Sunday School on Friday – Daniel in the Lion’s Den

We were in a hurry this past Friday – trying to get out of town for the big Labor Day weekend (hope you all had a wonderful weekend!), so we only had a short amount of time to spend on our Bible story.
We read Daniel in the Lion’s Den in both of our Children’s Bibles (see them here and here), one in the morning and the other at nap time.
We learned this song with motions (from Hubbard’s Cupboard, click the picture to go to the site):
And we made a paper plate lion. I drew inspiration for this idea from both DLTK and Making Learning Fun.
You will need a paper plate, paint, paintbrush,glue, a triangle cut from construction paper or foam, googley eyes, and 6 strips of black yarn.
First, paint a paper plate orange. We are running low on paint, so we mixed red and yellow together. You could do different color combinations too – maybe yellow for the face and orange or brown for the outer edge of the plate (lion’s mane), but we made it simple and did orange all over.
Glue on googley eyes, and a triangle nose (we used brown construction paper).
Next, glue on whiskers. For the whiskers I put the glue lines on the plate so M could see where to stick the yarn pieces.
For a little scissor practice, I drew black lines for M to cut on the back of the plate, around the mane at about 2 inch intervals.


Ta da – our finished lion:
We also read a library book that sort of tied in to this story. It is titled How Loud is a Lion? by Clare Beaton.

This is a fun book that goes through characteristics of several animals, always asking at the end of each page, “But how loud is a lion?”. Finally, at the end you see the lion and he ROARS (very loudly at our home, but only as loudly as you wish at yours :) ). We discussed how lions are loud and have sharp teeth and claws that could hurt people, and how wonderful it was that God sent an angel to keep Daniel safe – the lions didn’t even touch him!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week {#2}

My favorite this week:

Clifford’s Manners by Norman Birdwell.  I usually do not like character books, but this is a huge exception.  M loves all things Clifford lately and this book about manners is exactly right for the “learning to be polite” stage we are in.  Clifford is helpful, polite, kind, and thoughtful in this book.  The only problem, and I’m not even sure M picked up on it, is that it states “Clifford has great manners, and that’s why everyone loves Clifford!”  Obviously, I love M even when his manners are lacking, so I’m not crazy about that phrase.  However, it’s easy to edit as you are reading it, and it is overall a great and very helpful book!
M’s favorite this week:

Tool Book by Gail Gibbons.  There’s not really a story here, but it is full to overflowing with tools, tools, tools.  Every tool a little boy could possibly want to know about.  And I have a little boy that wants to know about every single one.  From files, to planers, to hand drills, to hammers… it has a lot of tools!  It’s illustrated so well, and does a great job satisfying the hunger for knowledge that kids (not to be gender-specific, but especially boys!) have about this kind of thing.  A great, great book.  M wants to read this one several times a day, and that makes it a winner!
For more Books of the Week, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art – Paper Mosaics

The open ended art theme at Teaching My Little Bookworm this week is Mosaics with Paper.
M’s cousin S was over the day we did this. She is an artsy little 4 year old and I knew she would definitely want in on the action.
I set up a tray of colored paper cut into squares, as well as some templates cut from cardstock. Knowing that our summer days are numbered, I was trying for a summer theme so I cut out a butterfly, a sun, a star, and a beach ball:

I gave them each some glue and they got busy! (That would be a puddle of glue that you see forming on M’s beach ball. He’s crazy when it comes to glue.)
(The necklaces they are wearing were from their previous project – they spent the entire day creating stuff. It was great!)
Here’s the finished pieces:
We are planning to create a mobile from these, but it just hasn’t happened yet!
Check here for more great mosaic ideas!
Have a beautiful day!

Our Art Corner

The linky at Teaching My Little Bookworm this week is about art spaces in our homes. Really, if I participate in any more linkies, my entire blog will be made up of link-ups to other people’s blogs, sigh. Yet, how can I resist such great ideas?! They can’t help that they (the other bloggers with these links) are such creative geniuses, right? ;)

So, here goes… our art corner is mainly in our kitchen, although there are other art areas throughout our home. We have a small eat-in area in our kitchen and this is what you normally see pictures of when M is doing art that I post about. Here’s what it looks like from a couple of different views:

Yep, we hang his art up here. Not only is that a little tacky (although we really don’t care, except I have been known to fly around taking it all down before *important* company comes), but it’s pretty much all hung up there with masking tape. Ugly, ugly masking tape. This is one of the many ways I’ve changed since having a child. Once upon a time I would never have allowed my walls to look like this! But I can’t help myself when those blue eyes look at me and say “where can I hang my art up, Mommy? I made it just for you!” So, there it hangs.

We also have a corner of our living room where M has his “desk” with crayons, scissors, lots of paper, stickers, colored pencils, etc. He does what he wants here as long as it stays in this area and he uses it all properly. Like, for instance, smearing the glue stick on the carpet means it will be taken away. ;) This is what it looks like – pretty messy:

There is also an easel in the kitchen. It has a chalkboard on one side and a white magnetic board on the other. He has markers and chalk here, more paper, magnets, and more stickers.

We also have a homemade outside easel that he paints on pretty regularly.

I store most of our art supplies, paint, stamps, do-a-dot painters, various things to paint with, freezer paper roll (we use this a lot to paint on) oil pastels, modeling clay, glue, etc. in a drawer in our entry closet:

I have a big bunch of newsprint and our paintbrushes in the kitchen.

I have a lot more crafty, artsy stuff in our basement in another plastic drawer organizer. This is where I keep our occasionally used items – faom sheets, foam stickers, sand paper, glitter, feathers, colored sand, extra glue, pom poms, and all the grown up craft stuff for me. :)

And I have 2 more of these drawers (I love them!) for miscellaneous stuff that I just can’t throw away. This is where we keep cardboard tubes, jars, bottles, etc.

So, there you have it. It seems like it’s spread out all over the house. We have a tiny home, so we have to make do with putting things where we can. My dream home would have a room dedicated solely to crafting and sewing.

For more posts about art areas go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

ABC Book – Letter H

It has taken me more time than I planned to get back to our ABC Book, but I have finally finished the pages for H. I haven’t shown it to M yet, I’m planning on doing it with him during our normal Tot School time this week. So you are getting a sneak peek!
The inside:
M has really been asking for help drawing letters lately, so I’m going to start including some sort of tracing activity for each letter from now on. For H – our letter template, with dashed lines, and laminated so he can use his window markers to trace the letters, then wipe them off and trace them again!
Next, a Tic Tac Toe game using Hammers and Hard Hats:
Two songs about the letter H (sorry only one song is pictured, but both are included in the printable file):

An envelope full of things that begin with H:
Heart pattern strips to match:
And, on the back, a shapes House to color, glue, and build:
I decided to use velcro dots instead of glue for the shapes house, so M can put it together as many times as he wants. I also use velcro dots to keep all the envelopes in the file closed.
Click here for the printable file of all the activities – Letter H.

You can print as many pages as you want and of course use them however you want. You do not have to make an ABC book. :) If you just want the tic tac toe game and the shapes house (or whatever), print only those pages. You could make them into activity bags.
If you use any of them, let me know – I’d love to see what you’ve done!


The instructions for putting the activities together are written on pages of the file, as well as information about where the graphics were found, which sites I used for the letter templates or songs, etc.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 1

 

M just LOVES our flannel board.  I’m sure you already know this, because I’ve said it on this blog about 20 times already. ;) 

The flannel board has become such a big part of our day lately - “school” time and just playtime too – that I want to share a few things about it – including how I made our board, the different ways I make the felt sets, which felt sets we have, and how we use them.

Since we have about 20 different felt sets, with lots of ideas for more, this is going to have to be a series of posts.  I hope it gives you some great ideas!

To make our flannel board, I used a large piece of foam core board from Michael’s (2’ x 3’, I think).  Some people choose to use a heavier material such as plywood, but I wanted ours to be lightweight and easy to transport since we move it around the house, or sometimes put it away.  M was very small when I first made our flannel board and I didn’t want him to get hit in the head with something heavy, should he pull it over on him (our board is not attached to the wall in any way, it just leans up against it).

I bought 1/2 yard of blue flannel and attached it to the foam core board.  To cover the board, simply pretend you are wrapping a present, then secure the fabric to the back of the board with glue or duct tape.  I used white duct tape and it has held up fine for over 2 years now.  It is not very *pretty* on the back, but we never see that side and easy means more to me than pretty does for something like this!

I also found an 8” x 10” piece of corrugated cardboard, and used some leftover flannel to make a smaller version that we take with us on car trips:

The first felt set I made for M was a group of simple shapes in different sizes.  He was less than 1 year old and had fun simply manipulating them, sticking them in his mouth (bleck!), and trying to make them stick to the flannel board.  We had them out all the time and made fun geometric designs with them: I repeated the names of the shapes for him, and sometimes the colors, over and over while he picked them up and did whatever he wanted with them.  He knew the names of all the shapes pictured within a few weeks.  Sometimes we used them to talk about soft versus hard.

The next set pictured is what I refer to as our “miscellaneous set” – it’s a little bit of everything.  I found many of the templates in Flannel Board Stories for Infants and Toddlers, by Ann Carlson, which I picked up at our local library.  Some of the printed pictures were found on various pages of the DLTK-kids.com site.

These were just for fun since M was still so little, and are things that M found interesting – a car, an airplane, a school bus, a semi-trailer, a little boy with clothes you can change, and a couple of puppies.

This is a good point to discuss the various ways of making felt sets.  Most of these were simply made by drawing or tracing with felt tip pens right onto the felt pieces, then cutting them out. You can use all colors of felt-tip markers, but make sure they are permanent markers, so the colors don’t bleed if they should happen to get wet.

To make the puppies and similar picture-pieces, I printed the pictures onto regular paper and cut them out.  I then put a thin layer of white glue on the entire back of the picture and placed them on a piece of felt.  A heavy book on top made sure they stayed flat as the glue dried; once it was completely dry, I cut it out along the edge of the picture.  This is one of my favorite methods – it’s just so easy to do, and the felt pieces hold up very well.

If you find pictures online that you would like to use, another great way to make them is to print them out, laminate them, and hot glue a piece of sandpaper to the back.  Sometimes the rough part of velcro works too, but I have had better luck with sandpaper; and the rougher the better.  This is easy to do and the pieces stay in great shape, but they are not quite as much fun for little fingers to play with as felt is.

{I sometimes copy a black and white picture into my computer’s “paint” program to color it before printing it out to use this way.  Of course, you could also color them with markers or crayons before laminating them.}

Fabric stabilizer sheets also work for use on the flannel board.  These color well with colored pencils or crayons – simply draw, color, and cut out the piece you want.  The stabilizer is rough enough to stick on the flannel board by itself.

In the next flannel board post I’ll share some of our other sets, and how I keep them organized, as well as the different things we do with them!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week

I’m excited about the linky for weekly book reviews at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.  We LOVE books at this house!
I’m pretty sure this will turn out to be a review of library books we check out, since that is what we read most often.  Once in a while, however,  we might add in a book that M owns, because he has a lot of good ones that we tend to forget about!

This week, my favorite was The Listening Walk, by Paul Showers, illustrated by Aliki.  (Just because I’m not listing this as M’s favorite, don’t get the wrong idea – he loves it too!!)  The little girl in this book takes walks with her dad along the street, where there are many noises, and in the park, where there are fewer noises.  The book is absolutely fantastic at imitating the sounds – everything from crickets chirping to wheels screeching.  The book ends with an invitation to sit quietly and see what sounds you hear.  We play this “game” quite often, even before we found this book, and M loves it.  It is very relaxing.  And if you have an energetic little boy like M, you need some relaxing activities!  I highly recommend this book!

M’s favorite book this week has been The Rattletrap Car by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Jill Barton.  The story is about a small family (3 kids and their dad) on a hot, hot summer day.  They want to go to the beach and play in the cool water, but it’s questionable whether their old car is up to the task.  Parts fall off, which M loves since he loves all things destructive, and the characters get creative in replacing them (beach ball for a tire, for example).  It’s pretty funny and a lot of fun to read.  The words have a great rhythm and the sounds the car makes are fun to read and hear. 
Go here to check out what books other kids are reading!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Sept. 6, 2009

M is 36 months old.

Tot School is just becoming more and more fun (for both of us) as we go along. This week M kept saying “That was fun!”, “I’m having fun!”, and various similar exclamations at random times. I hope he meant it and wasn’t just trying to talk himself into it!

In winter we were in the routine of doing something with the sensory tub almost every day. I’d let him pick lentils, rice, noodles, or whatever each day and he’d basically play with his little cars or little people in it while I had a little Mama-quiet-time in the mornings. You know, time to pray, read, actually put two thoughts together in a row, or simply sit and stare at the wall. :)

For some reason I never tried hiding things in the tub for him. This post from Jolanthe made me change my mind. So I grabbed his letters from his See and Spell and hid them in some rice. There wasn’t enough rice, so I mixed the lentils and pasta in too. Who says the sensory tub should only have one sensory experience in it at a time?

This is how he started – looking for the letters:
But it quickly turned into this:
I guess old habits die hard. We did get a lot of rice and lentils and noodles on the floor, but it was vacuuming day anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, it’s always fun to give him the dustbuster and make him vacuum with it. The dustbuster could keep this kid occupied all day if the battery didn’t run out. :)
I made up some new activity bags over the weekend; I was really excited about them. First, sandpaper and yarn (I’ve seen this on a lot of blogs, but first read about it in The Toddler’s Busy Book, by Trish Kufner).
It was not a big hit at all; apparently it was very boring:
So, we did a little scissor practice. I’m still trying to figure out where I first found these pages to print. I need to print out some that are a little more difficult, because M did these perfectly this time! He just loves cutting!
Then we did this little book from the Mailbox (June issue, I believe). It is a book about a seed that gets planted, then sprouts, grows a stem, gets leaves, and finally flowers into a sunflower. On each page M had to pick the correct picture to glue on, depending on the stage of the plant. He did fine with this, but wasn’t really “into” it, and didn’t want to color it.
Next we played checkers. Rather, we tried to play checkers. I know, I know, this is way too advanced for him and I was way too impatient to keep explaining it to him. BUT he has been asking for a checkers game since he saw a picture of one in a magazine.
This is how far we got before we both gave up:
Another activity bag I made up for him was these foam shapes. I cut slits in them and you can fit them together to create… well a bunch of shapes that fit together. :)
He loved this activity, although it didn’t really turn out like I hoped it would. I think the slits should’ve been shorter.
Another activity bag I made him was this “Silly Critter” game from the most recent issue of our High-Five magazine. I put magnets on the back and we used a pan to match up heads, bodies, and legs to make “silly critters”. We both liked this one!

We used our animal flashcards from Target for a matching game with M’s little zoo animals:

He did his name puzzles with milk jug lids (always a favorite!):
This is our newest addition to the flannel board – 10 in the Bed (found here):
He LOVED it and did it several times that evening with Daddy. Again, I have to get a post done about how great the flannel board is and all the things we do with it. Soon, I hope!
We read this GREAT book – Clap Your Hands, by Lorinda Cauley . It has activities on every page that the child (and the mama) can act out. It is a huge hit!
Then, in keeping with the actions theme, we did these movement cards* from Sparklebox. I put them in our pocket chart and M turned each one over, then we did whatever it said. They are fantastic – there are ones for balance that you do standing in one place; some you do while “traveling”, like skipping; and some you do on the floor, like rolling like a pencil or somersaulting. (There were others, but they were a little advanced; I only printed the ones I knew would be fun for M.) I was hot by the time we finished and even a little bit sweaty I am embarrassed to say, hee hee. These will definitely give you your exercise for the day!
Here’s M at the end of his somersault (I did NOT do a somersault), I love the goofy expression on his face!
For more great Tot School ideas, go here.
Have a beautiful day! :)
*I got the idea to do movement cards like this in the pocket chart from somebody’s blog and I wish I could remember who!! If it was you, please let me know and I’ll add your link. I decided to use the movement cards from Sparklebox, but there were some others available too, and they were linked on the other blog, so I’d like to share them!!