Sharla Kostelyk

Helping Children Pray by Creating a Prayer Wall

Creating a prayer wall in your home or classroom is easy to do. It can be instrumental in your child’s journey of faith. I have previously written about teaching children to pray and in that article, I mentioned our prayer wall and what an incredibly powerful tool it has been for us.

Creating a prayer wall can be as simple as placing names or pictures on your fridge with magnets or writing the prayer requests on a whiteboard. Children can even draw pictures themselves to create a prayer wall.

We used to use our fridge for pictures, but have found that since we start our homeschool days with prayer, it was better for us to make something in our homeschool classroom that we could use as a visual reminder. It is not only a reminder for myself and the kids of who and what to pray for, but also, an amazing visual of answered prayers.

We created our prayer wall by gluing cork to plywood to make a giant cork board. We can then pin pictures to it using pushpins. Some of our prayer wall includes pictures that are highly personal such as birth family members of some of our adopted children, so I have taken pictures that do not show the entire wall but will still give the general idea.

We have a small stack of other pictures that I keep nearby of family members and loved ones so that I can rotate some of the pictures out from time to time and also in case they are needing extra prayer for something, we can add them to the wall. I have the wall divided into sections which is not the easiest to see in this picture because of the areas I left out of the picture, but an example is the top right corner. That section is reserved for things that are on a bit of a deadline. In this case, my dad and my aunt were both having surgery on the same day, so their pictures were there so that we could be praying for them specifically and daily.

On our prayer wall, we also have a red piece of paper and the picture on that is the person of the month (or day or week or year). The reason that person’s picture is on the red paper is so that it will catch our eye whenever we are walking through the classroom or sitting in the room and we can be reminded to silently (or not so silently) pray for that person.

Our prayer wall includes friends of ours who are battling cancer, children we love who have medical needs, family members who are serving a mission in another country, grandparents, those pursuing adoption, and many other specific people who have prayer needs.

One of the things I love about having these photos up is that the kids really do seem to remember the prayer requests more easily. When I am tucking them in at night and we can no longer see the prayer wall, they often bring up the people whose pictures are currently there in their bedtime prayers.

Another thing I love is when we are able to rejoice together about an answered prayer. One of our friends who they have been praying for for many, many months now is now cancer free and we can now be praising God for that answered prayer and seeing the reminder of that right there on our wall!

Simple Valentines Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

This Valentines sensory bin was made at the last minute with very few items but still captured the attention and creativity of the kids! Last year for our Valentine’s Day sensory bin, I used red paper shreds as the base. I hadn’t planned anything out for this year so I used pink and purple beaded garland and shiny foil heart garland as the base. I threw in a few plastic heart shaped containers and in one of them, I put a costume jewelry ring. The container with the ring led my boys to come up to me, open the container and ask, “will you marry me?”!

We had a few friends over to make crafts and play and as always, the sensory bins were very popular with the kids. Our farm sensory bin also got played with a fair bit because I haven’t finished disassembling it.

The kids and their friends danced, ate, guessed how many conversation hearts were in the container (214), made crafts, played in the sensory bins, and played with the chocolate playdough. Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

The Ultimate Guide to Kids Crafts & Activities Using Cups

By Sharla Kostelyk

Craftulate has a great series, The Ultimate Guide to 50 Craft Materials, 50 days of crafts and activities featuring different materials. I’m honoured to be able to participate but was quite honestly wondering what I was thinking choosing cups as my material. I asked myself, “why couldn’t I have chosen foam sheets or googly eyes or pipe cleaners?” but once I started to give it some thought, I realized that not only was it easy to come up with new ideas, there are several crafts and activities that we’ve done in the past that have used cups.

The Ultimate Guide to Crafts & Activities with Cups

Cups are actually a very versatile craft material and something that many people already have on hand. Here are just some of the many cup crafts and activities that are possible. There is also a link-up below for you to add your own cup crafts.

plastic cup butterfly We made plastic cup butterflies earlier this week. We taped red heart shaped doilies to the back, poked pipe cleaners through the top for the antennae and used eye stickers and a Sharpie marker for the face. You could also use googly eyes.

Monsters Cup Craft The kids made Monsters using green cups, googly eyes, eye stickers, Sharpie markers, and pipe cleaners. It’s always neat to see how different each of the finished products turn out.

When we created a backyard Olympics, one of the crafts we made was the Olympic rings with cups and paint.

At Snuggle Puppy’s pirate themed birthday party last year, the kids all made hooks using cups and tin foil. This is simple but so fun!

For our Rainbow Theme unit, I made layered jello in cups.

We also used plastic cups in three of the games at our Minute to Win It Family Fun Night. They were easy games but so fun!

Meaningful Mama has a really great activity for teaching beginning reading using plastic cups.

This fire cup knock down game from Lalymom was for their Fire Prevention Week.

Craftulate has a unique idea to create ornaments with plastic cups.

Meaningful Mama has used a science experiment using cups to teach the character trait of flexibility.

These make your own constellations from KC Edventures are such a great way to make learning fun!

Craftulate used cups to help in teaching colour sorting.

Be sure to check out all the craft material posts to get ideas on how to use other common craft materials. If you are looking for creative ideas for kids, you may also be interested in following my Kids Activities Board on Pinterest.

Math Board Games for Kids

By Sharla Kostelyk

When I wrote about how I teach math in our homeschool, several readers were interested in knowing which board games we use that help with math. Those questions led me to creating this list.

$Math Board Games for Kids$

I find that board games are particularly effective for teaching my special needs kids but many children learn best by doing and all kids can benefit from playing board games. Playing board games also involves building memories and spending quality time together as a family.

Math Board Games

Here are just some of the math board games for kids that can be used to help them learn or improve their math skills. Games are fun, hands-on and a great way to help your child remember new or old concepts.

Dave Ramsey’s ACT Your Wage! [Hardcover] [2010] (Author) Dave Ramsey CASHFLOW for Kids Moneywise Kids Learning Resources Pop For Addition & Subtraction Game Learning Resources Head Full Of Numbers ThinkFun Zingo 1-2-3 Learning Resources Snap It Up! Math: Add/Sub Card Game Snap! Addition Learning Resources Snap It Up! Multiplication Card Game Trend Enterprises Zoom! Learning Game (100 Piece)Uno Card Game Ninety-Nine or Bust Game Dutch Blitz Phase 10 Card Game Styles May Vary SKIP BO Card Game 7 ATE 9 Assorted Colorful Dice in White, Red, Green for Board Games,Koplow Games Operators Dice Classroom Accessories ThinkFun Math Dice Junior Game Think Fun Math Dice Yahtzee Game Tenzi Game dice color may vary .Learning Resources Pizza Fraction Fun Jr. Game Sumoku Learning Resources Buy It Right Shopping Game Bicycle Playing Card Deck, 2-Pack Crib Wars Board Game Cardinal Double 12 Color Dot Dominoes in Collectors Tin (Styles Five Crowns Card Game Sequence Numbers Smath Game Learning Resources Dino Math Tracks Game The Game of Life – Amazon Exclusive Learning Resources Sum Swamp Game, 8 Pieces Lakeshore Allowance Game Learning Resources Money Bags Coin Value Game Payday Monopoly Board Game The Classic Edition Trouble Game Edupress Math Noodlers Game, Grades 2-3 (EP62350)Addition and Subtraction Bingo Addition Bingo Game Subtraction Bingo Game Telling Time Bingo Game Multiplication Bingo Game Multiplication & Division Bingo Game Fractions Bingo Game Fractions, Decimals, & Percents Bingo Game Conceptual Bingo // Convert: Fraction-Decimal-Percent Telling Time: How to Tell Time on Digital and Analog LEARNING WELL GAMES Multiplication Division Math Dash Edupress LRN2347 Math Dash Equivalent Fractions LEARNING WELL GAMES Addition Subtraction Math Dash Cool Math Rush Hour Jr Board Game Rush Hour Logic Game Alcatraz Prison Break Logic Game by SmartGames No Stress Chess Mancala Game

We haven’t played all of the games on this list but have played over half of them. Some are very obviously for specific math concepts while others teach overall skills such as patterning, sequencing, planning, logic, spacial concepts, and problem solving. Based on those skills, almost any board game can be used for math learning!

I have been using the math Bingo games since my oldest boys were young. They are very easy to figure out and a direct way to practise addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There is even a Bingo game for fractions, decimal points and percentages.

For logic and spacial concepts, I like games such as Alcatraz and Rush Hour as they can be played anywhere and keep kids entertained while secretly improving their brains!

Monopoly, PayDay and the Game of Life are wonderful introductions to money, not to mention advanced concepts such as real estate purchasing, budgeting, income and expenses, and the curve balls life can throw your way! For older children, these concepts and discussions about financial life skills can be made through two other games that I love, Cashflow for Kids, which is based on the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books and the idea of getting out of the rat race, and Act Your Wage, a Dave Ramsey game about living within your means that the whole family (adults included) can benefit from playing. Financial skills are something that many kids don’t learn about until it is too late and these board games are a great way to broach the topics and introduce important concepts without it being too intimidating.

There are many fractions games out there but Fractions Supreme is my favourite. It’s another game that we’ve had since our oldest kids were young. It makes fractions less intimidating through pizza!

We play A LOT of dice and card games here. We play games with regular dice as well as specific math dice. Our go-to game is called The Dice Game (we are very creative in naming things!). It uses 6 dice. I tried to type out the rules of the game to explain it to you but managed to confuse myself so I found the basic rules to send you to! Our family plays a few slight variations of what is explained there but it’s the same general idea. We rotate who the scorekeeper is each game to give everyone another chance to practise their math skills. Another dice game we love to play is the classic Yahtzee.

The card games we play most often are Nines (read instructions by clicking that link), Go Fish, War, Speed, and Canasta. We also play card games that require different cards such as Dutch Blitz and Uno. I always have a deck of some type of cards in my purse so that if we are stuck in a waiting room, we have entertainment that also has learning value.

This picture is actually just one day of game playing in our family! We also really enjoy strategy games which probably also could be counted as math games too but I will save that list for another day!

a day of board game play

Math board games for kids are just one more way to make learning fun! What games are your family’s favourites?

Gluten Free Snack Mix

By Sharla Kostelyk

I think my quest for gluten free snack options is well documented! When we took a road trip to the mountains last week, I was packing snacks for the drive and feeling frustrated by the lack of variety for Einstein (our son on a gluten free diet), so I decided to make up a fun snack mix.

This was simple to make but very popular with my kids. I threw everything into a bowl, gave it a quick mix and then divided it into little containers for the road. Okay, well, not all of it made it into the little containers. The kids saw me making it and convinced me to let them snack from the bowl first!

What I included:

peanuts
dried cranberries
raisins
Annie’s cocoa and vanilla gluten free bunny cookies
Panda Puffs
Whole O’s gluten free cereal

Other ideas of what you could include:

almonds or other tree nuts
mini marshmallows
chocolate chips
dried fruit
M+Ms
popcorn
sunflower or pumpkin seeds
Glutino pretzels
coconut flakes

My kids loved the mix. I liked that it was something a bit more exciting than a gluten free granola bar and easily portable. Of course, if you don’t have small containers, you could also send it in resealable sandwich or snack sized bags. This gluten free snack mix would be great for sending in school lunches.

Be sure to check out our full list of kid friendly gluten free snack ideas.

Valentine’s Sensory Activities

By Sharla Kostelyk

Valentine’s Day is one of my favourite holidays for kids. There are so many ways to involve your kids in this special day and make it fun for them. We have a tradition of eating heart-shaped pizzas and making and icing sugar cookies. We also give our friends and family members Valentines and I always include Valentine’s sensory activities in our celebrations that day.