8 ways to prepare your toddler for preschool at home

  
My daughter just turned three and will be entering pre-school this fall.  I wanted to know ways that we could prepare her for pre-school at home with simple things that we already had at home. I have compiled this list to save you the trouble since I already found them I thought I would be nice and share it with everyone.

8. Drawing and coloring- Expose your toddler to colors and drawing as soon as you can. Talk with them while you do this. you can say things like you are drawing with the purple crayon, would you like to try the redone.

7. Alphabet- work on the children recognizing the big and little versions of each letter. We have her sing the ABC song when she washes her hands to know she is doing it long enough. The other resource we use is the ABC book by Dr. Seuss it is by far their favorite book this past month.

6. Concept of Big and little- Show them things that are big and little throughout the day. You can say that is a big tree and that is a little tree while pointing to them.

5. Concept of Many and one- The one is especially important since a common phrase is, just take one or only use one at a time.  The dinner table and drawing time have been our easiest places to introduce it. We say just take one bite at a time or just use one crayon at a time.

4. Scissors- just introduce them to using them. Draw a straight line on paper and have them try to cut along the line. If they get that down use the shapes that are in the section below.

3. Shapes- Common shapes are important also. We have a shape sorter which made it easy. It had square, rectangle, triangle, pentagon, star, heart, hexagon, circle, and a crescent. If they get those down they are well on their way.

2. Being able to socialize- This may be harder for kids who are staying at home with their moms and do not go to daycare or playgroups. Daycare is a great place to instill this with so many other kids around. If your toddler is not around other toddlers and does not have to share, then get them around other toddlers through some mean. Put them in a summer reading program at the library for free. Network, use Meetup.com to find other moms or dads that are in playgroups.

1.  Vocabulary- Introduce them to all these sections and their vocabulary should be well suited for the preschool classroom. always talk, use as many adjective as you can. Explain everything to your child. They want to know what things are and how the world works around them.  Talk throughout each activity and ask them questions too. Try and get them to respond using their new vocabulary in order to cement it in there.

All of these things can be completed with simple items around the house and just need to be included in the activities you do with your toddler.

20 Million half orphans

Did you know that there are 20 million kids in the US alone that do not have their father in their lives in any way?

This is horrifying to me. Not only is this terrible for the children, but it is terrible for the entire nation. That is 20 million grown adults at some point in the future. With the statistics showing single parents being 6 times more likely to be in poverty it is then no surprise that these same children are much more likely to go to prison or to live in poverty than to go to college and make themselves a contributing member of society.

I want to challenge you males out there. Get involved in your community.  Become a Big Brother, volunteer at an orphanage or community center. Get out there and make a difference.  I have volunteered with Royal Family Kid's Camp and it is a truly rewarding experience.  Fathers can be sometimes undervalued in our society and I think that is a tragedy. Moms you are important, but so is the father. You can not be both and you shouldn't have to.

I grew up without a father, yet the majority of the time I was fortunate enough to have male figures in my life to look up to. I have now lost contact with most of them and one even passed away recently. This and the combination of having children has made me think about what my life might have been like if my father was more involved in my life. If I knew that side of the family, would I be a different person than I am today? Would I act differently? Would I be having holiday traditions to perform every year. Those are the types of things I see in movies and TV, yet they are not seen in my life. We live far away from the one person on my side of the family I have regular contact with, my sister, and that makes it difficult for us to get together. I haven't really talked to anyone else on my side of the family besides my sister in two years, except through cards or short and very spread out e-mails. My wife's family is small and spread out as well. Her father is a ..well I can't say what I want to say he is. Let's just say he is not going to be involved in our life. Her brother lives in Carbondale, but hasn't married or have kids. One of her aunts passed away last year. Her other aunt lives in California now, but doesn't have kids so the network or framework of our family is very small and spread out.

I pray to God every day that our children will grow up with a strong network of family somehow. I want this for my children, but sometimes am so baffled at where to begin. I have been somewhat looking to find my father and to just meet that side of my family before it is too late. Sometimes I wonder if the rest of his family even knows that I exist.

Are you looking for a long lost relative? Are you trying to build a network of individuals you can trust and truly call your friends or family? I would love to hear what you guys have to say in regards to this.

5 ways to save money and keep up with the Jones'

Tonight I felt compelled to share some tips on how to save money without losing face. I would consider myself a pennypincher with the best of them. The key to most of these ideas is the willingness to think outside the box.

5. Take advantage of your local library-  There are many things that the local library can do for you. They have free books, movies, cd's( which you can download to your ipod), classes, workshops and seminars. The staff also know many other free services that are in the community that most people do not know about. My local library offers free tutoring for k-4 students in the area. That alone can save parents 25-60 dollars a session.

4. Cut the cord- In this day and age there is no need for a home phone or even cable for that matter. We use MagicJack and cel-phones. the people that contend you can't use 911 with MagicJack have not had one because that is part of the registration process to set up the home address for the phone. Magicjack is 19.99 a year vs. 40 dollars plus for other packages. Now to digital cable, this is completely unnecessary. ditch the cable, boost your bandwidth package and get Netflix and take advantage of Hulu. Netflix you can instantly watch tons of content and they will send you dvds in the mail that you choose.  This cuts cost in renting movies and cable because now you can have those movies for movie night sent to your door and you can watch the same shows on network tv the next day or so on Hulu.  We have Hulu Plus and Netflix along with the highest internet package. The only thing I sometimes miss is being able to watch sports events,  so I will be looking into NBA pass and MLB.tv to see if those will be worth it over the year. I hope the NFL not only plays this year but comes to the realization more people are cutting the cord and come up with a streaming online package for NFL fans in the US.  With the cutting of the cord it has also ended the mindless surfing of hundreds of channels with nothing on. It saves us time and money, which I may haver heard somewhere before that "Time is money" so maybe just money.

3. Network- This means that you should talk to people. I mean if you are a teacher ,as I am working on becoming, or a plumber then let people know that information. This may lead to you in your kitchen with a leaky dishwasher and being able to call that plumber you know and barter some free tutoring of his kids for him to fix the dishwasher. You can even try to strategize this portion. see if you can't become at least associates with a mechanic, plumber, teacher, lawyer, financial advisor or any other person you might think you could need their service in the future. Bartering has been done for thousands of years, so take advantage of the skills or things you already have and save some money. Craigslist.org is a a great site to trade services.

2. Buy Used- Most things can be purchased used at a humongous price reduction versus new. You can buy clothes used at places like Plato's closet, Goodwill, Once Upon a Child, and Garage sales. You would be surprised at how many clothes still have the tag from the store on them that end up at second hand shops or consignment stores. I buy the majority of my kid's clothes at Once Upon a Child and can buy them ten outfits of the same brand for the amount that places like Carter's or Buy Buy Baby sell one for. Upscale neighborhoods are usually the best for quality of secondhand items since they are usually the original owner of the items. Cars should be a given, they lose on average 6-20 percent when they are driven off the lot. My head tells me I do not want to be underwater on a vehicle the day I buy it.  Craigslist and Ebay are great resources to buy secondhand anything.

1. Think outside the box-  Do not follow the herd of people doing anything. Demand and Supply rules of Economics apply to everything in life. Let's say I have ten pencils but 100 people want one, then I can raise the price and most likely at least ten people will still want one. If I have ten pencils but only one wants to buy one at the current price then I need to drop the price in order to entice more people to want my pencil. This is true with any product. Let me show you an example: TV's , the technology is constantly getting better making tv's somewhat cheaper for the quality, but overall those prices have been rising for each new innovation of the year. This includes plasma, lcd, led, and 3D. TV's are still a major investment and most likely you will have an outdated one in 6-12 months. So, with a big purchase like this on my mind I researched and researched and found on my budget of 350 dollars all I could afford was mid range smaller tv's. Then I thought outside the box and now I have an 85 inch screen to watch movies, write things like this blog,  and any other thing you can do with the computer and an internet connection. How is this possible on a 350 dollar budget, but through an awesome device I stumbled upon call the aaxa m2 mini led projector. I have it connected to my mac mini, wii, and antenna. It has an hdmi connection along with most other inputs and I can just turn it on, point it at my wall and go.

 I know there are many more things we can be doing.I would love to hear some other tips or things people have done to save money for them and their family!