The trees are up in the kids bedrooms and they are ornament obsessed! They decorate their bedrooms trees with homemade ornaments each year and have been asking to make more ornaments since we made our angel ornaments last week. So yesterday we made popsicle stick snowflake ornaments! We started by gluing three craft sticks on top of each other (above) to form the snowflake shape. We used these funky shaped ones we had leftover from making mini … [Read more...]
Spoon Feelings Activity for Kids
We have been having so much fun participating in the Virtual Book Club for Kids! This month's author, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, was new to us and we excited to see her book Spoon in the Scholastic book order last month. (affiliate link) Spoon is the story of a little spoon who begins to fret that his friends, Knife, Fork, and Chopsticks, have it so much better than him. His friends think he is the lucky one, but he can only see the things that … [Read more...]
Fire Hose Fact Practice Game
My first grader needs to work on her addition fact speed as part of her homework this month. We also have been talking about fire safety and today it occurred to me to combine the two--after all what better reason to go quickly than a fire? I wrote some of the sums the 6 year old was working on the fence with sidewalk chalk and drew flames around them. I also wrote letters and sight words in "flames" so my 2 and 4 year olds could play too. My … [Read more...]
Practice Questioning with a Question Ball
Good readers need to be able to recall and make sense of, or comprehend, what they read. One of the best ways to increase comprehension in readers of any age is with the Questioning Strategy. In order to better understand the text kids learn how to create teacher-like questions about what they have read. Sounds simple, right? All it takes is practice! This is where the Question Ball comes in! How to use a Question Ball to increase reading … [Read more...]
Pumpkin Themed Play Date and a Blog Hop
We invited some friends over on Saturday for a pumpkin play date! It was a great way to celebrate the first day of fall and definitely got us in the mood for fall. The best part? It was fun for the kids and super easy to put together! Pumpkin Books: We started the play date with a pumpkin story, the book Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell. The story follows a little girl and her family as they enjoy many fun fall activities. This is one of … [Read more...]
Kid Drawn Pet Portraits
We finally joined in the fun at Kids Get Arty and I cannot believe we have waited this long! The artist we chose to study is Brooke Churchill who does these crazy cool pet portraits in a style she calls her Signature Mosaic Technique. If you've never seen any of her work you have to go and check out her website--the whimsical details in her work are simply amazing! We spent a lot of time looking at the different pet portraits she has on her site … [Read more...]
Create a Food Themed ABC Book
We were so excited to see that this month's Virtual Book Club for Kids author was Lois Ehlert! We have long-loved her vibrant illustrations and her focus on food and animals and were happy to discover books of hers we had never read before. However, it was an old favorite that we spent the most time reading. Eating the Alphabet definitely resonated with the kids. So we decided to create our own version of the ABC story. The kids searched … [Read more...]
Hunger Heroes: A Food Drive Play Date
Last week we went orange for No Kid Hungry by inviting our friends to the park for a Hunger Heroes play date! Everyone was asked to bring food donations for our local food bank and we were so excited that over 30 of our little friends showed up with enough food to fill 3 large boxes. Each of the Hunger Heroes received a "today I helped end childhood hunger" sticker and an orange super hero cape to signify their good deed. The kids also drew … [Read more...]
