Books of the Week – Bunny Theme

 
Early on this week I realized we were reading an unusually large number of books containing rabbits… I’m not sure how this happened, except it started with Peter Rabbit a little before Easter and then the books just… multiplied.  Not altogether unlike rabbits themselves do. Thank goodness these are only books, not real rabbits. ;) 
So, we ran with the theme, and did some fun bunny activities and crafts that I’ll be sharing in an upcoming Preschool Corner post.
However, for now, I want to share an amazing find that we came across at our library: The Golden Sleepy Book, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Garth Williams.  Now, I know that’s a bear on the front, and I’m not sure why since the two main stories in it are about bunnies; but this is the best bedtime book ever.  EVER.  It has poetry and songs and two adorable stories…
The first one is titled, “The Whispering Rabbit”.   It’s full of yawning, so your little one (and you too most likely) will definitely be ready to go to bed.  This sweet little rabbit (the pictures are by Garth Williams and are sweet and colorful and fun to look at) is yawning so much he accidentally swallows a bumblebee who goes to sleep in his throat.  He can only whisper as he tries to make just the right sound to wake up the bumblebee.  It’s such a nice story to read slowly and whisper the whispering parts. :) 
The second story is titled, “The Dreaming Bunny”.  This story also has great pictures, but a couple of the pages are quite long on text and short on pictures, so a smaller child may have a hard time staying interested.  However, it’s a great story about a little rabbit that appears to be lazy, but really just wants to enjoy himself and dream his dreams, make up his little songs, and relax.  As it turns out his slower pace of life allows him to see things that the other bunnies are too busy to see.  He ends up saving all the bunnies and is a hero who is content to just go back to his dreaming.

We also read The Bunnies are Not in Their Beds, by Marasabino Russo.  We’ve read this book before and I’ve enjoyed reading it again, although I do worry that it might give M a few ideas I don’t want him to have!  These naughty little bunnies keep getting out of their beds and getting into mischief.  Mama and Daddy keep going upstairs to send them back to bed, getting a bit more stern each time.  But these bunnies aren’t so easily stopped. :)  This is a super-cute and funny book!
To hear about more kids’ books, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Birds – Picture Cards and Songs

We are so blessed to live where we do… with almost a full acre’s worth of yard and an abundance of trees, we have many different little feathered friends. :) The pretty one above is one of my favorites (that’s a public domain photo, not actually one of our goldfinches, but ours are just as sweet-looking).  Additionally, we have a handful of trails near a creek bed in a wooded area to our north, and a small lake to our south.  We see plenty of wildlife, including some amazing birds.  The lake often has bald eagles near it and we even saw one on a tall pine in our backyard a couple of years ago!  This is all despite being pretty near a major highway, the one drawback to our neighborhood.

Now that spring has sprung the birds are out in full force and we’ve been learning a lot about these little guys.  I couldn’t believe when I sat down to make a list of all the different species that I came up with 25!  I’ve learned all their names over the past 10 or so years thanks to my nature-loving husband.  And it’s so neat and fun to share this knowledge with M.

Another post about all our little bird-study activities will be coming soon (I hope!), but for now I wanted to share with you some little cards I’ve made.  These are the 25 species of birds we’ve encountered in our own yard or within a mile of our home.  I’m sure there are others, but really 25 is enough, don’t you think?  These could be used as Montessori 3-part cards if you made two copies of each.  They’d also be great for a matching game or “go fish” type card game.  We are using them simply to learn their names and talk about them.   And as long as I have them made, I might as well share them, right? :)  Click on the picture to go to the download page:

One of our favorite activities has been learning the various bird songs.  I’ve made a list at enature.com of all 25 species… we use the list to learn more about each bird and most have an audio file to listen to the sounds and songs of each bird.  I’ve found it fascinating and M seems to really enjoy it too!  The link is here, and you’ll need to use BirdCards9 as the user name and blogger as the password. Along the top of the page (about an inch down from the top) you'll see a menu bar; under "Local Nature" click on "Personal Wildlife List" to go to the list I created.  Any questions or problems, contact me!  You'll need to click on the birds and then you'll see a yellow button labeled "listen".  Click on this to hear each bird!

If you use these and blog about them, please include a link back here.
Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – A Century Turns by William J. Bennett

This is, without a doubt, the best political history of recent times that I’ve read. 
A Century Turns is a detailed chronology of the past two decades, from 1998 and the election of George H. W. Bush up to the recent election of Barack Obama.  I have lived this historical time, yet never have I understood it as thoroughly as I do now, thanks to Bill Bennett.
Not only is this book about politics, it’s about popular culture and world events… and how all of it has influenced our nation and brought us to where we are today.  Bennett, a known conservative, does an admirable job of providing an objective point of view when discussing events.  His opinion, when shared, is stated as such, and differing opinions are explained and respected as well.  The narration of events is peppered with Bennett’s personal anecdotes (he was closely involved with the major players in many events), which makes the book highly enjoyable.
This would work well as a history textbook (if only my high school history texts had been as interesting and compelling as this one!); at the very least it can be used as an extremely detailed chronological timeline of this period. 
I’m recommending this book to everyone I know.  Bennett has fascinated me with the history of my own time, and I am very grateful. 
Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

The Art Box – April 12, 2010

 The Art Box stayed pretty much the same this past week as it was the previous week (lazy mama syndrome), with the addition of some stickers and a wooden caboose to go with the train M has been putting together.

M needs a kick in the pants.  Or something.  He has been following me around for the past week saying “what can I do?  Can I watch TV? (no)  I can’t think of anything to dooo… whine, whine, whine.”  I’m pretty fed up with it.  He is suddenly not interested in even looking through his art box, unless it’s as a final resort to tackle the boredom. 

Anyway, this is all just to say what was done here was done only half-heartedly and I’m thinking of taking the art box away for a couple of weeks and simply putting out an art project (open ended, but not entirely child-directed) that he can choose to do or not do.  I am hoping to renew his interest in using his imagination and creativity.  My theory is he’s been sick on and off for the past 2 to 3 weeks and during that time has been allowed to watch too much tv and videos.  They can be a lifesaver sometimes with a sick kid, but they sure can become addictive and stifle the imagination pretty quickly!  I’ll still be doing my Art Box posts, but they may look a bit different for a couple of weeks.

M did enjoy painting his wooden caboose, albeit reluctantly:

 

He colored this coloring page with his sparkly gel pens:I love how close he’s getting to actually staying within the lines.  And I wish you could see how this thing glimmers in the sunlight!

 

M picked out two little pots at Target to move his sprouts into.  We planted some forget-me-not and shamrock seeds a while back and they are doing quite well.  It’s definitely time to move them to larger pots.  He decorated these first with some foam stickers:

Finished product (minus the plants):

 

He drew a picture for Daddy:

Then taped pieces of scrap paper to the back of it:

Then drew one for Mommy:He gave this to me, then very sweetly asked me to be his Valentine. :)  It’s a good thing Mama thinks you’re cute, kiddo!

Have some children’s artwork you’d like to share?  Link it up below, and make sure to include a link back here in your blog post! 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner – April 11, 2010

M is 3.5 years old.

Since we observe Lent, we waited until this week to do a lot of our Easter-themed activities (except for a few crafts the week before of course!).   In the Catholic church Easter is celebrated for 50 days, so we are just getting started!  We did not get through everything I had planned for this week because poor M is sick again!  I feel so bad for him… first pneumonia which we thought he was totally over, now what seems to be a run of the mill cold… but with a stuffy nose that won’t let him (or me) get any sleep.  Many of the Easter activities I had planned will easily fit into a spring theme, so we’ll just plug away at them as we have time in the coming couple of weeks.  Here’s what we have done so far…

Sensory:

The picture is not much to look at (I don’t know why I didn’t think to take pictures of the eggs open), but these are sound eggs.  There are 8 eggs total, with 4 different sounds.  M matched the sounds up with no problem and then opened them to see if he was correct.   I used egg noodles, buttons, sea shells, and erasers for the sounds.  There are so many options (coins, beads, pebbles, sand, etc.) and M loved doing these!  I’m tempted to keep this out on his shelf for another week and add in more sounds.

Fine Motor Skills:

I cut a bunny shape and an egg shape from some foam, punched holes around the edges for lacing, and then added in some pony beads.  M laced them, adding a bead in between holes.  He really enjoyed the change that the beads added to this activity.

I found this egg puzzle at Dollar Tree; it’s definitely advanced for M, but we had fun doing it together.  Each of the stripes separates from the others, and to put the egg back together you have to sort largest to smallest from the center out (if that makes sense?), then match up the little notches too. 

Math:

M did this Easter basket file folder game I put together for him.  You can find it here.  He enjoyed this, mainly because there are slits in the baskets that make little pockets for the eggs.  He had fun sliding them in, although he did feel bad for the zero basket which got… zero. :)

I also set out a dot painter page from here with tweezers and a small container of pom-poms:  M practiced one-to-one correspondence as well as his fine motor skills by putting a pom-pom on each circle with the tweezers (I’m really lacking in action shots lately, sorry!).  We are doing more and more activities like this with these dot painter pages.  After he’s done with the activity the page goes into his art box for coloring later.

Literacy:

I made some quick egg cards with letters on them to spell M’s name.  We strung them up with clothespins… so much more fun than simply placing them in order!  He has a somewhat long name with a digraph (th) in the middle of it; apparently we weren’t taking ease of spelling into consideration when we picked his name.  He had fun with this, but he’s not super interested in spelling yet.The lamb has nothing to do with this activity, it’s just a random coloring page he insisted on taping up right there. ;)

Play:

Of course we colored, “stickered”, and “glittered” eggs:

Then had fun hunting them in the backyard:

Then went to grandma’s house and did it all again:

This was the first year we really talked about what Good Friday and Easter are all about.   I wasn’t 100% sure that M even understood that people can die, and was a bit worried about questions that might arise when we talked about Jesus dying on the cross for us.  We tried to keep it pretty simple, but of course there were a million questions.  What with all the sickness going on around here, we had no activities to go with the real meaning of Easter this year, but our talks were quite deep for a 3 year old.  And I was so thankful to share the joy of Easter morning with M this year… how beautiful to hear my little child talking about Jesus rising.  :)

I hope you all had a beautiful week!! 

For more Preschool Corner posts, go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – April 10, 2010

 


Creaky Old House, by Linda Ashman
This is a super fun book to read.  It’s got rhyming, humor, great pictures to examine… everything.   We all love this book.  It was just a random find at the library, but I’m so glad we brought it home.  If you have a less than perfect house that is just fine the way it is because it’s lived in, I think you’ll enjoy this one.  M picks it every day and I’m always glad to see it in the pile. :)

Rabbits and Raindrops, by Jim Arnosky
I highly recommend anything written by Jim Arnosky – his illustrations of wildlife and nature never disappoint and I always find his writing soothing, calming… just beautiful.  This was the first time we’ve read this particular book and it’s lovely… little bunnies get out of a rainstorm by huddling up under some overhanging leaves.  Soon a hummingbird, butterfly and other small creatures join them there.   Honestly, sometimes I’m glad I have a 3 year old just so I can read books like this!  Oh, and M recommends it too. :)
Check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns for more book recommendations!
Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Mudpuppy Giveaway over at Counting Coconuts

I am loving this toy company and the constructibles that Mari-Ann is giving away over at her blog.  Check it out here!

Nurturing Positive Relationships and Socialization Skills – a list of goals, and some rambling…

I was asked to read Homeschooling for the Rest of Us, written by Sonya Haskins because many of my readers are homeschoolers. I’m working my way through it and have found so much great advice that I want to share some of it as I go along.
I am, technically, not a homeschooler. M is only 3, won’t start kindergarten until he is 6, and most likely will go to the private school associated with our church. However, I do place great importance on the fact that as his mother, I’m his primary teacher, his most important teacher at least for now. And, if you read this blog you know we do a lot of preschool learning activities. It comes naturally to me, I love doing it, M loves it even more… and it’s a way for us to spend special time together on a daily basis.
I struggle occasionally with what I should be doing with M. This brief time that he is mine alone… these short years of early childhood innocence… they are such a gift and I love being with him (that’s not to say it’s not a very tough job sometimes). But I feel the pressure of the clock winding down on us. What should my priorities be as his mother and first teacher? Well, love of God, knowledge of our faith, caring for others, manners… things that have to do with relationships. Strong, loving relationships are so much more important than academics at this age (probably this is true of any age). I admit, it’s harder work for me to help him develop a virtuous character, than it is to plan unit studies. (Evidently my own character isn’t quite perfect either – who knew? And still God entrusted this little guy to me; it floors me sometimes!)
What I love about Sonya Haskin’s book is that she stresses “relationships first, academics second”, especially for early childhood. What she writes about this topic is such an encouragement to me, and an affirmation that my instinct is right in this area.
What I particularly am appreciating right now is a list of goals regarding relationship growth (good social skills lend themselves to good relationships, right?) that Ms. Haskins provides early on in the book. For a list-maker, list-reader, and list-needer like me, it’s great to have something that I can refer to once in a while in order to make sure we are on the right track.
Here’s her list of what skills should be learned in early childhood…
“Students should be able to:

• take turns
• share with others
• use appropriate language
• use appropriate voice tone (yelling outside, quiet talk in side)
• say “please” and “thank you”
• praise others and avoid insults
• ask for help when needed
• stay on task
• look at others when spoken to
• communicate clearly
• wait patiently for lunch
• take care of belongings
• listen attentively
• resolve conflicts appropriately (no hitting, no biting)
• follow directions
• work with a team
• share ideas coherently
• understand age-appropriate social concepts
• help others" (pp. 45-46)
  

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this! Are there other things you’d add to the list? Let me know in the comments!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – Beguiled by Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect with this book… it’s written as a collaboration between two authors, I’ve never read anything by either of them, and I tend to think co-authored fiction sometimes ends up feeling too forced, with characters that have no depth.  However, I was pleasantly surprised with this book.
Rylee is a dog-walker for elite homeowners in Charleston.  (I love reading books set in Charleston, and this is what drew me to this book in the first place).  A mystery surrounds the area she works in – a “Robin Hood” type thief is stealing items from the homes of Rylee’s clients.  Eventually she becomes the prime suspect. 
However, there’s more to the robberies than meets the eye, and there’s more to Rylee’s past than she’s aware of.   The robberies and her childhood memories are intriguingly intertwined.
And there’s a little chemistry going on between Rylee and Logan, the lead investigative reporter for the case.  (Really, with names like Rylee and Logan you just know something’s going to happen, right?)  They aren’t sure  they can trust one another, yet they are drawn to each other and eventually work together to find the answers they are looking for.
I have to say, I guessed the antagonist extremely early on in the book, but this didn’t keep me from enjoying the chase and how Rylee and Logan solved the mystery.  The book was well written, and definitely kept me turning the pages with it’s fast-paced action scenes. 
Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for giving me a free copy of this book to review.

The Art Box – April 5, 2010

 
In the Art Box last week:  Easter cardstock shapes, glitter, pom-poms, buttons, markers, paints, glue, glitter pens, foam, watercolor paints, various papers, dot painters, markers.

M saw the glitter right away and was beside himself with joy.  Why does something super-fun have to equal super-messy?   We are still finding glitter everywhere.  I put the Easter shapes on an old pan to lessen the mess (or so I thought), and he started with the glue and glitterized them. :) 
I had included other things that I hoped he would also use to decorate these, but he was only interested in the glitter.  As you can see, one lucky bunny did get a pom-pom tail. :)  I punched holes in these and made a garland for his bedroom door:

I found a pack of small glitter pens in the Target dollar spot a few weeks ago and he loves them.  (I secretly can’t wait till he’s a teenager and I can tell his girlfriends how he loves sparkly, pretty things. Hee hee.)  An added bonus – they are scented!  Mmmm… very yummy!  He made very detailed pictures and every little thing was intentional and had a name.  I’m really finding this drawing phase quite interesting.  There were around 10 papers, all very similar to this one:

And here’s an easel drawing… a spider web!

He loves cutting foam, but he knows tiny pieces of it lying around drive me nuts, so he half-heartedly made these collages:

He found a rock outside one day and had to paint it (it’s on wax paper):

He’s taken to painting pictures from coloring books lately.  I hope this doesn’t mean the end of his free-art paintings that I just adore!  He was very proud of these though:

Halfway through the week I added small trucks and some dinosaurs to his box and he loved using them to make tracks:
Have some children’s artwork you’d like to share?  Link it up below, and make sure to include a link back here in your blog post! 

Have a beautiful day! :)