Penny Pinching Peach

For the semi crunchy, homeschool friendly and totally frugal!


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Indoor Water Play

Indoor Water Play

Indoor Water Play- a great way to keep toddlers happy indoors!

My children are all little water babies.

Usually this tendency shows in them splashing water all over the bathroom when they are supposed to be washing their hands. Finding them lingering in there playing in the sink and flooding the floor is frustrating , but I do try to give them fun opportunities to satisfy this urge to splash and pour.

One thing they love to do, when they can’t go outside to play, is set them up with some indoor water play.

I get out my humongous pot and fill it about a third of the way with water. I’ll set it on a beach towel on the kitchen floor, then throw in some cups, toy boats, funnels or other small items that will be fun to play with in the water. They can easily stay at this simple activity for the better part of an hour, especially if I switch out the toys every 15-20 minutes or so.

Sometimes I give him toy cars and it’s a “car wash”. Other times he is giving his dinosaurs or doll a bath. Get creative!  That’s the whole point!

This activity works really well for my preschooler to do while I’m working with my oldest daughter on her school at the table. He’s usually very content and relatively quiet. It makes it easier for her to focus than if he’s running around being a wild child, even if she is working independently.

Do your children enjoy playing with water indoors? For more fun activities for the cold weather this winter, check out 10 preschool activities using household items!


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Pinecone Christmas Angels

pinecone angel

I don’t have many unshakable Christmas traditions, since I didn’t grow up celebrating. I do have a couple that I started with my own little ones. One is that we always decorate Christmas cookies, even if it’s like last year when we did the kind of cookies that come from premade dough because Mommy’s morning sickness was kicking her hiney. The second is that we make some sort of Christmas decoration. So far this year, we made pinecone angels!

These pinecone angels were so much fun for my 3 and 6 year olds to make with Mommy! It was easy enough that they could do most of it themselves, but hard enough to keep their attention.

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The materials you need are so simple:

Give your kiddos the wings and stickers. Let them choose the colors for the halo and bow. I did a simple circle halo and twist wings.  Either let them draw or paint the face on the head or do it yourself if they are too young. When they finish, assemble and glue and set somewhere stable & out of the way to dry. You could tie a ribbon around them to hang to the tree, but we chose to just set them beside the kids’ TV.

My littles are quite proud of their ornaments. What do you think? Would you like to try more ornaments? Try my ever popular Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments or my fun Beaded Ornaments!


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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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Don’t Cut Your Pumpkins!!

Kiddos With Their Pumpkins

Kiddos With Their Pumpkins

Don’t cut your pumpkins!!!

If you are like me, you don’t look forward to trying to carve pumpkins into jack o’lanterns. In fact, I am totally paranoid about using sharp knives and carving instruments with my little ones. So, to satisfy their desire to decorate pumpkins while keeping my anxieties quiet, we just don’t cut, carve or otherwise mutilate our pumpkins.

Do decorate your pumpkins!

You can do so many things with them without cutting, and they should last all the way until time to decorate for Christmas! I love to do a pumpkin with a thankful theme. My children like to make pumpkins representing themselves. We have also done pumpkins that were just randomly decorated. Be inspired by what you like! I’m more about making fall decorations with my pumpkins and less about making them holiday oriented. Most Halloween themed things don’t pass my rules, anyway, since I don’t allow witches and wickedness in our décor this time of year.

Big Sister Pumpkin

Big Sister Pumpkin

Be creative and have fun!

My kids chose their pumpkins this year. They each chose a small one to represent themselves, and my oldest daughter picked a miniature one to represent their baby sister. They wanted to do their own decorating of their own pumpkins, and to give me ideas of what they wanted me to do for baby sister. 🙂

We used materials we had on hand. My deceased mother in law absolutely adored Halloween, and we wound up with some of her craft supplies. I allowed my kiddos to choose some items from those as part of their pumpkin decorating. We wound up using sequined candy corn and stars, googly eyes, ribbon and paint on the bigger munchkins’ pumpkins in the designs of their choosing and creation. I helped very little, since they were having fun and I wanted them to have pride in creating their own. We used smaller googly eyes, a real piece of candy corn for a nose, raffia and pipe cleaner for the baby’s miniature pumpkin.

Big Brother Pumpkin

Big Brother Pumpkin

Have a safe and happy autumn!!!!

We managed to decorate these with no booboos and minimal stress. My biggest concern was making sure the paint and glue stayed on the newspapers I laid out on the kitchen floor where we were working!

What kind of decorations have you done this fall?

Check out our No Carving Pumpkin Family! I think it’s pretty stinkin’ cute for fall décor!!!


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Paper Plate Pumpkin Masks

Paper Plate Pumpkin Masks

Paper Plate Pumpkin Masks

Need an inexpensive and easy fall craft for kids? Try my upcycled paper plate pumpkin masks!

I try to do a craft of some sort at least once or twice a week with my children, mostly using items we have on hand or that will cost me very little to get the supplies for. This was one of our recent projects, using only items I already had in my cabinets. These masks were pretty quick to pull together, as well as lots of fun for my little ones to help make and play with when they were finished. If you need a simple and cheap autumn craft for children, this is for you!

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Want to know how to make your own paper plate pumpkin mask? Keep reading!

Pumpkin Mask Supplies

Pumpkin Mask Supplies

First, gather your supplies. In case the photo isn’t enough explanation, here’s your crazy long list of things you need:

Yep, that’s it! Think you can handle that? 😉

Next, let your kiddos color the middle round part of the plate orange (or another color, if they’re feeling funky). Cut the round center part of the plate out.

Hold the cut out near your child’s face and put a dot on the plate where the eyes and mouth should go, then draw the shapes they want them to be. I scored the lines with my scissors and then went back over them with a knife to cut them the rest of the way out.

Poke a hole in each side of the pumpkin mask for the ribbon to go through. Have your child hold the mask up and then wrap the ribbon around from hole to hole to figure the length. You can do the strap one of two ways. Either two pieces of ribbon you tie on (my choice) or one solid piece they slide on and off their heads. I wrapped it behind and added enough length to tie through the holes as well as tying a bow in the back, which was a few extra inches. Cut and tie the ribbon through the holes.

Paper Plate Pumpkin Mask

Paper Plate Pumpkin Mask

Your child will be ready to go crazy as a walking jack o’lantern!

For a fun story time activity this fall and Halloween, check out The Teeny Tiny Ghost and the Monster! If you want a safe alternative to carving jack o’lanterns, try my No Carving Pumpkin Family!


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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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Edible Jewelry

Cheerio Bracelet

Cheerio Bracelet

This is one of my go to easy peasy portable activities for toddlers! I often pack a kit for these in my busy bag!

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Does anyone remember those candy necklaces like these Candy Necklace (24 Count) that were so much fun as kids?

I loved those, and they gave me the inspiration for this idea after my husband bought one for our daughter awhile back and I saw how much she enjoyed it, just like I did. 🙂

My kiddos love to create things, and to play dress up.

After a few incidents with little miss curious putting beads where they did not belong, like….say….her nose and ear….beads are banned from our house for the undetermined future of little kidliness. They absolutely love stringing things and making jewelry, though, so I came up with a safer alternative for them.

I give them each a bowl full of dry cereal, like multigrain Cheerios (preferred over regular because of the multi colors that go along with the multigrain) or Fruit Loops (which we never have, because of the dyes and sugars, but are much prettier for the purpose…LOL). I make a loop on the end of a pipe cleaner Chenille Kraft Big Box Of Pipe Cleaners – Jumbo Stems Assortment Idea Book, 150-Piece for each of them to string their cereal on. They then proceed to make patterns to their little hearts content, until they pretty much fill their pipe cleaner and I tie it off to the loop for them.

For my portable bracelet making kits, I grab a sandwich bag, throw in a big handful of Cheerios and a pipe cleaner with the loop already in it. Tada! Quick and easy busy bag!

When finished, my little ones have cute little bracelets they can wear, and they can eat them, too!

My five year old rarely eats hers, to be honest, but my two year old absolutely LOVES to nibble on his creation. He thinks edible jewelry is awesome, because he made it and because it’s edible. 🙂

Need more fun and easy preschool activities? Check out 10 Preschool ActivitiesUsing Household Items!