Learning by Heart – May 13, 2011

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

  Mother’s Day 2011
This was taken at the end of the day – I look worn out and
M looks ready to go. :)  That is usually how it is around here! 
I normally wouldn’t post a picture of myself with glasses on (I so dislike how I look in them), but I have to be in SOME pictures on here!  It’s my blog! :)

~M is 4.5 years old~

Literacy

M continues to love poems and these sequencing cards are a great activity.  He can do these all on his own, as long as I separate them into groups for him (one paperclip of cards for each poem): 

His homemade puppet theater (a tension rod in a doorway with a blanket thrown over the top) has been seeing more action lately, and we made these great little stick puppets for The Three Bears.  This is a fun way of doing more story sequencing and mom and dad get a cute little show to watch. ;) 

And M wants to learn to read.  You can read more about that in this post.

 

Science – Dinosaurs!

M loves the little dinosaur fossil eggs you chisel apart in order to find the bones.  He’s done many, many of these over the winter and early spring.  You can find them at Michael’s as well as Dollar Tree. See the little hammer lying on the table?  That quickly got set aside, and M began using his “real”, big hammer.  This kid is all about action, not patience.

     This particular one is an Ankylosaurus.  For each dino he’s unearthed and put together, we’ve looked for a book to learn a bit more about it.  I can’t remember the names of the books, but there are a ton of dino books out there (on the odd chance you haven’t noticed)!

 

Fine Motor Skills, Practical Life, and Misc.

After seeing this post over at My Montessori Journey, I thought it would be fun to set something similar out for M.  I found simple step-by-step tutorials for drawing a bird and a dog (look towards the bottom of the web page for the dog), and made instruction cards for M.  He wasn’t as eager to do this as I imagined he would be, and that was fine.  I don’t want to inhibit his own imaginative drawings by making him think things have to be drawn in a certain way.  However, I did enjoy seeing how he was able to go from step to step in order.  Here are the cards (I had each set on a ring):
And here are M’s finished drawings: Are these not absolutely adorable?!  :)  He said, “look at my chicken!” – I think he surprised himself, haha.  I have to say I like his chicken better than the bird he was trying to draw. :)

 

M loves to watch me use my sewing machine.  It is an event, let me tell you.  He anticipates it, watches every move, tries to figure out exactly how it works, and begs for more when I’m finished.  Sometimes I think he’s going to break into applause.  Part of it is his inclination towards all things mechanical, but part of it is just a love of the idea that something new can be created.  So I set out a simple embroidery hoop, some muslin, and a little yarn for him.  He wanted to sew a picture, so we started with a smiley face.  He learned to backstitch in order to create a line of stitches (although not perfectly, as you can see!), and overall really enjoyed this.

 

 

May Day meant a little flower crown for the statue of Mary in our garden.  I used some leftover flowers from a lei, cut a crown shape out, and let M staple the flowers on.  He LOVES the stapler (totally supervised, don’t worry!). 

 Ok, I guess the garden needs a little work.

It’s a little big.

We read two beautifully written and illustrated books about Mary:

 

 

Art

Here’s a look at M’s Art Box for spring (which has recently changed into an Art Cart – more on that later).  It was full of things to make flowers and butterflies: 

Here’s a bit of his artwork: 

 
And, my favorite, a ribbon and flower collage on contact paper for Mother’s Day. :) 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

 

Craft Time – Pretty Patterns for Mother’s Day

Wow, can you believe Mother’s Day is just a few days away? 

Over the weekend we made some cute flower magnets for M’s grandmothers. 

This craft was inspired one Sunday morning at IHOP (International House of Pancakes – yum, yum, yum!).  On the walls, there were framed papers, with egg-shapes cut from them, and patterned paper underneath, making pretty Easter eggs. 

With quick help from photo-shop, here’s an idea of what they looked like:Anyway, I really loved these, and tucked the idea into that little craft area of my brain.  When I saw a pack of pretty spring-themed scrapbooking paper at Target for 50 cents, I knew just what we would do with it.

However, it all turned out differently than the plan in my mind.  Doing the cut-out presented more of a challenge for M than I expected, and it looked more like a card than a piece of artwork.  We will probably do something along those lines sometime, but for now we modified the plans as follows…

Supplies: White cardstock, colored cardstock (we used yellow), marker, something to make a large circle and a small circle (lids), simple cardstock flower template, foam sheets or scraps, scissors, glue on a saucer, small paint roller, patterned paper cut into squares or small rectangles.  There was no measuring for this – I just snipped a few strips of paper into pieces.  If you want to make these into magnets, you’ll need magnets too.  I usually have a roll of magnetic tape from Walmart on hand.

Pour some glue onto your saucer, water it down a tiny bit, then use the roller to cover your white cardstock with a thin layer of glue:

Then, begin covering the cardstock with pieces of patterned papers; some will need to overlap in order to completely cover the paper:
                        look at those sweet baby hands!

 

Once your cardstock is covered, roll another layer of glue on top: 

While that’s drying, draw one large circle for each flower you are making on your colored cardstock, and cut them out: (M has 4 pairs of scissors, but couldn’t find any of them, and was allowed to use my sharp ones under close supervision.)

Draw small circles on foam (M picked pink) and cut them out too: 

Once your paper-covered cardstock is dry, use a template, or freehand draw two simple flowers: 

Cut them out. You will need the sharp scissors for this:

Dot some glue in the center of a large circle:

Pop on a cut out flower, dot it with glue in the center:

And stick on a foam circle:

We trimmed the yellow circles a little bit, and put magnets on the back, and now we have pretty magnets for Grandma’s and Nama’s refrigerators. :)     I love the variety of textures used on these (see the glitter and glossy spots?)!  Using fabric scraps instead of scrapbooking paper could add even more texture!

 

Some other ideas for Mother’s Day…

Paper plate and tissue paper flower suncatchers:

Foam mosaic flowers (or any shape mama likes): M made these for Easter when he was 2 years old (pre-blog).  I cut the cross and flower out, gave him scissors and strips of foam to cut the tiles, and he glued them on.  I still love these.  I put a little magnet on the back and they’ve been on our fridge ever since.  It would be fun to revisit this project now that he’s twice as old. :)  I think these would be perfect for Mother’s Day too!  And super-easy for just about any child to do.

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Bookmarks – A Simple Mother’s Day Gift

   M made these sweet bookmarks for his grandmothers this  morning.  I have to admit, the main reason I wanted to make something like this is because I am in love with my new laminator. :)

I cut out some 2 1/2" x 8" rectangles with my scalloping scissors, gave him some crayons, and he drew pictures on one side of each bookmark.
I pressed some lilacs earlier in the week.  To do this, I simply picked a handful of small blooms, cut the pointy part on the back off, sandwiched them between two pieces of wax paper and put two heavy dictionaries on top.  (We tried dandelions, but they just didn’t work as well as the lilacs.)

On the other side of each bookmark, I put 5 or 6 tiny dots of glue and M carefully placed a flower on each one.If we do this again, I’ll use glue dots… the glue made the lilacs turn a little brown.

He drew stems for the flowers,then I inked his thumb and he made thumprints for the leaves.  :)

I laminated them and cut them out while he watched.  I think we are both in love with my new laminator. :)
They are so cute, I’m going to have him make one for me too. ;) 

Have a beautiful day! :)