Family Friendly: Introducing Mom MTC

While listening to BYU Women's Conference from several years ago, I heard Sister Sylvia H. Allred describe the work we do with children as important and very similar to the work done for missionaries at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) as they prepare to go serve God by teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to their assigned area of the world.

My heart burned with a greater knowledge of the importance of the plans I make and the work I do to teach and train each of my children and all those I come in contact with throughout each day. I realized that my home was a Missionary Training Center, where each of my children could have the opportunity to learn how to be missionaries daily, as long as I did my part in providing the right learning environment.

I decided to expand my already planned monthly Mommy Moment Teaching Plans that I have been working on in the past. This year I have posted my plans online on SimpleSupermom but will now begin to put those plans on this new site: Mom's MTC.

I hope any of you who are so inspired would be willing to share your ideas of how you lead and guide your children to find the truth and make correct choices. You can do this through comments to individual posts or by emailing me at simplesupermom@gmail.com with the subject heading Mom's MTC.

Be Inspired,

Great Kids Book: Alice in Bible land Series.

I love the "Alice in Bibleland Series" by Alice Joyce Davidson. My Mom got these books for our family growing up and I loved them so much that I got them for my family too. My daughter LOVES them! They have been a great way to introduce scripture stories. They are about a "little girl named Alice" who goes through a "magic Screen" and sees the Bible stories come to life. The stories are told in poetry form, easy to memorize, and have lots of beautiful pictures. One of our favorites is "The Story Of Baby Jesus"

Sale on Book of Mormon Little Books

I previously posted about this wonderful set of early reader Book of Mormon books on my blog. So for the full description of why I love these books, click here. to summarize, I loved them because my daughter was able to use them to learn to read in the correct sequence very easily simply by reading these leveled scripture story books in order.

There is a great sale on these books that I just found out about and wanted to share. I received notice that the author is discounting the series as well as some of her other items if you order before December 31st, 2009. She is also offering free shipping. These are wonderful for a family and great gifts for pre-k to first grade age children. For more information or to order these books go here.

"Matt and Mandy" helps me teach.

My daughter LOVES to read the "Matt and Mandy" section of the Friend magazine each month. She also loves to watch "Matt and Mandy" episodes online (click on the link above). One day, when she was facing a problem with some friends from school and trying to decide what she should do about it, we decided to create our own "Matt and Mandy" comic page about a similar situation and figure out what she thought Mandy would choose to do. It really helped her in thinking through how she should solve the problem (and helped me refrain from telling her how to solve it so she could learn to do it herself). I am really thankful for the Friend magazine!

Daddy Daughter Date: Home Depot Kids Workshop

I think it is very important to have Daddy Dates. They are an important part of a strong and happy family. My favorite Dates with my Dad were one time when he took me to a dance and gave me a corsage and everything. Another favorite was when he took me to an amusement park just the two of us (There were ten kids so it was really special to have my own time like that)

My hubby discovered the free projects they do at Home Depot. (Here they do it the first Saturday of each month). They are great. They give the kids an apron and each time they do a project they earn a new project pin to put on their apron, a certificate and of course they get to take home a fun free project. The best part is the time with Dad.

Fun Paper Doll Craft

My daughter has a fun craft idea. Here is how she explains how to do it:

" I was watching 'Beauty and the Beast' and after it I just thought of this craft idea since I was in such a 'Beauty and the Beast' mood. I made a Belle doll. This is how I made it:

1) Draw a picture of you or of anybody and cut it out.

2) Draw dresses and then cut them out.

Make sure they have little tabs to hold it up.

3) Then put one of your favorite dresses on the paper doll.

( And here's a funny joke about paper dolls: Why are paper dolls so fun? Because they're "funnable!" LOL) Now enjoy your paper dolls! Have fun with them! Go along and play!"

How to Make a Tissue-Paper Doll

Here is a craft idea created by my daughter. Here is how she describes how to make it:

"First you get one tissue. This will be the body of the tissue-paper doll. Then you take one rubber band (the thin little black ones) and then take one and put it in the middle of the tissue. Then you take another one and put it on the bottom.

Then you take the last one and put it on top.

Then you take one square of toilet paper and make it into a loop. You have to make two of them--these will be the arms of the tissue paper doll. Then you either tape or attach them somehow to the middle of the doll.

Then you color the shirt and pants of the doll with markers. Then you color the mouth and the eyes of it. The mouth and the eyes will form a face when you are finished. Then you color the hair and color the tissue part with the rubber-band and any part you want to be the hair. (Just be sure not to color the face yellow) Then you add like a ring or like a butterfly ring or CTR ring or any ring and attach it to the middle of the shirt. Forming another layer of rubber band, take the one that the ring is attached to and attach it to the center and then you have your toilet paper doll."

So cute! I have a little blogger.

Free Online Summer Reading Program

We signed up for Letterpals which is a free online Summer Reading Program for Grade School age kids. The pets from the pet shop send a grade-level email to your child Monday through Thursday during the week for them to go online and read. Then they answer comprehension questions, do a crossword puzzle and a word-search with words from the email, and earn points for prizes by doing so each day. It is free and my Daughter LOVES it! It even has a bonus that I say "finish your most important job list and then I'll let you check your mail in letter pals! She works so fast after that. She has also been working on her typing skills and her spelling with me while she completes the activities.

Teach Small Children to Read

I am including an email message from one of my friends with information about my FAVORITE resource for teaching reading. My daughter started with these level books just before she started kindergarten and although she was already a beginning reader, she very quickly went through these books with me. The beginning levels tell simplified scripture stories from the Book of Mormon. (Which is on Lliam's list of Most Influential Books) The last level includes actual scripture passages and after that she was ready to read the Book of Mormon herself! She is now starting second Grade and reads at a third-fourth grade level. She also LOVES Scripture Stories! The bonus is that they make Great coloring books for church too. :) Thanks Doris!!

"Below is an email from my mother-in-law who has written leveled books called "Book of Mormon Little Books." My mother in law has been a teacher for over 20 years and the past several years has been a reading specialist for the state of AZ. If you have children or grandchildren who are learning to read, these books are great and she even has made a lesson plan book to go with them.Another neat thing she has put together is when her kids were young, for her scripture study most days she would compile Book of Mormon Picture Pages. Basically she has gone through the entire Book of Mormon and has written out the scriptures on individual pages (most pages contain several versus of scripture) but she has organized them in such a manner so that her children could take a page and draw a picture relating to the scriptures, then they would each share their picture and learn the scriptures in a more hands on way. To this day the kids still talk about and remember a lot of the pictures they drew and my mother in law has notebooks filled with these picture pages her kids created. She has compiled all of these onto a DVD, they are blank pages for you to print out for your children to draw the pictures.Anyhow, she is discounting the prices right now so I wanted to just let you all know this. There is more information below along with websites if you would like to visit them.

Michelle."

"Dear Friends,Recently I've been part of the UHEA (Utah Home Education Association) Convention. I had the pleasure of presenting 2 workshops as well as having a booth where we sold my 32 Book of Mormon Little Books, Scripted Lesson Plans, and Book of Mormon Picture Pages (family scripture study for all ages). I'm offering everyone free economy shipping and UHEA Convention discount prices that are listed below through June 30, 2009!Please share this with all your friends.Thanks!Doris Johnson Please visit both websites:http://www.mormonlittlebooks.com/ UHEA Discount until June 30th!http://iceitnice.blogspot.com/ Family Home Evening & Other Occasions--Cake Decorating Fun for Everyone!
UHEA CONVENTION DISCOUNT PRICING
Until June 30, 2009"

K12 First Grade Curriculum Review

I really enjoyed being a guide for my daughter this year as she completed first grade through a virtual academy public school which uses the K12 curriculum. It was a little challenging finishing the whole curriculum since we started in January, but overall it was a good experience. My favorite aspects of this program are:

-Free complete curriculum materials and lesson plans sent to me in the mail and available online.
-Online computer software that tracks where my child is at academically.
-Still considered a public school so there was a teacher assigned to my daughter and she did phone and internet classes with her and phone or internet classsroom instruction and question answer sessions and parent teacher coferences monthly.
-Very thorough and fun curiculum. She especially enjoyed the science and history sections
-online learning games and online audio stories which enhanced the study of the day.
-assessments for almost every lesson which we could take BEFORE c ompleteing the lesson and find out if it is stuff already known.
-Anything I considered to be minutes toward a specific subject was able to count so there was great flexibility: making necklaces could be art, reading scriptures together could be language arts, phonics , or history . . .

The challenges were:
-starting mid school year, although the teacher was very helpful
-Too much time on the computer for me (the guide) since I read through the lessons so I could teach them to her ... in the end I got very good at seeing the objectives and improvising so I didn't need to stare at the screen so long.
-remembering to keep track of the minutes spent in each subject so that I could post her minutes into her attendance each day.

Family Values Children's Website

While reading a bedtime story from the Children's magazine, "The Friend," We noticed a page about a new website for kids. It has games, printable coloring pages, music, scripture stories, coloring online . . . and more. My daughter stayed up a little later than normal because we were having so much fun together.