Books of the Week – Feb. 12, 2011

Stuart Little, by E. B. White (the author of Charlotte’s Web) – this is our current chapter book.  Stuart is the mouse child of otherwise normal people, and he has lots of interesting adventures.   There’s quite a bit of new (somewhat old-fashioned) vocabulary in this book, which I love exposing M to.  I think it’s so important to introduce this kind of thing to him.  I credit my ability to so easily “get” Shakespeare and other older literature to the fact that my parents raised my siblings and I on stories like this (as well as the King James Bible!). 

 

Count Yourself to Sleep, by Lynn Hodges – spare yourself this one if you have a low “sugary sweet” threshold. :)  M loves it and I bet other kids his age will too, but goodness… the book is basically a song about counting your blessings, and it’s okay in and of itself… actually very wholesome.  BUT the cd that comes along with it, which plays the song, is sung by a very cutesy, cutesy child’s voice and it’s almost more than I can bear.  M listens to it at bedtime every night and it does put him to sleep, so its fine as long as *I* don’t have to listen to it too! :)

 

I Wish that I had Duck Feet, by Theo LeSieg (A.K.A. Dr. Seuss) is great.  The rhyme is perfect, the illustrations are appealing and funny, and the story has a good message about being happy just being yourself.  This is probably the hit of the week.  (M might disagree with that, because I’m pretty sure the one above this is his favorite, but still… I just can’t call that one the hit of the week – sorry, M!).

The Original Curious George, by H.A. Rey – this is a book that belongs to M, and he’s been asking for it this week.  There are only a few character books that I really like, and the Curious George ones are at the top of the list (along with the original Winnie the Pooh books).  This is the story of how the Man in the Yellow Hat found George and brought him to the zoo.  M loves the part where George plays with the telephone and calls the fire department. :)  It really is a fun book to read!

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

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – week 15

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

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES:

Sewing buttons – M watched me hand sew a quick repair job on his pillow several days ago, and was very, very interested.  So I set out this little button sewing activity for him: 

He used an embroidery needle and yarn to sew the buttons onto the cotton fabric.  Here’s how it turned out: He did a great job and really enjoyed it too.  He had to hang it in the window for the “birdies to see”. {Sigh – we have too many things hanging in our windows for just this reason.  We honestly can barely see out of a few, but it’s hard to take things down!}

 

Tying knots – this was supposed to be for knot-tying practice:

I thought M would love this, but no.  He was disappointed that it wasn’t a lacing card and didn’t have a picture on it.  Then he asked for train lacing cards, so I have made some for next week. (I would just let him use my shoes for knot practice.  I know he would love that, but I’m really not interested in untying knots in my shoes!  I’ll have to find an old pair somewhere.  Or maybe Daddy’s shoes. :) )

 

Pipeline Game – I found this several months ago at a thrift store, and I put it out on M’s shelves once in a while as a fine motor work.  This time we actually played the game, several times, and it’s a lot of fun.  There is a die to roll that tells you what shape pipe you get and the goal is to create a pipeline from your starting side to the opposite side of the board.  Your opponent can block you and “cap” your pipeline, and then you have to start over.  It really is a lot of fun and we’ve all been enjoying it (too bad I don’t have an action shot!): 

 

Design and Drill – this is a new, great little activity for M.  The drill really works, and has 3 bits that go with it, all of which work on the included bolts.  That’s neat in and of itself, but there are also 20+ designs included; M picks one, then puts out all the bolts needed, drills them in, then un-drills them and starts over again.  It’s neat because he has to mentally transfer the design from the card to the board (usually by counting each row to see how many blank spaces there are before the first bolt):

 

Picture Pies – these are from a great little book titled, Picture Pie by Ed Emberley; you can make almost anything by cutting out a circle, then cutting it into a variety of shapes.  I’ve been choosing a design from the book, then drawing the circles and cutting lines for M, and giving him a small drawing showing how to put the pieces together, or simply showing him the design in the book.  This week he did a bird and a mouse:

  I think these will be a feature on his shelves many times in the weeks to come!

 

Biggie Fuse Beads – these were a hit again, as always.  This time, M came up with his own designs, then took a lot of care in getting it “just right” on the peg board.  Here is a car he made, with a road beneath it and sky (with clouds) above it.  You can see the seat and the steering wheel too. :)        

 

 

  “TOGETHER” ACTIVITIES:

Math Skills:

We haven’t done much in the way of Math, although I do think the Picture Pies and Design and Drill mentioned above definitely qualify as math activities.

This week I tried to help M understand why teens look the way they do – he can count to 100, but he is having trouble identifying written numerals.  He’ll say “two, five” instead of “twenty-five”.  (Small digression here – when I say he’s having trouble, I mean it is troubling him that he can’t identify them; I honestly have no problem with it and know that he’ll eventually get it, but since it’s something he’s interested in learning, I’m happy to help him out a bit.)

I printed out some number cards (I can make these available as a printable file if anyone is interested – let me know!), and grabbed our homemade Montessori bead bars.

First We put a ten bead bar to the left and a single digit bead bar to the right (4 is pictured here).  Then we took the 10 card (which he can identify) and placed it above the appropriate bead bar, and did the same with the 4 card: 

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our bead bars together, and counted them – fourteen!

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our number cards together and I showed M how to place the 4 on top of the 0 so that it was right over the 4 bead bar, and the 1 (for 1 ten bead bar) was right over the 10 bead bar: 

Fourteen beads to count, and the number 14 to show it.  We did this with all the teens, and I then showed him how 20 is simply 2 10 bead bars.  It was much simpler to do this than it sounds in writing it all out! :)

He got it, but was ready to quit at 20.  I can’t tell yet whether this really sunk in or not, but the chugga-chugga-choo-chooing was pretty fun. :)

 

Literacy Skills

Rhyming:

M is all about rhyming now, so I stuck the following letter magnets to the side of our dishwasher:We sounded out ‘at’, then picked a couple of the other letters to place in front of the ‘at’ and had fun making up rhymes –”the cat sat on the bat under the mat and gave him a pat” and that sort of thing. :)

 

More Rhyming:

I grabbed a little bowl full of miniature objects and we took turns closing our eyes while the other one picked an object and hid it in their hands.  The person with the hidden object had to give rhymes as clues to help the other person guess the hidden object.  I was surprised that M had trouble making rhymes for words that had more than one syllable.  He always tried to make a rhyme for just the first syllable and nothing for the rest of the word, which made my guessing pretty difficult sometimes. :)  Also, a couple of times I tried to give him hints with the beginning letter and a rhyme, like “it starts with ‘z’ and rhymes with ‘bebra’” and this just completely floored him, hee hee.  We’ll play this again some time; it will be interesting to see how he progresses.

Spelling and Letter Formation:

One day M got out a bunch of toothpicks and wrote his name with them.  This was completely on his own, and he was really very proud of himself:Yes, it’s backwards.  Totally backwards.  This didn’t bother him, but he did tell me that it was too hard to make “baby” letters with toothpicks, so he decided to make most of them “mama” letters.  I think it’s interesting that he has picked up on the fact that only the first letter of his name should be upper case, and I’m just a tiny bit worried about the backwards thing. 

I will be posting about our science experiment of the week on Sunday – don’t miss it! :)

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! :)

 

Book Review – Celebrating Saints and Seasons, by Jeanne Hunt

Late last year, as I began to plan out some faith-based activities for this year, I was given the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book is divided into the 12 months of the year, beginning with January (to me it would have made more sense to begin with Advent, as does the liturgical year, so it would not begin in the middle of Christmas; however, I do understand that in many ways perhaps beginning in January was just easier).  There is an additional section at the end for “Special Occasions Throughout the Year”, such as birthdays, deaths, etc.

Each month is divided into sections: major celebrations, saints and heroes, and prayers.  Each individual activity is marked with (F) or (S) to indicate whether it is appropriate for Family or School use.

I expected this book to have activities appropriate for the various seasons, saint’s days, feasts, and other celebrations of the Church.  I did not realize that a good portion of each month’s section would relate to things like Groundhog Day, April Fool’s Day, First Moon Landing, National Ice Cream Day; or that there would be items like a Leap Year Day Prayer, and a Tomato Psalm.  I agree with making the ordinary extraordinary and finding God in simple everyday occasions, but finding these sections seemingly on par with sections about holy days and canonized saints was a bit disconcerting and distracting.  Some of the “prayers”, apparently written by the author, for a variety of occasions were a bit… cheesy (in my opinion).

The subtitle of this book is, “Hundreds of Activities for Catholic Children”.  Many of the suggested ideas for saints’ days and special feasts are great - for example, making Hawaiian leis on May 10th, in honor of Saint Damien of Molokai, a missionary to lepers in Hawaii.  An idea for the 12 days of Christmas is to have each family member give one another a small gift each evening, and then something long-desired on the evening of Epiphany.  More of this type of idea would have made this a great resource book for Catholic families, but as it is, one might be better off searching the internet for ideas, or simply getting a book about saints and using the stories to come up with extension activities.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book to review.  All opinions stated are solely mine.

Indoor exercise for those long, long, long, loooong winter days

In Minnesota we are used to winter.  This doesn’t mean we like it, but we are used to it.  Some days, like when the wind chill is 30 degrees below zero (fahrenheit), we don’t go outside.  I know that at least 20 minutes outside every day, regardless of the weather, is one of the best things for children.  But seriously, when it’s dangerously cold out and it takes 30 minutes to bundle them up and 30 minutes to unbundle them, not to mention mopping up wet floors and making hot chocolate and etc. etc. etc. – the going outside thing is just not going to happen.

And since this year it’s winter pretty much everywhere, I thought I’d share some great kid exercise cds we’ve found and have been putting to good use lately.

I know that most kids don’t need something structured like this to act wild inside, and get their “exercise”; but after several days inside I’ve found that M needs a little something to get him up off the floor where he’s staring at his trains going around and around and around.  I try telling him to get up and do something!  But inside the house there’s just not as much inspiration for something active to do, like there is outside.  And since I don’t really want him deciding to sled down the basement stairs on his old crib mattress (yep!), these cds come in very handy.

We’ve checked out many from our library, but here are our top 3:

Wiggle Wiggle and Other Exercises, by Bobby Susser.  This is a fun one, with exercises put to song – there’s one for stretching and strengthening your muscles, one for just wiggling to the music, etc.  They are basic, pretty easy, and easy to follow.  M loves the one about Marching in a Circle.

Silly Willy Workout, by Brenda Colgate is probably my favorite, because not only is it super fun, but there’s also a short narration for each song that explains what to do as the song plays.  There’s also a great variety of exercises.  This cd also has the option of listening to the songs without the beginning narration, once you are used to doing them.

Preschool Aerobic Fun, by Georgiana Stewart – this cd has warm up, moderately vigorous, vigorous, and cool down exercises.  Each one is labeled on the cd, so when we don’t have time for the entire cd, I just program our player to play one or two songs for each category so we still get in a warm up, active exercise (which will give you some REAL exercise!), and a cool down.   This one also has instrumental selections like the bunny hop, which is so much fun!

Have a beautiful, energetic day! :)

Preschool Craft – Valentine Piggy Backs

This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment-craft, but I am so pleased with how cute they turned out, and M loves them!

Supplies:Pipe cleaners, googley eyes, hole punch, pencil, heart stickers, pom poms, glue, and hearts cut from sturdy cardboard (1 large, 1 small for each completed craft); I used pinking shears to cut them out for a bit of extra decoration.  Decoupaging the cardboard with scrapbook paper first, then cutting out the hearts would be super-cute too!

We ended up using a couple of extra supplies too: A craft stick broken in half, and 2 more small cardboard hearts, one for each finished craft.

Make faces on one big heart and one small heart:

Use the googley eyes, pom poms for noses, and the foam heart stickers for lips:
Punch holes on the sides of each heart for the arms.  Thread through your pipecleaners, cut to size, then twirl them around a pencil to make them curly.  Sorry there’s no photo of this step, but you’ll see how they look in photos below.

Punch holes in the extra hearts you cut out, big enough for your child’s first two fingers to go through:
and attach that heart to the bottom back of your big heart. 

As you can see in the next couple of pictures, our small hearts on the bottom did not have the finger holes in them at this point.  We ended up having to take them off to punch the holes in them, as it was just too hard to do with it all put together.

Add glue to the back of the big and little hearts that have faces on them, then attach the craft stick to hold them together, little heart guy on top, big heart guy on bottom:

Turn everything over and admire your happy little Piggy Back Valentine People:

 Aren’t they sweet?!

And this is what the holes in the bottom heart are for:

Hee hee – lots of fun! :)

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Sunday – Float or Sink

I found this fun book full of science experiments at a local thrift store:All of the ideas in this book are perfect for the pre-k to 2nd grade crowd (in my opinion), and there’s a lot of cool extension activities for the child that may want a bit more.  All of the experiments are quick and easy to do; there’s a list of what you need, and most of the time it’s stuff you already have in your home.  We are really enjoying making our way through this book! 

We’ve done the basic sink or float experiment many times since M was a very little guy and just loved playing in the kitchen sink (mostly making a mess and blessing me with the opportunity to develop my patience).  This time we made it a bit more scientific by making predictions and sorting our items out in a variety of ways.

We used a divided tray with black squares of paper taped to the bottom (it’s a Christmas tray), and M began by writing an “F” for float on one side, and “S” for sink on the other side.

We went through the house gathering items into a basket, making sure to include things made of wood, metal, paper, or plastic, with a couple of other things thrown in too (like a tangerine, which we’ll get to later).  Then M made a prediction about each item and sorted them into his tray based on whether he thought they would float or sink: I’m guessing he really just made random predictions; there didn’t seem to be any sort of consistency! ;)

We tried the “floaters” first, and he was right about most of them: 

Then we added in the “sinkers” and were surprised by quite a few things in this group actually floating, like the glass jar, and the large plastic block:

Funny thing about the jar – it floated when it was empty, but sunk when we filled it up with water! 

A similar thing happened to a folded paper towel – it floated at first, but as it got wet it sunk.

AND – some things that sink will float if they are placed on top of a large floater!

We re-organized our sorting tray so each thing was on the correct side:

Then we sorted them out into another tray according to what kind of material they were made from.  We realized anything that was metal sank.  Most of the heavy or large things sunk, unless they were filled with air; filled with air, these same things floated. We also realized that the things made from wood all floated.  A foam dart and a sponge floated too (until we squeezed all the air out of it under the water), as did most of the plastic items, except for the heavy car, which also had metal on it.

Our “floater” tray, separated by material:

See the tangerine peel?  It has air pockets in it, which make the tangerine float.  We peeled it, and the peeling floated, but the fruit sank:

And then he played:   

I think M really already knew most of what we learned in this experiment, but being more orderly about “discovering” these things really made it stick in his mind.  He had so much fun with this, and his playing at the sink warmed this mama’s heart with memories, and also made me thankful that he is not nearly as messy anymore! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool / Bible Craft – Shining Our Light

Yesterday I wrote about how we are trying to integrate our faith more and more into our every day life as a family.  Occasionally we do little crafts or activities (if I can think of any) to go along with this.   

This weekend, the Sunday scripture reading from the Gospel of Matthew is about how Christians should be salt and light in the world.  (Matthew 5:13-16)

We talked about this a little and then did a fun candle craft.  We’ve done this once before and M loved it.  He’s  been wanting to make another one, and this was the perfect opportunity (especially considering that I just used up a jar of chicken bouillon, the perfect size for a little candle. ;) )

We started off with some tissue paper scraps, our jar, white glue thinned with water, a foam paintbrush, and a small picture of Jesus with His mama, cut from a Christmas card:

I explained to M that this is called decoupaging.  He just loves those big words. :)

Paint on a thin layer of glue, press on tissue paper pieces, then carefully paint another thin layer of glue on top.  Keep doing this until your jar looks “just right” to you:

It took some extra glue to get the picture to stick on.  I would suggest using a cutting from a magazine instead of a card, or using generous amounts of double stick tape to put the picture on, then covering it with the thinned glue:

 

When it’s dry, pop in a tea light candle and watch your little light shine. :)

the back

the front

We’ve also been singing This Little Light of Mine, using a battery-operated tealight to “hide under a bushel” (his cupped hand) and “blow” out. :)  M really, really loves this!

Have a beautiful day! :)