Books of the Week – Oct. 31, 2009

One of our very favorite books is Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. We found it at the library this week and have been reading it every day. We’ve had it before too – and we normally keep re-checking it out for as long as we can. I know, we should really buy it. It is “A tale of a peddler, some monkeys, and their monkey business”, as it says right on the front of the book. This is truly a classic and I think there are so many creative things we could do with this book. If you haven’t read it or shared it with your child, I highly recommend that you do!
We also checked out this fun little book:The Cow That Went OINK by Bernard Most. This was a recommendation from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and M loves it. He laughed out loud several times – big belly laughs – the first time we read it, and that definitely means it’s a keeper. This is about a cow that says “oink” and a pig that says “moo” and how they help each other out while the other farm animals are busy laughing at them (neigh-ha, baa-ha, hee-haw-ha, etc. – pure silliness). It’s a lot of fun, and any book that gives my boy the giggles is a favorite of mine too. :)
We also picked up One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey.This book features Sal from Blueberries for Sal (one of our absolute all-time faves), who is now a big girl with her first loose tooth. This is a precious, adorable story. This book speaks to children in their own language, and reminded me of how magical a time childhood is and how sweet our innocent little ones are. Sal’s loose tooth falls out while she is helping her dad dig for clams; she can’t find the tooth so she wishes on a feather instead, and even makes a wish for little Jane on an old sparkplug (you’ve GOT to read it to understand). This is just a very sweet story and I’m so glad we picked it up!
For more book reviews go here!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Penny Drop Game – motor skills and just for fun :)

This was one of M’s shelf activities this week since we were talking about the letter P.

I found an old egg carton and grabbed 18 pennies, one for each little section.  We took turns standing straight up over the egg carton and, with our arms bent at our waists, dropped one penny into the carton at a time.  The goal was to get one penny and only one penny in each section.  It is easy at first, but once you are close to the end of the pennies and there aren’t many open sections left it gets a bit more difficult.

You can see M does not have the proper stance in this picture. :)  That’s ok, I let him cheat once in a while. ;)

He had so much fun with this super-simple game and played it several times each day, even getting Daddy in on the action a couple of times.  Sometimes he (M, not Daddy!) even played it by himself.

In a week or two I’ll bring it back out and make it more challenging by putting “X”s and “O”s  in the sections.  Then each player will have to try to hit only his sections. 

Have a fun and beautiful day! :)