What We Did In Homeschool: Dental Health Week / Letter A

Okay, so before I begin this series, it is really important for me to say, I am a terrible homeschool mom when it comes to the by the book teaching. I love the crafts and games and organization. But I cannot for the life of get it together to do it every day like I plan. I also never do circle time, in fact, I shudder at the thought.

I think it's because I worked in a daycare for a while, where circle time was a must must must. But I just sat there and saw all the kids bored, and not engaged at all. They knew their ABC's and rhyming songs, yes. But they were bored and so was I! So we don't do that. We forgo my carefully thought out lesson to take a walk and go Pokemon hunting, or play on the iPad, or bake cookies. And that's okay by me. Because she's four and I'm happier when we're doing fun things. I don't think she needs to know any of this stuff yet, we basically do it for fun and because she has shown an interest in it. I am not the mom pressuring her to learn how to recognize every letter because Sally up the street is only three and is already reading classic literature.

Nope. We like dirt, fun, and total chaos around here. So we're just keeping ourselves busy and learning to love learning.

That being said, this is what we DID accomplish this week!

I wish I could show the pictures of E completing her work. She pretty much had a blast for all the things we did, even though they were pretty standard.

First of all, we started letter of the week. GROAN. I did not want to do this. I am more of a montessori minded kinda gal, and letter of the week seems too cookie cutter for me. Alas, E really wants to learn her letters and learn to read, and we have been struggling. I thought focusing on one letter a week would be good. So we've done something with the letters each day this week.

M - A is for Alligator craft (This backfires when mommy can't stop saying crocodile instead)
T - Color in every letter Aa to reveal... bwahaha AN A!
W - a is for apple craft
T - A in sign language


Monday - A is for Alligator
I can't show the picture of this because E is in them and I don't want to show her face in blog posts like this as much as I can help it. But you can see the outcome in the header image. Basically, turn that A sideways (I precut mine out of construction paper for her) and have her glue on teeth and giant googly eyes if you're cool like us.
Prep Time: 5 Minutes
Prep: Cut out A, cut out teeth
Busy Time: 10 Minutes

Tuesday - Color in Every Letter Aa

This is a print out that will be available for purchase eventually, I'm still working my way through the letters. Basically there are a ton of letters in boxes, they have to find all the letter A or a and color in that box. It reveals... dun dun dun... another letter A! I am binding these in a book for her so she gets to look back at all the hard work she's done. This was her least favorite thing to do this week, but that's because she is lazy and didn't want to have to color every one. Punk.
Prep Time: None
Prep: Print 
Busy Time: 30 minutes (again, she was a whiner)

Wednesday - a is for apple 

Another simple craft. But it gets the point across somehow. I think we're going to hang them all up in her room as we go along so she can remember the letters (hopefully). Just cut out the letter a and a lead and have your LO glue on paper. Simple but allows you time to talk to them about the letter.
Prep Time: 5 Minutes
Prep: Precut letter a and the leaf
Busy Time: >5 Minutes

Thursday - A in Sign Language
Explaining sign language to a 4 year old is especially hard when you don't know sign language yourself. I can't get her to understand the concept of letters hardly, and now I'm throwing in signs as well. Too soon for us? Maybe. But we'll give it a go. She thought this was incredibly cool once she learned it. We are printing out clip art we're finding online to hang on her wall.
Prep Time: >5 Minutes
Prep: Finding and printing clip art
Busy Time: >5 Minutes



As far as dental health week went, we had a lot of fun there too! We had several projects to do!

Wipe Away the Tooth Decay!

Prep: Printing smile and laminating paper

Busy Time: Endless! She even asked to do this again the next day.

 This is a pretty common dental health week activity. We laminated the smile and drew on it with dry erase marker. Most people use a toothbrush to wipe it away, but I just used a toothpick because I didn't have an old toothbrush and wasn't going to get a new one. She played this for such a long time and was so proud to show daddy when he got home. She also made the smile go around and "eat candy" before she gave him tooth decay and made him happy when he was eating vegetables!

Tooth Number Jump

Prep: Cutting out tooth shape, writing on numbers

Busy Time: Endless again, have them jump on the right number as long as you want!

This is another simple one that turned out great. I shouted out a number and she had to go find it and stand on it. We're working on recognizing numbers 1-20.

 

What makes your tooth happy/sad?

Prep: Cutting out teeth shapes, cutting out food (both good and bad)

Busy Time: About 15 Minutes

First I had to cut out the giant teeth shapes. I just used printer paper and eyeballed it. I drew a happy smile on one and a sad frown on the other. I had E glue on googly eyes (because everything is better with googly eyes). Then she cut out all the food types. Then we sat down and discussed what makes something good for your teeth or bad for your teeth. Then we guessed which one was good for your teeth (these went on the smile) and what was bad for your teeth (these went on the frown). Quick, easy, and makes them think critically!

What did you do in homeschool this week?  

We also painted pine cones, just for fun! We have a huge pine tree in our front yard, so after our walk we stopped and picked out the best ones. We DID NOT get the critters out of these before we started crafting with them, and that was a mistake because they were everywhere. But it was a lot of fun for her to scream in faux fear every time a new one came out. This is just proof that not everything has to be a lesson at this age! Some things can just be fun!

Make Your Own Cloth Wipes (Without a Serger)

So, I have been called crafty in the past, but in reality... I'm not. I try to be, and sometimes I can make some okay stuff, but I'm pretty much a rookie. I did manage to make my own cloth wipes though (this earns me extra crunchy mom points right? Cloth wipes AND made them myself? Shoooot) and I'm gonna share my process with you!

 

 Why Use Cloth Wipes?

When I first thought of cloth diapering (anytime before I would be so grossed out at the idea of cloth diapering even... how naive I was! Not I'm OBSESSED), someone mentioned cloth wipes to me. I was like... okay crunchy weirdo, cloth diapers are enough of a stretch for me, disposable wipes are fine. I was wrong. There are many reasons to use cloth wipes, especially if you're already cloth diapering!

They're more cost effective. Even if you're purchasing ready made wipes instead of just material.

I spent $11 and some change on the four yards of flannel. I already had the thread and I already had the sewing machine. Those cost extra. ;) But since I got 100 wipes out of these, I basically made them for $0.11 cents a wipe. If you buy ONE pack of Huggies disposables, you're looking at 3-5 cents a wipe. But they usually last a week. At least that's the AVERAGE with my first one, not taking into account the extra bad blow outs or the weeks the LO is sick and you use more. These can be used until I decide I'm bored with them and want more. 

You know what's going on your baby's bum.

People use all kinds of solutions when making their own cloth wipes. The most common that I've seen is just water (usually stays freshest if you use distilled or boil first, which is my plan). You can also add things like coconut oil, or baby shampoo for extra cleanliness and goodness on the babies skin. Some people add essential oils even to make it smell amazing (but this is cautioned against. Do only after you research and decide for yourself, essential oils on kids under 2 is not well researched!).

After my first little was out of disposable diapers and wipes, I remember several brands of wipes being recalled for listeria (I THINK). I was appalled, how could this not be more monitored? How can they not be paying better attention to something that goes onto a newborn, a child? Then I realized all the chemicals are terrible for the kids too. And they don't care if a child or two gets hurt in the process, as long as the company is still making their bottom line. If you cloth use cloth wipes, you know exactly what's being put on your babies skin.

No midnight trips to the store.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. With my first LO we lived in a place that had many 'open 24 hours' stores. So the husband made quite a few last minute, late night, trips to the store for both diapers and wipes. Especially when surprises came and we went through them faster than I had planned for at each grocery shopping trip. (Which, how stressful is it having to guess how many wipes and diapers you'll need till your next trip? And if something comes up and you don't get to go as soon as you thought? This stress is eliminated.) Now that we live in a location where everything closes at nine, this is an even better reason for us to use cloth!

If you're cloth diapering, you're doing the laundry already anyways.

This was the biggest thing that got me started on cloth wipes. I was like, okay, yes I will cloth diaper. Yes I will wash poo off into my toilet, and yes I will wash diapers in my washer. Then the next logical step was to save even more money on wipes. How much easier is it to not have to worry about running to the store for diapers OR wipes every again?

Cute prints!

If you're going to be wiping poo, shouldn't it be at least a little enjoyable for you? Material comes in many beautiful designs. Pick and customize to you and your LO! 

Let's Get Started!

What You Will Need:

-Fabric

-Sharp scissors

-Polyester Thread

-Sewing Machine

-Washable Marker

-Cardboard/Paper

STEP ONE: Pick your fabric

First let's talk about the fabric. After some research I chose to do my cloth wipes in flannel material. It is apparently pretty absorbent and sturdy. I'm happy I decided to go this route, after sewing them they feel like I won't mind wiping poopy bottoms at 2 AM with them, which is the point. Some people just buy baby wash cloths and use these as cloth wipes. There is nothing stopping you from doing this, I'm sure it works great! Some people also like to use fleece, but that was just too thick of a material for me. I wanted something that was the basic consistency of a disposable wipe, just one that wouldn't rip and could be used over and over again.

So I got 4 yards of flannel for $11 and some change at Joanne's on sale. I was intimidated because I loved the fabric so much and like I said... not crafty. But I dove in anyways!

 

STEP TWO: Decide on the size you want

I made mine 8x8 inches. I got 25 wipes per yard, and an extra strip that I plan to make breast pads out of. This was just out of nowhere, and they shrunk to what I think was the perfect size since I didn't pre-wash my fabric at all so it will shrink from this. This is all based on personal preference. If you already have some way to store them, you could measure your container. You could measure a disposable wipe. Do you. Like I said, I was too excited and just jumped right in. Couldn't help it. I just cut an 8x8 square out of a manilla folder.

STEP THREE: Make your marks, and cut 

I don't have a fancy rotary cutter and cutting board thing. I wish I did. In fact after I went to make my first set, and then knew I'd be making inserts in the future, I thought it would be worth the investment. Those things are expensive! So I went back to my own way. Which was place the cardboard square on the fabric and draw around it. Try to make it line up with the straight edges of the fabric.

I just used E's washable yellow marker. It didn't come out in the first wash (wth Crayola) but it did after the second. I traced around the edges in a row along the cardstock.

And then I cut! First I was using an old pair of dull fabric scissors, and let me tell you sharp scissors make all the difference! You can see a faint line of yellow on the picture above. 

So WA-LAH! Here I have adorable cloth baby wipes. Some people stop at this point. I didn't because I read that sewing along the edges added extra endurance for the wipe, and I want these to last for the long haul. So I decided to do a zig-zag stitch along the edge, while I dreamt of having a serger.





STEP FOUR: Sew them bad boys

Like I said, I did a simple zig zag stitch along the edges with my sewing machine. I wish I had a serger. But I don't have a million dollars and a lot of storage space so this had to do. The first round of wipes I rounded the corner because I heard this was easier to sew. It wasn't. At all. So for the rest of them I just went to the edge, picked up the foot, turned the material and partied on till I reached the next edge. I did a back stitch when I made it to the original edge so the thread wouldn't come undone. Yay finished wipes!

One Ply or Two Ply?
This was a big question I had when I started planning to make my own. Since I knew my edges sucked, and I wanted this to be a simple process I did one layer of fabric, I did not double up. This leaves one side looking not so pretty.

BUT this works for me because like I said I want the general feel of a disposable, and I thought two layers would be too thick. BUT it's all personal preference. If you wanted two layers all you'd have to do is match them up and sew. Not too much extra stress.

TIP: Mine definitely frayed after the first wash. But the stitch held firm and it only frayed to that point. So I just cut off the stringies and am sitting pretty again. But don't be shocked if after your first wash they edges look a little undone. I'm not sure if washing the material beforehand would have helped this or not.

I really like the results. They're not the neatest, but when I'm wiping poo at 2 AM I'll be happy I don't have to worry about running out.