Play Dough Patterns

Play Dough Patterns

Well, today was leap day and we certainly took advantage of our extra day!  We have been busy all day!  My plan was to post a frog book and craft, but nothing ever works according to plan!  Instead we woke up and my three year old wanted to play with play dough right away.  We played for  over an hour. He loves to play with his ocean animal set. Today (and most days), I think his plan was better than mine!

We have been using the play dough that we made a while back and after playing with it, I don't know if I will ever buy another canister of the "factory made" stuff.

Pointing out the pattern to me.

While we played my son and I made patterns with his ocean animals.  The pattern was blue sharks and brown  starfish.  We worked on it a little while together and then I walked away for a second.  He was so excited to show me that he had continued on all by himself.  Our pattern making only lasted about 10 minutes, but that was perfect!  He felt like we were playing exactly what he wanted to play and I snuck in a little math!

Play dough patterning from another day.

We did a lot more than patterns so here are our creations.

Kindergartner's Creation

He continued on with a whole family.

A family of whales

Making bubbles in the ocean sand

To go along with our play dough patterns I made sure we read another ocean animal book.  Getting the little guy to read an ocean book is very easy!  We read one that we bought at the aquarium last year, but read quit often at night.  It is called Ocean Wonders by Dorothea DePrisco Wang and illustrated by Daniel J. Mahoney.

This is a sparkly board book with pages that slide open.  Each page that slides displays an ocean animal decorated with foil accents.  Before opening the slide there is a clue given and you can guess what animal is hiding.  My three year old loves the sliding pages and it is just the right length that we can read it over and over again!  I love that the back of each slide has a picture.  This book has most of our favorite ocean animals like sharks, whales, and jellyfish.  I wonder when the obsession with the ocean animals will end!

Finger Rhymes

Baby girl does so much more during the day now!  She is awake a lot longer so I have been playing with her more and of course reading more books.  Right now this is my favorite book to read to her.

Finger Rhymes by Usborne publishing is a book with six different rhymes and the actions that go along with them.  My daughter loves "Round and Round the Garden".  She giggles every time we trace her tummy and tickle her under her chin.  I love that the boys know these rhymes too and can play along with her.  The boys have most of these rhymes memorized so they can look at the pages and feel like they are reading the rhymes to her!

Leprechaun Hat

Three Year Old's Leprechaun Hat

I promised Little Guy that we would make a leprechaun hat after reading St. Patrick's Day by Bright Baby Books.  My inspiration was this article from Alpha Mom.  I had gotten the supplies together, but had to wait for the right time to make one.  Today was the right day.  Right before nap time we sat at the kitchen table and glued and glittered away the time!

My prep work was to gather...
1 paper plate
2 sheets of green card stock or construction paper
2 long strips of black paper about 1 inch thick, draw a buckle in the middle of one
green and gold glitter
shamrock tracer from ABC Teach
green marker or green paint
glue
paint brush
baking pan to keep glitter in one spot

Here is everything we needed.  I cut the center of the paper plate out and left tabs so I could staple the hat on the brim later.  I should have  made the hat a bit bigger.  Next time I will cut closer to the edge of the paper plate so it fits better.

First, Little Guy colored the paper plate green, but the paper plate could be painted too.

Then he painted glue onto the traced shamrock on green paper.

He shook glitter everywhere.  You can see from his smile he liked this part the best.

Gold glitter for the buckle.

We glued the buckle to the bottom of the green paper.

We made an extra sheet for the back of the hat.
While he took a nap, I stapled the green sheets to the tabs on the paper plate. and covered the staples with masking tape.

Happy to wake up from a nap and have a leprechaun hat to wear!

When he woke up from his nap and my kindergartner was home from school we read Looking For Leprechauns by Abby Klein and illustrated by John McKinley.

This book is a little longer than what my little guy usually listens to, but he sat still and listened to a lot of it.  He wasn't interested once Daddy came home from work, though!  In this Ready, Freddy Reader it is St. Patrick's Day.  Freddy wears green and explains to his sister that if you don't dress in green on St. Patrick's Day you will get pinched.  This leads to Max, the bully, causing trouble in class.  Sounds like a typical classroom on St. Patrick's Day to me!  At school Freddy's class reads a story about leprechauns and  the kids go searching for leprechauns at recess, but are disappointed when they don't find any.  Mrs. Wushy surprises them when they get back to their room and everyone is a fan of St. Patrick's Day again.  

Little Guy loved that his hat looked like the leprechaun's hat in the story and Big Guy enjoyed searching for the word fin on each page.  This is the second Ready, Freddy Reader I have added to "The Book List".  To read more about these books check out my Ground Hog Day post.

Our Marching Band

When my kindergartner was three his love of instruments started to show up.  He asked Santa for a trombone, wore a marching band costume everywhere, and loved to play the drums.  It helps that his dad and I were both in marching band too.  We started reading Our Marching Band by Lloyd Moss and illustrated by Diana Cain Bluthenthal around the time he was three.  Now he is playing piano and practicing everyday, just like the characters in this book.

Our Marching Band is the adorable story of a town full of children who want to start a marching band.  They each find their instrument of choice and practice through the fall, winter, and spring.  The adults all complain that the sound "annoys" and is "driving us insane" but the children don't give up!  By the time summer rolls around the band sounds great and the mayor wants them to march in the Fourth of July parade.  By the time parade day arrives the adults are proud of the band and act as though they have been supporting them from the very beginning.  

This book is a great teaching tool for learning what all different kinds of instruments look like.  The rhyming words make the book easy to listen to and the pictures are very appealing.  It will make anyone want to pick up an instrument and play!

I chose to read this to my kindergartner tonight because we spent the afternoon at the library trying out different instruments.  Here are some of the highlights from our afternoon.

He was very eager to try the violin!

Little Guy acted like he had been playing his whole life!  LOL

Baby Girl tried out the flute!

Trying out the cello.

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse

Three Year Old's Polka-Dotted Elephant

Oh my!  I think I have a new favorite book!  My son of course loves the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and for some reason the blue horse is his absolute favorite animal in the book!  Well, when I saw The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle I had to check it out from the library and read it to my son right away.

My three year old loved it.  He started reading it with me after the first three pages.  There is something so appealing about the simplicity of the words and the pictures that go along with them.  The artist (a young boy) in the book paints animals, but makes sure they are all colors that we don't associate with that animal. The rabbit is pink, the crocodile is red, and my favorite is the green lion!  By the end of the book the artist paints a polka-dotted donkey!

There is also a nice history in the back of the book about the artist, Franz Marc, whose paintings inspired a young Eric Carle.  I had no idea that Eric Carle grew up in Germany around the time of World War II!  It was fun to learn a little bit about my three year old's favorite author!  He even has a blog!  Check out his website here.

My son enjoyed making the animals from My Heart is Like a Zoo so much that I decided to let him make his own animal from The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse.  My son likes elephants so I found an elephant image that I thought would be easy to paint and printed it out for him.  I told him we were going to make our own polka-dotted elephant like the polka-dotted donkey in the book.

We painted polka dots with pencil erasers.  Each color had it's own pencil.  I used the pencils that don't sharpen well since I try to stay away from writing with those!

After we made the elephant, my three year old wanted to keep painting.  He painted for another 30 minutes while I made dinner!  We got most of our pictures from ABCTeach.com.

 While we painted we listened to the song "Red Bananas" by Ralph's World.  It seemed appropriate to listen to a song about a green gorilla while painting polka-dotted animals!

Overall, this craft was a HUGE success.  My three year old went to bed reading The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse and named all of the animals that he wanted to make again in the morning.  Now that everyone is asleep, I am off to go buy the book.  This is certainly a must have for our library!

Winter Friends

Today was one of our few snowy days this winter.  We took advantage of it and played in the snow a lot!  Tonight I let my son choose one of 4 snow books that I set out.  He chose Winter Friends by Carl R. Sams and Jean Stock.

This is a cute board book with great photographs.  Although, a little simple for my five year old, he still enjoyed listening to it.  Reading it makes you want to go take a walk outside in the snow.  Throughout the book you see different animals going to visit a snowman in the woods.  They also grab a snack of seeds or a carrot while they visit.  The book includes "Winter Friends" we are not used to encountering in many of our books; such as a cardinal, deer, squirrel, and many other birds.  Winter Friends is by the same authors as Stranger in the Woods, but is a much shorter version.

The website for Stranger in the Woods can be found here.  It includes some more fantastic photographs and activities that go along with the books.

Irish Flag

Kindergartner's Finished Project

My son loves to use scissors right now!  He finds a piece of paper and starts cutting.  I have had to be careful with the papers I keep on the table, so they don't get destroyed!  I decided to let him practice his cutting skills and make an Irish flag at the same time.

First, I got a sheet of white paper and divided it into three equal parts.  I also cut the orange and green construction paper into strips.  The strips make it easier for my son to cut into little pieces.

My three year old cut away.

My kindergartner worked very hard to cover the entire side.

Three year old's finished project.  We didn't plan on putting white in the middle, but he insisted. 

We read, St. Patrick's Day by bright baby books two days ago.  This book is a very simple board book with a picture for St. Patrick's Day objects and the word on each page.  It was a great way to introduce the boys to St. Patrick's day.  My favorite page, or course, is the photograph of the Chicago River dyed green!  Baby Girl even looked at the book with us while we read.  This is called a "Touch and Feel" book, but there are only two or three pages that I would consider "Touch and Feel".  The leprechaun hats and glittery shamrocks are the best touch and feel pages.  Either way, I still like the simplicity of the book and love that it gave us a good introduction to St. Patrick's Day.

While we worked on the craft I showed them the picture of the flag from St. Patrick's Day.  That page is right next to it is the leprechaun page and my three year old loved their hats.  He said "Want to make hat."  I think we will be making a leprechaun hat in the next week or two!

Skylanders!

If my three year old is obsessed with sharks, we can definitely say that my kindergartner is obsessed with Sklyanders (a very popular video game).  One of his favorite reading materials right now is Skylanders: Spro's Adventure Official Strategy Guide by Bradygames.  He got this book a couple of weeks ago and we have to read it every night.  I let him choose three pages to read at a time since it is very long.  He loves to read the short stories about each of the 32 characters from the game and then find out what they can "upgrade" to.  He has just recently wanted to start reading the pages that explain how to play the game.  When I read it to him it sounds like a foreign language to me, but he likes to listen!

Coloring Ghost Roaster.

Working on his title page.

To keep him busy this weekend, I had him start making his own Skylanders book. We had a hardcover blank book that I had bought a while ago and was holding onto for something special...well this was it!  He spent at least an hour coloring pictures of each character and then writing a short sentence about each one.  I did not help him spell, but I was so proud of his "kindergarten spelling"!   He even made a title page.  This will be a work in progress for a while and the best part about that is that I can tell him to go work on his book when he tells me he doesn't know what to do.

Working on his book is quiet, he can do it by himself, it helps his writing skills, and he enjoys it!  It doesn't get much better than that!

If your kids like Skylanders, check out a fun math game we played with them here!

Ocean Reward Chart

One month ago I started this blog with the book, The Big Bad Shark and the Three Little Fish.  Today is our one month anniversary of blogging so I am going to celebrate with another shark book!

At the library this weekend I found Shark in the Dark by Peter Bently and illustrated by Ben Cort.  I brought it to swimming lessons so my three year old would be entertained when his lesson was over.  He was so anxious to read it once he saw the cover!

Shark in the Dark is a story about a group of little fish that are chased around by a hungry shark.  After asking the squid for help, the fish come up with a plan to scare the shark so that he will never bother them again.  Their trick is very clever!  They all swim together in the shape of a whale and show the shark what it feels like to be picked on.  My son and I read it about 5 times at swimming lessons and another time before bed!

My son's love for ocean animals has offered me lots of inspiration, but I think his ocean reward chart is my favorite!

Adding a sticker to his ocean.

For this chart I bought a roll of blue wrapping paper and drew waves at the top.  After I cut the waves off, I had a giant ocean that I could hang on the wall.

My three year old has not been the easiest kid to put to bed at night, so we started using this chart on the days that he slept well.  For every night that he goes to bed easily and stays in his bed he gets a sticker.  We found gigantic ocean animal stickers that he can color, so each time he gets a sticker it really shows up.  He isn't ready for the structure of a chart yet, but this allows him to see his progress and make his ocean whatever he wants it to be.  We plan on using this when we are brave enough to start potty training too.

This idea could be used with green paper for jungle animals or dinosaurs, and white paper for polar animals.  You could even do sports charts!  When this ocean is full it will be fun to choose a different theme!

What Presidents Are Made Of

We enjoyed our day off today and made sure we fit a book about our Presidents into it.  I found this book at the book store a week ago and thought it was very different from anything I have ever seen about Presidents.  What Presidents Are Made of is by Hanoch Piven.  Each page has a picture of a President that is made up of different objects that represent their personality or events in their life.  Jimmy Carter's mouth is made of a ladder because he helps out with Habitat for Humanity, George W. Bush's nose and eyebrows are a hot dog and bun to represent the baseball team he used to own, and Andrew Jackson's nose is a boxing glove because he liked to get into brawls.

My kindergartner and I read this while my other son was taking a nap.  We didn't read all of the Presidents, but read many.  He was anxious to read about President Obama and enjoyed looking at the timeline at the end of the book.  I showed him who was President when I was born and when he was born.

"Mommy, I look like a clown."

After we read it we sat down and made our own portraits of ourselves out of things that represent us.  My son chose an upside down Skylander logo for his mouth (because he is obsessed with the video game Skylanders), noodle ears (because his favorite food is macaroni), and quarter eyes (because he likes to earn money by doing his chores).  My kindergartner thought that it looked like a clown.  Mine wasn't anywhere near as cute as his, but included a running shoe nose, bulls eye ear for my favorite store, and candy heart mouth for the family that I love.  When we were done laughing at the way each of our portraits looked my son asked if we could play candy store again like we did yesterday.  I love when my boys will continue to play something that we played earlier.  Anything that helps keep them busy is great!

Presidents, Teddy Bears, and Candy

Counting by tens to see how much we owe for the chocolate hearts 

Today was one of this days that the kids just did not know how to entertain themselves.  By the end of the day I was exhausted and had totally run out of ideas.  We had already made books, colored pictures, played Monopoly and video games, read, and I think it was only 2:00.

After my son's nap I had the kids set up a candy store with all of their extra candy from Valentine's Day.  They sold suckers, chocolate hearts, candy hearts, and teddy bears.  My kindergartner made the signs so we knew how much everything cost.  He didn't understand why he was selling teddy bears there, but I told him he would find out why later.

We practiced counting by fives, tens, and counting coins while we played.  My kindergartner wanted to be the store owner the whole time and my three year old and I were the customers.  We played for about 30 minutes.  It was a good change of pace for the boys and I was surprised when my kindergartner said he wanted to stay home to play candy store instead of go get a car wash with Dad.  Of course, I convinced him to go with Dad (I was looking forward to 20 minutes of silence)!

Before my kindergartner went to bed tonight we read The Legend of the Teddy Bear by Frank Murphy. This book tells the story of why the teddy bear is called the teddy bear.  My son was quick to correct me after we read it, "Mommy it was called Teddy's Bear."  It is amazing how much they can pick up from a book in just one reading!

This book includes the story of Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear on a hunting trip, the resulting cartoon in the newspaper, and the two candy store owners that made the first teddy bear that same year.  The timing for those candy store owners was perfect!

My son enjoyed listening to the story of Roosevelt refusing to shoot the bear and we both learned a little history while we were at it.  As I read he really paid attention to the story and the pictures.  I truly was surprised that my son said, "I like that book" when we were done reading! I thought that it may have been a little too long for him, but I was wrong...again!

I loved seeing his face when he found out that the candy store in the book sold candy and teddy bears.  He realized that was why I had him sell teddy bears at his candy store today.  Thank goodness for good books that give me some ideas to keep my kids busy on these boring winter days!

Pretzel Log Cabins

Pin It

Last night my son was very excited thinking about his three day weekend.  He kept talking about why we had an extra day off so we started reading a book about our Presidents.  While we were reading I got the idea to make a log cabin today.  My son made gingerbread houses like this at school.  I adapted the idea so we could make a log cabin.

I got everything that we would need together.  I used small orange juice cartons, pretzel sticks, graham crackers, frosting, and graham cereal.  Before they started I covered the orange juice cartons with foil.  I thought about using a half gallon carton, but we didn't have any that were empty.

My kindergartner started frosting one side of the cabin.

He alternated short pretzel sticks and longer pretzel sticks.

Deciding to use graham crackers or graham cereal for the house.

My three year old joined in when he saw what his big brother was doing.

My son decided to use the cereal for the roof and the graham cracker for the door.   We even added a chimney.

He wanted to have a man that could live in his house.  I suggested his Lincoln Log people, but he said, "He couldn't get in."  Maybe we should get the Lincoln Logs out later tonight!

The book my kindergartner and I started reading last night was So You Want to Be President? by Judith St. George.  I had this book from my teaching days.  This is quite a long book for him, but we read about half of it last night.  This book has some interesting facts about all of our Presidents and highlights the similarities and differences between them all.  

We learned that eight of our Presidents were born in a log cabin; the White House has a bowling alley, swimming pool, and movie theater; and the President gets to eat whatever he wants!  Some Presidents were trouble makers, while others were honest.  Not only did my son learn some things, but I did too!  We learned about the tallest President, the shortest President, oldest President, youngest President, and the heaviest and lightest President.  All of the facts are amusing and interesting!

This book is a more  difficult listening level than what he is used to, but he did a great job listening and we just stopped after every page to summarize what the author had written.  The back of the book also has a short list of all of the Presidents.  Our book is not the updated version so some of the things in it are not quite as accurate as they were 11 years ago.  I did find an updated version that includes President George W. Bush, but not President Obama. Either way, this is a great book, and the missing pieces aren't hard to fill in!