Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Dip

Here is a recipe for a really easy yummy dip. Sorry no pics :(

1 roll of Jimmy Dean Sausage
2 packages of cream cheese
2 14oz cans of original ro tel tomatoes (they are tomatoes that have green chiles etc. in them)


Cook sausage in pan. Drain fat (or if use the reduced fat kind there is less fat to start with). Mix in cream cheese until melted. Add in tomatoes (one can put the whole can with juice and all in, the other can drain the juice first). Stir. Serve warm with Fritos or tortilla chips. Enjoy!

Monday, July 21, 2008

A couple of ideas...


The first is the Fathers' Day cards (I know Fathers' Day is long gone, but you could use it next year or adapt it for another occasion-I made one with a dress for a wedding once); it is a super cheap way to make cute, handmade cards (no stamps or embellishments needed). I used some kitschy origami paper but anything paper with a tie-like print would work. I just cut out tie shapes and then glued it on. The result: an inexpensive and handmade way to show the fathers in your life that you care.
The second idea is to take a bouquet of grocery store flowers (which are not arranged at all) and arrange them yourself. I used three vintage glass containers (from Salvation Army) and just separated the flowers into colors and arranged. The result: a set of arrangements that look like they came from a fancy flower shop and not the Low Prices, Everyday leader :)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Do Something Drastic...Bag the Plastic

I hope you are all prepared for an earful! Amy has requested that I talk a little about what we can do in our busy little lives to help with the problems the environment is facing! And boy are we making a mess of things.
We WASTE MORE than any of us realize and the solution is so super simple. Doing small things that take just minimal extra effort from each of us can turn a TIDAL WAVE of waste into a much smaller stream!
As you can see I am VERY passionate about doing my part. So here is one of my personal batttles with the land fills:

NO MORE PLASTIC BAGS!!!
This is my biggest effort. Oh the statistics!
-200 animals die every year from plastic bags.
-Plastic bags cost 4,000 dollars to recycle which can only be resold for roughly 32 dollars. That's a loss of 3950 dollars per ton!
-Plastic bags brake down in to MORE toxic petro-polmers which contaminate the soil and water ways which get into our food chain.
-Plastic bags are made of a polythylene; a themroplastic material made from oil.
There are many many other stats, but the point is that we need to change.

What WE CAN DO!
-Use cloth bags at the grocery store! So simple! It will cost you maybe 20.00 dollars for a good amount to carry even the biggest load. You can make them on your own. They last for years and have no toxic side effects! Please, if you do one thing, strive to make it this!
-Instead of lining your garbage cans with plastic bags make a little extra effort and clean them out once a week.
-Use Cloth diapers. THERE ARE MANY MANY companies that make fantastic, easy to clean renewable diapers. (aka, fuzzybuns, bumgenius, gdiapers) Plus you will save roughly 1,000 to 1,500 dollars by doing so.
-Give your support to companies in your community that are tryingto get rid of plastic bags and spake up about it! Talking to people is one the quickest ways we can help clean up our act!

We can do these simple things. We can make change. Change begins in the home. If you teach your children the importance of reusing and avoiding plastic bags they will grow up doing the same. As mothers we have the power to change everything!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Preparing for Kindergarten???

Hello there, Amy asked me to write a little about what I think parents can do to help kids get ready for school. My name is Adrianne Fulton (for those who don’t know me) & I teach kindergarten in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have only taught for two years so I am definitely not a complete expert & remember these are totally my personal opinions & by no means the law. :) She definitely asked the wrong person though because I could give my strong opinions about this for days & days! :) So sorry if this is too much. But I figure that if you don’t want to hear it you can stop at any time. :)

My first thing that I have the strongest feelings about is…if your child is not ready don’t send them. The requirements for these little guys to meet anymore are so extreme for a 5 year old that if they aren’t ready to do it…pushing them will make it worse. They will struggle, get frustrating because they are struggling & then eventually give up. It is amazing how much of a difference there is between kids who are early bdays (Sept.) & late bdays (July). The first few weeks of school, without even looking at their birthdays, I can tell who is the oldest & who is the youngest. As a future parent & a current teacher, if it was my child who had a birthday during the summer I would SERIOUSLY consider – are they truly ready. Even if their birthday is a May, April or March, if they are obviously not ready it would be easier to send them to preschool another year than to have them have to repeat kindergarten or struggle for the rest of their schooling because they met the age requirements for the school district, so you decided to send them. Boys are typically a lot more immature and more "unready" than girls at young ages. Keep in mind. If they struggle in kindergarten, they will almost definitely struggle in the majority of their schooling. Their attitude towards school and learning depends a lot on how they perform in their early years of school.

Like I said before, your kids will learn so much by the end of kindergarten. In order to truly know what you should have the kids know I would talk to a kindergarten teacher in your area to get specifics. But below are things that we do that will be pretty general and most likely done in pretty much any kindergarten.

One of the biggest things is…READ! Let them see you reading. Kids truly learn best through example. If they see that you love reading, they will want to emulate that & they will want to read & be interested in that as well. I have heard (I don’t know if it is true or not) that kids who have their fathers read to them become more interested in reading/better readers because they feel special that "DAD" is reading with them & taking the time to do that & therefore it must be a special thing. It is so important to read EVERY single day. At a young age get them into the habit. My sister was so good at this & her little boy would get out of his bed & take a pile of books to his night light (so he wouldn’t get caught by turning on the light) & “read” by reciting his favorite books at about age 4 or 5. Be a reading example.

One thing to keep in mind while your kids are in school is that if something is slightly suggested, really take it into consideration. For example, I had a little kid once that really should have repeated kindergarten & because of the laws & everything legal that you have to deal with in schools you can’t say – keep your child back. It is more of a – your child is struggling, these are your options, what do you want to do? - Because of the legality of it, really take it into consideration & realize they CAN’T tell you what to do. They can only suggest and let you make the best decision for your child. If they are mildly suggesting something, it probably means that they would strongly like you to consider it.

As far as what to work on & when it is required, here are a few suggestions. Another thing to keep in mind is – less, more often, is more. If you are planning on working on something for 30 minutes a day, it is better to do 10 minutes 3 times a day than 30 minutes in one sitting. Little kids obviously can only focus for a small amount of time, so spending 5-10 minutes (or even 2-3) on a topic is better than spending 30. Driving is a great time to review and talk with your kids. Ask them education questions while you drive and make a game out of it. If there are only a few things that you can do these are the things I would suggest – know most of their letters- if not all & some sounds, write & recognize their name, rhyming, numbers to 10 at least & to 20 would be amazing, hold a pencil…correctly, holding scissors…correctly, zipping their coat & at least start working on shoe tying. Obviously these are high requirements and would help your child be the higher end of the class...but by no means a requirement to enter kindergarten. Here are more specific requirements and the quarter that we do it in.

*1st - rhyming (which is either really easy or really hard for kids…work on this a ton), patterning, sorting, numbers, letters, letter sounds, shapes, beginning sounds, knowledge about a book (where to start, punctuation, words vs. letters, etc), 5 senses

*2nd – numbers, letters, letter sounds, counting by 10’s, 5’s & 2’s, even & odd #’s, 3-dimensional shapes, blend/segment onset & rime,

*3rd – numbers, letters, letter sounds, time & money, measurement, blending phonemes, reading ability, seasons

*4th – numbers, letters, letter sounds, addition, subtraction, graphing, syllables, phoneme substitution, reading ability

These are the big things that they are tested on in Lincoln. Of course there are always a million other little things. But that gives a big view that isn’t too long. :) Another BIG thing is word wall/vocab/high frequency words. Kids should be able to look at the word QUICK and know it right off, without having to sound it out at all. Here is a list of our required words. We have about 40-50 other words that we do as “extra” but the words listed are most important.

*1st: colors - 2nd: I, to, my, at, a, see, like, mom, yes, dad, me, no – 3rd: for, here, go, can, is, and, have, you, it, love, in, by – 4th: play, the, said, he, are, she, on, up, we, am, look, this

A book that I would definitely recommend for parents with boys is “Mind of Boys” by: Michael Gurian. It is a book about how boys are different than girls. They learn differently, they express themselves differently & therefore they need to be treated & taught differently. When I began the book I was thinking – oh another book that I will read & then stick on the shelf. The first chapter is a rough one to get through, but keep going. It is an amazing book that truly helps you understand your boys better. I honestly read a lot of it & would think “oh that is why my husband/students/nephews/friends kids thinks or does that”. It was an amazing book & I would recommend it for anyone who has a boy, works with boys or just wants a good book that is an easy & very informative read.

Hopefully my pages of rambling didn’t totally bore everyone. But that is my opinion :) If there are more questions I would be more than willing to give more of my opinion…but remember I am not amazing with this yet, this is just what I think after two years.