The adventures of Old Bo Bear

Am working on a Fall reading series...to come. But before our season turns to fall on Monday, I better finish off the few books I have left from our Summer one. :)

We read "The Adventures of Old Bo Bear"...
With this project, we used a project I saw on my friend Cameo's blog. Very cute. I picked up a quick pizza mix and just added water. Each of the kids got to add their own parts to the bear. I helped Kaden, but Jenna did hers pretty much by herself. I was SO impressed that she insisted on her bear only having ONE ear, like the one in the story we read. Dough together, brush with butter or oil....
And sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon--

And ta-da...cute, warm, bear snacks.

Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin

I guess it's TECHNICALLY still summer...for a few more weeks. I feel bad we had gotten out of the habit of our book and project. We have been in a funk--

Today we read Zin! Zin! Zin! A violin. Cute book.
We made instruments and played in a band for our projects. Really the options on this are limitless! What did WE use?

1- vanilla wafer box wrapped in rubber bands...made a guitar
2-parmesan cheese bottle filled with rice. Great shaker...
3-toilet paper roll--wrapped a piece of wax paper on the end and held it with a rubber band. It kind of buzzes and sounds like a horn / kazoo.
5-Durkee Onions container--empty, of course. Made a great drum! :)

ISH

Our summer lovin' book was ISH...and I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend this book! It has such a great lesson--that you can be you and do beautiful things just by being YOU.
So for our project we decided to paint however we felt like painting. I bought these little wooden cars from Walmart for .88 cents each. The kids LOVED them and were so excited to paint their car to make it their own. :)

If you can't tell, we had a DISASTER afterwards. Mainly because Kaden decided that he would streak his face with white and green and then pour out an entire bottle of paint and wipe the wall with his hands. No worries Jane (my landlord), the paint came off. :)

But hey, being creative-ish was all worth it. :)

TOY BOAT

Summer lovin' book on a sunny Saturday--TOY BOAT.

We made cute little floating boats out of a sponge (new, don't worry!), a straw, and some construction paper (though if I had this to do over, I would think of something that would hold up in the water, like maybe a transparency.)

The kids were so thrilled and ran to the bathtub right away to test out their new boats. Smiles turned to frowns when they splashed too much and their sails sunk. Like I said, waterproof material for next time. :) But they are still excited and talking about them.

Way down deep in the deep blue sea

Our book and project today was the book Way Down Deep in the Deep blue sea...really cute book.

I am pretty proud of this project because I came up with it myself. I found a template for a fishbowl online (can't find the site right now but will look for it) and then cut out a hole in the middle. I washed a ziplock bag with water and then emptied it (just do you could get the water effect.) We cut out foam sea weed and fish and put it in the baggie. I then closed all but about an inch of the baggie. I blew a little bit of air in through the hole and closed it so that bag was puffy.



I then put a hole punch through both the foam fishbowl shape and the baggie once it was lined up just right and put a strong through it (because I am lame and don't have any yarn in my house! ) :)

So then you have a hanging fishbowl! Now, if my kids were older and had a longer attention span, I think it would be fun to do a fishbowl cutout for the other side too and then glue the sides together. And I think one thing I would do different next time is to let my kids draw the fish / sea creature shapes on the foam and then cut them out. This time I just cut some fish and they put the eyes on. But I would love to see what they come up with.

Overall, a super easy project that turned out really cute...I think. :)

If you Give a Moose a Muffin

Today for our Summer Lovin' book we read, If You Give a Moose a Muffin...

The version we read was actually in a book my mom gave us called "Mouse Cookies & More" that has the collection of If you give a....stories, recipes to go with the stories (cookies, muffins, pancakes, etc.) the written music to several songs for each story, plus a CD with the stories being read and some really cute songs. WE LOVE THIS COLLECTION! It is a nice hardbound book, and I saw it online today brand new at Barnes and Noble for about $17.00--TOTALLY worth it. The songs alone are worth that price. So cute...and my kids go crazy with giggles and dance all over the place when we turn it on.

For our project, we carried over some of our activity from yesterday--picking raspberries. We made a triple batch of raspberry muffins with our fresh raspberries, and read the Moose story to go with it. They were delicious...

There is a part in the story where the moose eats and eats and eats the muffins till they are all gone. We probably would have done that same thing if I hadn't bagged them up and put them in the freezer. We love doing this with muffins ahead of time because they make a great FAST breakfast (and make me feel like I actually cooked, especially when I don't feel like it).

Will post the recipe soon on my recipe blog...so be looking if you are interested.

JAMBERRY

For today's Summer Lovin' book we read Jamberry. What a fun book!
I had been waiting to read this until we had a chance to go berry picking so we could incorporate an outside activity into this read. So when our local berry farm opened for picking today, we could hardly wait!

After picking a basket of berries (and eating a few too) we headed for the grocery store to pick up several other kinds of berries. Blackberries, blueberries and Strawberries were all added to the cart.

When we got home, I washed and sliced up all the fruit and put it in muffin tins. I had seen this idea online before (wish I could remember where!) and thought this would be a fun time to try it out. I wanted the kids to taste each kind of berry and see what they thought since we haven't tried FRESH blueberries or blackberries before. Jenna ate ALL OF THEM. Every single kind. She didn't care for the blueberries too much at first, but ate every last one. Kaden ate the berries really well also. And Spencer, well...he eats pretty much EVERYTHING. A success...
Added to our berry tasting were some carrots, cheese sticks, turkey rolls, and wheat thins. It was really a fun way to do lunch and pack in some extra nutrients.

Color Dance

For our book and project we read the book Color Dance. The librarian recommended this book because I knew I wanted to do this specific project dealing with colors. My thoughts? I really didn't care for this book. Jenna was REALLY bothered by the fact that they call the pink color RED. It is CLEARLY not red. It is pink. She is right. :) So, I would like to find a different book that uses the correct colors next time. :)

I just discovered Knox Gelatin. It is basically clear tasteless jello and when mixed a certain way, you can make it into a gel-like rainbow! 8 packets of jello (there are usually 4 in a box) mixed with 6 cups of boiling water, mix until dissolved, and then pour into a bowl (or other mold). Let sit. You don't have to refrigerate this. Took about 4 hours to set.
I knew that Kaden wouldn't make it a long time with this project...he wouldn't try to keep things nice and neat. So I wasn't too concerned with tidiness. There are special thin droppers you can buy, but I just used all the leftover medicine droppers we have that you can't read the measurements anymore. Worked fine. :) Fill cups with half a cup of water and several drops (you want the water to be really bright/bold) of food coloring. Fill your dropper with colored water and insert it into the gel.
It was neat to see the colors run together and see how and where the water would go.

This was definitely a blast...and I will definitely do this again just because the kids liked to practice giving the gel blog a "shot". :) jk

How will we get to the beach?

We picked up several books from the library today, but we did our project from one we already have. I LOVE this book--can't say enough about it!
For our project we made little sand art. I picked up the funky plastic bottles on clearance and the sand I got from Walmart. We did each color to represent an item in the book (orange spotted ball, blue book, etc.) because the book is actually a memory game and the kids LOVE it. So this was just a fun reminder. Each kid got to choose how much of each color and help pour the sand through a funnel into the bottle.

I then superglued the lids to the top so that we will hopefully not have our own indoor beach... :)

Loved this project...was really, really fun and simple.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

Today's book: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

A favorite in this house! :)
For the project, I went to http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/brownbear/index.htm and printed off individual color pages of the animals listed in the book. I let the kids pick 1 color for each page and we made our own version of the brown bear book...

Example: instead of black sheep we had a pink sheep, instead of brown bear we had a purple bear, etc.

Jenna did really well remembering what the colors were on each animal in the book, so many of hers match. Kaden's book was quite an assortment though! :)


And of course, for snacks, we had BROWN BEAR snacks... (mini teddy grahams)

It feels so good to be back to doing our summer lovin' projects and spending time reading during the day instead of only at bedtime. We love books!

LITTLE

We read two books today for our summer lovin' books...The LITTLE engine that could and One LITTLE seed...focusing on LITTLE things today! :)



No art project this time--we were busy today, so we read while dinner was being made. I have to say that I am TOTALLY excited about dinner. I have been trying to clean out our fridge and freezer before we go on vacation, so there wasn't much to work with. :) I had some fillo shells (which are AWESOME--they are prebaked and don't need heated!)

I put a can of cream of chicken soup, a little bit of milk, some frozen mixed veggies, chopped up chicken that I had cooked and frozen earlier, salt and pepper--heated it all together for a few minutes--even in the microwave, filled my fillo shells and topped with cheese (which melted as they cooled). No oven at all! It was GREAT! I am DEFINITELY going to do this again!! What an easy summer meal.

Okay, back to the LITTLE theme. These are bite size...which the kids loved.

We carried our LITTLE theme over for dessert--little sno-cones in those itty bitty cups. Yum...

A sweet success....

Where is Coco going?

Our Lovin' Summer book today was "Where is Coco?"

This is a really simple book--not a lot of words. And really, READING it would not make my top 20 favorite children's books. HOWEVER, the kids love this book because of the pictures. So, usually when we read this we talk more about what is going on than actually reading it. I have to say the whole setup and pictures are REALLY cute. They just kind of bombed on the storyline...if there was one. :)

I thought we would make our own little Coco...I did a lot of this project on my own since it used hot glue, but the kids' part of the project will really come tomorrow. We are going to make our own little books with pictures of everywhere "COCO" goes. I made them on clothespins so Coco can clip onto things and "pose" for pics tomorrow! :) So, they get to be creative as to where all she will get her picture taken. :)