Best Seller Saturday #8

Hi all! How are you loving this winter weather? Here in Ohio we have been hit by the white stuff finally this winter. We were able to head out and play in it one time because to accompany the white stuff we are getting hit with Arctic temperatures. Makes for 2 not so happy little people in this house. Today we are getting blasted again. I will take it over our dear friends in New England any day.

So what are we here for today! to babble and rabble? ... YES! Nah just kidding. It is time for Best Seller Saturday.  I took a look over my sales this week. I have sold 1 item of everything that has sold this week.  Not even a double.  :)  Then I looked at revenue - one of the items was higher priced than the rest -- all week I sold only 1 and 1.50 items.  It was just silly!

So this is my best seller this week.

I love this coloring book. My dear friend asked me to make this for her daughter's birthday. I even left the dedication page in the book, so when it is purchased you are also graced with a jelly fish drawing from Little Miss.

You are not going to get all your standard animals in this one. A is for African Elephant instead of Ape.  E is for Emperor Penguin.  N is for Naked Mole Rat.  W is not for walrus, it is for Warty Pig. Many of these animals are inspired from our local zoo. If you purchase this I hope you love it as much as "Baby H" does.

As for my most downloaded freebie this week. It happens to be ...

more coloring pages.  This one was also put together with some little ones in mind. I will send my friends coloring books and resources from time to time. I hadn't done it in a while, so I put together this coloring book and sent it off.  It goes nicely with many winter themes.  Take a look at this feedback that I received on this one.

This is exactly what I go for when I design a coloring book. Simple and Cute.

Coloring books all started when I couldn't find simple enough coloring books for Little Miss when she was younger. These coloring books are truly drawn with 2 and 3 year old's in mind.  Simple enough for young hands, but complex enough for older children to still have fun.

Now it is your turn.  What are your Best Sellers this week.  Link up one paid and one free product below.

An InLinkz Link-up

Teach Me Thursday: Hearts, Hearts and More Hearts

Last week in preschool we learned with hearts, hearts and more hearts. {Click on each picture to go to the post about our activities.}

No Prep Printables

Letter Assessment with Hearts

Candy Heart Graphing

Fine Motor Skills

File Folder Games

Dot Hearts

What's New Wednesday Week 4

Last week in preschool we have tons of fun learning with polar bears, penguins and filled in with other fun winter things.

    

Check out what we did and what we used!

Polar Bear Hunt
Frozen Sensory Bags
Polar Starting Sounds
Winter Shape Sort
Mitten Patterns File Folder Game
Winter Image Sorting and Data Collection
Polar: How Many More?
Winter Hat Flip and Find

Not too bad seeing that we are in adjustment mode. Hickman #1 started working again - PTL! - on Monday.

However, because we are in adjustment mode the Valentine items I am trying to get done and posted -- yeah still sitting here. It will be up for next week's What's New Wednesday though.

Without further ado it is time for the link up!

The product I am highlighting this week is my Hands On Polar Bear Centers.

The freebie from last week (which is still free) pairs with this just swimmingly!

Just to highlight a few of the great activities that are in here:

Hands On Ten Frame, Science Journal, and Word Family Building

    

Now it is your turn! Link up your newest or one of your newest items (try to link up something you haven't before). One Paid, One Free.

An InLinkz Link-up

This Week During Preschool

I don't think we have done much with preschool time since Halloween - and that is actually one of our goals for 2015 is to be consistent with preschool time.

When preparing for school time this week I realized two things.

1. My printer is way, way too low on ink to print anything off until after 1st paycheck.

2. I think my printer is starting to need to be replaced. What I printed had the dreaded ... my printer head is starting to go lines.  

Seeing that I updated all of our winter items I am using pieces from last year's versions. 

This week in preschool we used:

Polar Bear Bundle

Penguin Bundle

Snowmen Bundle

Hat and Mitten Math Bundle

I look forward to sharing our week with you! 

Wowsa!

What a productive 2 1/2 hours!  I will update the blog more about it.  But here is a glimpse to all that I got done!

You can check them out over at Teachers Pay Teachers if you don't want to wait for blog posts!  :)

Train Unit Lapbook

While we were packing to get ready to head out of town for two weeks I was thinking.  I am going to need something to keep these two high energy kids busy during Thanksgiving Day.

Of course I could have turned to Pinterest to find a Thanksgiving learning and fun activities.  But today is for my little guy.  He would not be interested in Thanksgiving activities.

So I pulled out what he loves.

I printed off several activities from this unit.

• Pattern Trains
• Number Train
• Rainbow Experss
• Shape Train Cargo Match
• Count and Fill Tank Car
• Tracks Play-Dough Mat
• Number Puzzles

I chose to leave everything black and white.  Little man can color anything if he wants.  Also, I was running out of time.  

I laid everything out on the file folder and started gluing envelopes to store pieces.  Then I assembled the Rainbow Express and stapled it onto the book.  I cut and folded all the pieces and put them in the envelopes.  I covered anything that I wanted to be wipe-away with clear packing tape.  

To keep the middle train in place I added a train gate to keep it in place when not in use.  

The back of the folder I glued an envelope at the bottom to hold the number puzzle pieces.  Then I taped on a sheet protector.  The sheet protectors hold the number puzzle pieces in place as well as has space for wipe away activities.  

Homeschool Preschool in Tiny Spaces

If you have been around the blog here for any length of time you may have heard that I am currently living with my in-laws.

If it were not for the set up of their house it would have be working as well as it is.  When I say well, it's not like Keith and I are not both daily - okay how much longer God?  We also recently closed out our storage unit - we were tired of storing stuff we didn't want anymore.  We blessed several families with our goodies and saved ourselves quite a bit of cash.  That meant though that I had to bring more stuff into our already tiny space.

We are also homeschooling preschool and we just didn't have a dedicated space to do things.  I was constantly having piles of stuff everywhere and toys lined the room.

So I made some changes. That were all spurred by one comment on this picture I posted on Instagram.

Would love to see how you set up your week.  -- umm, how can I show that? I take pictures of what we do, but there is really no set up or set out stuff.  Because we had no dedicated space. 

Until now.  Let me present our preschool corner!

The space itself is oh, 5 by 7, 6 by 8 - It's tiny.  There is enough room for me and the kids to closely work.  Not only does this corner now work for preschool.  It barricades a lot of my mother-in-laws stuff to keep it safe.  

Now for our tour.  

As you can see on the picture these things are on top of a set of plastic white drawers.  This bad boy needs its own post.  This is the Barbie command post.  Dolls, accessories, furniture - it's all in there.  It is not really in the preschool corner but it makes a good top shelf for these small things.

And although you can't really see it, behind this writing desk looks like a white set of shelves.  Well that is our Barbie house.  So the Barbie drawers need to be there too.

Then comes the tiny centers area.  In the most GHETTO, most unique cheapest storage shelving unit known to man.  You can't really see them, but on top there are two little buckets with chalk and dry erase markers for the writing center.

The top of this storage unit will also be where I keep our science center items as we use them for the week.

Then there is our work table.  As we are using the corner we are finding out that we need more light back here.  And we are finding out that Little Mister prefers to do work at the desk than the table.

More tiny centers with storage.

This final picture is on top of the quiet time drawers.  It is a great place for me to stick all the stuff that we are going to need for the week and just take one day to get as much of it together as I can.

Some people might think that it is a little looney to dedicate this space to school time.  But it is used for way more than just when we "play school".  It is used when we pull out playdough after nap.  It is used when Little Miss wants to play with "bigger girl" toys.  It is used for puzzles.

But moving things to this corner we were also able to spread things out into the rest of the room and separate playtime when needed.

I think the biggest blessing of living here is that I could honestly say that I don't need a big house to be happy.

Feel free to pose any questions about our corner or homeschooling preschool below!