Kiss, Kiss!

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Mommy Books

Book #1

Sensory Play with the book Kiss Kiss

With Mother's Day around the corner, it seemed appropriate to get our favorite "Mommy" books off of the shelves.  So I went searching and didn't have to look too far for Kiss Kiss, since it is a "regular" almost every night!

When I was pregnant with our first, the teachers I worked with had a shower for me.   They each brought a book for the baby.  Kiss Kiss! by Margaret Wild and Bridget Strevens-Marzo was from a wonderful friend of mine and I am sure she would be happy to know that we read it all of the time!

Kiss Kiss! is a sweet story about a little hippo that is in such a rush to go and play that he forgets to give his mom a kiss.  He travels through the squelchy mud, tall grass, and bumpy rocks.  In each place he passes there is a baby animal giving his mama a kiss, but Baby Hippo doesn't realize that he forgot to give his mama a kiss until he reaches the leafy leafy trees.  Then he runs all the way back to his mama. 

We have read this book so many times that my three year old pretty much reads it to me.  

It was a beautiful day outside when my son and I decided to go outside and play with the animals from Kiss Kiss!  We were ready to go outside and get dirty just like Baby Hippo.  I collected all of the animals from the book and some tins and plastic containers to help us set the scene for our messy play.

First, he dug up some dirt and added water for the "squelchy, squelchy" mud.

We searched for a branch for the "leafy, leafy trees" and my son ran to the side of the house yelling, "I found it!"

We had mud, rocks, and a mossy bank.

When our scene was done, my son added the animals and played along as we read.

He loved the mud and learned to use the grass as a towel to wipe his hands!  

In case you didn't notice, Baby Hippo is actually a rhinoceros.  I can't believe that with all of our animals we didn't have a hippo!

My son did some "fact checking" as we played.

He wanted all of the animals in the mud, and brought Rocket out to "swim" in the water.

After we played with the animals for a good amount of time, we played animal hide and seek.  I found the zebra upside down in the bushes, and my son found the elephant buried in the mud.  We had a blast!

Reading Kiss Kiss! and spending some quality time together outside was a great way to start of our favorite mommy book week!

Check back later in the week for more mommy book posts including

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?

I Love You Stinky Face

If I Could Keep You Little

Chewy Louie

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books

Book #7

Chewy Louie and some Chewy Louie Paper Bag Puppets

Can you believe today is the 100th book on Adventures in Reading with Kids?  Time is flying!  Only 266 more days to go!  Oh boy!

Of course, I had to pick a special book for this special occasion and that special book is Chewy Louie!

Chewy Louie by Howard Schneider is honestly one of my favorite books that I have ever read with my kids.  I knew I was saving it for a special occasion and our 100th book was the right time!  I picked the book Chewy Louie from the library after reading The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.  The Read Aloud Handbook is a fantastic parenting read that I highly recommend!  It has a wonderful list of books that are "must reads" for families.

Chewy Louie is about a boy's brand new puppy.  When they bring the puppy home he eats everything!  He eats food, toys, and furniture.  Mom worries, but Dad says, "He's just a puppy."  Chewy Louie doesn't stop and nothing seems to help!  By the end of the book you are sure that they will have to get rid of Chewy Louie, but Louie starts to change!  "He is not a puppy anymore."  My boys really like the last page of the book with a bite taken out of it!  If you have ever had a puppy, I promise you will be able to relate to this story!

Since Chewy Louie loves to chew things it seemed like the right time to try out a paper bag puppet.  My three year old had never made one so when he had finished he couldn't wait to put on a show!

Before the boys started, I cut out some shapes for the ears, body, face, eyes, teeth, and nose.  I also got a couple of crayons, glue, and a paper bag together for each of the boys.

First, the boys colored the body, face, and ears to make their Chewy Louie puppet look hairy.

They also colored the noses and eyes.  My three year old wanted one red eye and one blue eye.

We glued the face on and put the teeth on the back of Chewy Louie's head.  We glued everything to the paper bag.

Ta da!  A Chewy Louie puppet!  Can you tell he loves it?

Oh no!  He ate our book!

He also ate the table just like in the book!

The boys ran downstairs to do a puppet show that was "very true to the book."  My kindergartner narrated and even used the word "horrified" to describe how the mom was feeling!  

I always like to be honest on here, so I will tell you that the boys were not thrilled to have to sit down for 15 minutes out of the day to make a puppet, but once they started they didn't mind at all.  Although I asked them to make the puppet, I did not ask them to put on a puppet show!  I am glad that they did because it was very entertaining.   The video we have will be something we can watch and laugh at for a long time.  

Sometimes a little persuasion to get the boys to do something can result in even more fun than I expected!

If you haven't been following our week of dog books, here is a list of the links to all of our dog posts!  Check back this week when we will be announcing our first giveaway to celebrate 100 days of books and blogging!

Harry the Dirty Dog

Dogs, Dogs

About Dogs

Dog's Colorful Day

Shampoodle

Bark, George

Bark, George

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books

Book #6

Bark, George by Jules Feiffer is a book that my boys love.  I remember reading it to my five year old about a year and a half ago.  He thought it was funny! I thought it was strange!  Reading it again, I still feel the same, but the kids love it and it resulted in a fun game of bean bag toss!

Bark, George is about a little dog named George who doesn't bark like normal dogs.  He meows, moos, and quacks.  His mom takes him to the vet and the vet ends up pulling a cat, duck, pig, and cow out of his mouth.  After all of that he can finally bark.  His mom is so relieved as she leaves the vet with a barking dog, but the end will leave the reader wondering if there is something else hidden in George's tummy.

After reading the book and talking about what might be in the puppy's tummy at the end, we played a game of bean bag toss that ended in 45 minutes of fun bean bag tossing with animal sounds.  All I did to prepare for this game was print out pictures of the animals from the story and tape them onto our bean bags.  

We got our bean bags together and our three year old retold the story before we played the game.

We called out animal noises and they had to grab the right bean bag and try to get it in the center of the game.

After doing that a few times, we ended up playing a game where the goal was to get rid of all of the bean bags from your side.  As we threw them we had to call out the animal sound.  The house was filled with the sound of giggles and screams of hello, oink, quack, and meow!  A video here would have been a much better way to share how much fun we had.

45 minutes later our bean bags had a different look, and the pig was missing, but we all had smiles on our face and that is all that matters!

I am amazed by how something so simple as a bean bag toss can get the family laughing and playing together for such a long period of time.  It doesn't take much to entertain kids, or their parents!

Only one day left of Dog Books!  In case you missed them here are the other books!

Harry the Dirty Dog

Dogs, Dogs

About Dogs

Dog's Colorful Day

Shampoodle
Chewy Louie

Shampoodle

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books

Book #5

Since we are dedicating a whole week to dog books, I thought our dog needed to have a special day!  I got the courage to take all three kids for a walk...plus the dog.  To those without kids or a dog, this might sound like an easy job, but if you have kids and a dog you know that this was quite a project for us.

Although the kids let go of the leash twice and Baby girl cried through most of the walk, I guess I would call it a success.  At least now I know I can handle all four thanks to my kindergartner who walked the dog most of the way.

There were many giggles on this walk!  The dog did a better job of taking my three year old for a walk than vice versa!

My kindergartner did a great job with the dog.  Our dog is small, but he is certainly strong!  My son practiced giving commands to the dog as they walked and by the end of the walk the dog was listening to him.  I could tell that my son was feeling very responsible!

My three year old liked taking Baby Girl for a walk a little better than the dog.

At the end of the walk the dog was so tired that my three year old was able to walk him without being dragged along.

 Later on, we gave the dog a much needed bath.  When asked if he wanted to help, my three year old replied, "He stinky alright!"

My three year old was a big helper.  He had fun getting the dog wet, but wanted nothing to do with the shampoo.

Here is our dog during the bath.  Poor guy!

After shot!  Nice and clean and not "stinky" anymore!

We ended the dog walk and bath with the book called, Shampoodle.  Shampoodle is by Joan Holub and is illustrated by Tim Bowers.  This is a Step into Reading: Step 2 book, so it is great for beginning readers.  The story is told in fun rhyming text and has a fun story line involving picture day with lots of dogs.   The dogs get their fur washed, dried, and styled, but the dogs better watch the path they take to get their pictures taken!

My kindergartner and I used to read this book all of the time.  When I got it off of the shelf again he was excited to read it and was able to read some of it on his own too.  This is another book he will be able to read to my three year old once he has practiced with me a few times!

This week we have also read

Harry the Dirty Dog

Dogs, Dogs

About Dogs

Dog's Colorful Day

Dog's Colorful Day

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books

Book #4

Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd

Oh my goodness, we had so much fun reading Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd and we never would have even picked up this book if it wasn't for a great book recommendation from one of our readers, Courtney from Miss Courtney meets Bobo.

Miss Courtney's Dog and Loofah Project

Check out her site and her great idea for Dog's Colorful Day which includes mini loofahs!  Need I say more?

Dog's Colorful Day is about a dog and his messy day.  Dog starts the day off with one spot, but ends the day with 10 spots.  He gets a red spot from red jam, a blue spot from paint, and many more!  This book encourages counting the spots at the end of each page.  I appreciate the page where Dog has all 10 spots and the numbers 1-10 are written at the bottom.  My three year old loved pointing to each number and counting to 10.  At the end of the book, Dog gets a bath and has only one spot left, the black spot that is always on his ear!

This is one of those books that we read and immediately after reading it my three year old is ready to do a project to go along with it!

The night before reading this book to the boys, I traced Dog from the story and printed out MANY copies because I knew my three year old would not make just one Dog!  I put out an paint filled egg carton with each of the 10 colors in the story.  I added some other options for spot making too.

My kindergartner started off with a choice of stickers, dot painters, or paint with a stencil brush.  He chose the stencil brush and put one dot of each color on Dog, just like in the book.

My three year old chose the dot painters.  We had many blue spotted dogs by the end of the morning!  

Next, he chose our home made circle stamp.

I had my kindergartner make up an addition equation with his picture.  He chose to use stickers on this picture.  Dog started off with 2 spots, 4 more fell on him.  He has 6 spots now.  My son wrote 2+4=6.

Before nap time, my three year old and I played a number matching game similar to our 10 Little Rubber Ducks project.  I traced a quarter 10 times on Dog and wrote the numbers inside each circle.  Then I cut out a circle of each color and wrote the corresponding number from the book on each one.

As we read the story, he found the correct color spot and matched it to the same number on Dog.  He was very proud of himself!  

Yes, my three year old wore his swimming shorts and shirt all day!  Maybe he was planning on swimming in the rain puddles!

Our kitchen table was covered with over 10 Dog paintings this morning.  The boys had fun and got a little messy too!  Dogs Colorful Day was a great addition to our Dog Week!  Thanks again to Miss Courtney and her great recommendation!

Here are some of our other books from Dog Week.

Harry the Dirty Dog

Dogs, Dogs

About Dogs

Shampoodle

Bark, George

Chewy Louie

About Dogs

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books
Book #3

My kindergartner enjoys reading, but sometimes gets tired if he is reading a book to me all by himself.  For that reason I love these We Both Read books!

I found out about these books through a literacy meeting for parents when my son started school.  I was so excited about the fact that he was going to be learning to read this year that I had to go online and order a few.  We started reading About Dogs at the beginning of the year, but he was too frustrated so I put it away.  We took it off of the shelf about a week ago and now it is too easy for him to read.   We talked about how much he has learned this year and I could tell he was really proud of himself!

We Both Read Books give adults a page to read and after they read, the kids get a chance to read.  In the K-1 level the children are reading mostly sight words.  If there is a word that is unfamiliar it is typed in bold on the adult page, and then the child reads it again on the next page.

About Dogs is by Bruce Johnson and Sindy McKay.  This book is a non-fiction book with great photographs that show a variety of dogs.  About Dogs goes into how dogs are different from each other, how they can be used to help people, and what they like to do.

Since this book had many sight words, I decided to have my son play with the word "dog" and see what words he could make by switching the letters.  I got out the magnetic letters, but my three year old was more interested in those.  My kindergartner only wanted his pencil and the paper.

I traced 12 dog bones onto some handwriting paper so he could write each new word in a dog bone.

We changed, added, or took a letter away each time we made a new word.  Our playing with words path looked like this

dog, log, hog, hug, hut, hot, hat, bat, bath, path, pat, pet

My big guy looks very serious here, but he was very interested in this activity and thought it was funny that I made him guess the last word.  He loved that we changed the word dog to the word pet while we played.  He also loved that by working so hard at the table I gave him a reward star on our favorite iPad app called iAllowance.  When he gets home from school he will be able to use that hard earned star and a few other stars to play his favorite video game.  

Our Other Favorite Dog Books

Harry the Dirty Dog

Dogs, Dogs

Dogs, Dogs

A Week's Worth of Our Favorite Dog Books
Book #2

My son gets a book sent home from school for reading fluency every week.  He has really gotten used to these and now that it is nearing the end of the year I think it is important that we continue to read these throughout the summer.  The books that are sent from school are just the right challenge for him so I am on a mission to search for books that include easy text, but include some difficult words too.

Dogs, Dogs by Michelle Nelson-Schmidt is a great book for my kindergartner to sound out words, read sight words, and build his reading confidence.  Dogs, Dogs is a picture book that uses words like fast, little, fat, pretty, and stubborn to describe all sorts of dogs.  Each page has two rhyming sentences describing each dog.  The adjectives that are in the sentences are also printed out in a larger text on the same page.  My kindergartner loved the last page with a "mirror" so he could see what he looks like as a dog.  Michelle Nelson-Shcmidt has also written Cats, Cats and has some adorable dog coloring books!  Check out her website www.michellepaints.com!

The first time we read Dogs, Dogs my kindergartner was able to read almost the whole thing by himself.  Of course, there were words like stubborn, chum, and shivering that he had a hard time reading or didn't know what they meant, but I was very happy to have found a book that after a few more practice reads he will be able to read independently.  This is also a fun book to read to my three year old.  Even better...my kindergartner can read it to my three year old!

For our project today I was able to have my kindergartner get involved with some writing and my three year old got to practice his scissor skills.  The finished project is a fun collaborative dog collage!

First, I cut out a bunch of colorful dog bones.  My son's job was to write down words he thinks of when he hears the word dog.

He wrote the words on the bones.  Sometimes he sounded them out on his own.  Other times he wanted help.

When he ran out of ideas he used the book Dogs, Dogs to help.  All of the adjectives in the book helped him a lot!  He wrote down words like fast, hairy, and stinky.

He glued them around a large sheet of paper to make the frame of the boys' dog collage. When he was done he practiced reading the words that he had used to describe dogs.

Later on, my three year old searched for pictures of dogs in magazines.  We get lots of kids magazines sent to our house and save them for this purpose.  Each time he found a picture he would yell, "I found one!"

He cut them out while I helped him hold the paper.  He got better and better with each picture and was so proud of himself.  He kept saying, "I did it!"

When he decided he had enough pictures of dogs he glued them inside his brother's frame.

He really enjoyed the process of this project.  We moved around the table cutting, placing pictures, and gluing.  I have noticed that if our art projects have different "stations" they seem to last longer than those that don't.  Three year olds love to move!

We hung up our picture in the family room and my three year old said, "It's beautiful."

After hanging it up my son needed to add dog stickers to it, so it came back down.  Sometimes our projects are never ending!  

Both my boys enjoyed this project and I will definitely be doing another one of these collages soon.  We found lots of pictures of elephants while we were searching for dogs, so maybe elephants will be next!

For more dog books check out

Harry the Dirty Dog

About Dogs

Dog's Colorful Day

Shampoodle

Bark, George