Thanksgiving Week

I mentioned yesterday in my Christmas Card post (enter the $50 Shutterfly prize giveaway!) that we have been doing a bunch of fun Thanksgiving related activities.

Here's a quick run through of some of our favorites; hopefully you will find a few ideas for over the Thanksgiving holiday this week!

Last year's "thankful tree" was much smaller scale. We modled after this craft on 1+1+1=1 and added things we were thankful for on each leaf.

This year I knew I wanted it to be much bigger and give both kids a chance to add as many things as they could think of. I used brown construction paper and cut out branches, then taped them to the wall. I just free-handed the tree, trying to make it look like a huge tree with lots of branches, but I traced the leaves. They've done a great job adding to our tree; it has many additional leaves at this point. It has also been a great teaching tool...the easiest thing for my kids to be thankful is all their favorite foods! But they are thinking outside the box a bit more now (and they both wanted to put each other on the tree!).

I was inspired by Housing a Forest to make shape turkeys. These took just a little bit of prep time and were a fun activity for both kids. We used it to work on not only shapes, but colors and sequencing/patterns.

Here's the finished product hanging up!

 Along with the turkeys, we've done several fall pictures, including a tree with the leaves made out of crumpled and wadded tissue paper.

We've also enjoyed using a number of free preschool packs that are Thanksgiving themed! Check out this one by Our Little Monkeys and another by 1+1+1=1. Some favorite activities include putting stickers on the white dots:

Measuring Thanksgiving items:

More stickers with a special visitor:

And lots of color by number fun with an Aunt!

 These puzzles are fantastic too!

 We'll also be making good use of some of the travel activities I posted about last Thanksgiving while we make the rounds with family and friends! Happy Thanksgiving!

Be Consistant! (Loving Books, Part 4)

I feel like I've learned a lot about how to encourage my kids to love books, especially great books, and I wanted to take a few posts to share some of my thoughts. Any time you delve into parental advice-giving it has the potential to be a nasty can of worms. So, I hope the book recommendations and thoughts on encouraging a love a reading are helpful. I'm not trying to make out like my way of doing this will work for everyone. 

So far I’ve talked about being selective about choosing good books for your children, as well as being intentional about finding and identifying good books. In this post I want to focus on the importance of building reading into your routine. Routines will look different for every family, and rightly so, as you encourage reading in a way that is specific for your children.

My children love to snuggle together on the couch when we have a time devoted to reading. They are not holding other toys and we minimize distractions. Our routine always includes reading the title, author, and illustrator to our children. When our children discover a new favorite book, they are able to ask for it by name instead of referring to it as “the cow book” or “choo-choo.” And most important for our family, when we go to the library to get new books, it helps them and us when we remember the names of favorite authors.

We make the library a weekly part of our routine. I can’t read every book before we bring it home, so I also make sure that I have one or two old favorites each week, in case the new books are not as good as I hoped. Some weeks we only have time for a quick trip to grab a few books, but many times we spend an hour or more looking through books, playing with the toys (and the computer!) in the children’s section, and talking with the librarians. The library has become one of their favorite places, and because we go weekly, they anticipate each trip and ask to go even more often.


Favorite ABC books

ABC: A Child's First Alphabet Book by Alison Jay
  One of our favorite author/illustrators. Each page has beautiful images and several objects to discover that go along with the letter.
The ABC Mystery by Doug Cushman
  A simple book with great rhythm. Follow the clues to discover "whodunit" along with Detective Inspector McGroom!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr and John Archembault
  The classic alphabet rhythm and song. We have this audiobook also and it is a hit.
Alphabeep: A Zipping, Zooming ABC by Debora Pearson
  Follow through the alphabet with cars, trucks, and other things that go.

LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
  This is an adorable book with occupations and activities for each letter of the alphabet. Great illustrations also.

Dr. Seuss's ABC by Dr. Seuss
  Another great classic. The board book is a good introduction for smaller children, but move on to the full version as soon as possible!
I Spy: An Alphabet in Art by Lucy Micklethwait
  Each page features a piece of artwork. Look for the part of the painting that corresponds to the appropriate letter. There are several books like this as well. This is a more difficult I Spy.

Also noteworthy but highlighted earlier...C Is for Caboose: Riding the Rails from A to Z and Baby Einstein: Alphabooks

Disclosure

Stuart Little and Summer Reading

The next Preschool Book Club selection will be Stuart Little by E.B.White. The virtual meeting will be August 30th, and take us to the end of the summer! Crazy. Hopefully in the fall I will be more on top of things and the meetings will happen regularly at then end of each month as I originally planned.

Stuart Little is just over 100 pages and is full of great illustrations by Garth Williams. We read Charlotte's Web several months ago and it is one of Emma's favorite chapter books. I'm looking forward to reading another novel by E.B. White; I really enjoyed the writing in Charlotte's Web as well.

Are you taking part in your library's summer reading program? At least at our library, it is still not too late to sign up and get started! After 10 hours of logged reading time each child received a certificate, coupons good at local restaurants (a free kids meal at Applebees!), and a free book of their choice. Emma's book was Stuart Little, which is part of the reason we decided to pick that one next.





Pick up a copy of Stuart Little at your library for some great summer reading! Or if you are looking for an inexpensive copy, Amazon sellers have copies starting at $3.

Book Club Activity: Dinner with the Beavers

Last week's Turkish Delight activity was a big hit in our house. Did you make some too? Not only did I get some great help mixing and stirring,



they had a lot of enthusiasm at the end as we prepared to put in the food coloring and flavor.


Side note: that picture looks remarkably like the first time we made Turkish Delight, except for how much my kids have grown over the past year!

Here is a look at our finished product! We made lemon again, at the request of my daughter. I really want to try almond next though.






The texture was completely spot on this time. Practice makes perfect!




Now, on to this week's preschool book club activity.

We are having dinner with the Beavers, and on the menu: pan-fried fish, potatoes with butter, milk, and a marmalade roll and tea for dessert. We'll likely round our meal out with a veggie side and some fresh baked bread.

The chapters with the Beavers take up a good portion of the middle of this story, so if you are right on schedule reading along with us, you probably have gotten to this part recently! The description of the food for this meal is rich and flavorful. As an adult it made me hungry reading it, and I know my daughter will love the chance to "act out" something from the book. I'm also looking forward to the discussion over dinner; we'll probably grab the book and look back at the pictures of this dinner and talk about the plot twists of Aslan's introduction, Edmund's betrayal, and the big question of 'what do you think will happen next?'.

I hope you'll join us for a warm and homey fish dinner this week. I'm planning to make a marmalade roll using this recipe from the Pioneer Woman. 

Beautiful, delicious, local strawberries!

I took my children strawberry picking this morning at Filasky's Produce in Middletown. It's a great little local farm and we've enjoyed picking strawberries there for several years.

We were the only ones picking this morning and there were TONS of strawberries, all beautiful and ripe.  I ran into the main building to have my container weighed before we started picking and a photographer from the Delaware News Journal asked if she could photograph us picking our strawberries.

The kids had a blast posing for the camera and picking the biggest strawberries that they could find. Aren't these amazing looking? And they taste even better!

If you are local, be sure to head out to Filasky's this spring. Their hours are great (7-7 every day except Sunday 7-6) and the strawberries are just $2.15/pound. And if you are looking for a u-pick farm in your area, be sure to check PickYourOwn.Org.

Fun for Easter

We had our Easter celebrations with family this past weekend and are looking forward to a quiet Easter with our church family this year. I haven't done a lot leading up to Easter like I had hoped because we have been sick off and on for the last several weeks. Of course, we had a lot of fun mailing our Easter basket pop top can. And Resurrection Eggs are always something I enjoyed doing growing up.

Here are a few simple and easy Easter activities  that I hope to get to this week!

Naturally dyed eggs via The Kitchn

I love these creative ways to get different colored eggs!

Marbled eggs via Kimberly Cun

So awesome! I love the pattern you can get from just cracking the egg before dying it. I think these would look totally great as deviled eggs too.

Homemade marshmallow peeps via This Chick Cooks

Mmmmm I love peeps!

Looking for something fun to do after Easter is passed? Check out this great spring preschool pack from Creative Learning Fun.

Do you have a favorite activity planned for this week?

Pop Top Cans 2.0 - through the mail!

Remember the pop top can treats I made last year? Recently I started thinking about sending them through the mail. What a fun way to get a surprise! 

The best cans have fruit in them, because they are easy to get clean inside (not something that sticks like beans!). Remember...open your can from the bottom leaving the pop top intact! Carefully cut the label from the can and use it as a template. I used scrapbook paper, but you could keep things really simple and just use construction paper.

Next you need to assemble your goodies! Since Easter is right around the corner, we decided to send some Easter treats to a friend. We put stickers and candy in some eggs and found a few other fun things from our Tot School bin to add as well.

We also added pretty paper to both ends of the can...trace around the end, then trim to fit!

I added instructions,

and we made an address label out of more scrapbook paper.

Who do you know that would love to get one of these in the mail?

Since we put light things inside it only weighed about 5 oz, which put shipping just over $2. And the post office workers didn't even look at me funny when I stuck my can treat on the scale. Easter was the perfect time to send one of these, but I know I'll be doing more for things like birthdays in the future!

Thanks to Our Best Bites for the original inspiration!

Linking up with these parties:

Take a look Tuesday

Handmade Tuesday

Tuesday Time Out

Show and Tell

Show me what ya got

Tuesday Glam

Perfect Square craft

I love that I get the opportunity to stay home with my kids. I'm also thankful that they are growing up to be little bookworms like me! We head to our library nearly every week to check out a new batch of books. But I'm sure anyone with small kids knows that not all children's books are created equal! I'm really picky with what we read...if I don't like it, I'm not going to keep reading it over and over!

We recently came across this great book and both my kids (ages 3 and 16 months) can't get enough of it. Thankfully, I think its great too. This week we enjoyed making a special craft each day to match the different pages in the book.

Perfect Square by Michael Hall

The book follows the "on Monday....on Tuesday" pattern, which made it really easy for us to do a different craft each day. I cut out colored squares to match each day, and then we followed the book for our craft. Can't get much easier than that!

This one was a little more challenging for me to cut, but it turned out really neat.

I never would have thought to use scraps of paper to make such cool crafts, and I just love how each one turned out.

Here's a look at our completed days, along with the pictures from the book. Highly recommend this one for hours (no joke!) of fun!

Have you entered my coffee giveaway? There's still time before it ends tomorrow!

I am not affiliated with Michael Hall or Perfect Square; I just love great books. The Amazon link is my referral. If you make a purchase through it, I get a small percentage of the price.