International Space Station

Tonight I had read that we were going to be able to see the International Space Station overhead right before the kids went to bed.  I tried to remember the time and even thought to set a timer, but never did. Luckily, my six year old chose to read Little Bear tonight and while reading the story, Little Bear Goes to the Moon, I jumped out of bed, and forced everyone outside to look at the night sky.

At first all I could hear were complaints about how cold the boys were in their pajamas, but once we spotted the International Space Station moving across the sky, I didn't hear anymore complaints.  We explained to the boys that astronauts live in the Space Station so that they can learn all different kinds of things about space.  Once my three year old heard this he told us that he wants to do that.  I am not surprised!

When the International Space Station was out of sight we went in the house and I looked for our space book that describes the space station.  I don't know how I found it so quickly, but I did and the boys were thrilled to see the illustrations of the International Space Station, astronauts, and solar panels.

See Inside Space is an informational lift the flap book by Katie Daynes and illustrated by Peter Allen.  The pages in this book are sturdy, colorful, and full of all kinds of information on space.  There is a whole page that folds out to show the planets in the solar system, another page that shows a timeline of important events in time that shaped our knowledge of space, and even a small booklet that holds information on when to look for certain stars and constellations in the sky.  The back of the book also includes a link to more information on space.

After looking at the book, my husband went to the NASA website to find some more information and photographs of the International Space Station.  Amazing!

What a fantastic teachable moment tonight!

Small World

One of our favorite rides at Disney World is definitely It's a Small World!  Months ago I found the picture book, It's a Small World and was thrilled to pick it up and bring it home to my sons!  The fact that it came with a CD that includes the song made it even more special!

It's a Small World by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman and illustrated by Joey Chou is an adorable book.  This song was created for the 1964 World's Fair and is also the most translated song on Earth.  The illustrations in this book are just as precious as the dolls that fill the ride!  

It's a Small World After All! 

My three year old took everything in!

Baby Girl's first ride on Small World.  She looks a little antsy!

We read It's a Small World before and after visiting Disney. While reading we were able to find many of the same things in the book that we saw on the ride. There are magic carpets, a giant sun, a surfer, kangaroo, elephants, and of course lots of children.  This book is a great journey through all different places in the world and after reading it I guarantee that you will be singing the song all day long!

Here is an adorable It's a Small World picture to color.

Bats

While in Disney World, we visited Animal Kingdom and saw giant bats.  We learned some interesting facts about them too.  Did you know that a bat's wings feel the same way as the skin on your eyelid?  I didn't!  We also learned that one of the only reasons bats turn sideways is to go the bathroom.  Interesting stuff!

Here are some of the pictures we got of the giant bats at Animal Kingdom.

These bats were very close to us and in an open room.

Their wings are huge!

My three year old still thinks it is funny that they have fur and not feathers.

I know, I have posted about many of these Fall Scholastic Science Vocabulary Readers, but we read them constantly right now, so I couldn't leave out Fantastic Bats (it is perfect for Halloween too)!

When we got home it seemed appropriate that my three year old picked out the book  Fantastic Bats by Justin McCory Martin.  Fantastic Bats is a non-fiction reader filled with all kinds of information on bats.    The photographs in this book are amazing and so close up that my three year old thought he could tell if the bats were smiling or frowning!  This book has three chapters that give all sorts of information about the way bats live, eat, and look.  My three year old loves reading it!

Disney Bear

There is no question about it, Magic Kingdom is definitely our favorite park to visit while we are in Disney World.

We were lucky enough to receive the book The Story of Disney Bear: A Day at the Magic Kingdom from a friend that visited Disney a few years ago.  It has since been a favorite book of ours.  The torn binding is proof that this book has been read over and over!  

In The Story of Disney Bear: A Day at the Magic Kingdom, Mickey wishes for a friend to play with in the Magic Kingdom.  Tinkerbell hears his wish and with the help of some pixie dust, Mickey has a friend named Disney Bear to tag along with as he plays at the Magic Kingdom.  Mickey Mouse and Disney Bear visit all of our favorite rides at the Magic Kingdom.  They ride Peter Pan's flight, the Jungle Cruise, Dumbo, It's a Small World, and many more!

Disney Bear is now known as Duffy and you can even meet him at Epcot!

Many of Disney Bear and Mickey's favorite rides are the same rides that we enjoyed on our trip!

Our new favorite was the People Mover.  We had a great view of the castle on this ride!

We were able to ride the new Dumbo ride a few times!  At least one ride was in the rain!  The boys loved the play area inside.

My three year old was excited to drive a car on the Tomorrowland Speedway.

The new water play area near the Dumbo ride was a big hit with my boys!

The girls didn't mind riding in a "slow spinning" teacup!

Baby Girl survived her first day at the Magic Kingdom and left with a smile!

No matter how long you visit Disney World you are bound to miss a bunch of things.  When we got home and reread The Story of Disney Bear :A Day at the Magic Kingdom, I realized we skipped many rides.  Luckily, the boys don't seem to mind.  All that matters is the memories!

Kingdom of Color

We had a great time in Disney World last week!  I am anxious to share some of our highlights, but after a very late arrival last night and a very busy day, I will have to share our fun in tomorrow's post and throughout the week!

Although we are no longer in Disney, my boys are still very excited to talk about the trip and remember all of the fun we had.  It is no surprise that my six year old picked out four different Disney books to read before bed tonight.

One of the books he chose to read was Tangled: Kingdom of Color.  Tonight, he read this to my husband.  It was the perfect book for his reading assignment because he was supposed to find an adjective while he read.  This book is filled with adjectives!

Tangled: Kingdom of Color is a Step 1 book from the Step Into Reading series.  This book is filled with short simple sentences all about the colors that Rapunzel sees once she is outside of the tower.  The large font and bright pictures are very inviting to new readers!  Although my three year old picked this book out a long time ago, it became the perfect book for my oldest when he was learning to read color words in kindergarten.

Although, this book was maybe a little easy for him, he needed a simple book to ease him back into reading (yes I will admit not much reading was done in Disney).  Now if only I could have had an easy day to ease me back into reality, but I don't think such a day exists!

Little Bunnies

My baby girl loves bunnies!  Her favorite stuffed animal is a little white bunny that she got for Easter.  We do not go very many places without bunny!  In fact, Bunny has joined the family of stuffed animals that follows us around everywhere we go.  These animals are our other three children...as if we don't have enough to keep track of!

Little Book of Little Bunnies by Usborne Publishing is an adorable little baby book!  I love everything about this book from the durable, but cushy cover to the border of polka dots around every page!  This book has sweet photographs and illustrations of bunnies on each sturdy page along with a word or two to describe bunnies.  This is a favorite of my baby girl and my three year old right now!

Somewhere in the Ocean

Somewhere in the Ocean by JenniferWard and T. J Marsh is a fantastic counting book for ocean lovers!  My six year old picked this out for his little brother at the school library last week, and my three year old loved it.

Somewhere in the Ocean is a rhyming story about different mother ocean animals and their babies.  The book starts with one manatee baby and goes all the way to ten baby octopus.  Each picture has the number of babies hidden in it and my son loved finding the numbers, although some were hard to find!  We learned all kinds of things as we read this book!  Otters live in kelp forests, hermit crabs change their shells, and sea horses hold on to the sea grass so they aren't pulled away by the waves! The back of this book even has fun facts about all of the animals that are featured in the book, such as manatees, clown fish, hermit crabs, jellyfish, and orca whales!

My six year old sure knows what his brother enjoys reading about!

The Giant Jelly Bean Jar

Here is another great book that my six year old brought home from the school library last week.

The Giant Jelly Bean Jar by Marcie Aboff was a book that my son picked out for himself and it was a great choice.  This book is the story of a little boy named Ben who loves to visit the jelly bean shop.  Each week, the owner of the shop has a jar of jelly beans to give away to someone who can answer his jelly bean flavor riddle.  Ben is always shy and timid so he never wins the jelly bean jar, even though he knows the answers to the riddles.  The day that the jelly bean store celebrates its first year of being open, the owner decides to give away a giant jelly bean jar.  This time Ben is able to get over his fears and win the biggest jelly bean jar yet!

My six year old really enjoyed listening to this story.  He had fun answering all of the riddles and even wanted to make his own jelly bean jar when we woke up the next morning.  We stuck with a baby food jar, so we didn't have as many jelly beans as Ben, but we had enough!

Who Wants a Dragon?

It is so much fun to check my son's backpack on the days that he goes to the school library.  He does such a great job picking out books for himself and his brother.  There have even been times that he brings home a book and says, "I thought you would like this book, Mommy."

Last week, he brought home Who Wants a Dragon by James Mayhew and illustrated by Lindsey Gardiner for his three year old brother.  My three year old was ready to read right away!

Who Wants a Dragon features the sweetest looking dragon I have ever seen in a book!  He is red with polka dots and has an adorable face!  The book asks "Who wants a dragon?" but it seems that no one is interested in getting a dragon.  There isn't enough room on the witches broom, the knight is afraid of the dragon, and he gets the princess' dress all dirty!  Luckily, his mommy is there to cuddle with and give him a kiss!

Thank you to my six year old for always bringing home at least 3 different books a week!  He does a lot of my blogging work for me!

M & M Halloween

I don't know of many kids or adults who don't love M&M's, especially during Halloween!

We have had The M&M's Halloween Treat Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath and Peggy Tagel since our youngest was old enough to eat M&M's!

My three year old had so much fun playing with the book the other day.  It was great practice for colors, fine motor skills, sorting, and counting.

In The M&M's Halloween Treat Book is a book with Halloween illustrations that leave an empty spot for readers to place an M&M.  My son had fun placing orange M&M's on the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch, buttons on the flashlight, and stars in the sky.  The first page starts with one missing M&M candy while the next has two missing candies, and so on until the end of the book when there are 7 missing candies!

A fun size pack of M&M's was the perfect size for our fun.

He couldn't wait to eat the M&M's.

Here he is adding brown eyes to the Halloween ghosts.

This is the perfect book to make a small bag of M&M's last a little longer!

The Machine of Doom

My six year old is a huge fan of Skylanders, so he was thrilled when his grandma brought him a Skylander's book.  He wanted to sit down and start reading right away.



The Machine of Doom is a story of three Skylanders that are defending the Skylands.  Spyro, Gill Grunt, and Eruptor are trying to protect Skylands from the evil Kaos.  They must reach the Chattering Key and the Machine of Doom before Kaos does!  On their journey, the Skylanders encounter many of the same obstacles as they do in the game, and use their same powers.  Just like the video game, the book includes a lot of humor.  In the end of the book, Spyro, the dragon, has to decide what he will do with Kaos.  Spyro decides to save Kaos from a collapsing pyramid, but unfortunately Kaos is able to escape from the Skylanders leaving an opening for another Skylanders book!

This book was definitely the longest chapter book that I have read (and finished) with my son. The Machine of Doom has pictures, but not as many as he is used to, so he was really forced to listen carefully as I read.  It also helped that he had some background information from the video game.  We were familiar with the characters, at least, so the story wasn't as difficult to follow if it was all new.  My son really enjoyed this book and was thrilled that we actually finished it!

When starting this book with my son I wasn't expecting much!   Reading this book did actually accomplish something though!  I was happy that my son realized he could actually listen to a longer chapter book!  Reading this book was a win, win for both of us!

ABCs of Halloween

ABCs of Halloween by Patricia Reeder Eubank has been a favorite of both of my boys in the past few years.  I remember reading it with my oldest when he was learning his alphabet and now it is perfect for my three year old who is really starting to enjoy learning about letters!

There are many things to like about this ABC Halloween book!  

1.  We love the detailed illustrations!  There is so much to look at and look for on each page.

2.  Each letter is carved into a pumpkin!

3.  There are many words on each page that begin with the featured letter.  For example, the letter "P" includes the words plump, pumpkins, puzzling, pink, purple, pale, and perfect all on one page!

4.  It is a rhyming book!

5.  The back page and cover have a line up of pumpkins from A to Z which lends perfectly to singing the alphabet when you are done reading!

6.  It is all about Halloween!  Skeletons, witches, owls, and monsters are always fun!

This is My Monster

October is the perfect month for reading about monsters!  My almost one year old daughter agrees!  She was very thrilled to have found this monster book in our Fall Book Basket!

This is My Monster is an Usborne Noisy Touchy-Feely book that reads a lot like the books in the "That's Not My..." book series, except in this book it is the reader's monster!  The creature in this book is a friendly purple and blue monster! 

My daughter loved touching the furry ears and belly!

Each page in this book describes the monster's characteristics.  He has a shiny nose, big furry ears, he flies, likes to smell stinky things, and even has a tail.  My three year old loves that he eats socks and clocks, but the best part is the little button that you can push on each page.  "This is my monster and he says...Roar!"  Pushing a "roaring" button on each page keeps both my 11 month old and my 3 year old engaged through the whole book!