Family Home Evening, of FHE, is a suggested practice by the LDS church. Family Home Evening is a great way to grow closer as a family, even if you aren’t religious. Family Home Evening is just a time set aside each week for uninterrupted family time. It could be an activity, a lesson, performing some kind of service, even going to a movie. Obviously some things help build unity more than others, but the important thing is that it is consistent and is a top priority each week. 

The LDS church suggests making Monday family night. If Monday doesn’t work for you, pick another day of the week. It doesn’t matter what day. 

The LDS church lays out a list of things that a family home evening should include. You can see the full list and details here. Those things are:

• Start and end with a prayer
• Learn from the scriptures
• Add music
• Make it fun
• Be consistent
• Add variety 

In our home, we have two little kids. The oldest is only 2, so it doesn’t make sense to have gospel lessons that are complicated at all. We stick with very simple and short lessons, followed by a long singing time and a snack. For example, one of our lessons was all about how we fold our arms and bow our head when we pray. We sang songs like “Do as I’m Doing” and had the action be folding the arms and bowing the head. It was probably a five minute lesson, but it brought a good spirit into our home and helped us grow closer together by spending time with each other. 

Here are my five tips for having a successful family home evening when toddlers are involved

• Keep it short
• Keep it simple
• Plan ahead
• Be consistent 
• Sing lots of songs

I know I said this before, but consistency is KEY! The first time you try to have a family home evening, it might go horribly. Your child might hate the fact that you are making him or her sit down for fifteen minutes when they could be playing. Don’t give up! It’s so good for your kids to have to sit still. If they can’t handle it, start with singing time. Nothing works better than a few songs to get kids to relax and unwind a little. 

There are a TON of resources to help you be successful with family home evenings. One of my favorites is A Year of FHE. She is no longer coming out with new lesson plans, but there are over 120 lessons to chose from (THREE years worth!). Many of those lesson plans can be easily adapted for little kids. 

Mormon, Mother, and Marriage Therapist has a list of 55 ideas for FHE with toddlers. I found that list very helpful. 

There is a blog called 5 Minute Family Home Evening with a TON of short little lessons that are great for little ones with short attention spans. 

Those are just a few resources that I have found helpful. Remember though that Heavenly Father knows EXACTLY what your little one needs. If you prayerfully plan out your Family Home Evenings, they will be successful. They may not be perfect, and you WILL have some that you feel have failed, but just keep it up, and in the end you will have years of family memories and wonderful lessons taught to your growing children. 

Do you have any awesome Family Home Evening ideas? I’d LOVE to hear them! 

The post Having An Effective Family Home Evening With Little Kids appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

My little girl just turned one in May. Ever since her older brother was born, I toyed with the idea of using cloth diapers. They are so stinking (pun intended) cute, and I had heard tell of how they can save you a couple thousand dollars during the diapering years, plus the whole they-are-good-for-the-environment thing. But, I never actually did it. My first was in disposable diapers for his entire diapering career. When my little girl was born, my first was still in diapers and just barely over a year old, so cloth diapering seemed so out of the question and overwhelming at that time. Plus, we had been given a LOT of diapers from friends and family at the birth of each child, so I pushed the idea of cloth diapering to the back burner and just stuck with the disposable diapers. 

I am NOT picky about what diapers I use on my kids. The first few weeks, I try to use pampers, mostly because of the nifty line that lets you know when your little one is wet, but after that, I get the cheapest stuff I can that won’t actually fall apart. Generally, we were using Parent’s Choice. I can get them for about 14 cents a diaper without doing any couponing, and spent about $30/month/kid on diapers. Not too bad, really. 

After my first child was completely potty trained, the thought of cloth diapering came into my mind again. I would really like to cloth diaper my third child, but I knew that by the time I was 38 weeks pregnant, it would seem way to overwhelming. So, I decided to give it a trial run on my 14 month old daughter. I decided that it would be easier, for a couple reasons. For one, she doesn’t need changed nearly as often as a newborn. Another reason I thought it would be easier is because she only poops about ever other day, instead of… well constantly like a newborn does. I figured that if I could handle it with her, I would be more likely to be able to handle it with a newborn. 

So I did some research and started buying diapers. I’ve tried a few different diapers since starting her on cloth diapers about a month ago, and I have found a few that I really love. I am excited to share them with you during this series. I’ll be talking about my washing routine, how I handle going out, how I convinced my husband to go along with cloth diapering, how much money we ACTUALLY save, and more! Be ready for some fun diaper reviews, too! 

 Check out the other posts in the cloth diaper series:

How I Convinced My Husband

My Washing Routine

What To Do About Diaper Rash

Bumkin Diaper Review

Gro-Via Diaper Review

The post Cloth Diaper Series: Why I Decided To Switch To Cloth appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

Run to Walmart {or drive, I suggest driving, sand is heavy pick up one $20 plastic underbed storage with a lid. Then head back to the garden department and get about 10, 50 cent sand bags {they have cleaned play sand for sale that is specifically for sandboxes} Take it all home and set it up on your patio. I also suggest getting your husband to bring in the sand for you
If you are being really adventurous, grab a cheap set of beach toys. It was amazing. My little one year old boy would not play with ANYTHING for longer than about 5 minutes, but the sandbox, seriously he would stay out there forever! I hope your kids enjoy this as much as mine!

Oh and if you need some proof, here is a picture of him dancing in the sandbox

Happy Sanding!

Traci

The post My Little Sandbox {a simple & affordable DIY for your toddler and you!} appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

I bought all this kitchen stuff at the dollar store. I decide instead of getting pretend stuff, I’d let me kids play with the real deal. You can’t hardly beat the price, anyway.

I just bought a bunch of kitchen stuff that I thought my kids would like to play with. There is a spoon, some measuring cups and spoons, some funnels, tongs, and a few other little things. Then, I add a little something each time they play with it. It might be a little flour that I add, or some rice, or just plain water. They have a great time transferring the ingredients from one cup to another or trying to grab things with the tongs. Sometimes we take it all outside and fill a bucket up with water and let them go at it. They end up super wet, but they love it. It’s great because it teaches life skills like pouring and stirring. And the best part is that you won’t have to worry about your kids using YOUR kitchen stuff anymore, because they have their own! We even use this stuff to make real muffins sometimes. That’s a HUGE hit.

The post Teaching Your Kids Life Skills With Dollar Store Tools appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

Here is what you need:

• mini m&ms
• a plate

So you can see how this works for you and adjust as you go, but here is what I did:

Get out a few m&ms (you don’t need all of them!) and put them in the middle of the plate. The first thing we did was sorting.

I had to help my little guy get the hang of it, but he figured it out pretty quick. He did want to eat them, and occasionally I would let him (I would say you can eat ONE blue one and help him find a blue one). 

Once we had them sorted by color, we did some counting for fun (I think he’s a long way from numbers but it doesn’t hurt to practice!) We did lots of “where’s a green one?” and things like that. 

After he had all he could take (about ten minutes is all.. I didn’t want to frustrate him too much), we started eating them. I would alternate which color he could eat and he seemed to have a really good time. 

One of the things I think was a key to making this a successful activity was praise (and the fact that my son was eating mini pieces of chocolate). Each time he got the right color, I would get really excited and say something like “yeah! Good job!” I think the praise kept him from getting frustrated and helped him keep going with the activity.

Good luck teaching your little ones colors! Leave me a comment and let me know if you have any awesome suggestions for teaching colors. I’d love to hear them.  

The post Fun Way To Teach Your Toddler Colors and Sorting appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.