Books of the Week – Feb. 5, 2011

We read another Carl book this week – Carl’s Sleepy Afternoon, by Alexandra Day.  It was even more of a hit than our Carl book last week.  Carl is quite the dog – very adventurous and helpful and completely loveable.  So far we haven’t found a story about Carl that we haven’t loved or at least liked.  We haven’t read all of them though, so I can’t say for sure that they are all wonderful, but this one sure is!

 

A Far Fetched Story, by Karin Cates has been one of M’s top favorites over the past couple of weeks.  We read it at least once a day, and quite often it’s one of the books he chooses to look at in bed at the end of the day.  In my opinion, it’s okay… even cute, and sort of funny.  The real attraction (for me) is the artwork, by Nancy Carpenter – so interesting, and I can’t even explain why.  Here’s a note about the artwork, found in the front of the book:

“The paintings for A Far-Fetched Story are done in pen and ink with watercolor on Arches 90-lb. hot-press watercolor paper.  Each family member’s far-fetched tale, as well as a few other illustrations, are also pen and ink drawings with watercolor that have been color copied onto transfer paper and ironed onto white linen.  I used a sewing machine and colored thread to sew additional lines and add details to the linen paintings. – Nancy Carpenter” 

Interesting, no?

 

  

Our newest series of chapter books to read at lunch is The Littles, by John Peterson.  I remember loving these books when I was little.  I read them on my own in 2nd grade or so, but the vocabulary and story lines are super-easy for M to comprehend and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these as read-alouds for 4+ non-readers.  There are a couple of things I’ve skipped (which is easier to do with non-readers than readers, right?), that I felt were too scary for M (like a Little almost getting eaten by a dog, and that kind of thing, which some children his age are fine with).  The three books pictured above are the ones we’ve read so far.  Our favorite is The Littles Go Exploring – a story about finding a hidden room, going on a adventure beyond the Dark Woods, and looking for Grandpa Little who disappeared 2 years prior.  Super-duper exciting stuff! ;)

For more reviews of children’s books, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Candlemas and a bit of miscellany :)

public domain image

I love saying that word (I mean miscellany, although I do love to say Candlemas too, now that I think of it), but it’s not often that I get a chance to use it in everyday conversation. :)

I thought I’d quickly share with you what we’ve been doing in the way of faith-based activities.  This is a routine we’ve only just started, and there will be some adjusting, and perhaps adding as we go along.

At the beginning of last year we started going through M’s little Children’s Bible, one story per day, completing it in late spring.  We truly enjoyed it and when it was done I was a bit stumped about what to do.  Silly, I know (we could simply have started over)… but I wanted something that would be simple and easy to do each day, with the possibility of more involved learning and extension activities once every week or a couple of times a month.

I also wanted something that would keep us in line with the rhythm of the liturgical year.  I’m a good Baptist girl who fell in love with a good Catholic boy (and eventually became Catholic too), and I’ve been so appreciative of how the Church lives the life of Christ throughout the liturgical year.  None of this used to make any sense to me, but as I’ve learned about it I’ve really been drawn to the depth and beauty of it. 

My conversion story is probably not of interest to any of my readers, other than a few family members and possibly friends who have known me forever, and with whom I normally shy away from discussing this kind of thing (conflict has never really been my thing, and since my dad was a pastor in my early childhood, you can imagine there’s conflict surrounding this subject).  So, I won’t go into any of that here, except to say, one thing I love is that the Catholic Church has a 2 year cycle of daily Bible readings – including passages from the Old Testament or a New Testament letter, the Psalms, and one of the Gospels.  (This is not including the Sunday readings, which are on a 3 year cycle.)  So, reading through these passages daily, you’ll end up reading the entire Bible every 2 years.  The first reading and Psalm always relate in some way to the Gospel reading also, which is really neat.

Whew – that was more of an explanation than I intended, but I’ll let it stand. :) 

I’ve been reading the daily readings to M, from a “real” Bible, not his Children’s Bible, and he is doing just fine with comprehension.  I do tend to look the reading over first and simplify anything that might be confusing, or too mature for him (I edit other books as I’m reading them too; just because it’s the Bible, doesn’t mean a small child is ready to correctly comprehend everything in it!).  We usually do this as he eats breakfast and then we talk a bit about it while I’m cleaning up the kitchen.  It’s very simple and relaxed.  We are going through the Gospel of Mark right now, with all the wonderful miracles that Jesus performed – there’s a real “wow” factor in them that I appreciate so much, seeing them through the eyes of a 4 year old boy. :)

There are many special days throughout the year, one of which was this past Wednesday – Candlemas  - also known as the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

The Presentation of the Lord – public domain image

This was when baby Jesus was taken to the temple at 8 days old, and Simeon and Anna saw him and praised God for the savior He had sent into the world.  Jesus was revealed as the light to the nations that had been prophesied in the Old Testament.  So – in Catholic churches everywhere candles are blessed and a very simple tradition in the home is having candles lit all day long in honor of this important day in the life of Jesus.

 I love the peacefulness of lit candles

We believe that parents are responsible for passing on their faith to their children.  Our church does provide Sunday School, but I still feel that it’s important that what they do there is only supplemental, and what we do at home is the real foundation and formation in this area.

Do you make a point of celebrating your faith in your home? I’d love to hear and learn about your family traditions during this “ordinary time” of the year!

Have a beautiful day! :)

This post has been edited to add the following:

A commenter asked about finding a list of the 2 year cycle of daily readings.  The best I’ve found online is here:

http://wau.org/meditations/current/

In the upper right hand corner, below the heading, you’ll see the following box:

Click on the month you want and it will bring up a printable .pdf listing all of the daily readings for that month.  As you can see most of the months available in this list are from 2010, and the list is updated with the current month.  So… you will need to visit the site again in March to get March’s reading list and so on.  If anyone is interested in having the entire 2 years of reading laid out for them, you could purchase a Missal, which not only lists, but also has the text for each reading (these are expensive; we received one as a wedding gift).  Otherwise, many local Catholic bookstores provide small booklets with the listings for each year for only $2 to $3.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Craft – Cardboard Tube People

We made these silly and fun little guys a few weeks ago, and they’ve been joining us for meals ever since. :)
M actually inspired this craft by drawing  a face on a cardboard tube and sticking a big pom pom on it’s head.  Alas, that little guy has been lost, but when I found some face stickers at Michael’s I knew exactly what we’d use them for.

Supplies:Glue, pipe cleaners, pencil, buttons, large pom poms, cardboard tubes (toilet paper size), googley eyes, face stickers (or other items to make a face), and construction paper strips cut to half the size of your tubes, and long enough to go all the way around them.

I got the face stickers at Michael’s, but you could also use markers, buttons, and small pom poms for facial features.  We made our large pom poms (for the hair) from yarn. 

Wrap a tube with a piece of construction paper and glue in place:
Add details to the “shirt” with buttons or a marker, and add your facial features:The pencil is lying inside the tube to weight it down so it won’t roll while the face and shirt decorations are added.

Wrap a pipe cleaner around the pencil and slide it off.  This makes it “twirly” (and it’s just fun to do):
Poke holes in the sides of your tube, and stick the pipe cleaners in for arms.  After doing this I realized they would stay in better if we had threaded one long pipe cleaner through both arm holes, then twirled the arms around a pencil.  Our arms kept falling out, so I eventually put a dot of glue on them inside the tube.

Pop on the pom pom hair, and you’ve got some pretty cool tube people:

Give ‘em a snack:        
These guys are so much fun to play with! :)  It is especially hilarious if they run across the table, then lean over to look at the food on your child’s plate, and their “hair” falls out. ;)  Good times!

Have a beautiful and funny day! :)
 

Preschool Arts and Crafts – Valentine Suncatcher and Art Box supplies

Suncatcher Craft

Honestly, we are in some sort of suncatcher rut around here.  M loves hanging things in the windows “for the birdies to see”, (never mind that our stinker of a red squirrel has pretty much chased away all the birds and other squirrels – grrr).  But if you search for “suncatcher” or “sun catcher” (because I like variety in my spelling) on my blog I bet you’d get 50 hits.  Or somewhere around 10 or so, maybe.  But it feels like 50.

Anyway, they are pretty, right? :)

For this little craft we used black paper, tissue paper scraps in a few colors, a black marker, scissors, and contact paper.

I folded the paper several times and drew half hearts on the folds here and there: 

I always love to give M a little scissor practice, and he thinks it is so cool to open up the hearts.Last year I set out folded scrapbook paper with half hearts drawn on his activity shelves, and he happily sat and cut out about 20 hearts, acting surprised each time. :)  Oh, the joy that was 3 years old.

Cut a piece of contact paper that is slightly smaller than your black paper, and stick it on to the front of your paper.  Flip it over and stick on the tissue paper pieces. 

M wanted purple, but we didn’t have any, so I showed him how to make purple by layering the bright pink with the blue. 

When it’s finished, flip it over to the front, and hang it in a window. :)

 

ART BOX supplies for Valentine’s Day

Last year, M was still making valentines for everyone he knows well into March. :)  So I decided to get a Valentine Art Box ready for him right away this month.  I don’t really post about his Art Box much anymore, but it is still a significant part of almost every day.

(My craft/school supply room is also our exercise room.  So, yes, that is a treadmill that the art box is sitting on.  It’s the most use it’s gotten in months, hee hee.)

I spread everything out to give you a good look:In the Art Box: paper doilies, markers, regular and craft scissors, buttons, a variety of stamps (including several trucks to “man it up” a bit, hee hee), stamp pads, several patterned papers (the little ones on top are metallic and I cut them into smaller pieces to get more use out of them), watercolor pencils, pom poms, pony beads, glitter foam cut into heart shapes, regular sequins and heart-shaped sequins, googley eyes, foam heart stickers, ribbons and rick-rack cut into small pieces, craft punches, and glitter glue.  There’s also regular white and colored construction paper in the box, as well as glue and watercolor paints.

Let the Valentine-making begin! :)

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Is Preschool Necessary? (part two)

Part one of this post is here. 

Socialization in Preschool

What exactly do people mean when they say preschool is good (or even necessary) for socialization?  Honestly, it’s something I’ve had a hard time understanding.

My best guess is that people who speak of preschool as being necessary for socialization actually mean something like this:

• preschool can help the child learn to get along with other children (sharing, taking turns, manners, etc).
• preschool will give the child an environment in which to make friends his own age.
• preschool can help the child get ready for formal schooling in a classroom setting.

I think that everyone who has encouraged us to send M to preschool has good intentions.  All of these people care about him on some level.  I feel I need to take their concerns and look at them, not just dismiss them, in the spirit of maintaining healthy, caring, and peaceful relationships.

Let’s get the third reason out of the way first.  Since I tend to think that the older a child is, and the more developmentally ready he is, the better he’ll be able to learn in a classroom setting, I don’t give a lot of weight to this particular argument.  Also, with 13 years of school ahead of him, most likely he’s got time to figure all that out, if necessary.  Also, most preschool classrooms are very different from the classroom of a higher grade, as they should be.  I agree that it’s important for a child to learn to respect authority figures other than his parents, but this can be achieved in many other ways.

Now, in regards to learning social skills and making friends…

It seems to me that the best way to learn social skills is to have parents who are good role models and who make the time and effort to teach their child the kind of behavior that will best equip him for healthy relationships in the future.

Why the parents?  Simply because parents are the people most important to the child; their opinion matters most to him; from them he gets (or should get) the nurturing his body and mind and soul crave, which helps develop his confidence and a sense of his self-worth.  And this is exactly what he’ll take with him into the “real world” where he will have to get along with others, and form friendships, and know how to behave in a variety of situations.

Doesn’t it seem that, as adults, we often find ourselves looking to other people in our lives to meet some need we feel?  Quite often it seems (to me) that need stems from something that was lacking in our childhood.  For example, children who were abandoned or always in fear of abandonment, still fear it in adulthood and can place unrealistic expectations on another person, hoping that this person will finally make them feel safe.  That’s an extreme example to make a point, but I think the principle plays out in other, less dramatic, ways also.  It’s hard to overestimate the value of developing a good, secure, relationship between parents and children.  And it’s something we can’t rush along.  And “attachment” isn’t a bad thing at 4 or 5 years old.

As M’s mother, I am in a position to stay on top of behavior issues with him – I can remind him a hundred times a day (and I think there have been days like that!) that he needs to share and take turns and develop a caring heart towards others.  I can take him with me to the store, the post office, church, playgroups, etc. and show him by my example how to be polite and mannerly.  I can take him with me to pick out toys for less fortunate children; donate diapers and formula for new babies; or take him to visit elderly people on a Meals on Wheels route, all the while teaching him about the respect we owe to each person, and the inherent dignity of each human being regardless of where they live or what their abilities are. 

By talking to him one-on-one about these things, I’m able to discern his growth in these areas of true “socialization”, answer questions he may have, and help him develop a greater understanding of what we, as a family, hold valuable.  I would not, for the world, give up the amazingly deep conversations about these things that we sometimes have.  For the record, I know that doing these things would still be important if he went to preschool.  But finding time for them would be much more difficult! 

So, it would seem to me that it’s better and more do-able to socialize a child out in the “real world” during normal day to day life with mom and dad, rather than in a preschool. 

However, parents are people, and as such have strengths and weaknesses, and can not be all things to all children. Many parents have strengths in areas where I am definitely weak (healthful cooking; rough playing, especially with boys; etc).  For some families, preschool meets a need and is great.

But one of the areas in which I have done well has been making sure we have ample opportunities to learn and socialize outside of our home.  (I actually feel that we are too busy sometimes, and try to limit our days away from home to no more than 3 per week, not including weekends).

I’ve been thinking about the social skills that M already has – he’s polite (most of the time, hee hee), truly cares about others, knows how to share and take turns, can carry on conversations with anyone of any age, plays well with other children (provided there are not too many other children… this is something I’ll talk about in my next post, in regards to the socialization of a shy child), and is developing a sense of responsibility in his every day life.  By my standards, he has great social skills for a 4 year old!   

In addition to the activities mentioned in an earlier paragraph, we have 1 to 2 playgroup meetings per week, as well as one-on-one play dates quite often (he does have a few friends!), a nature center class each week, a music class most weeks, frequent outings to indoor playgrounds in the winter and parks in the summer, and weekly trips to the library.  Add to this lots of time with mom and dad at home, as well as seeing cousins and grandparents most weekends, and you’ve got a pretty well-rounded and happy kid. 

Preschool can be fun, there’s no doubt about it.  It can provide a lot of wonderful, stimulating ideas and activities.  Many children love preschool!  I am not trying to bash preschool, and I sure hope it doesn’t seem like that’s my point here.  I know wonderful, wonderful preschool teachers who are doing great jobs.  I hope that throughout M’s life he has teachers (regardless of grade) like Deborah over at Teach Preschool, who wrote this very encouraging post (it’s well worth reading!).  The problem I have is the apparent confusion between socializing and socialization.  Socializing with children of the same age is not the same as teaching the child good social skills.  In fact, I’ve seen and heard of situations where the opposite effect has occurred – being around a large group of children for a while or on a regular basis can cause a child to pick up attitudes and phrases and all kinds of things that we definitely do not consider good social skills! 

Maybe my opinions on this subject stem from my own experiences in school – throughout all of my school years, I clearly remember being told that I was there to learn, “not to socialize”. ;)  (I’m a “talker”, as you can see by the length of this post!)  Remember, the family is the most basic building block of society.  If a child does not learn social skills and how to be a good friend from his family first, most likely no school will be able to do the job later on.

Whew – that’s enough for now.  I want to talk about shyness and socialization in my next post on this subject.  I promise it won’t be this long!

Your comments are always welcome!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Books of the Week – January 29, 2011

We’ve been reading so many great books lately!  There’s nothing quite like snuggling up in a warm blanket and reading away winter afternoons, is there?  We have a date on the couch each afternoon at 3:30 and M does not let me forget about it, ever. :) 

The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver, by Thornton W. Burgess is one of our top favorites of Burgess’ animal stories (these are chapter books, and I wrote more about the series here).  There is so much fun, adventure, and real learning in this little book, it’s amazing.  The work of Paddy the beaver is really fascinating!  So we checked out two more books about beavers - Beaver at Long Pond, by William T. George; and Beaver at Long Pond, by Jim Arnosky.  Both are excellent!

Animal Tales, (sorry, I can’t seem to find any link for this one) also by Burgess, is a collection of very short stories about his animal characters.  These are fun little stories, and each has a lot of nice illustrations, something the longer ones are short on.  Since we’ve now finished all the longer Burgess stories that we own, this little book gave us our “Green Forest” (where all the animals live) fix for a while.  I plan to order the other stories as soon as possible.

Bartholomew and the Oobleck, by Dr. Seuss was a new one for M (although we have made oobleck before).  I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure what M thought of it – he just said it was long.  Which it is. :)  To make oobleck… use 1 part liquid starch to 1 part white glue – mix it together gradually until it forms a rubbery, non-sticky ball (add green food coloring if you want it to match the book).  Lots of slimey, gooey fun. :)

Carl’s Snowy Afternoon, by Alexandra Day is a sweet and charming book.  It has hardly any words, but the pictures tell a story that almost every child has thought of – a big dog who is a best friend and does things like letting you ride on his back and sled down a hill with him.  I love Carl.  M loves Carl.  I so wish we had a dog just like Carl!  And I just found out that this is just one in a series of books about Carl – yay!  We’ll be checking more of these out for sure.  This is a book that non-readers will love since they can simply look at the beautiful illustrations and tell the story on their own.  I’d say this book is the hit of the week.

Although, this book is a probably a tie for hit of the week:  A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I’ve been wanting to introduce real poetry – something more than nursery rhymes – to M for a while now, but had completely forgotten about this sweet book.  Oh. my. goodness.  You have to check out this book – it is full of poems about childhood, and they are something children can really understand and relate to.  It’s a bit dated, and some of it is not very politically correct, but we love it.

For more reviews of children’s books, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Learning by Heart – January

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

The sweet deer that visit us weekly at our nature center.
  We are getting to be good friends with these graceful and beautiful animals. :)

I’m not sure where the time has gone this month!  We haven’t done a ton of learning activities, but we are slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I’m re-thinking and re-planning some things as we go.  I’ll try to just hit the highlights of this month in this post (sorry if it gets too long!).

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES
(independent or semi-independent activities)

Mostly, I’ve been rotating toys on M’s shelves this month.  New toys from Christmas make this easy to do for a while.  I have plans to create a page where I can list all the activities I rotate on the shelves for M, because I think it’s fun to read that kind of thing, but also because I think it gets kind of tedious on these weekly posts to keep listing the same things time after time.  I will, however, make sure to mention any new items that I put out for him.

Folding:

M folds laundry like a pro (towels and washcloths mostly), but has been practicing his paper-folding skills since we got this great little book.  He loves this book, and I let him do as many pages as he wants.  He tends to get obsessed with something until he has mastered it; apparently this is just what makes him happy and how he learns best, so I don’t really follow the rule of stopping an activity while he’s still enjoying it.  Doing that frustrates him and makes him less likely to take it up again.  Here’s a little example of what this book is like:

See the little mouse?

Eek!  It’s really a giant elephant! ;)

It is so much fun – I’m not much of a fan of traditional workbooks, but the Kumon group of books is excellent.

 

Cutting and Pasting – I cut construction paper in several colors to size, hole-punched the edges, stuck it all in a 3-ring binder and gave it to M for his own photo album: He has his own digital camera (an old camera of ours that doesn’t have a memory card, but takes about 20 pictures at a time), so I’ve been printing out some of his photos for him.  He loves to cut them out and place them on the pages.  He actually uses double-stick tape most of the time for the “pasting” part of this.  I think it will be so much fun for him to look back through when he’s older.  It’s not the best quality, but it’s simple, inexpensive, fun, and a good way to sharpen those scissor skills. :)

As you can see, he’s fond of self-portraits, hee hee:

 

Mazes and dot-to-dots - I also made a little book of these for M.  The mazes were from another Kumon book, and the dot-to-dots were something I found on Amazon.  I cut off the binding and placed each page in a page protector, then all of it went into another 3-ring binder:

This has been a big hit with him.  There are, I think, roughly 80 mazes – great for reasoning skills and fine motor skills.  The dot-to-dots each go up to 100, which is a real challenge for him right now, and we normally do those together.  Since the pages are all in page protectors, he uses a dry-erase marker to do them, erases them with a piece of felt, and then does them over and over again.  I think this will be a great car-trip book!

Math: Not much has been done on this front, although M continues to enjoy counting anything and everything.  One day he decided he wanted to count to 100 and surprised himself by actually doing it. :)  He only needs a little help once in a while, and he does not recognize the written higher numbers, but wants to, so that’s what we’ll do next. 

Science: M loves doing this: 

Mixing colors of water in an ice cube tray.  He asked to do this, which he does from time to time.  It’s one of his favorite things.  He likes to watch the colors mix, use the pipette, etc.  Normally he then asks for these ice cubes when he’s taking a bath, and enjoys watching them melt and color the bath water.

We’ve been doing one mama-led science experiment per week, and I’ll post about these at Science Sunday on Ticia’s blog – stay tuned!

As you may know, M is obsessed with all things electric, especially light bulbs and batteries.  He has been itching to know how these things are made, and I found a couple of interesting you tube videos about just that – How Light Bulbs are Made, and How Batteries are Made.  He was fascinated by the machines that make these things and loved the videos, although I’m not sure how much he really understood (the voice over sounds like a computer voice and has what might be a British accent).  I was pretty fascinated too!

 

Literacy:  We’ve been reading, reading, and reading some more these past weeks.  We are content for now for that to be the main thing in this area.  Actually, more than content, we are loving it.  I feel like we’ve found so many great books lately, which I hope to post about soon.  I’ve decided to wait until this fall to start any book units with extension activities – that’s what we will do if M doesn’t go to a “real” preschool then.  We’ve been reading chapter books at lunch over several days, and picture books for about 1/2 hour each afternoon (snuggle time!).  M’s comprehension of the longer books continues to amaze me.  Sometimes he understands things I don’t even catch!  He’s developing a real love of books, which makes this mama very happy. :)

He is also a rhyming fiend.  Everything has to rhyme lately – oh goodness, you can imagine the nonsense going on here.  Things like, “Mommy, did you ever see a bug licking a fug?”  {Sigh}  or “Are you a dishwasher, made out of fishfasher?”  {Sigh again}

I found some great nursery rhyme sequencing cards here.  I made a little cardstock mat to place them on: 

I printed out several sets of sequencing cards, and by looking at the cards, M was usually able to tell which poem they were for.  Then we’d say it together and then he’d say it again, while setting the cards out, in order, on the appropriate square.  He really enjoyed this.  I’ll probably set this out on his shelf with more cards for him to do independently.

 

Karen at Prekinders has these fantastic rhyming mats and cards, which we also did.  M always enjoys doing these!

 

Art:  We’ve started going to a weekly music class – it’s very informal – lots of playing around with a great assortment and variety of instruments, some movement songs, and lots of rhythm activities.  We enjoy it a lot, but I’ve noticed it’s the same activities, in the same order each week.  Occasionally there’s a new song thrown into the mix, but there just isn’t enough variety to keep us interested in going each week.  There are only 6 more sessions, so I think we’ll try to make it to 2 or 3 more.  It could be such a wonderful program if a little more effort went into the planning.

As far as other art – this drawing cracks me up:

It’s just a regular drawing of him, but see the rectangle drawn around him?  And how his feet aren’t touching the bottom?  It’s M jumping!  Hee hee, I love it.

We’ve also been doing one planned art project per week.  Most recently, we colored on white construction paper with crayons, then rubbed over it with mineral oil.  This was an idea from one of Mary Ann Kohl’s books (can’t think of which one right now), and it was supposed to make the colors brighter.  It didn’t really seem to be working, so I showed M how to make a loopy design and then color in each open area, hoping that with more color all over the paper it would work better.

It worked okay, and actually the oil made the paper seem more like a thick vellum, which was pretty neat.  We hung the finished artwork in the window to be a suncatcher, but unfortunately we haven’t had much sun lately.

 

Miscellaneous:  Lately I wander around my house, seeing things like this:

M has definitely mastered his screwdriver skills, and I realized that I really don’t need to worry about providing many fine motor skill activities for him anymore. :)

 

This is a little old, but every year, once Christmas is finished, we set our tree outside and make treats for the animals:

We also read The After Christmas Tree, by Linda Wagner Tyler:   which talks about the tree’s “second season of giving”. 

 

Finally, I’m not sure what category this falls into, but it was fun!  I filled a bowl with water, added a bunch of small objects, and let it freeze outside overnight.  The next day M chiseled away at it to get all the little things out.  He really enjoyed this!

 

Hope your winter is full of coziness! 

 

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

Have a beautiful day! :)