Atlanta's Frugal Mom

Before I dive in to great toys and activities to keep kids moving, a disclosure: portions of this post are sponsored.  I’ve received a form of compensation in exchange for featuring some of the items in this post; however all opinions, experiences, and bad puns are 100% my own. With kids’ birthdays sneaking up on you, and Christmas being a close -um- nine months away, it’s time to start pondering gift ideas for the kiddos in your life.  If you’re like me, you may be looking for toys and activities that promote getting active, rather than passively sitting in front of a screen.  While I’ve already mentioned games and activities for preschoolers, these toys are geared more for an older crowd, say ages 6 – 106.  😉 Here are some great gifts to keep kids moving, both indoors and outdoors: (Laser) Tag! You’re It!   My kids, particularly my son, enjoy a good game of Laser Tag, and have really dug the Laser X we got for Christmas last year.  We have recently added a few more L...

Starting kindergarten is something I’ve gone through twice already with my own kiddos, and there’s definitely some things you can do to help prepare your kiddo for kindergarten, aside from simply ensuring they’re ready for kindergarten .  Getting your child ready for the first day of kindergarten can help make the day, and your morning, go smoothly.  Here are my best practical tips for making the first day of kindergarten a success! Getting Ready for the First Day of Kindergarten

As a preschool teacher, I’m frequently asked about ways to help facilitate learning and growth at home, particularly what activities for young preschoolers can parents work on at home.  During spring conferences with my two-year-old class’s parents, this question is second only to questions regarding potty training .   Trust me, I get how long these summer days can be, and being able to fill your child’s days with meaningful, age-appropriate activities can make or break your summer.  (or winter break.  Or spring break.  Or ….Tuesday!)  So what are some activities for your young preschooler, or any time of the year, to do at home?

As a preschool teacher, I’m always looking for ways to spice things up in my classroom, including new and fun sensory table ideas.  Thankfully, an amazing coworker created a master list many moons ago, and shared it with me as I was starting out. Whether you’re a preschool teacher, or a parent of a preschooler, you’ll appreciate the diversity of a good sensory table.  Sensory tables provide an opportunity for preschoolers to experience a wide array of fine motor skills, as well as some gross motor skills, all a sensory-rich environment.  Don’t have a full-blown sensory table for your home or your classroom?  Remember, water/sand tables make great sensory tables, too! Also, the sensory table ideas listed below can be mixed and matched for whole new levels of experience.  Toss in tools to assist in manipulating the items in the table, such as cups and measuring spoons for pouring, tongs/kid-friendly tweezers, and scissors for snipping and cutting.  Also, yo...

Morning car rides can be daunting if you’re not a morning person, and sometimes even if you ARE a morning person.  Although I believe it’s perfectly ok to let your kids be bored, I also believe it’s important to use moments together wisely.  So we tend to spend our morning car ride having conversations, and playing kids car games that help wake them up and keep them on their toes, AND it’s all done sans technology!  Here I delve beyond “Punch-Buggy Charlie” and the license plate game for some good no-tech car games for kids. Car Games for Kids 20 Questions  –  We each take a turn coming up with a person, place, or thing.  Then the other participants take turns asking yes or no questions to figure out what it is.  If we figure it out before the 20th question, we win; if not, then the person answering the questions wins.  This is a good exercise in making deductions and also figuring out good “category” questions.

Tonight I was the very mean mom who wouldn’t help her daughter.  Tonight I let my little girl struggle and get a little frustrated, and I refused to help her or to do for her the task she set out to do.  And we both lived through it. You see, she decided she wanted to change out her shoelaces for these funky Atlanta Hawks laces she got when we visited the Ronald McDonald House a few weeks back.  She pulled out a pair of sneakers, plopped herself down on the den rug, and sat there, staring at her shoes. She looked up at me for …approval? Guidance?  Or both. I told her this was a task she needed to try to do on her own.  I told her upfront I would NOT put those laces in myself, that -at 8 years old- she could do it.   I further told her she may need to keep trying until she figured it out. She looked at me like a helpless puppy, but I stayed over on the couch, folding clothes, and simply offering a watchful eye, and an ear for conversation. She pulled the laces out of one sh...

I originally wrote this almost two years ago, but as I get closer to sending my now SECOND GRADER off to school, and cope with also having a boy in pre-K, there’s still so much of this that rings true.  ….and I still don’t know how to do-it-all.  😉 Last week proved to be quite a week, to say the least.  My family and I spent the first week in August on vacation in Florida, first hitting the beach, then spending some quality time with the grandparents, and a day at Disney. We came back on Saturday, and my oldest was starting Kindergarten on Monday.  Seriously, the summer seemed to have just flown by.  I’m proud to say I held it together quite well, and masked my nervousness and sadness at sending my baby off to Kindergarten, in a school with kids all the way up to 8th grade.  It was the second day, when carpool began, where I nearly lost it – watching her walk away with her cute Ariel backpack.  Such a big shot.  What happened to my little baby?? With start...

Part of our family routine includes attending Saturday evening Mass, and this weekend was no exception.  We drove separately, since my husband was going to take our daughter to a dance performance, while I took our son back home.  I came in about 15 minutes late with our son, as he was in the midst of a Prednisone-induced fit when it was time to go.  Sigh. We were all sitting in the back pew, doing our usual Mass thing, and I observed the family in the pew ahead of me – namely because there was a little girl with redhair sitting with them.  I noticed their mom, and likely her parents, with three school-age-ish kids.  The mom and the grandfather sat between the son, while the girls were sitting betwixt the grandparents. I quickly, quietly noticed the son likely had mild special needs.  I also noticed quickly how stressed the mother seemed.  It broke my heart to watch her out of the corner of my eye: I could sense the anxiety she felt.  She was nervous her son may act out, or simpl...

For some reason, today I felt just a little extra whimsical while watching my daughter.  Like many mothers, I’m sure, I catch glimpses of her older self throughout the course of the day, and today -for a fleeting split second- I saw my little girl all grown up.  I’ve already shared my wishlist for her , but here is my collective little nuggets of advice for my daughter. Advice for My 6-year-old Daughter, for the Teen Years and Beyond   Don’t be a mean girl.  Ever.  But don’t be mean back to the mean girls – how else will they learn kindness if it’s not extended to them? Love yourself , on the inside and the outside.  Treat your body with respect now, and it will thank you in kind as you get older.  Learn now how to take care of your whole self. Be kind but firm.

  I came across this post, from an old blog I created about and for my daughter.  Unlike my actual daughter, this blog’s been neglected for about three years, but I wanted to breathe new life in to this post, as I still feel it’s relevant to her -and to daughters and children everywhere.  What’s on YOUR wish list for your children?   My Wish List for My Daughter October 2, 2010 My Dear Carol, As your mother, I wish for you many things in this life.  Above all, I pray daily that you live an exceptionally long, happy, healthy, meaningful, and purposeful life.  I wish this for you, and any siblings you may have.  I hope to help make those things attainable for you, with these things I wish for you:

It seems like it was just last week I walked my little girl in to Kindergarten .  And yet now, in a blink of an eye, she  was saying goodbye to Kindergarten .  While I knew she was more than ready to start Kindergarten , I still knew this year would be filled with many “new”s: she started a new school, venturing away from the preschool where she was already well-known; which also means she made new friends, whom she embraced with her big heart and they she; new teachers, all of whom she seems to like, her classroom teacher the most! In the last nine months, she’s become an even stronger reader, mastering even more sight words, gained more confidence as a reader, began to experiment with spelling, finished writing her own book, began formerly learning Spanish, learned how to skip count by 2s, 5s, and 10s, learned how to add numbers in her head, almost mastered shoe tying (gonna keep that on our summer checklist!), and grew by leaps and bounds in ways I never imagined! ...

My daughter starts Kindergarten in less than a month.  While I am not ready to let my baby enter the big world of Kindergarten, I am confident I have paved the way for this milestone, and am certain she is ready.  …but what exactly does “kindergarten readiness” look like, really?? Whether you’re sending your first or fifth child into kindergarten, it’s never an easy time. You have a lot of pressure on your shoulders to make sure your child knows certain concepts before you send them off. There are some things you can start doing now to prep your child for Kindergarten in the fall. Signs of Kindergarten Readiness   Letter Sounds – Every child entering kindergarten should have practice with their letter sounds. You’ll want to start teaching them their letter sounds by making sure they know the alphabet first. Knowing the alphabet plus their letter sounds is one way a kindergartner starts the reading process. You can help your child learn their letter sounds by rep...

The other day, I took my daughter to the gym with me.  Not for any super-compelling reason, other than convenience and lack of child care. My daughter is five, going on fifteen, and isn’t interested in playing with the “little guys” in the kids zone, where her 2-year-old brother goes.  So, got the green light from my instructor ahead of time to let her come with me to one particular class I take, Les Mills Body Combat . What happened in the 48 hours during and then following that class, and the lessons *I* would learn continue to surprise me, even as I type this out. I prepared her for the class, letting her know that it would be similar to the gym class she got to try out at UFC Perimeter Gym , but with grown ups.  I assured her she was welcome to join in with us, and that it was ok if she didn’t know all the moves.  None of us did, really.  But I also comforted her with the iPad (don’t judge me!), a pad of paper, and her markers.  On the drive over there,...

This post originally appeared as a guest post on another site about two years ago, but that site is no longer around. :/ SO, I’m re-claiming it and adding it to my Picky-Tot Pleasers series.  Lemme know what’cha think!   Call me Popeye.  What can I say?  I love to cook with spinach.  Up until recently, it’s been in just about any dish I made with chicken or ground turkey.  However, I crossed the line the other morning when I (deliberately) baked spinach in to my pancakes.  That’s right, my daughter and I made spinach pancakes.  On purpose.

Explaining death to young children is never a particularly desirable subject, I find, as we wish to preserve their innocence and shield them from anything that may burst their fragile bubble, believing all is always well in their world.  However, death is inevitable.  Some folks lose loved ones later in life, while others experience death of a loved one at a tender, young age.  Following is my story, explaining death to my five-year-old daughter, Carol. My grandmother was fortunate enough to raise her five children, not only to see all eight of her grandchildren grow up, but also see her eight great-grandchildren, AND meet three great-great-grandchildren.  She lived for almost 18 years after my grandaddy passed away, and was the last of her twelve siblings to survive.  She lived through the great depression, and lost her own mother at a very young age.  She was, in every sense of the word, a good Southern woman.  She had the greenest thumb I’ve ever seen, able to revive even the l...

Do you really need reasons to read with your child???  Parents are told constantly to read to their children, or with their children – but perhaps having a little further explanation would help you understand WHY reading with your children is as essential as brushing your teeth twice a day.  This list is from the Georgia Preschool Association Newsletter. Reasons to Read with Your Child Build a lifelong interest in reading.  “Getting children actively involved in the process of reading and having them interact with adults is key in a lifelong interest in reading,” said BeAnn Younker, principal at Battle Ground Middle School in Indiana. Children whose parents read to them tend to become better readers and perform better in school , according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Reading to children helps them with language and speech development . Reading expands vocabulary and teachers pronunciation . Reading to toddlers prepares them for school , when th...

It’s been almost two and a half years since I potty trained my daughter in four days at 26 months.  Once we finished those four days, she never ever looked back!  With that total success, and with my son (22 mo) on the brink of being ready, I’ve devised and revised some of my favorite potty training tips for other parents. Here’s what I consider potty training essentials  and/or what I’d recommend when undergoing the process: Foam hand soap – it just makes hand washing more fun, and makes hand-washing easier.  You can always check for coupons to print before you head to purchase!  😉 Keep towels for drying hands on counter in reach , if your towel holder is too high; I still keep hand towels on the counter for my now 4.5 year old daughter. Potty seats for the big potty, as well as little portable potty chairs , because you never know what might interest him most!  When you’re on the go , consider a foldable potty seat. Step stools — for the ...

And this is precisely why we have to examine the contents within EVERY time we throw something away…. Ah, yes, life with a toddler certainly keeps you on your toes! Happy (wordless) Wednesday , y’all! 🙂

And just like that , my little baby boy is off and walking – still throwing his hands in the air whilst walking….

Happy Wordless Wednesday, y’all! I hope your children’s toys are better behaved than mine! 😉  In the meantime, have your children’s toys been naughty lately, too?  All I know is the “boy baby” -as Carol calls him- was hitting, so got an immediate time out.