I Can’t Even Imagine

I hate to post stuff everyone else is talking about & hesitate to put this up, but my heart is so heavy for them! I can’t stop thinking & praying for them. I love this guy! He wrote songs for our wedding, songs for our life, we met him backstage soon after Dad died, he’s just a great guy! That marriage conference we went to last weekend was in Franklin, TN & we were talking talking about all the songwriters that lived there. My brother put it best with SCC’s song, Carry You to Jesus.

Lift this brother & family up with me, will you?

To see a touching video of Steven Curtis with Maria taken a couple months ago, etc. click here.

Preschool Care Packages

A bloggy friend of mine was talking about “care package” ideas for her mother to send the kids, especially the littles, so they would have educational things to do when the olders were working. We have so enjoyed these packages through the years. It’s been a great way for Grandma (several states away) to be involved, and for our littles to have quality educational materials to play with through the years. Here’s a list of those things that have stood the test of time & been most enjoyed…

counting bears or bugs (the ones where you can make patterns with, sort, etc.), – you’d be surprised at how much you can teach with these!

nice musical instruments (tambourine, rhythm sticks, shaker eggs or homemade ones with various seed or beans or corn, jingle bell anything, slide whistles, kazoo, harmonica, etc.),

simple costumes, or accessories to costumes,

gardening equipment (gloves, little tools, watering can, etc.),

tepee or castle to read in (This company used to have a cheap tepee too, keep an eye out for its return),

the Identiflyer,

nice puzzles,

Faerie Tale Theatre ( a great collection of stories, but I got this collection a few years ago for 35$. I can’t find it that cheap now! Keep an eye out on ebay I guess.),

flannel board & or chalk board, felt stuff to put on felt board (homemade is easy, cheap & fun – we’ve made shapes, people with clothes, etc. seasonal fun like a tree with little multicolored leaves to put on, pumpkins, snowman parts, flowers, etc. to teach seasons – felt comes 10-25 cents a sheet – just takes time to make),

lacing beads or cards,

cheap puppets & stage,

magnetic letters (lower case please – harder to find & more expensive maybe, but best for learning – they are going to use lower case a whole lot more than capitals in life!)

And of course books. I like to buy the ones that are more interactive because they’re fun & the library generally doesn’t get those kinds of books (The Jolly Postman type, lift the flap, pop-up, or scratch & sniff, touch & feel, etc.) or noisy books like Buzz, Buzz, Busy Bees where the batteries are dead in the library versions!

I’ll probably add to this list later as my brain gets going. Also, a theme for the week sure helps a LOT for me to get excited about preschool learning as well as Grandma having a direction to go in buying & sending packages. We’ve had a lot of fun with this through the years. Another day I’ll try to post the themes for the year. After doing that for eight years, we pretty much came up with a set schedule for themes that worked well & ended up being predictable every year. For those interested, stay tuned for more info.