Mommy and Me Monday

Hi, MOPS moms! My name is Laura Lambert. I LOVE MOPS! I was one of the moms who started Grace UMC MOPS in 2005. At that time my youngest son, Sam, was only a few months old. Last week he started kindergarten! Time flies when you are raising little ones, doesn’t it?

I am planning to write a weekly post for the MOPS website called, “Mommy and Me Monday.” In it I will share simple ideas of things you can do with your children. While it’s important for us to do little things to enrich the lives of our children, I feel that it’s equally important for us to go easy on ourselves and be realistic about what we can reasonably accomplish as moms. In no way do I want anyone to read my posts and feel bad if they don’t have time to do the project or activity. I certainly don’t do daily or even weekly projects with my two boys. But I do enjoy surfing the internet late at night and finding fun ideas.

I tend to go in spurts where I may do many activities with my children over the course of a few weeks and then many weeks may pass before we do something “planned” together. I know I’m rambling, but I really did want to emphasize the importance of just relishing the time you have with your children and not feeling badly if time constraints don’t allow you to do all the things I post about. If it helps, just remember that I am probably not even doing all the ideas even though I’m the one writing about them!

To give you a little background on me............I am a Glenwood-ite born and raised. I lived in Iowa City for 14 years before moving back to Glenwood in 2001. I am a teacher and am just starting my 20th year as a professional educator. I am currently the director and head teacher of Holy Rosary Montessori Preschool here in Glenwood. I have two sons. One is almost 9 and has just started third grade at West Elementary and my youngest is 5. He just started kindergarten at Northeast Elementary. I have been married for 17 years. My husband is an Assistant Professor in the Exercise Science department at Creighton University in Omaha. I enjoy reading, scrapbooking, blogging, and being with my family. I write two blogs. One is about our family life. For the past two years I have planned special activities to do with the boys during Advent. Those ideas are posted on the personal blog if you are interested. My other blog is about my Montessori classroom. I post pretty much every activity that I place on my classroom shelves. Many, if not all, of these activities could be adapted for use with your young children at home. The links for these blogs are: http://www.adayofwonders.blogspot.com and http://www.mymontessorijourney.typepad.com I would love to have you stop over and visit.

OK.......enough about me! Today’s activity idea is super simple. It is called “Card Puzzles.” To do this project just find some greeting cards with images you like. You may have a stash of cards already. Otherwise, the dollar stores are a great resource. Cut off the front of the card. This will be the base for your puzzle. Then cut the card into several pieces either with scissors or a scrapbooking trimmer. Voila! Now your child has a puzzle to put together. For very young children, cut only 3 or 4 pieces. Older children, of course, could handle more pieces. Kally’s General Store here in Glenwood (on the square) has some adorable teeny tiny cards. I think they were only 79 cents each. This would be a great way to find another purpose for cards your child receives for their birthday or leftover Christmas cards. Amber and I both tried to get photos to post but weren't able to and wanted to get this posted. So.........hopefully we'll have better luck with the next Mommy and Me post as far as photos go.