Tarzan and Beauty

This weekend we had a much needed movie night with popcorn and we rented Tarzan.  I forgot how much I love the music in that movie!  The kids really enjoyed it too.  My little guy loved all of the animals and he decided to watch it while wearing his Cookie Monster rain coat.

Watching all of the gorillas reminded me of one of my favorite books that I used to read with my son.  When he was three this was his favorite book and we read it MANY times.  He had it memorized and would read the whole thing to us.  The book is Little Beauty by Anthony Browne.

I took it out the next afternoon to read to my three year old for the first time.  He was very excited once we found the gorilla book.  We read it four times before his nap.  He wanted to keep reading it, but he definitely needed to take a nap, so I told him we could read it when he woke up.

This is the story of a gorilla who can use sign language to speak with the zookeepers.  He asks them for a friend and they decide to give him a cat.  They become best friends.  Little Beauty and the gorilla do everything together...even go to the bathroom together.  The pictures are fun and make the kids laugh.  The best part is some pictures don't have any words and instead of reading we would just talk about what Little Beauty and the gorilla were doing.  It also uses the words happy, sad, and angry a lot.  The faces on the gorilla match very well with his feelings.  My little guy practiced making happy, sad, and angry faces each time we read it.

A few days later we found a gorilla figurine and a small cat figurine.  We played Little Beauty and the gorilla for about an hour.  Of course, we had to add some Skylanders, dinosaurs, and Little Einsteins to the mix, but Little Beauty was always saved by the gorilla.

Movies are great and are sometimes a must after a really long week, but one that makes you want to read a book afterward is fantastic!

Groundhog Day

Since Groundhog Day is coming soon, I took out our two books about it.  I don't even know how we ended up with two Groundhog Day books, but we did!  This morning my oldest son brought this book downstairs and we read Good Morning, Groundhog by Abby Klein and illustrated by John McKinley.

This is a cute Ready, Freddy! Reader with colorful illustrations.  It explains what Groundhog Day is all about. We often read Ready, Freddy! chapter books, but we got a set of these readers through my son's book order.  My son was excited to see that the word fin was hidden in each picture, just like in the chapter books.  I have started a post about the Ready, Freddy chapter books, but it will be ready later in the week.

My oldest son colored this picture of a groundhog with a hundred chart.  I found this on Lil' Country Kindergarten blog.  This was perfect for him since tomorrow they will be celebrating their 100th day of school.  It was good practice for his number recognition AND  he had fun.  He was wondering what the picture was going to be the whole time!
I also printed out a picture of a groundhog for my two year old to color, but he wanted to play with Alphie while my other son colored, so Alphie it was.  I found the picture of the groundhog at DLTK-kids.com.  Maybe he will color it on the 2nd!

Our Own ABC Book

We have been planning a few trips for this year and my son has overheard us talking about them.  Now he can't stop asking about when we will be going on vacation.  When we sat down to read one night he took out our ABC book that I made after one of our trips last year.  I absolutely LOVE our ABC book.  We went on a hiking trip and early on I decided I wanted to make a book with all of the great pictures we were getting.

 I wanted to make an ABC book because we were learning about so many new things like canyons, poison ivy, and waterfalls.  Now, I will admit that towards the end of the trip it became an obsession and the last few letters I really had to search for, but I completed my task of finding a picture for each letter.

I was so proud of my finished project and even happier that this is one of the books my son keeps at the foot of his bed.
I made this book on Shutterfly and can't wait to make more like it.  This is a fantastic way to keep special event photos or vacation photos all together in a book without making it the "normal" photo album.

Lego Party

My kindergartner likes to play with LEGOS.  I can't say he loves them because it is something that he will play with for a few days and then won't take out again for a week or two.  This weekend he went to a "LEGO Party" at our park district.  He spent two hours there making LEGO crafts, eating LEGO treats, and playing with LEGOS. He even won a container of LEGO candy that you can build with because he guessed the closest number in the estimation game.  I am hoping that this little class will encourage him to get in some quality LEGO building time at home.  Like books, LEGOS are quiet, and there are just some days that the noise of my house can drive me absolutely crazy.  That is when I suggest coloring, LEGOS, blocks, and play dough to my kids.

We have lots of LEGO books, but our newest is The LEGO Ideas Book.  

I would describe this book as a coffee table book for kids.  It has great pictures and a few directions to make these often complicated LEGO figurines.  This isn't a read aloud book, but it can inspire some creative LEGO building!  We got this book out one night after dinner and were amazed at the things that people can build with LEGOS.  We can't make most of them, but my son wanted to build a giraffe and elephant after looking through it.

Here is my son building a dinosaur.  We got the directions from the LEGO party, but you can also find some building directions at the LEGO Club website.  You can also subscribe to a free LEGO Club magazine while you are visiting the website.  I just signed my son up for it!

Earlier in the week we worked on some of the LEGO pages from the 1+1+1=1 blog.  You can find the LEGO printables here.  My son did a good job of sounding out the words that matched the LEGO people.  He also did a great job of counting some of the money pages.  I can't believe how much he is learning in school!

Not So Super Books

I will admit that playing super heroes is not my cup of tea!  Nothing super hero related is considered much fun to me, but the boys love them so I try to ACT like I like them.  My son's love of super heroes started with a book that he was given as a gift.  The book was about Batman and we have not turned back since. I am not quite sure how many super hero books we have, but in my mind it is TOO many!  My older son's favorite, which is pretty much a regular each night, is DC Comics: The Ultimate Character Guide.

Since it is my son's favorite and not necessarily mine I try to focus on the good things.  Here are some of the good things...

1.  Alphabetical Order - This is like a dictionary of super heroes and villains.  Each super hero or villain has their own page and they are all in alphabetical order.  My son has gotten good at looking for super heroes based on their first letter.

2.  Number Comparisons - Each page has the super hero's vital stats.  My son likes to try to compare the super hero and villain's weights.  He has also learned the abbreviation for pounds is lb.

3.  He likes to read it - I find it hard to say no to books that my kids want to read.  

This book is pretty intense and not necessarily the best for my son's age, but he found it at the book store and either I had to buy it or Grandma was going to give it to him for Christmas.  I was kind of put in a corner.  There are plenty of super hero books that I don't mind reading though.  I am sure I will get to some of them, but for now this is what we are reading so I am sharing!

Happy Three Month Birthday!

Today, my little girl is three months, so to celebrate I am going to highlight the first book that I ever read to her!  It was Baby Colors by Rachael Hale.

Reading this book to her is great because both boys can get involved.  The first time we read it we all sat around her blanket with my kindergartner chiming in with the rhyming words, my three year old telling us the color of each page, and well the baby didn't do much at all, after all she was only a few days old.  This book teaches me a great lesson that even though I am reading a "baby" book the WHOLE family can still enjoy reading it with us!

Zoomer

My kindergartner's school has an award that they give to a book every year.  The students get to vote for their favorite.  A while ago he was given a book mark with all of the nominees for the awards.  I have told you how much I love book lists, so I headed to the library with my list of nominees a couple of weeks ago and searched for as many of them as I could find.  I came home with four.  I have a lot more to search for the next time we head to the library!

The first book that I read from the list of nominees was Zoomer written and illustrated by Ned Young.

As I type this right now I realize that I must have chosen this book first because of the cover. It is so appealing!  That dog sure looks like he knows how to have fun!  This book is all about a dad who is getting the kids ready for school while mom is away and Zoomer just doesn't cooperate with him at all.  Zoomer has "big plans" and "won't be going to school today."  

The first time I read this my big guy wasn't that thrilled with it.  I thought it was funny, but he said it wasn't THAT funny.  He still chose to read it again the next night and the night after that and after that.  He clearly likes it now and each time we read it we notice something new in the pictures.  He keeps telling me he is going to vote for this book...I have no idea when they vote and we keep reminding my son that we have only read 3 of the books.

I made a chart so that he can remember the books that he has read after we return them to the library.  Here is a picture of him filling it out.  He can give it a rating of 1-4 stars and he can tally up how many times he has read each book.  Since we just started this we are going to have to estimate how many times we have read the books.

It would be a lot of fun to just have the kids create their own award for their favorite books.  I may have to save this idea after his school voting is over...just because he likes one book doesn't mean it will win the majority vote!

Be sure to check out our book exchange post that we created with Zoomer for The Educator's Spin On It's Summer Love Book Exchange!

My Snowflake Baby

So far I have highlighted some books that I have recently read with the boys, but I think it is time for baby girl to get some attention on here.  On Sunday I was lucky enough to find myself alone with the baby.  She was so happy and so was I!  I put her down on her blanket and she tried SO hard to roll over.  After playing a bit and saying the same things to her over and over again, I knew it was time to get out a book.  This way I knew she would hear my voice, we could make some eye contact, and I didn't have to feel like a goof telling her that she is beautiful for 25 minutes in a row (although I still make time for that too)!

 I got out her basket of books and decided to read Snowflake Baby by Elise Broach and illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld.  Santa was nice enough to bring her this book!

She really enjoyed listening to Snowflake Baby!  Each page has a flap to lift up and under each flap is a fun word like "Brrr" or "Whee" .  Of course, she isn't too interested in the flaps, but she got a gigantic smile on her face each time I read "Aha" and "Peekaboo".  We were having a great time, but this very peaceful moment lasted about 3 minutes...enough to read the story once.  

As I started to read it again we were interrupted by my little guy sliding down the stairs.  He woke up from his nap and was ready to read with Baby and Mommy.  He plopped down right next to her blanket and scared the daylights out of her.  She started crying, he of course wanted me to read the book right then, and the dog started barking at something outside.  Luckily, everyone started to calm down and soon my three year old was able to enjoy the book too.  He pointed to the dog on the cover and said "Like Santa's reindeer."  Even if the dog doesn't fly away with the baby's sled like Santa's reindeer, I love when he starts to make connections between books we are reading and other things he has read about or encountered!  

Although the plan was to have some reading time for just the girls,  it was made even better because the three of us were able to share the book together!

If you have recently read a winter book and would like something fun to do to go along with it try getting creative and make some of these snowflakes.  We tried it and here are some pictures.  Notice the three year old is not in any of the pictures...he lost interest in about 2 minutes.  Mickey Mouse is hard to compete with!

Kindergartner's Snowflakes

Three Year Old's Snowflakes

My snowflakes.  I find that the kids sit down better and work longer if I sit with them.

My kindergartner got very creative and worked on these for about 30 minutes.  He told me I was getting creative too.  This is an easy craft.  All I had to do was get glue, cotton swabs, and paper.  You could even skip the glue!  Have fun!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Last week my three year old and I got out the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? by Bill Martin Jr. and pictures by Eric Carle.  This is a very popular book, so I realize I am not being very creative, but we are having so much fun reading it every day that I had to write about it.  The first time we read this book we had to read it six times!  This is way over my limit of 4 books at night, but it is so hard to say that we have to stop reading when we are having so much fun.  Now, we are still reading it at least once before nap time and once before bed time.

This book is great for kids that are starting to read along with you.  My little guy started reading along with me the first time and now he reads the whole thing with me.  It is catchy and he is now getting better at recognizing the difference between black and brown.  Both of my boys got these confused early on.

I have a few blogs that I follow and one is http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/.  This blog has a ton of printables and great ideas.  I went to the Brown Bear printables and printed out a few of them.  My son colored the coloring book and also did a small "puzzle" activity from the blog.  My kindergartner and I even had fun one afternoon playing the dice game (first to roll the same animal 10 times wins...I lost).

He was very proud of his poster that he made.  When he saw what he was going to glue he said in a real quiet high pitched voice "From my book!"  He loves to see the animals from Brown Bear.




We also made our own Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? book with ocean animals.  I had a pack of ocean animal stickers that we used to write our own book that included a pink jellyfish, yellow octopus, and blue stingray.  Instead of using a teacher at the end of the book we put my son's picture in it. Here he is making his book.

 Now we can read "Orange Seahorse, Orange Seahorse, What do you See?" anytime we want!

Winter Wonderland

We had a big snow storm this weekend and yesterday I woke up ready to go snowshoeing.  I wanted to do this last year and never got to, so we packed up the WHOLE family (grandparents included) and headed to the arboretum.  Unfortunately, our little guy slept through it all and missed our adventure, but our kindergartner had a wonderful time.  It was beautiful and it was wonderful to have that feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere for a while.

The arboretum has a gift shop with lots of BOOKS!  So, I stopped in and found a couple of winter books that I couldn't wait to read with my boys.  I read Winter Wonderland by Jill Esbaum with my older son before bed.  He gets to choose three books each night and this was one of his three.  I love that he is willing to try new books when I bring them home (even if they aren't super hero related).  This is a National Geographic book with terrific photographs and very descriptive writing.  The book discusses animals, winter activities, and holidays during winter while using words like astonishing, feathery, and vanish.  He enjoyed it and was very eager to point out that we have gone sledding, but have not gone ice skating this year.  I guess we will have to add that to one of our weekend outings in the next few weeks.

After playing outside in the snow yesterday we decided to stay warm today and make an indoor snowman out of paper plates and cotton balls.  My three year old is getting a little better at sitting down for art projects.  Hopefully, he will keep it up!

Inspired...

I have been inspired!  My friend is taking part in the 365 picture challenge this year.  She is taking a picture each day.  Now, I won't be taking part in that challenge.  Although, I may take a picture or two a day, I am definitely not a photographer.  What I am is a mom who loves to get creative and active with my kids.  I am also a mom who loves books. I have always been a book worm.  I am sure that it helps that I was a teacher too and I know how important reading is for our kids, but whatever it is I love anything that I can read; kids books, chick lit, classics, magazines.  I especially love when I come across a book list, such as "The Top 100 Must Read Books" or "100 Favorite Children Books".  But the other day I came across a book that I had never seen on one of the book lists that I have read through.   Now, of course it could be on a website I haven't looked at, or a blog I haven't read, but I asked myself, "Why can't I make my own favorite book list?"  And I didn't have an answer except for lack of courage.  So, I am setting off on our "Adventure in Reading"  where I am hoping to highlight a favorite book that I have recently read with one of my kids each day (365 books).  Now, this could be just like a bad New Year's Resolution that I give up on in two weeks, or it could be a blog that only my mom and husband read, but I won't know until I try, so here we go...

My three year old son is obsessed with sharks, whales, dolphins, and anything that lives in the ocean.  After scouring the internet to find Christmas gifts and birthday gifts for my son, I was lucky enough to come across The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark by Ken Geist.

This book looked like so much fun, and the internet reviews were wonderful so I decided to order it.  When the book came in from the book store I may have been more excited than my son!  I saved it until it was time to read that night.  Once my son saw it he was very excited to go to his room and look at all of the pictures.  You have to love anything that will get your kids upstairs for bed time!

Of course, this book is a version of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, but the main characters are three little fish and a big bad shark.  The first time I read this to my son, he absolutely loved it.  The pictures are fun and bright and the repetition of the story made him eager to join in and read with me.  We have continued to read this book each night, and each night we have as much fun reading it as we did the night before.  This book and my little guy's obsession with ocean animals has brought some new fun to our play time.

My little guy asked to get the play dough out.  He took the blue play dough that I rolled out and turned it into an ocean for his "Big Bad Sharks".  Here is the recipe for the play dough that we used from The idea Room.  We left out the spice (I like it better with) and added blue food coloring and glitter for this batch.

After reading The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark I realized that I have never read The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf to either of my sons.  How could I have skipped such a classic story?  The next time we go to the library I will be running to the bookshelves to find a version or two of The Three Little Pigs, or maybe The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.  You have to love a book that makes you want to read even MORE!