Our new family member

Max and I bought a new fish yesterday. That is about as committed as I'm willing to go in the pet category. It is red, but Max says his name is "Blue" or "Yellow" depending who he is talking to on the phone.

We put him in his new home today- a vase with no lid. It occurred to me I needed to find a container with a lid but I'd rather not buy one and will switch it out when I find something (a pb jar?)

So, Max shared his chocolate milk with "Blue" today- I'll let you know how he recovers.

Are You My Mother soft book

Laura had asked for interactive books on her blog- this is our favorite right now. Max and I read it over and over- the little bird gets to talk to the other characters. At the end he fits under his mom's wing and I get Max into a headlock and it dissolves to a tickle fight ;0)

I thought it was too much to spend on a kids book, but has proved to be one of our favorites. Grandma bought it for Max and he loves loves loves it

Preschool StoryTime: Frogs

My little girl student is not here today- just 3 boys- so I'm skipping the craft. But we were going to make a frog puppet.

We read: Why Frogs are Wet by Judy Hawes and Keeping Minibeasts: Frogs by Watts. I had also planned to read Frog Prince

We played 'hopping frog' which is a lot like 'hot potato'. Use a frog stuffed animal and set a timer for 30 seconds (1 minute was too long) and then pass the frog around so you are not the one holding it when the timer goes off

We played 'leap frog' with me holding the hoppers hands so they didnt' hop on top of their friends. But their favorite part was just to put some pillows on the ground for 'lily pads' and then hop from one to the other. We have a few alligator stuffed animals nearby to be the crocodiles in the pond so the little frogs do not fall into the pond. They LOVED this and played for quite a long time

For snack we are going to have 'flies' (raisins)

Preschool StoryTime: Spring

When the kids arrived, I had them keep their shoes and coats on and we went for a walk first thing looking for signs of spring. Here is what we found:

baby leaves on the trees
birds chirping and flying
some flowers poking up from my neighbor's yard

We also looked for:
frogs eggs in our backyard pond (not found)
baby animals (not found)

It was not a long walk- it was pretty chilly and damp.

We read a book about Spring and then talked about how it rains a lot in the spring and makes puddles and read Mud Puddle by Munch. Kind of a stretch, but that was the book I had at hand (and one of my favorites to read aloud.

We also looked at the book Sunshine Makes the Seasons and talked about how the earth rotates to make day and night, and then goes around the sun to make the seasons. I used an orange to show them how the earth rotates. They all looked at me blankly, so who knows how much they got out of that part.

We watercolored painted on muffin liners (they sell 2 sizes at Target that are white) and then when that was dry we put them together for flowers for our moms (smaller liner inside bigger liner to make the flower- glue them to a craft stick for the stem)

Our youngest reader

Zoe squirmed her way over to the book pile- there was a particular Curious George book she was trying to get out.

Elves and the Shoemaker Preschool Storytime

No photos for this one- sorry!

We read Elves and the Shoemaker. I had several different versions and we looked at the photos of each and talked about which elves we liked better.

We talked (briefly!) about the Brothers Grimm and their stories

I had a basket of different kinds of shoes (slippers, cowboy boots, tennis shoes, cleats, baby shoes, flippers)- we talked about why we wear shoes and then did a matching game.

We used our sewing skills to put fruit loops on string. (I had an actually little sewing project I got at the Michael's dollar section but I couldn't get it done with their short attention span and my baby needing held. Would be better as a one on one activity. Or when you are no holding a squirmy baby)

Could also do a shoe lacing activity or a shoe polishing activity

Jack and the Beanstalk Preschool Storytime

We read Jack and the Beanstalk. I had several different versions and we looked at the pictures for each and talked about how some the giant looked more scary than others. We read one short version and one longer version. The kids helped say the Fee Fi Fo Fums

We talked about vocab words "giant, large, huge, enormous, big"

We sang "Once there was a beanstalk" (to the tune of Once there was a Snowman- if you don't know it ask any Mormon kid under the age of ten, lol)
Once there was a beanstalk, beanstalk, beanstalk
Once there was a beanstalk, tall tall tall
Jack cut it down, down down
Jack cut it down, small small small

We colored pictures of Jack and cut him out and put him on a little stick. We planted beans and put our Jack in the cup to await the beanstalk growing.

We did a color sorting graph with jelly beans- the kids really liked this activity