Books of the Week – Feb. 19, 2011

Library Mouse, A Friend’s Tale, by Daniel Kirk is a sequel to Library Mouse.  These are both cute stories about a mouse who lives in a library and writes books at night, leaving them out for children to read.  In this particular book, a little boy named Tom finds out that the mysterious writer is really a mouse and writes a story about his new friend.  Both of these books are great for encouraging children to make up their own stories, and even create and illustrate their own books.  We love almost any book by Daniel Kirk, by the way.

 Three Cheers for Tacky, by Helen Lester.  I’m not a huge fan of Tacky the Penguin, but in this story he’s much less irritating than he is in some of the others.  M loves him and his interesting personality.  Tacky is an odd bird, but he knows how to be himself and not worry about what anyone else thinks.

 Mattland, by Hazel Hutchins.  I first heard about this book when Natalie wrote about it here.  M definitely loves this book – it tells the story of a boy’s imagination in a really captivating way (honestly, Daddy and I love it too).  I love how the main character, through his creativity, resolves some not-so-happy feelings and also opens the door to new friendships.  

Fine Feathered Friends, by Tish Rabe is in the Cat in the Hat Learning Library series (I also got this one from Natalie’s post).  It was, hands down, the hit of the week.  This book does a great job with the rhyming, which makes it so much fun to read.  And there’s a really neat flying machine in it, which M wants. ;)  It also has a lot of great information about birds!

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

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – week 16

 

“The mother’s heart is the

child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

{M is 4 years old}

We were fighting colds (and losing) this week, so not a lot happened on the preschool front.

Here are a few of the activities I threw together on the spur of the moment for M…

Hammering “nails” (golf tees) into a cardboard box:Honestly, I’m not sure what, if any, skill this works on.   Practical life, maybe?  But it sure is fun.  He used to love doing this with styrofoam, but cardboard does not give as easily as you might think and gave him a new challenge.  He decided to add some colored paper to make a design:And then he turned the whole thing into a surprise for Daddy.  The “design” on the left is a smiley face, and on the right he used the golf tees to spell his name.  What?  You don’t see it? ;)

More “picture pies”, like those mentioned in last week’s post:

 

About a year ago I found a little wooden puzzle on sale at Michael’s.  They are basically tan gram pieces, except the two large triangles that are normally in tan grams were cut into 4 medium-sized triangles.  I’ve looked all over the internet for printable puzzles to use with these, but haven’t had much luck in finding ones large enough to actually place the pieces on.  I finally picked up a book full of puzzles (I can’t remember the name and I’m too lazy to go look right now).  I’ve copied a few of the puzzles and enlarged them.  I’ve been placing a new puzzle on our fridge every few days and M has really enjoyed doing them.  He does need some help, but I’ve been very impressed at how well he’s done with these:

I glued magnetic strips to the backs of the pieces, and used wood glue to make the 4 medium triangles into 2 large triangles like a traditional tan gram set would have.

 

We have had some beautiful weather, and M bundled up to go outside and ride his bike on the cleared-off driveway.  Ah, the feeling of freedom that comes from a bike. :)

 

And, of course, there was some valentine making.  I will not bore you with the hundreds of valentines M made, but I’d like to show you the ones he was most excited about:

These are for Max and Thor, two dogs.  Yep – he loves them and a whole lot of love went into making these valentines. :)

 

We also baked up some yummy valentine cookies, which we also painted.  I think I first saw the idea over at The Artful Parent - she used food coloring and water for the paint.  I’ve been reading MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Discovering Great Artists, and in it she mentions egg yolk painting, which sounded awfully interesting to me, so we decided to combine the two ideas.  We whipped together an egg and some food coloring, painted it onto cut out heart cookies, and had a lot of fun!

  

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

Have a beautiful day! :)