Websites to check out

I've been finding lots of great websites and products lately and thought I would share them.

Amazing Action Alphabet - There are a few products from this company that we have - A flip chart of the animated letters, the activity book and the CD. The cd is our most recent purchase, since it just came out, and the kids are loving it. We listen to it in the car when we run errands - they not only love the cd, but there is no fighting because they are too busy enjoying the songs. These product teach the sounds of the letters and they are helping the kids to be able to sound out words.

Food storage - this site - Simply Living Smart - has video tutorials on things like sprouting, fruit leather, storage, etc. They also are a store where you can purchase food storage stuff. I've only watched the videos so far and they are great.

Children's Miracle Music - I don't know if any of you have heard of this yet, but I absolutely love this program. It's a set of cd's, one for morning and one for night, you put them on and the kids do their morning and evening routines. We really only use the evening one, but I need to start using the morning one more. When we turn on the evening cd my kids are ready for bed in 10 minutes. On the nights we forget to use it, it takes 1/2 hour or more. The kids love trying to get the different things (jammies on, teeth brushed) done before the song gets over - it's like timing them, only set to music. Charlie does better with it than Tom. Charlie is 5 1/2 and Tom is 3 1/2. Tom still doddles a little, so I have to stay near him to remind him, but it is still light years better than when we don't use the cd.

Crayon roll

To go along with the activity bag that I made for the boys I made these crayon rolls to keep their crayons all together. I saw this idea on the web a few weeks ago and thought it was nice, but once I was already in sewing mode making the bags it didn't take much longer to throw one of these together. I couldn't remember where on the web I had seen them, so I just googled 'crayon roll' and lots of sites came up. The website I found most helpful showed pictures of the different steps of how to do it. It took me less than an hour from start to finish. I just did it tonight and the boys haven't seen it yet. I hope it will help them from having to dump out all of the crayons all over. In this handy roll they can see all of the colors and can reach for just the right one.

Kids activity bag

Yesterday I was at an Expo and saw some kids bags that were in fun prints and had pockets on the outside for holding their crayons. They cost $30! ouch. I looked at them and thought maybe I could try to make them.
I took the kids to the fabric store to choose their own fabric - Charlie choose army material and Tom choose dinosaurs.
I checked the web and found a few websites that gave me an idea of how to make the bags. After a little bit of trial and error I figured out how to make them and they turned out very well, I was pleased with how nicely they turned out. I put the pockets on the inside - one large pocket and on the other side a pocket with slits for putting in pencils and crayons.
Charlie loves to draw and I hope this bag will help him keep his things together instead of leaving them all over the place.