Shopping Evaluation

With the Super Walmart opening in our area (and Bottom Dollar Foods too), I knew it was time to do a price comparison to make sure I'm shopping at the best place and getting the best deal for my money. (Before sales and coupons) Here is my simple plan to figure out what is my best plan for shopping and having a base for knowing who has the best deals each week.

• Make a list of everything that over the course of time you need to buy (its OK if you miss something, you can tack it onto your list as you are walking through the store.) 
• Make a list of all the stores that are possibilities for your shopping
• Go to one store each week and do your shopping. In the process, make sure you have written down the real price (not the sale price) for each item on your list and the quantity you receive for that value (quantities may change especially if you are including a BJs or Sams Club in your list like I am.)
• Break down results and compare - easy list then of what your best deals are and where to get them and then when you see that sale,  you'll know if it is a good deal or not!

Happy Shopping!

Christmas Cookies in a Jiff!

Do you work all day and come home to the same busyness of every day with all the holiday prep piled on top? Do you stay at home with one, two, three...(you get the idea) little children who are under foot and need Mommy's help and attention. Are you lucky to get one batch of cookies made, let alone a variety for Christmas?
Me too!
The natural solution in my mind was a cookie exchange, but that is too much work too... or is it. We just did a cookie swap for the moms who send their kids to UBCS Day Care. Here are some easy tips to put together a cookie swap that takes very little time and effort.

• Host the exchange with out getting together. You can do this by collecting cookies, dividing them out, and handing them back out. While this takes a little work on the part of a couple of people who organize the exchange, it is well worth it and really doesn't take all that long if you find the common threads in all of your lives.  We had the moms drop the cookies off when they brought their children to day care Wednesday morning. Today (Friday) they will pick their cookies up and take them home. There are other simple ways to do a swap. If you  know how many people are participating have everyone divide their cookies into that many ziploc bags and everyone takes a bag from each person at church or where every you see eachother. The sky is the limit! Think outside the box.
• Keep your cookie amount reasonable and unchanging. We did 5-6 dozen cookies each for an exchange of about 20 ladies.  For a smaller group we did simply what one batch of your cookies yields. 
• Have everyone bring their cookies in a disposable container - they won't get it back! And they also need to send an empty tray or large tin to take the cookies home in.
• Give a time buffer - if the moms forgot the cookies on Wednesday, they could bring them in Thursday.
• Be creative and have fun! There are lots of ideas out there, so do your research!

Have you participated in a cookie exchange? What things did you notice that made your exchange a success?

Making Dinner Prep Easier

Whether you are a busy working mom, or you are at home all day long, getting dinner ready can be a very stressful time of day. Here are some ideas to cut down on stress and make it easier to enjoy your family meal each day.

1.        Have as much of your dinner prep done before hand as possible (the night before , during nap time, or in the morning)

2.      Have special activities that the kids can do only when you are making dinner.

·         Special coloring activities

·         Special books – Leap Frog Tag

·         Special toys

3.      Set up a meal swap with a few friends. (Details to come about this one :) )

4.      Double your meals and put one in the freezer for another day.

5.      Cut onions the night before or when you are prepping another meal and bag them. Then when you put your meal together in the morning you don’t go to work smelling like onions.

6.     Get older children involve (they can help with simple prep or setting the table.)

Well, sorry I haven't posted in weeks. I learned that it took me way too long to find papers the way I was. I spent 3-4 hours a week and that was for the first time through a lot of the material I was covering. So we ended up buying a book. I'll post a link to the workbook later. I really like it. But this blog will be dedicated to ideas for Busy Moms with Busy Kids. At Upper Bucks Christian School and Day Care we are starting a Moms 2 Moms group. This blog is especially for M2M, but I hope in the mean time that it will benifit ladies all around the country as well!

Preschool Week 2

 Another week is here. Here is the lesson plan, and  the different pages to use. Any pages you don't see are out of the book I told you about in lesson 1.

Find the B's
Balloon Page
Bee Page
Starfall B Page
Letter B
Mini Book page 1
Mini Book page 2

Counting worksheet - I just change the 7 to a 3
Groups of 3&4 Worksheet - having trouble getting it up. I'll update when I get it worked out.

Tower of Triangles
Learning Express 3
Learning Express 4
Learning Express 5
Triangle Fish

Education.com Red Book
Worksheet Universe Red Page
Education.com Red Page
Ladybug Coloring Page
Education.com Fireman

Kids Learning Long and Short Page
A Kids Heart Long and Short Page
Teaching Ideas Long and Short Page

This Week

Sorry there was no lessons for this week. All we have done is review because of only having one class. Tuesday we had a great time at the park with Moms & Tots!

Next week's lessons to come out shortly!

Preschool Week 1

Today we had our first day of Preschool! The kids did great. For those of you who would like to cover the material we are learning - here it is. I'll post the next week's work, at the end of the week before. (Thursday or Friday, hopefully before Saturday :) We covered the material in 2 hours but added play time, games, snack and waiting on eachother.
Hope this is a help to you.

This week the 4 yearolds will be working on the following skills:

• Letters ~ Aa
• Numbers ~ 0, 1, and 2
• Shapes ~ Triangle
• Colors ~ Red
• Pre-Math Skills ~ Comparing Sizes
• Fine Motor Skills ~ Various
• Story ~ The Apple Pie Tree and Alligator Shoes***
• Bible ~  Cubbies start on Wednesday - Cubbie Motto and Key Verse  We are using Bible time to work with what our children are already doing in AWANAS at our church on Wednesday Night. If you live in the Sellersville, PA area and would like more information  feel free to contact Bethel Baptist Church.

***For a story, you could either focus on the story each day and also read another or find other stories with the same theme for other days, I will do the same story for our learning time and read another story to my children at nap time.

See this week's lesson plan and activities.
Below are the worksheets that coordinate with each lesson. Worksheets that have page numbers came out of Preschool Skills

A:
Letter A
Mini book page 1
Mini book page 2
Find Capital A

0,1,2:
0 Handwriting Page

Counting 1 Page
Counting 2 Page

Triangles:
Cutting Triangles
Triangle Boat Picture
Triangle Itsy Bitsy Book

Red:
Red Picture Worksheet
Kid Zone Red Page
Red Itsy Bitsy Book

Compare Size:
Comparing Size Practice Activity
Small Worksheet
Big Worksheet

Fine Motor:
Cutting Practice Sheet
Sample Name Sheet - For those of you who are in our Preschool group, let me know if you would like a link to your child's name, please let me know.

Revising Rewards

My first child can be a handful! He has a strong will and loves to use it. Finding what matters to him can be a challenge. But right now I'm learning that he loves playing with money. So as Mommy looks for new ways to encourage good behavior and helping, I came up with Busy Bee Bucks. My boys can earn the bucks by following through on responsibilities and showing kindness. They can spend them on rewards: special privileges, treats, special activities (doesn't have to be anything expensive :).

These bucks can be used to show the process of earning privileges in a more concrete manner than the concept alone. You could also use it to teach them to save and tithe. Haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to use them, but will share more as we learn through trial and error.

Click here- Busy Bee Bucks or above to open the bucks.

Would love to hear your ideas on how something like this has helped you!

Welcome

When Laurel and I sat down, and she shared her preschool ideas with me, she left a thought in my head that I couldn't get past. She asked if I was going to do a blog for the preschool a group of us are starting. My first thought was no way! And even as Holly and I talked about it yesterday, I thought there was no way I could do it. I have to keep up with our Moms & Tots blog. But as I started working on my preschool planning, I realize that I could share what I'm doing on here for all those involved and those not involved, with out adding much work, I'm already typing everything up. So why not type it up where others can access it and use it.
So as I begin the planning of our Busy Bee preschool and keeping my three children busy at home, hope I'll be able to share ideas that will help you too!