Atlanta's Frugal Mom

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.

This was supposed to be the summer of many things. Just like every other previous summer, I started concocting some pretty grand plans for summer 2017 with my kids. I’d planned to work a little bit each day teaching my rising 3rd grader her times tables, using a fun program I used when I was a public school teacher. Instead, I randomly quizzed her verbally. I’d planned to work with my rising kindergartner on learning to tie his shoes, since shoes with laces are mandatory for him. That didn’t happen at all. I’d planned to try out all the cool awesome places around Atlanta I keep hearing about (and -um- some of which I’ve featured here ), but we didn’t.

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...