A year of ABCs: B with art, literacy, math

Our B pail:
Books
Ball 
B foam letter
Banana

B is for bead butterflies.
We used sparkly beads strung onto chenille stems to make a butterfly.  I put my hands over Little Lady's and helped her string the beads, then she slid them down the stem.  Her fine motor skills have always been impressive and darned if she didn't nearly string a bead all by herself!  

We used a lot of "B" words in this activity: bead, butterfly, bend and blue.  

Moving with books: Waddle

Also see Moving with books: Barnyard Dance

When Little Lady was born, a dear friend gave us the book Waddle by Rufus Butler.  It's an awesome book.  We love the rhymes and especially the moving, colored pages with the animals.  This is a book that we also like to get up and move with.  Almost every time we read it, Mini Me (and now Little Lady is catching on to the fun that comes beyond wiggling the pages) has to get up and jump like a frog, stomp like an elephant, and scamper like a bear.  This is not a book we can read before nap time or bed time because things usually get wild.  I finally caught a little of our fun on video.  Mini Me's animal actions seem to change with every reading and his finale this time surprised me!

Easy kid art display

Not long ago I started to feel like hanging the kid art on our fridge was not the best choice.  I couldn't admire it while it hung at my knees and the kids kept wanting to take the things off to play.  That's okay with most art, but I couldn't hang anything there that I really wanted to keep for a future memory.  


I needed a new plan for our house with only a little extra wall space.  


So, one day I got out some clothespins and had the kids paint them with various colors.  Mini Me painted with brushes and Little Lady smeared with her hands. 

I strung a thick ribbon across a closet door in our dining/play room and duct taped it to the back of the door (classy!).  Using the clothespins the kids painted, we now can hang artwork in a bright place so we can all enjoy it.  It was free, easy, involved the kids, and makes life a little brighter.  Success!

Mixed up puzzles

Mini Me loves puzzles so I have no need to entice him to do them, but sometimes it's fun to add a twist to activities.  


I took five (easy) puzzles and put all their pieces face-down in a big, mixed-up pile.  I placed the puzzles around the pile.

Mini Me knew right away what to do and went to it.  There was a lot of self-talk: singing, planning his next move, narrating what the pieces were doing.  He started out by placing whatever piece he grabbed first, thus doing all five puzzles at once.  At one point, he was picking through the pile to get all the dinosaur pieces, thus doing only one puzzle at a time.  It was great to see him work.  For the second round, we worked together.  Mini Me assigned me two puzzles to do, and he did the other three.  Teamwork!  

Another day I tried this with small jigsaw puzzles; a slightly more difficult task.  I mixed up the pieces to two jigsaws and had him put them together.  He did not complete the puzzles simultaneously, but instead put one together first, then the second one.

 Yet another day I pulled out the easier puzzles again, put the pieces in one big, mixed-up pile, and spread the puzzle boards throughout two different rooms.  This was great to include some movement and a little more strategy.  Would he sort pieces and take them to the puzzle?  Would he take one puzzle piece per trip?  

An additional idea to spreading the puzzle boards across the room (or several rooms) is to have him hop, skip, crawl, walk backward, etc from the pile of pieces to each puzzle board.  

My grand ideas for the week

While scrubbing the kitchen floor, I needed a few minutes of a kid-free kitchen so I scooped small cups of fresh snow for them to play with.
Play with?  They just sat on the couch and waited for the snow to melt so they could drink it.  ha ha

Before playing that afternoon in the fresh snow, I cranked our heated mattress pad to H (which means raging hot!).  

 After 45 minutes outside, we stripped our snow gear and ran in to cuddle in Mommy and Daddy's warm and toasty bed.  Genius, right?  Yeah.... only if your kids like to cuddle in your bed.  Mine like to bop and spin and tackle each other.  So, I cuddled under the covers while they wrestled on my legs.  Not relaxing, but it did warm us up.


Little Ladies who need attention while my hands are busy washing dishes can be satisfied with a scoop of bubbles to play with.  An even more fun twist?  A clean paintbrush so she could paint with the bubbles!

A Year of ABCs: A with movement, music, science, Spanish

A is for activity cube.
I used a cereal box to make a small cube.  Simply make a cross-shape with six equal boxes in it.  Then cut, fold, and tape.

I wrote six A-themed activities on each side of the cube.

Crawl like an ant.

Fly like an airplane.

Touch someone's arm.

Walk like an ape.

Tickle someone's ankle.

Chomp like an alligator.  

We roll the cube and do the activity.  It took Little Lady a while to catch on, but it's been fun for us all!


A is for alphabet song.
We just sing this song all the time.  I make a point to sing it during diaper changes.  She hums along!  

I also found this song on YouTube.  It's a phonics song and the tune is really catchy.  I found myself singing it daily, and changing the words so I could name lots of "A" words.  For instance:

A is for apple, a a apple, A is for ant, a a ant.

A is for alligator, a a alligator, A is for arm, a a arm.  

This tune sticks in my head like no other.  I think we'll continue with my made-up words throughout each letter this year.  I'm sure I'll be humming this tune to my grandchildren someday.  It sticks, I'm telling you.


A is for animal noises.
We had fun using our sensory finger puppets to help us make a great deal of animals noises.  Little Lady's favorites are how a duck says "ka ka" and the spitty spray of an elephant.  


A is for agua.
I tried to use the word agua pointedly every time we played with or in water: in the bath, helping me do dishes at the sink, or when I let her slop around with some toys in bubbly water at the sink while I cooked.  
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Better Than Chocolate Chicken

I don't know where I found this recipe.  I made it once and it was delicious but then I lost it for almost 8 months (I filed it under "pie" instead of "poultry" in my recipe box and it didn't turn up again until Thanksgiving... a sign I should make pies year-round perhaps).  I was so excited I called my husband at work to tell him and he said, "You've cooked a whole chicken in the Crock Pot before?".  So, you can see that the first shot at this impacted me heavily and him... not so much.  Nonetheless, I have named it Better Than Chocolate Chicken.  


Ingredients:
1 large, whole chicken
1 c chopped onions
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 tsp salt (yikes - I halved that and it was fine)
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp onion powder

Method:
Combine all spices and rub on chicken.  Refrigerate in a sealed bag overnight.  Spray slow cooker with cooking spray.  Place onions on the bottom, then chicken.   Do not add water!  Cook on low for 4-8 hours.


This is the best chicken and the leftovers are great, too.  I shred all our leftovers and have used them as a simple main dish (with mashed potatoes, a steamed veggie, and rolls, it's great), and have put them in quesadillas, bruchetta bakes, and jambalaya.  The reason I decided to blog about this is that I caught myself foraging this chicken the night I used the leftovers in quesadillas.  I was nabbing bites from my kids' plates when they weren't looking!  And worse, I stood at the sink before I started washing dishes and picked off all the chicken that was left on everyone's plates.  Gross!  But clearly so yummy I had to share the recipe.  


If you make it, only tell me about your experience if you loved it because I will be devastated if you don't share in my chicken joy.  ;) 

Home made photo magnent tutorial

I made these photo magnets as part of a gift basket we gave at Christmas, but they make for an easy DIY craft at any time of year.  

You will need:

magnets you want to re-purpose (you could buy new, blank ones but I went for the free stuff and used a handful of large magnets with local emergency info and business ads on them)

black acrylic paint

Modge Podge 

brushes

photos

your children's artwork

First, I painted the magnets with black acrylic paint.  It only took one coat for me.

I cut my magnets into fourths but you could cut them to any style.  These magnets were extremely easy to cut and I probably could have used a fancy scrapbook scissor to scallop the edges if I wanted. 

I had the kids make some smear art.  I gave them card stock and dabbled paint on it and let them smear away.  I did stifle their creativity by selecting the colors for each page myself so they were complimentary.  But, the kids did a wonderful job poking and swishing around with their hands and fingers and even a couple small brushes.  I love how they look!

I traced the cut magnet pieces onto the painted card stock.

I used fancy scrapbook scissors to cut out my tracings.  I made sure to cut inside the line I traced so these cut-outs are slightly smaller than the size of the magnet. 

Prior to this craft, I had taken photos of the kids with my own camera and had them developed at our local drugstore into mini-wallet sizes.  I cut those photos out.  Then, I made a template slightly smaller than the size of the photo.  You can see in this picture that the yellow template is a bit smaller than the white photo behind it.

I traced the template on to the fancy square of my kid art I had already cut out.  This is going to make a little frame for the photos.

I cut the middle of the frame out - the template I had traced.

Now there are three pieces of the magnet to assemble:
the cut-out magnet square
the photo
the card stock frame made from kid art

I put double-stick tape (left over from putting plastic on the windows) on the back of the photo and frame.  This really helped hold it in place when I applied the Modge Podge. 

On each magnet I taped the photo first, then the frame on top of it.  I placed them all on waxed paper and got ready to Modge Podge.

When I applied the Modge Podge, it looked really milky and thick, but it dried clear and lovely!

I made these photo magnets assembly-line style and it didn't take long at all.  They are not exactly high-quality, store-bought items but I think they look great!  It made for a wonderful Christmas gift, especially with the incorporation of the kids' own artwork.

These could easily be done with stickers or other cut-outs for decoration.  They would be very easy to personalize.  You could also forgo the photo completely and do just kid art magnets!

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Preschool math: Grouping and sorting

We have a Garanimals matching game at our house that has been a great game to have around for many things.  We play Memory with it (even my husband and I have used all the cards for a massive game of Memory), and we use it for various sorting and matching activities. 


It had been awhile since we played with our matching game so we pulled it out one night.  After a short game of Memory, Mini Me wanted to sort the cards into piles.  We decided to use our wonderful train table for the sorting.  

It was Mini Me's idea to sort the cards into the categories of "animals", "food", and "toys".  He wrote the beginning letters for each word on the table, then drew a circle around it so he could keep the cards organized. 

Here he is, hard at work.  Little Lady also wanted to participate, so we gave her a decoy pile of cards.  It started as Mini Me's pile of "this is not an animal, a food, or a toy" category, and Little Lady just moved them to a new location.  She was as busy as he was!

After the circles started getting full, he had to organize the stacks a little (I swear, this was his idea, not mine!)

After he sorted all 60 cards from the game (yes, 60!), he wanted to make new categories.  He wanted to sort the cards into the groups of "things I like" and "things I don't like".  He drew a smiley face and a frowny face for these categories. 

Things started off going very well, but Mini Me was in a very loving mood and decided he just liked everything in all the pictures.  Game over!

Before we knew it, we had passed a half hour grouping and sorting.  Bedtime!

A Year of ABCs: A with art, literacy, math

Our A pail:

Alligator

Apple

Apple cards

Apron

Angel

The apron is her favorite part, and that's the piece of the pail Mini Me suggested adding!  

A is for apple stamps.
This was a big, messy hit.  The paint dried long before she lost interest.  Aside from stamping three sheets with her half-apple and quarter-apple stamps, she also examined the seed hole and poked her fingers in the flesh.  It was sweet watching her choose her stamping colors, too.  

A is for book animal matching.

Using our Little People animal toys and books with large animal pictures, we matched the toy to the picture.  The first time, Little Lady held the toy and searched for the picture.  The second time, I pointed to a picture and she searched for the toy.  This was definitely a joint activity for us.  The best part for her was making the animal noises each time. 


A is for abacus.

I tied and taped a rope between the legs on the long side of our homemade train table with some half wiffle balls strung on the rope.  ¡Voila!  A homemade abacus.  

Little Lady enjoys sliding the balls along with her counting intonation "whaaa, oooo, oooo" but I think Daddy enjoys it more than all of us, as he uses it to teach Mini Me how to best spend five imaginary dollars...  

More A activities are coming soon!

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Moving with books: Barnyard Dance

Not a day goes by in this house that we don't brush our teeth, sing songs, eat all the food groups, and read several books.  We love books!  They are good for teaching, snuggling, laughing, singing, and moving!  There are so many children's books that encourage movement of some kind that I thought I would try to capture on video some of our favorite "move around" books.  


Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton is a much loved book at our house.  Last fall my parents gave the kids some cowboy hats and everyone had a laugh as we learned how to square dance while wearing the hats.  Little Lady became an expert at bowing and Mini Me likes promenading when he has a willing partner (unfortunately, I could not capture this cuteness on video).  To make things even funnier, we also went to this site and listened to a small part of the Barnyard Dance song - hilarious!


I hope you enjoy our moving with books posts - stay tuned for more - and I would love to hear suggestions on what books get your children moving, and how!

(It is an odd coincidence that Mini Me is wearing the exact same clothes in both videos - he does wear other things!)

Home made felt faces

Edited August 2012: Buy your own, ready-made felt face from my Etsy shop! Enjoy a versatile, quality felt game without going to the trouble of making it yourself. Check it out here!

I was inspired to make felt faces after reading this blog post and I finally got around to making them.  

It was incredibly easy and hardly took any time at all!  I was also excited to use my huge stash of leftover felt from making the felt house.  

I cut one face for each pack as well as hair, eyebrows, ears, noses, mouths, a mustache, and a goatee.  The kids had so much fun that someday I will add hats, earrings, and maybe an eye patch!  I think we need another set of glasses and maybe some gray hair, too. 

Here are some of the pieces:  

I hot glued the face shape onto a piece of bright green felt for the background.  I also hot glued the googly eyes, too (and did a very poor job of slopping the glue on!).  You could skip the googly eyes and make your own eyes of different colors.  Here are some faces that show all the pieces in the set:  

Is it me or does Ponytail Girl look like she has a very strong and masculine jaw?  


Here is what my 18 month old did with the felt face pack:

Very Picasso.  She prefers to take the pieces and put them on her own face parts, which is a great dimension of learning I hadn't thought of!


Here is what my 3.5 year old did:

 He LOVES this game and hates every time we have to put it away. 


I'm keeping this in the house for now but eventually I want to make more sets and have them in the car for travel games.  I can imagine all sorts of fun "game-y" things we can do with them in the car.  I also want to add them to a travel game pack I'm envisioning that also includes a chalkboard and magnets.  Ah, my to-do list...
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Indoor alphabet hunt

Last fall Mini Me and I had a great time outside doing an alphabet hunt in the yard.  He had so much fun doing it over and over!  We made an attempt at doing it inside this winter and it worked well.  


First, I wrote some CVC words on our train table.  While Mini Me was otherwise occupied, I hid the corresponding letters throughout the house - plus a few extras for an added challenge.  


When I called him over for the game, this is the super duper excited face he made!  Okay, this isn't the original excited face because I made him reenact it for a photo, but he was truly very excited.  He loves this game!  For a chuckle, look at Little Lady's "What?" face in the background.  She'll get it someday....

Mini Me set off to find the letters throughout the house.  He had a smile on his face the entire time! 

Little Lady did great joining in to find the hidden letters, too.  She graciously gave each letter she found to her big brother.  

Still searching!

Found another!

Little Lady spied this yellow letter first but she couldn't reach it, so she had to find Mini Me for help.  

Each time Mini Me found a letter he RAN it back to the train table.  He found the matching letter on the train table and placed his foam letter on top.  He started a pile of "extras" since I had also hidden letters (and numbers) that didn't go with the written words.  Little Lady took it upon herself to sort the "extras" pile. 

Once Mini Me found all the letters and put them in place, he started calling out the letter sounds.  Together we put the sounds together into words. 

He's really working on that /w/ sound!

Ever the little mimic, Little Lady also wanted to point to the letters and make a sound.  Here she is pointing to the "p" and Mini Me and I are trying to get her to say /p/. 

We did three rounds of this in a row on this day!  Just like when we did this outside, it was a great activity for literacy practice AND burning a little energy!