Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up- January 1, 2013

Happy New Year!

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Welcome to Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up with your hosts Karen @ Tots and Me and Emily @ Emily Reviews

So glad you could join us as we embark on another year of Tuesday Giveaway Link Ups. 

Our co-hosts this week are Mellissa from Something Like Life. and Kim from Mommie...Again.

This link up will be posted Monday at 7 PM est. and run all week long! Make sure you stop in as often as you can to list your latest giveaways.

Here is how to use the Giveaway Link Up

1. Post your reviews and/or giveaways, as many as you have, be sure to add the end date (family friendly please)

2. Help spread the word about the giveaway link up by grabbing our button, Tweeting or posting on Facebook. (Not mandatory- but it helps get more exposure to your giveaways as well!)

3. Take a moment to enter any giveaway that strikes an interest to you!

If you would  like to follow the  hostesses, we will gladly follow you back! Simply leave us a message to do so.

Thank you for linking up with Karen @ Tots and Me & Emily @ Emily Reviews along with             Mellissa from Something Like Life. and Kim from Mommie...Again.

Muffin Tin Monday: Just a balanced meal

Today's muffin tin was a quick-put-it-together tin as I am working on getting our New Year's Eve Party ready. The party is just going to me and the girls as daddy is working. We will have fun and have another muffin tin to post about. Well, I will probably post about it in our New Year's Eve Celebration post tomorrow.  

Now, onto this week's muffin tin.

1 glass of milk for dairy.

Carrots for our veggie.

Pears for our fruit.

Homemade trail mix with mixed nuts (protein), raisins (fruit) and mini M&Ms.

Rolled up Muenster cheese for dairy and protein.

Bite sized peanut butter (protein) and apple butter (fruit?) sandwiches (bread = grain).

I do always try to make them balanced meals.

Harold joined in once again with his own muffin tin. I forgot to get a picture of it, but he had carrots, Gerber puffs, pears and bread (he loves bread).

And he got to use his cup for the first time. I've been giving him water out of a cup for a while, just a small amount in the cup while I hold it to his mouth, but this is his very own cup he got for Christmas.

Don't forget to stop by Muffin Tin Mom for more great muffin tins.

Last Minute New Year's Eve Countdown

Are you looking for a last minute countdown chart for the New Year?
Usually I am coming up with last minute ideas because I procrastinate. (Actually, I think better under pressure and usually come up with my ideas last minute, quite stressful.) This time, however, I wasn't even really thinking of doing something with the girls until last minute. I looked at other ideas out there: snack ideas, countdown ideas, craft ideas, noisemaker ideas. You can check out my post and check my New Year's Eve Celebration Pinterest board for some off the neat ideas I came across.

But yesterday afternoon I came up with an idea for our very own countdown, which will incorporate some other ideas. When I first started this blog, I was very much into making countdown charts. Though I haven't had as much time to make them recently, I think I might get back to them. This countdown chart is a little different than the ones I have done in the past. We will be counting down the hours to midnight, starting at 1pm today.

It is our:

Countdown to 2013

I traced a BIG circle onto white posterboard and glued it to foil lined posterboard. I then traced the bottom of a cup to get the circles for the numbers. The numbers are just taped onto the big clock face. 

Starting at 1pm we will be taking one circle off per hour. Underneath the circle the girls will find out how many hours are left until 2013 and what we are going to do that hour. The first few hours are just our normal day. After dinner it gets a bit more fun.

With this clock countdown chart you can put whatever fun activities you want to do with your children. We are going to be using some of the ideas I posted about last night during some of these hourly events.

Planning for New Year's Eve 2012

This is the first year I really thought about doing something special with the children for New Year's Eve. Of course, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, so I started searching on Google and on Pinterest.
Below you will find some of the ideas I thought were very good possibilities for tomorrow. I am not sure what we are doing exactly, but when I figure it out I am sure I will be sharing it.

Here are some neat snack related ideas:

Source: helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com via Karen on Pinterest

Source: hungryhappenings.com via Karen on Pinterest

Source: makeandtakes.com via Karen on Pinterest

Here are some cute countdown ideas:
   

Source: littlewondersdays.blogspot.com via Karen on Pinterest

Source: hoosierhomemade.com via Karen on Pinterest

And some fun noise makers:

Source: makeandtakes.com via Karen on Pinterest

Source: makeandtakes.com via Karen on Pinterest

School Time: Advent Lessons

We have been taking a break from officially doing My Father's World lessons, though I have been throwing in some review. The week's before Christmas we were reviewing SchoolhouseTeachers.com as part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew. You can see the review here. I was glad to focus on the Bible, Luke 2 and Matthew 2 for our lessons during Advent. I printed out some coloring pages (from the PreK Activities: Read and Play) that included the Bible verses of the Christmas story and the girls colored a couple a day.

First we focused on angels being God's messengers.  Of course I had to make a muffin tin.

We made hand and foot angels like we did a couple of years ago.

 They traced their hands.

I even traced Harold's.

I traced their feet by doing one and then putting the heel of the second foot in the traced heel but shifting the second foot over to create a robe for the angel. 

Then I cut out the hands and feet.

They painted the feet/gown with silver glitter paint.

Then they used a strip of foil to make halos.

I had to share Hannah's 2010 angel compared to her 2012 angel. 

I also printed out an angel dot-to-dot picture.

And we made toilet roll angels (once again, part of the SchoolhouseTeachers.com PreK Activities lessons).

That was our review of the letter "a" and we got to discuss how the long a sound was different than the short a sound we were learning with MFW. 

Then we moved on to the letter "m."

We discussed Mary being Jesus' Mother and how she laid him in a Manger. We made mangers similar to the ones we made 3 years ago. I made the manger by drawing a trapezoid and some legs. 

I traced them on brown paper and the girls cut out their own.

Then they cut yellow yarn into pieces for the hay.

The yarn kept Harold busy for a while.

They glued a yellow oval to the manger and then glued the hay to the yellow circle.

We then swaddled baby Jesus in a piece of felt.

And we attached him to the manger.

Unfortunately the glue did not hold. I think stapling will be needed, but I couldn't find my stapler. For the time being they are taped.

We also made Baby Jesus Haystacks for our Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen time. This was also an idea from the SchoolHouseTeachers.com lesson, though I did tweak it a bit and use white morsels instead of chocolate chips. I figured the change gave the haystacks a more authentic color for hay. 

We then moved on to Shepherds and a review of the letter "s" with discussing the staff. 

We played a game were the girls had to take turns being the shepherd and lead the sheep (held by one of the other girls) on a safe path home by saying words that started with the letter "s."

The safe path had the letter S written on it, which you can't really see in this picture. The other papers were blank.

We discussed how sheep (like people) tend to go astray. The sheep would go astray in our game if a word was said that didn't start with the letter "s." But the shepherd had to quick say an "s" word to get them on the right path to be good shepherds.

Seeing as there are three girls they also took turns being the bear or the lion who would growl if the sheep got to close.

I also made a Christmas colors Muffin Tin

And we read  The Candymaker's Gift: The Inspirational Legend of the Candy Cane by David and Helen Haidle.

You can read my 25 Days of Christmas Blogshare post for Dec 24th to read about the legend of the candy cane. We made a birthday cake for Jesus with a focus on candy canes.

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