY super mum, but THE super mum that other mums look at and think, "wow, she has 3 young kids and she can do it!".

But it didn't work out like that.

After 4 years of battling with depression and anxiety, postnatal depression finally got me. That or it was a combo attack of the depression and my performance anxiety as a mother.

But after 5 months of struggling, I finally managed to claw my way out from under this new "black cloud" and reappear in the world of the living again. I attended Church. Visted friends. Went to play groups.

The Struggle

This isn't usually something I am forthcoming about. I'm happy to let people know that I do suffer from "anxiety" (the stigma of the word "depression" brings too many judgemental stares and uncomfortable silences). But to tell people that I have a daily struggle to enjoy my husband, my children, my home, my life, is hard.

Harder still has been trying to tell myself that this won't last forever.

And so to today's post.

I know there are other people out there. Other people struggling daily to cope, to enjoy, to live. So I've decided to share my strategies to staying sane in this crazy world.

Ways to Stay Sane in a Crazy World

• Have a code word. For example, ours is "Push the button, Max!" If my darling hubby says that, then I know that I've entered an anxiety zone and need to do something to reset myself. It has to be something that he can say in public and not appear like a total loony (or make me to appear like one!). Something instantly recognisable.
• Go for a walk. If your children are with you, go to the park and just enjoy them. If you can, go for a walk in the morning sunshine, and think about the glory of God's creation as you pass flowers, letterboxes, trees, and people.
• Have a cuppa and read a magazine. It only needs to be for 10 minutes. Just enough to break the cycle.
• Ring a friend. Sometimes all you need is to know someone is there.
• Bundle the kids in the car and go window shopping. I usually buy them something special to bribe them with or keep them interested. All it needs to be is a $2 shop item. Go and dream. Look at gardening items, clothes, food, housewear. Whatever you like to dream about.
• Do some exercise. I get out to the gym without the kids when hubby gets home. Its just a break from your own four walls.
• Take a long bath (or a shower). Feel the water surround you. Flowing over you and taking your troubles and thoughts away with it.
• If a specific task is causing anxiety, complete it. Sometimes thats all it takes!
• Collect scriptures you can read when you are feeling depressed/anxious. I have mine in my bedroom. I can pull them off the wall and walk around the house praying and declaring their promises aloud. You are a child of God. He doesn't say you can have the things he's promised if you're a good girl. He says you have them because He loves you. Claim them.
• Turn on some inspirational music. If you fill your life with negative things that breed discontent and depression, you will feel discontented and depressed. Make a concious effort to put on music that makes you sing or dance. Perhaps worship. I have a collection of music from when I was a teenager that I just have to listen to to start tapping away. It instantly lifts my spirits.
• Get outside. Whether it is to pull weeds, hang washing, go for a short walk, whatever. Get out into the sunshine.
• Do something you can feel good about. Something creative. Make a card. Bake a cake. Anything that makes you feel like you've achieved something.
• Pick some flowers. If you don't have a flower garden (we don't!!), perhaps ask the next door neighbour if you could pick a few of theirs. Display them somewhere you often look.

Well, there are my coping strategies. I hope they've helped. Perhaps you could help others by sharing some of yours in the comments section!