Casey - The Mommy Teacher

TMT Photo Shoot!

1 photographer + 2 Mommy Teachers + our 6 kids = total mayhem!

Jessica and I are bouncing off the walls after we had a super fun, high-energy, awesomely chaotic photo shoot with a local professional photographer and we cannot wait to see the results!

Kelsey Ryals of Kelsey Ann Photography had amazing patience while our 3+3 kids ran around spilling water, tracking play dough through her house, dumping toys all over the place, and drooling tootsie rolls as Jess and I danced around making funny noises to get the kids to cooperate for that magic shot – all while “Down by the Bay” and other kids’ songs played in the background. Can you just imagine the scene?

Whew! Good thing Kelsey is a mommy teacher herself with her 4-year-old joining in on the fun, excited about the unexpected playdate at her house, otherwise our crew may have been completely overwhelming for a photographer.

Anyway – so many exciting things are coming to The Mommy Teacher and we are just giddy with anticipation! After seeing the sneak peeks from the shoot, well, let’s just say, the wheels are in motion for a makeover!

Many, many thanks to our photographer, Kelsey! Please go visit the Kelsey Ann Photography Facebook page and visit her website to see her amazing portfolio: http://www.kelseyannphotography.com .

If you are in the Lafayette, Louisiana area, Kelsey, a member of Professional Photographers of America, does lifestyle, wedding and studio photography – capturing the most precious moments of her clients’ lives! She also participates in OpLove – providing photo sessions with military families, and Inspiration Through Art – photo sessions for families with children with serious illnesses or life-altering disabilities… ALL FOR FREE!!! I am so humbled by Kelsey’s passion to provide forever memories to these families at no cost.

Thank you, Kelsey, for helping out these Mommy Teachers! We cannot wait to see the final product and the changes to come on our site!

October 30, 2013 by Casey | 0 comments

5 Tools to Make Reading Fun!

Let’s face it, learning how to read isn’t always the most exciting thing in the world, especially when you are practicing fluency with words that do not even exist (a common practice to gauge phonemic awareness and blending sounds).

James’ teacher sent home a new fluency folder that includes lists of non-sensical (made-up) CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant), sight and high-frequency words. Reading these lists can be absolutely BO-RING for both the reader (your child) and the listener (most often, you, Mommy Teacher). It’s also super easy to get overwhelmed by unfamiliar words in these early reading stages, so, how can we make reading fun and enjoyable???

Here are 5 inexpensive and cheap tools that you can use:

1. TRACKING FINGERS: My son’s fluency folder came equipped with a rubber witch’s finger to use to follow the words left-right, top-bottom. (I specifically wrote this post right before Halloween so that you can go pick some up at your local dollar store before the 31st! You’re welcome!) As soon as James hopped in the car from carpool he was pulling out his new fluency folder and showing us how to use his tracking finger… and now my 4-year old wants one too!

2. PUNCTUATION SWITCH: Take a popsicle stick and draw an exclamation point on one end, switch it around and draw a question mark on the other end. Read the story (or even just a list of words) by adding different emphases at the end of phrases. A simple change in intonation can make for an interesting read with even the most boring of texts – or it can make a silly book even sillier! (A twist on this is to sing the text… one of my son’s favorites that I catch him doing even when he doesn’t have an audience listening.)

3. CATERPILLAR CHART: When I was teaching, I used a caterpillar chart to keep track of how many books we read throughout the year. I wrote the title and author of each book we read on a different circular body segment of the caterpillar. By the end of the year, our caterpillar’s body went half way around the classroom!

You can use a similar, smaller version at home by using stickers. Start off by using a sticker for every word your child can read by him/herself, and then move up to simple books. With your younger child, you can just keep track of the number of books you read to him/her. Set a number goal of number of words or books you need to reach before your caterpillar can turn into a butterfly!

“To help my caterpillar grow and grow,

I must read at least 1 book (or new word) a day.

Once he gets to be 10 stickers long,

He will grow wings and fly away.”

4. WHISPER PHONES: I am pretty sure Jessica has written a post about these before, but it’s always a fun reminder for next time you are at your local home improvement store. Grab a PVC pipe and some 90 degree elbow fittings, cut it down to about 6 inches, and you have a great reading tool! Teachers use these in classrooms all the time for young readers to hear themselves read out loud without making a lot of noise. With these phones, even the quietest whisper is audible to only the reader.

5. MAGNIFYING GLASS/GLASSES: Grab some goofy glasses or a magnifying glass and all of a sudden reading became a game! Much like the tracking finger and whisper phones from above, this reading tool just makes reading a little more fun… well, to your pre-schooler or school-aged child… I, personally, don’t get it 😉 If you have some old sunglasses, punch out the lenses so your child can have some new, funky eyewear while being studious!

What tools do you use to make reading fun for your child? Share with us on Facebook or comment below!

October 25, 2013 by Casey | 0 comments

Make My Pumpkin

In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to do an art project with my 4-year-old while my 6-year-old was at school. My middle child loves and cherishes this one-on-one time with Mommy. Jess’ post on Monday inspired us to make our own Jack-O-Lanterns, but I had a different objective in mind.

I was also inspired by a “find the differences” book I was reading with Leyson that has two near-identical pictures side by side, but with subtle differences. Each page asks you to “find (x-amount of) differences” which may be as simple as the omission of an object in the picture or a change of color, shape, size or placement of an object.

The objective of our activity was for my son to be able to both point out and fix the differences between my picture and his picture to make them the same, and also to recreate the picture I created… in this case, a pumpkin.

Materials needed: construction paper, scissors, maybe some glue after the activity 🙂

Mommy Prep: Using orange construction paper, I cut out two large pumpkin shapes, and lots of different sized rectangles*, triangles, circles, squares and other various shapes with brown, yellow and black paper.

*I cut out 4 different types of rectangle stems to bring in some vocabulary to our activity: short, long, thick, thin

IMG_20131021_085735_081 Leyson first had to close his eyes (or cover his face with a blanket because I learned that I can’t trust him to keep his eyes closed) and count to twenty while I arranged the different shapes to make a face on my pumpkin. Apparently, counting to twenty now means omitting numbers 14 and 19, so we will be working on that again soon.

I started off with a simple face. Two circles for eyes, a circle for a nose, a fat, brown rectangle and a U-shape for a smiley mouth.

When he got to 20, he pulled the blanket off of his face, he had to use the remaining shapes to make his pumpkin look just like my pumpkin.

To make the project more challenging in other rounds, I layered some of the shapes such as using smaller circles on top of larger circles for the eyes.

The most difficult part of the activity was when I used only triangles to make a face and he had to figure out which direction the triangles were facing. It’s harder than it looks!

We experimented with all the different things we could learn from making pumpkins:

Feelings/Emotions: We made happy pumpkins, and sad pumpkins, and angry pumpkins, and scared pumpkins… and talked about why each pumpkin was feeling the way they were feeling.

Counting/More or Less: Sometimes Mommy’s pumpkin had 4 teeth, sometimes it had more or less.

Compare and Contrast: “What is different about the nose on your pumpkin and the nose on my pumpkin?” “Do our pumpkins have the same shaped mouth?”

Vocabulary: Colors, shapes, sizes, parts of the face

Spacial Awareness: “Are the eyes close together or far apart?” “If you put the eyes in the middle of the pumpkin, can we fit a nose and a mouth too?”

Phonemic Awareness & Writing: We segmented the sounds in pumpkin /p/ /u/ /m/ /p/ /k/ /i/ /n/… which is pretty hard to do when your child pronounces it like “po’kin” but we wrote the real word on the back of our project.

When you are finished the activity, grab some glue so you can add some Halloween decor to your house!

Who needs to buy decorations from the store, when with a little glue and tape you can make your house ready for any holiday?!

October 23, 2013 by Casey | 0 comments

DIY Peel & Stick Window Decals

IMG_20131013_082342_031 My mother-in-law just did a super fun and easy Halloween craft with the kids (and me…she brought extra supplies because she knew I’d want to do one too!).

We made ghost and pumpkin window peels/decals and decorated the kid’s bathroom for Halloween. We had so much fun doing this super easy craft that I think we might just have to make our own window decals for every holiday!

Materials for Ghost Window Decals:

transparency sheets
white paper
school glue
permanent marker
googly eyes (optional)
nail polish remover

Step 1: Place a blank paper underneath your transparency (easier to see that you are not writing on your table with a permanent marker).

Step 2: Draw your picture onto your transparency using your permanent marker.

Tip: My 6-year-old had the genius idea to TRACE a picture. Look through a few coloring books or print a picture off the computer of a simple shape to trace.

Step 3: Pour a whole lot of glue inside the outline of your picture and use your finger to “paint” the picture.* Make sure the glue is thick and even across your entire picture. It’s ok if the glue goes out of the lines, you can trim that off later.

Step 4: Place your transparencies on a flat surface to dry. You will be finishing your craft tomorrow. When all of your glue has turned from white to transparent, it is dry. (We let ours sit for about 24 hours).

Step 5: Using a small amount of glue, place googly eyes on your ghost. Wait for the glue to dry.

Step 6: Peel off and stick to your window or mirror! (Getting it started to peel off is the tricky part. Try bending the transparency while using your finger nail to lift it from the sheet. Then gently peel it off.)

Step 7: Use nail polish remover to erase the permanent marker from the transparencies and begin the craft all over again!

*To make COLOR decals, when doing Step 3, add a few drops of food coloring to your glue and mix together while you are spreading it. For our pumpkins, we added 4 drops of yellow to 1 drop of red in the glue and mixed it together to make orange.

Another option is to use fabric paints instead of glue, but 1. I love finger painting with glue, and 2. using glue is a cheaper alternative to fabric paint.

If you do this craft with your children, please post pictures to The Mommy Teacher Facebook page!

October 15, 2013 by Casey | 2 Comments

Blog Recommendation: “Just 30 Days”

I have to apologize to all the Mommy Teachers who were following my Daily Devotional posts! As soon as my boys started Awana for the semester (a Christian Bible study for kids age 2 to grade 6.), our daily devotions were substituted by their memory verses for the week – every few lessons or so, they receive either patches or “jewels” for their club vests… very.big.deal.

So you can imagine, that while we were getting into the routine of working memory verses into our daily study, there was little self-control left inside of their little bodies for devotional time. I am trying to work in a little craft or activity little by little, but so far, I have been left covered in glitter while they run around the house chasing each other.

As soon as we get our new schedule down, I will pick back up with writing the devotional posts so you can join us! I will include our memory verses too. Hopefully this is the week where we find our groove!

For now, I want to share with you my friend Megan’s new blog Just 30 Days (www.just30days.org). When Megan first told me about her new blog adventure, I couldn’t wait to join her! Each month, she is picking up a new habit to try for 30 days… one of those habits that you always WANT to try, maybe even make it your New Year’s Resolution, but never actually get around to it…

Read part of her “about me” section below:

We’ve all heard the saying that it takes just 30 days to create a habit. I wonder if that’s really true. I’ve decided to try and find out by taking 30 days to try one thing. Whether my goal is to wake up early, eat clean food, stop complaining, meet my neighbors, workout, encourage my husband, live on a budget…I’m going to try one thing at a time for 30 days straight. After 30 days, I will see if I want to keep doing it or maybe I will realize it doesn’t make my grass green at all. But either way, I believe there’s power in a focused life!

So this is my journey of watering my side of the grass…30 days at a time!

In September, she and her followers did 30 days of waking up early. Phew, that was challenging for this night owl! But the days that I did follow through were AMAZING! Just being able to finish my quiet time without someone interrupting, taking a shower without the kids trying to hop in with me, and getting completely dressed with makeup on while being lost in my own thoughts instead of having to hear, “Mooooom!” completely changed my morning attitude!

This month, the challenge is praying for your children. Each day, Megan has chosen a new virtue to pray about and she blogs about her prayer time, verses that accompany your prayer, and successes or little bumps along the way (because if it weren’t challenging to remember to do this every day, we’d already be doing it).

She also makes it super easy for you to join in the challenge. Simply click the tab that says “The Next 30 Days” and fill out the contact information. She will encourage you through e-mails and notifications of new posts. What a great way to hold you accountable!

I have been praying over the kids each day and our experiences have been so peaceful! As soon as I explained to the kids what I was going to be doing, they immediately sat down quietly to pray with me. It has been amazing to see them sit still through my wordy prayers and then ask questions after about the virtue.

I hope you will join us in this challenge!!! Perhaps my personal challenge next month should be staying on top of weekly devotional posts 😉

October 9, 2013 by Casey | 1 Comment

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