Graphing is a great math activity for littles because it so concrete, hands-on and helps them practice many different concepts including: Counting One to one correspondence Math vocabulary (more, less) Comparison of quantities Data collection and organization Let's just be honest here, nothing is more fun to graph than candy! This gummy bear graphing is free and pretty much requires no prep! I recommend using these little bags of gummy bears!   Here are some questions you can ask little ones about their graph to take the learning deeper: What color did you have the most of? What color ..read more

Valentine's Day is right up there with Christmas as one of my favorite holidays! It's such a sweet little holiday to celebrate love and spread kindness. Since EK was born, I have loved changing out the books on her shelves for the holidays. Here are our favorites for Valentine's Day:  HUG: This book book is so cute! Bobo is looking for a hug. This book will be enjoyed far beyond Valentine's Day. Would be a great valentines gift for your baby! Where is Baby's Valentine?: Karen Katz is one of our favorite authors and we love this series of books. They are short enough to keep a little one ..read more

Sensory bins are great learning tools for littles at home and in the classroom. They are fun, easy to set up and will keep your littles occupied when you need to get something checked off the never ending to do list.  Just getting started with sensory bins? Start with this post! As always, you know your child best so please choose materials that are developmentally appropriate and safe. Here are 30 ideas of items to include in your sensory bins this winter: Snowballs: I have seen some in the Target Dollar Section too! EK loves these!  Silver pipe cleaners (some people call these chanille ..read more

This post contains affiliate links.  I feel like I need to start this post with letting you know that I am really a nerd about this type of thing. I went to get a pedicure a few weeks ago and took the book, What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life to read while I relaxed. I know, I'm a little intense. But, if you are also into child development HERE are my favorite parenting and child development books. I just don't want you to feel bad if you don't know much about sensory bins to start with.  Actually, before we jump into sensory bins I jus ..read more

I have to admit. I did not know how many different version of The Gingerbread Man there were until I became a teacher! The gingerbread man is a great one to incorporate into your teaching during the month of December! I thought it would fun to put together a post with all things gingerbread man!  This post does contain affiliate links. First of all, here are a few of my favorite versions of the story.  Writing activities that encourage creativity are my favorite. I love when kids can be silly and creative when they practice writing instead of focusing on being "right." The story ..read more

I'm over the moon about this Christmas. It's my first one as a mom and I can't wait to do all the things. Even though EK is a baby, I wanted to plan a special holiday activity for our family each day leading up to Christmas. This might sound like a lot of extra stress and work, but it really wasn't! Let me walk you through our countdown set up!  First I typed out each day in December like this: (You can copy and paste mine from below to save yourself some time!) December 1: December 2:  December 3: December 4: December 5:  December 6:  December 7:  December 8:  December 9: December 1 ..read more

Are you wondering what a Happy December Gift is? In all honesty, I just made it up! It's just a little gift to give someone on December 1 that they can enjoy all month. Back in the dark ages Dillards use to have a Christmas Collection CD that they would put out every year. It was just a CD with lots of holiday songs by popular artists that you probably got for free or super cheap with a purchase. One year my mom gave it to me at the beginning of the holiday season and I would listen to it on the CD player in my room EVERY NIGHT. I have happy memories of jamming out to it the whole month of Dec ..read more

The holidays are here and I know that there are A LOT of gift guides out there. Since becoming a mom earlier this year I have seriously survived on other people’s recommendations; and I love sharing what has worked for us too! When you find something that your family loves, you want to tell the world! So that's exactly what this is: toys and gifts that our family loves! So thank you for being here and trusting my opinion when shopping for your sweet baby's first Christmas. It's EK's first Christmas too and it's going to be so special.  Before we get started, I want to share another shopping ..read more

My mom was the best and little making fun seasonal treats. She made little witch hat cookies with Hershey's kisses at Halloween, little turkeys with fudge stripe cookies at Thanksgiving and rice crispy treat nests at Easter. I have so many fun memories of bringing these special treats to holiday parties and showing them off in my school lunch. This was all way before Pinterest too! Shout out to you Mom! All of the treats were yummy, but the best part was making them together. I know...awww.  I've seen a cute turkey idea using an oatmeal cream pie pop up on Instagram this season, but I wanted ..read more

The other day I was telling my husband that I wish there was something that I collected. He very quickly reminded me that I am a collector of books, especially board books. Ohhhh yeaahhh...I am! We read EK multiple board books a day, so we get sick of the same ones real quick! It's such a treat to have some seasonal books to pull out for the different holidays throughout the year! I promise every one of these is on our home bookshelf. Actually, that's a lie...EK is really into pulling books off of the bookshelf, so they are most likely on the floor.But none the less, they are in our home...som ..read more