Laurie's Everyday Notions

Yes, it says, "Lorie ROCKS!" I have a new favorite at Laurie's Little Sprouts. He may have spelled my name wrong but  the word following my misspelled name makes it all ok. :) I found several recipes for sidewalk paint which used corn starch and food coloring. I had neither so I improvised. I mixed by sight so I apologize but I have no exact measurements. I simply mixed liquid laundry starch with powdered tempera paint. More starch than paint. Mix well.  Time to pretty up the driveway! Shared with:  

As a daycare provider I struggle with finding gifts for the kids to make for their parents that are useful. Really, I don't want to send home another scribbled drawing that a parent may want to throw away but the guilt of doing so causes the parent to add the artwork (artwork that looks like the thousand other pieces of artwork) in the stack of all the other "art" the child has made for them. I know. Some of you may be shaking your head in disbelief that I can even suggest that one would want to throw away Jr's precious abstract of dinosaurs caught in a tornado. But let's be realistic.  A few mementos are great but a closet full becomes a burden. When we use all our household space to keep memories, we tend to be too busy organizing the clutter to MAKE memories. My first challenge was finding something useful. Something that would either be used up or something that is genuinely worth putting in that memory closet. My second challenge was finding something the...

When public school has a day off, so does my homeschooling boy, simply because no school means more kids for me. Big Kids (that's what we call the school-agers), for some reason, are harder to entertain than the littles. School (or their peers) must teach them the phrase, which is quite often delivered in a whine, "I'm bored........."  I try to stay a step ahead of them to ward off their lack of creative play.  I don't know what it is about these things but  it is quite magical to see how they captivate children.   Last Friday, with no school and a houseful of kiddos, I had the playmobiles ready. I bought the playmobiles on ebay last year and it was the best money I EVER spent as they entertain both the the Big Kids and the Littles for literally HOURS! I also had the ingredients ready for making SLIME! As soon as the playmobies had lost their popularity, we picked them up and made our slime. It was a big hit. The kiddos helped me mix up the slime, we then...

Remember the hundred (give or take) jars of baby food that were gifted to me? I have a bucket full of empty jars now that need to be "crafted".  I also had a bucket of aquarium rock that needs to find a new use. This week we used up a few rocks and jars while making terrariums. Easy peasy and the kids loved this project.   First we painted the lids a sunny yellow.  I was wondering where I'd find moss or other greens to put into our terrariums. It is March in Minnesota after all (although you won't know it with temps nearing 80 degrees today). While at the farm checking my maple trees (I had hoped to harvest a bunch of sap to make my own syrup this year. Unfortunately the weather has been too mild to produce a good sap flow), I noticed a pile of concrete blocks, which were once the walls of the horse barn, covered in moss. Perfect! The Boy and his big, muscular arms loaded up a moss-covered block for me to bring home for our project. Yesterd...

Lessons on the fly, because that's how I do things. I start every fall with big dreams of structured, daily lesson plans for my preschool kiddos. And every year around mid-October I realize that daily life creates many more opportunities for learning. I like to talk (I know, most of you are shocked at this), so we talk. We talk a LOT at Laurie's Little Sprouts. We talk about colors when we're coloring, when we're eating (because fruits and veggies naturally lead to color conversation) and when we're looking at the colors in the sky. We talk about letters. We sing. We read. We play. WE bake. We create. We learn how to treat our friends with kindness and respect. We learn manners. So what's left? Not much. I don't think I need a lesson plan or a big planner full of lesson plans in order to teach. So the other day I was really excited about where our day took us. I couldn't have planned it any better.  I am fortunate that the Early Childhood program in...

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the "Elf on the Shelf" book which comes with an elf. That's not our elf. I'm too cheap...I mean frugal. The book/elf combo costs around $30. Last month I found an elf (with no book) at Hobby Lobby. On sale for under three bucks. It pays to be cheap. The day before Thanksgiving I introduced the daycare kiddos to our new house elf. I told them that he was Santa's helper and that he would be watching to make sure we all get on the "good list". I did not put much emphasis on this as I try to focus more on Jesus than Santa. Instead I made a big deal out of the fact that he was OUR elf so we had to pick a name for him and that he'd be traveling around the house at night so every morning we would have to look for him. The kids have had so much fun with both of these tasks. When I asked for suggestions they all started yelling out names. I threw in the suggestion of adding something "Christmas-y" such ...

Pirate Week and Beach Bash BEACH BASH Fish in the Sea Beach Bash Snack Fish in the Sea SUPPLIES: 4 - 3 oz boxes of Berry Blue Jell-O Swedish Fish (or gummy sharks/fish/etc) Clear cups Mix 2 boxes of Jell-O with 1 1/2 cup of boiling water, stir to dissolve. While water is boiling, add ice to 1cup of water to make 2 cups. (I found it easier to fill my two-cup measuring cup with ice and then adding water) After jello is dissolved, add the ice water. Stir until ice cubes are melted...or if there is a couple unmelted floaters, spoon them out. Fill cups to create first layer of the sea. Allow jello to set (otherwise the fish will sink) for about 30 minutes. The jello doesn't have to be completely set but just enough to support the weight of the fish. While the jello is setting, mix the last 2 boxes of jello in the same way as the first. Add this to the cup for the top layer of the "sea". Put in frig for 1 hours or until jello has set....

On Tuesday I took the "Big Sprouts" (six of my school age daycare kiddos) to the  Chatfield Public Library 's Elementary Summer Reading Program, where they made hamburger cookies. The boys loved it and had so much fun that we decided that we needed to make these at Laurie's house and teach the littles how to make them too! SUPPLIES NEEDED: Buns ~ Vanilla Wafers Burger ~ Fudge Mint Cookies Ketchup ~ Red Frosting Mustard ~ Yellow Frosting Corn Syrup (I made a simple syrup with sugar and water) to "glue" the sesame seeds to the "bun". Optional: Mayo ~ white frosting Lettuce ~ green shredded coconut Notes: To make this project less expensive, I could have made my own frosting or purchased a little tub of white frosting and added food coloring. I decided to spend a little more in the name of convenience. 12 kids can do a lot of damage with frosting. :) The squeezable icing was perfect and much less messy. Assembly is pretty simple. Add k...

To celebrate the end of school and the return of our old, school-age friends to Laurie's Little Sprouts Daycare, the kids and I decided to have a "Camping Week". A couple weeks before, I asked the kids what camping week would "look" like and we generated a list including but no limited to tents, bugs, fishing, flashlights, campfires, s'mores and ghost stories (we skipped that part for the little ones). TENT It's amazing how fun setting up a tent is for kids. I even let the kids help and they did a great job of putting the poles together and helping in "raising the roof". Not an easy feat with this big tent. Camping coloring pages and worksheets (camping vocabulary, word search, crossword puzzles) for here . BUGS and Trail Mix We inspected bugs with a magnify glass and made trail mix. In our trail mix we added pretzels, chow mien noodles, mini chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, raisins, tropical fruit mix (bananas, pineapples, etc) an...