Penny Pinching Peach

For the semi crunchy, homeschool friendly and totally frugal!

Tag Archives: homeschool


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Free Printable Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

Thanksgiving turkey printable

Thanksgiving turkey printable

Getting into the spirit of Thanksgiving crafts?

I’m always sketching fun things for my kiddos to work on, and this time it was a turkey template for them to color and give a festive leafy tail. I sent them out to hunt for pretty leaves for their turkey tails while I quickly sketched a turkey for them to color. I happened to think that if my munchkins were this excited about it, maybe yours would be, too. I usually don’t think of it until after we finish a project, but this time I decided to make it into my first free printable and see how y’all like it. It’s easy peasy, but kept my little ones occupied quite awhile. It got them running through the beautiful autumn outdoors with their grocery bag, hunting for the perfect leaves. Once they were tired of doing that, it gave them something fun to do awhile and finally to display in honor of the upcoming holiday.

Want to make your own Thanksgiving leaf turkey?

First, gather up some leaves. If you don’t have any real leaves available, you can substitute construction paper leaves, feathers or anything else your little imagination can conjure.

Next, have your little artists color those turkeys you printed off and cut it out.

Then glue or tape the leaves to a paper plate in a circular pattern and glue or tape the turkey over where they intersect so it looks like the tail.

Tada!!! Turkey perfection….or close enough to make you smile!

Ready to make your own turkey? Head on over to my link below for your free printable!

It’s simple and unpolished, since it was freehanded with a sharpie originally, but it’s freeeeeee and made for a fun time for us!

Free Turkey Printable

If you need some more fun crafts to do that use common household items, check out my upcycled Thanksgiving Turkey Craft or this list of 10 Preschool Activities Using Household Items!

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This would be a great way to reinforce thankfulness this Thanksgiving 12 MAKE A TREE of Thanks/THANKSGIVING Activity Sticker Sheets/AUTUMN/Thankfulness/GRATITUDE/Kid’s/CLASSROOM!

This would be a fun activity for the kids at Thanksgiving dinner Creative Converting 8 Count Kids Thanksgiving Activity Placemats with Stickers!


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Struggling? You Are Not Alone.

Carrying my baby while I can

Carrying my baby while I can

I have been struggling. I’m struggling with handling life’s bigger problems- like finances and relationships. I’m struggling with my self image after birthing three children and having health issues. I’m struggling with my precious unruly children, teething fussy baby and a moderate dose of post partum depression. I will be okay, but this poem flowed out of all that and more. I felt that maybe someone would benefit from my transparency, although I was hesitant to share this.

♥♥♥

Baby teething, keeps on screaming,

Must have Mommy, and it’s seeming

Like she’ll never let me put her down

Or let me stop carrying her around…

But she will.

♥♥♥

Threenager yelling out so loud,

Waking baby and feeling proud.

Leaving destruction wherever he goes

Hard to imagine he’ll get better as he grows…

But he will.

♥♥♥

Six year old asking questions galore,

When I answer, she wants to know more,

Gives me attitude when she doesn’t understand,

Will she always question every command?

Probably will.

♥♥♥

My head is pounding from the chaos and noise,

My kids drive me crazy, but they’re also such joys.

They tire me out and the work’s never done

Will I miss their neediness as much as the fun?

I think I will.

♥♥♥

Some days I’m discouraged and wonder why

Do I continue to give them my best Mommy try?

Will it matter if I do my best to raise them right,

Or just let them run wild without giving a fight?

I know it will.

♥♥♥

Why am I sharing my struggles with you?

Because I’m not alone, and know this is true.

Most parents struggle and feel they’re not enough,

Does it help to admit I love my children, but it’s tough?

Maybe it will.

♥♥♥

Are you struggling today? What helps you when you are struggling? Two things that help me are writing and shifting my focus to others.

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This bracelet would be a wonderful reminder that God can bring you through anything If God Brings You To It, He Will Help You Through It Bracelet!

I wrote a series about kindness awhile back, if you are interested in some ideas on how to help others. Here’s one of the posts from that series: Share The Kindness.


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Fun ABC Activities

I was looking through my ABC activities to do them again and adapt them for my little ones this year, and decided to put them together with some other ABC themed fun projects shared with me from other bloggers. Y’all are going to love these! They are all oodles of fun on top of being educational, so how could you go wrong? 😉

ABC Fun, Find and Food

A is for Apple

A is for Apple

Alphabet Game

Alphabet Game

Alphabet Game From Mosswood Connections

Getting Artsy With D, E and F

Tracing

Tracing “D” With Pompoms

ABC Chalk Activity For Preschoolers

ABC Chalk Activity

ABC Chalk Activity From Practical Mommy

Letter Search

Sailing with Pirate C

Sailing with Pirate C

Learning to Write the Alphabet with Cotton Swab Painting

Cotton Swab Letter Painting

Cotton Swab Letter Painting From The Stay At Home Mom Survival Guide

Newspaper ABCs

Hunting and Clipping

Hunting and Clipping

Free Alphabet Printable Coloring Booklet

Free Alphabet Printable Booklet For Kids From Thrifty DIY Diva

Free Alphabet Printable Booklet For Kids From Thrifty DIY Diva

Phonics Hunt Game

Phonics Hunt

Phonics Hunt From Penny Pinching Peach

Which games and projects are you looking forward to doing with your kiddos? For some creatively frugal fun things to do with your munchkins, check out my roundup 10 Preschool Activities Using Household Items!


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Dollar store education: Color sorting blocks

As a homeschool graduate currently homeschooling my own munchkins, I’m always looking for creative and inexpensive educational activities. I absolutely love dollar stores of all kinds for bargain educational supplies to use! They cost so little, and can cover so many different topics. One of my nifty finds has been these color sorting cubes. Being creative with them, I can come up with bunches of different ways to use these little boogers to keep my little smarty pants entertained and educated at the same time. I’ve used them for lots of different things, but I thought that I would share some of what we have done with them as fun & stimulating preschool projects.

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You can order these from Amazon if you want to: Learning Resources Hands-On Soft Color Cubes (Set of 102)

Simple color sorting

Simple color sorting

Simple color sorting 2

Simple color sorting 2

We started off the day simply. Since I’m a penny pincher from way back, I took two styrofoam plates we had used for our lunch, wiped them off, grabbed some colored markers, outlined and filled in half of each plate in the four different colors of her sorting cubes. I then asked her to put all of the cubes on the matching color section. As you can see, she did great. 🙂 She did this a few times before she was ready to move on to something else, so then I came up with a couple of more fun educational games for her…

Pattern and Varied Numbers

Pattern and Varied Numbers

I flipped the two styrofoam plates over, and drew out the new projects with my trusty markers again. What, you thought mrs frugal was gonna use new plates? LOL On the left in this photo, I told her to follow the color pattern using two blocks in each rectangle. On the right, I asked her what each number and color was, then requested that she put the correct number and color of blocks in each rectangle. She really enjoyed this one, since it was a little more challenging. After a little while, she was ready to do something new with her color cubes, so Mommy had to come up with another challenge…

Counting and Sorting

Counting and Sorting

For her last color cube project of the day, I asked her to put 4 blue cubes on the blue side, 5 green cubes on the green side, 6 orange cubes on the orange and 7 red cubes on the red. We did this same “game” with several different series of numbers. She really enjoyed the challenge of remembering how many went on which color, since it wasn’t written down.

Now that I’ve shared a few of the educational games we do with our color cubes, what are some inexpensive items you use to help kiddos learn? What do you wish you could find an educational use for?

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Pompom Pickup

Pompom Pickup

Pompom Pickup

Pompom Pickup 2My little guy loves activities that require hand/eye coordination and concentration. I am constantly coming up with quietly stimulating little things for him to do while my daughter is doing her kindergarten, and that’s one category I focus on. This activity is perfect for keeping him engaged for a good period of time, at least until he picks up every single pompom. He’s very goal oriented, and cannot stand to quit before every pompom is conquered! 😉

You don’t need much for this. A container (a plastic jar or a clean empty apple juice container works well for me), a bunch of pompoms Pepperell Assorted Pom Poms, Standard Colors, 300 Per Package
(cotton balls would work, but colorful pompoms are more fun) and a pair of tongs of some sort will do it.Pompom Pickup 3

Give your munchkin the pompoms and container, then demonstrate how to pick up a pompom with the tongs and place it in the container. Watch him try until he succeeds, and praise him profusely, then challenge him to see if he can get all of the pompoms into the container all by himself.

My son loves this activity so much, he asks for it. He’s so very proud of himself when he gets all of those pompoms in the container, he goes charging around the house bragging about it. 🙂

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Animals At School

Baby School Scholar

Baby School Scholar

For anyone who is homeschooling and has children not yet old enough to participate in formal education, you know one of the biggest challenges is balancing the needs of the little ones with the ability to teach the older and allow them to concentrate. Thankfully, I had fun with a lot of preschool and baby school type activities with my oldest before she started kindergarten, and can adapt most of those ideas to use with my two year old little guy. I document a lot of them, because he has so much fun and he’s so doggone cute. 🙂 I was thinking that maybe someone else might find some of our little “baby school” activities useful in their own homeschool or quiet times with their kiddos, so I’m going to start sharing some.

One activity both of my little ones have loved is oversized animal flash cards. The exact ones I have are these Animals (Slide and Learn Flash Cards) that are really neat, but these are a nice, inexpensive set that will work for any of the activities I’m sharing using my flash cards Animals of All Kinds Flash Cards. I can come up with a lot of different activities using these, and easily keep a toddler happy with them for half an hour or more. Here are a few fun ones for you to try with your baby schoolers.

Big or Little

Big or Little

I have Bambam sort the cards by whether he thinks the animals are big or little. This is a good one for him to start the day with, because he’s good at it and it builds up his interest and confidence.

Another activity he enjoys is sorting the cards by whether they have fur or not. This is slightly more challenging for him, but usually not too difficult for him to reason out, which is a good thing.

Color Sorting

Color Sorting

For variety, I have him stack the cards according to the color of the trim. This one makes him have to focus on a completely different part of the cards, so he feels like it’s a new activity and it keeps him interested for longer.

Some other things we do with the cards are sorting them by the following categories: No feet, two feet or four feet? Can they fly or not? Is the animal a baby or grownup? Scary or nice? Pet or wild (I started with farm, pet or wild, but my kids think farm animals make great pets, so I dropped that. LOL)?

Can you think of any other games you can do with animal flash cards?

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Phonics Hunt Game

Phonics Hunt

Phonics Hunt

My oldest daughter is currently learning to read. She is doing an amazing job with her schoolwork, and has inherited my voracious love of learning. However, when we did our review work today, I spotted a couple of letters she was having trouble matching with their phonics sounds correctly. I decided that- instead of doing math today (which I don’t do daily with a kindergarten student, since she likes to do a lot at a time, anyway)- I would make up a fun game with multiple parts to help her get a better grasp on the sounds she was struggling with remembering. We needed some outside time to burn energy and get some fresh air, so I incorporated that in with our school time. (Gotta love homeschooling!! Learning happens everywhere!! Since I’m a second generation homeschooler, this is natural & normal for me, but I am seeing a whole different side of it now. Love it! 🙂 )

My Princess Pennypeacher was having trouble with the letters H and N. I handed her a grocery bag, and explained that we were going hunting for things that start with those letters, making the phonics sound for her. Our goal was to find at least three items with each phonics sound. She is very goal oriented, so she loved this!! As we went walking together, searching for objects, I kept repeating the letters and sounds and helping her come up with words starting with those sounds. We found a few things outside, then continued our search in the house. This kept her busily searching for a while, having a good ol’ time all the way, with her little brother following her around shouting the sounds with her without having any idea what he was talking about. 🙂 Once she found three items starting with the H and N sounds, we moved on to the next part of the game.

I had her sit down and choose two pieces of paper to write the uppercase and lowercase versions of each letter at the top of each sheet. Once she did that, I had her pull one item at a time out of the bag, tell me which sound and letter that item started with, set it beside the correct letter sheet and then I helped her write the words by breaking down the sounds in each word to see if she could tell me the matching letter. This was mostly to reiterate the sounds she was working on, but also to check for any other sounds she might be struggling with. This part was less of a hooray kind of fun for her, but she still enjoyed the challenge.

To finish up, we took a silly photo of my kindergartener, her project, and her loyal assistant! 🙂

Do you think your little ones would enjoy this game? It cost nothing whatsoever, so that made my pockets happy. It definitely helped her get a better grasp on the letters she was getting confused on, although I think we will need to do a couple of more fun reviews to make sure she really has it. I love having fun learning with my munchkins! 🙂


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The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game

Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game

Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game

If your kids are like mine, they love to play games together. However, it’s really hard to find a game that is fun for my very smart five year old, while being simple enough for my determinedly independent two year old to do with little to no assistance.

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Educational Insights The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game is one of those rare amazing finds! They received this as a gift from a sweet friend of mine a few months ago, and they still play with it at least a couple of days a week. If you’ve been around little ones much, you know that this means this game is awesome if it’s surviving and still enjoyed regularly after that long!

If your child is old enough to know his colors well, or has an honest older sibling who can assist them nicely, you can let them sit at the table and play while you putter around the house getting things done. Since I initially helped them learn to play and they completely got the hang of it, which took about three or four games in all, they have rarely needed my assistance for anything except occasionally reminding Bambam to take turns when it’s not his turn. If you’re a mom, you know how valuable games and toys that encourage independent play can be for both you and your children. If you’re not, trust me when I say both parents and children will be happy with you for this gift for that very reason! 😉

Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Playing

Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Playing

Every piece of this game has proven to be sturdy enough to withstand the normal treatment of a little boy who earned every ounce of his nickname, Bambam, with all of that playing time. Both of my kiddos love their Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel game enough to willingly clean up and keep from losing the cutesy squirrel pinchers and numerous multi-colored acorns. The adorable tree shaped box is even much sturdier than the average game, so it’s still completely intact, as well. The only thing I would add is that if you have little ones who still put things in their mouths, please keep this game and it’s pieces safely away from that child, since the colorful acorns would be really tempting to taste and choke on. This should be common sense, but I felt I had to say it as a responsible parent of itty bitty folks. 🙂

I definitely recommend buying this game! I’m not being compensated for this review, just recommending and sharing a great product I think other families would love as much as we do, but I would be thrilled if you would purchase it through one of my Amazon affiliate links in this post, above and below. It costs you nothing, but it gives me a small commission to help take care of these cute little rascals. 🙂

Educational Insights The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game

Need some fun activities for your little ones? Check out 10 Preschool Activities Using Household Items!


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Cloud Dough

So much fun!

So much fun!

Has anyone made their own play dough? I hadn’t, but I was looking for a new project for little miss creative when I saw a recipe for something they called “cloud dough”. It looked so easy, fun and super duper cheap to make, I had to give it a try.

The recipe? Two parts corn starch to one part hair conditioner of choice. I let my little one pick one that was pink and she liked the smell of. Mix until it’s all combined. It will be the roughly consistency of play dough, smell like conditioner, and have a soft fluffy feel to it ( hence the cloud part).

My daughter loves this stuff! She says it is even better than regular

Glittery Dough

Glittery Dough

playdough, because it’s soft and makes her hands smell yummy. We keep it in a Ziploc bag between playing. Our first batch kept for several weeks, then we made a second. It takes very little time or money, and scored high points for Mommy. It has kept her busy for hours, and I even let my little guy play with it some, if I am able to stay by them to watch closely.

A fun change up is one we just tried yesterday. I sprinkled a tiny bit of gold glitter on the table and let her roll the

dough in it, then she squished the glitter all up in it. Now she has sparkly cloud dough, which she calls her sparkly fairy dough. 🙂

Pink Cloud Dough

Pink Cloud Dough

Updating to share yet another twist on this fun dough we make regularly! 🙂 If you’re like me, and don’t keep dyes around on a regular basis, but do

Green Cloud Dough

Green Cloud Dough

keep sugar sprinkles for decorating baked goods, this one is for you! My kiddos had been arguing over what dough was whose, so I was brainstorming for a way to differentiate. I reached for the green and red sugar sprinkles in the spice cabinet and mixed a generous amount into each of their batches separately. My girly girl Princess Peachy wound up with a beautiful pink to make her little heart smile, and my dinosaur loving Bambam got a soul satisfying light green. No more fussing!! 🙂

Who wants to whip up a batch of this stuff? It is super simple, inexpensive and smells wonderful! 🙂


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Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

 

Upcycled Thanksgiving Turkey

Upcycled Thanksgiving Turkey

For our preschool the other day I decided to make it all about Thanksgiving.

First, I told my daughter the 4 year old comprehensible version of the first Thanksgiving and we had a discussion about the things we are thankful for.

She was especially thankful for her mommy, daddy, baby brudder, all her animals and food. 🙂

Next, I sent her into the yard to gather leaves while I got together craft supplies for her project of the day!

I like re-using random items in our crafts, so I grabbed part of a thing cardboard insert I’d been saving from a box of drinks  (an old cereal box would work) and cut pieces to make a turkey body and head, cut a slit in the neck and chest to be able to stick them together, trimmed an old Reeses’ candy eggs box, then laid them out with her crayons and markers so that she could decorate her turkey however she wanted, and got some googly eyes to glue on when she was finished decorating. She had a blast! When she was through, I couldn’t find any clear tape, so I just used masking tape to tape the cardboard pieces around the box “stand”, put the head on and helped her tape the leaf tail on the backside. It would’ve been prettier with clear, obviously, but Princess Peach is pleased as punch, and that’s what counts. 🙂

Thanks for Turkey?

Thanks for Turkey?

Once the turkey was proudly perched on our windowsill, I wrote out THANKS and TURKEY on two pages, had her point out all of the letters and we talked about the words. Then she did her best to copy the words out. She also made a picture with her two hands traced and the word THANKS at the top later that day, because she enjoyed her Thanksgiving theme so much and didn’t want to be finished with it. 🙂

What kind of fun Thanksgiving themed things do you do with your little ones? Try my Free Printable Thanksgiving Turkey Craft!