Virtual Book Club for Kids: Tomie dePaola

Sharing Saturday is still open if you would like to share your child-oriented crafts and activities or be inspired by the amazing ones already shared!

Today I thank God for a week with very few plans so hopefully I can get the rest I need!

Today is the kick off of November's Virtual Book Club for Kids Blog Hop. As you may know I have joined a wonderful group of bloggers to do this book club. Each month we feature an author and each of us picks a book to blog about and do some craft or activity with it. Then we invite you to join us by choosing a book by the author of the month and sharing in our blog hop. I join the following wonderful blogs to bring this to you each month.

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids -
 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo -  The Educators' Spin On It -  
Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - 
Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom -  Mommy and Me Book Club -  No Twiddle Twaddle - 
The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - 
Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas -  
Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - 
Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls -  
Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles -  
Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn

This month's author is Tomie dePaolo. Now he has many books to choose from that appeal to different ages. This week we will talk about two of his books.

Angels, Angels Everywhere is a sweet little book for younger children. It goes through each page with different angels and they are labeled things like "Kitchen Angel" or "Play Angel". You can guess from the pictures what their role is as well.

Pascual and the Kitchen Angels is a book telling the life of Pascual, the patron saint of the kitchen. Pascual goes to a monastery to join the monks, but when the monks see all the food he brings from his family they ask him to cook. Not wanting to be sent away he goes to the kitchen and begins to pray since poor Pascual does not know how to cook or for that matter boil water. The angels come and cook while Pascual prays and prepare a wonderful feast. The monks are so impressed with his cooking they make Pascual their cook.


Since both of these books involve angels, we are sharing both of them today. For Pascual and the Kitchen Angels, we made wooden spoon kitchen angels.

I bought some wooden spoons at the Dollar Tree. We put a googly eye on each and then used felt for hair, dress and wings and a pipe cleaner for the halos. This craft can also work for Angels, Angels Everywhere since it also mentions kitchen angels.

We also made some lollipop angels. We are still working on using up our Halloween candy!

For these we used tissue paper, coffee filter dresses, cupcake liners (for wings) and pipe cleaner halos.

Then we made some paper plate angels. I think these are pretty self explanatory.

Then after Hazel went to bed, I made her an angel mobile. In Angels, Angels Everywhere we talk about the Bedtime Angel who tucks the children into bed and we always add that she stays and keeps them safe so they are not alone. I thought it would be fun to have a mobile of angels with one representing the Bedtime Angel. I put three angels on it to represent the Bedtime Angel, the Wake Up Angel, and the Guarding Angel. My plan is to hang it above Hazel's bed so she will see the angels looking over her each night.

These angels are made with a pipe cleaner, wooden bead, scraps of yarn and felt for clothes. I used the pipe cleaner halo and a I cut a silver poinsettia I got at the Dollar Tree for wings. Then I strung them and hung them on a circle of floral wire. My balance is  not perfect yet, but I will work on it.

For even more angel crafts you can check out all the ones we did last year for the angel swap we participated in. 

Every time we read Angels, Angels Everywhere Hazel tells me she really likes it! What Tomie dePaola books have you been reading lately? I hope you will join us in our blog hop! Next week we will be sharing another Tomie dePaola book and craft/activity. I hope you will join us again!

A Ghostly Day

The past few days we have been finally doing some Halloween crafts. One of our focuses has been ghosts. So today I will share our ghosts with you.

Welcome to The Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

I have joined these wonderful blogs to create the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

Toddler Approved

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Rainy Day Mum

Reading Confetti

Inspiration Laboratories

Play Dr. Mom

Mommy and Me Book Club

Kitchen Counter Chronicles

Two Big Two Little

Creative Connections for Kids

The Golden Gleam

Juggling with Kids

Taming the Goblin

Crafty Moms Share

Not Twiddle Twaddle

Ready Set Read 2 Me

Famiglia & Seoul

The Good Long Road

The Educator's Spin On It

Imagination Soup

3 Dinosaurs

Smile Play Learn

Royal Baloo

Being a Conscious Parent

Each of us will be posting about a book from the same author on the third Monday of the month and co-hosting a link party for you to share your own books and activities from this author. The authors we have picked are Mo Willems for June, Don and Audrey Wood for July and Kevin Henkes for August. We are hoping this will help to keep us all motivated to include reading in our busy summer plans and help keep the summer slide away from our kids. Will you join us in sharing?

We have had so much fun exploring Mo Willems books this month!! It was hard for us to choose one book to share with you. I must admit the only exposure we had to Mo Willems before this book club was a story time at a local museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. One of the few we went to they read Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. Then the kids did a neat craft. They gave them a black and white picture and had the kids paint on them similar to the pictures in the book. Well we re-read Knuffle Bunny as well as the two sequels to it. Hazel loved them all! We also did a quick picture similar to what we did at the museum. This time we used dot markers instead of paints because they were already out. I got the black and white picture here.

Ok, now onto the book we are suppose to be sharing about. We said we would pick one of the Piggie and Elephant series. Well, we have had a hard time picking just one. I think we have six out of the library and have loved all six of them. I do think Hazel's favorite right now is Elephants Cannot Dance, but she also loves We Are in a Book!

After I took this picture I realized the one about sharing ice cream was not there. Of course our homemade ice cream would be a perfect activity for this one, but since we already shared that activity we have another to share. We decided the fun think to do would be to make Piggie and Gerald (the elephant) masks so we could act out some of the books. To do this we started with painting two paper plates--one grey and one pink. Then I cut holes for the eyes. Oh, and we glued some pipe cleaners on as glasses for Gerald. Next we took one of Steve's old grey socks and put a small amount of stuffing in it for Gerald's trunk. I cut a slit in the plate and stuck the sock through it. Then Hazel glued one bump from an egg carton to be Piggie's snout. We added some glitter glue for her nostrils and for both of their mouths and glued on construction paper ears.  We used black for Gerald because we didn't have any grey on hand. Then Hazel really wanted them to have strings (I was hoping to glue them on tongue depressors and have them be the hold up type). Since Hazel was really insistent on wanting strings, I punched holes in them and tied stretchy string to them.

Then of course we tried them on. I put a larger string on Piggie so that mask fits me better and Gerald fits Hazel better, but of course we tried both on each of us.

Next we started acting out Elephants Cannot Dance. In this book, Piggie in her tutu wants to teach all of her friends how to dance. Gerald informs her that elephants cannot dance. She doesn't believe him so he shows her it in a book. Then she says that he can always try. Gerald then gets excited to try but of course does not have much success. He feels like a failure and gets sad. Then their other friends show up telling Piggie they are ready for their lessons. Piggie says she cannot teach them since her friend is so sad. The other friends say they don't want Piggie to teach them because they want to learn The Elephant. Then everyone tries to dance how Gerald danced and they all have fun.

Now Hazel loves to dance around the house or a store or any open space, so she loves this book. Next time we act this one out, I'm going to have her be Piggie and wear her tutu.

We will also be acting out some of the other books. Plus stay tuned this week for sharing more ideas to go with other Mo Willems books. I also hope you will visit all my other co-hosts and see what their creative ideas are for the book they chose. 

Now it is your turn to share a craft or activity for a Mo Willems book. I hope you are enjoying them as much as we are!!

This is where I share...

Multicultural Monday: Learning about Kenya

Another part of learning acceptance of differences is understanding them. As such it is important to look at other cultures. In doing so you will find the similarities and differences between yourself and them and understand the people in the culture a bit better. Today we are looking at Kenya. Why Kenya, you may ask. Well, Hazel received a wonderful postcard from Kenya about a month ago.

Postcard from Kenya for Hazel

 Hazel and the children of Andrea of Ziezo Designs and Ziezo Kenya have been exchanging postcards so we could learn about another part of the world. I discovered Ziezo through Sharing Saturday (which is still open if you would like to share with us your child-oriented craft or activity). Looking through her wonderful blog, I discovered her children go to a Waldorf School and I thought it would be neat for Hazel to learn a bit about Kenya from other Waldorf students. So we added her second pen pal (her first being from Australia--Kelly's from Happy Whimsical Hearts son). (On a side note if you are interested in having your child exchange postcards with Hazel, please drop me an email.)

Kenya's Flag: Source

Map of Kenya: Source

For the flag and map as well as some more information I went to http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2962.htm, the official page of the Kenyan Government. Kenya is 224,080 square miles which is just a bit smaller than the state of Texas. The official language of Kenya is English. The population is about 39 million (as of August 2010) and is very diverse. The majority of the population is Christian. They also have very different climates within the country although the equator passes through just about the center of Kenya.

Our first activity came from this book on Food and Festivals of Kenya by Wambui Kairi. We made kaimati, a small doughnut coated with sugar or coconut. They are eaten in Mombasa at a party at the Makadara Muslim Grounds to celebrate Id-ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Ramadan is a month where Muslims fast during daylight hours. Therefore this festival is at night so it is dark.

To make kaimati we took one cup lukewarm milk (ok I microwaved it since didn't realize it needed to be lukewarm until we needed it), one teaspoon dried yeast and a pinch of sugar and put them all in a bowl and let it sit for 10 minutes. I should add that our dough did not really rise so I think this may have been due to the wrong temperature for the milk and another little mistake we made.

Next Hazel beat an egg and added it to the yeast mixture. Hazel was a bit sloppy in her mixing and spilled a bit of the liquid (this was another minor mistake).

Then we mixed together 1 cup of flour and a teaspoon of salt (ok this is our second mistake. It was suppose to be 3 and 3/4 cups of flour!) Then we added the liquid and realized our mistake and added more flour. Then you get to mix with your hands and kneed a bit.

After adding the flour I found the mixture to be too dry (and would not mix in), so I added some more milk. It still was dry, but at least it was all mixed. Then you let it rise for two hours. (I went to church while it was rising.) Then you deep-fry it in oil by dropping spoonfuls into the oil. I used  canola oil in my large saute pan and ours was so dry I formed balls and dropped them in. When they came out you rolled them in sugar or grated coconut. I gave Steve the job of rolling. He actually liked them in both, but the coconut I bought was not fine enough for this.

Even with our mistakes, they were quite tasty. However I think I would try one of the recipes I found on line the next time. From Food Buzz. From the blog Kenyan Food. From Susan Kamau's Kenyan Kitchen (this one is most similar to the recipe I followed, but adds cardamom). I should add that we did go through the book and read the pages about Kenya's people and food and looked at all the different pictures throughout it. Hazel enjoyed this as well. (We did this during the ten minutes of letting the yeast turn frothy.)

Next we took a craft from Around-the-World Art & Activities by Judy Press. I was actually hoping to get two crafts from this book in today, but it didn't happen. Hazel was a bit tired and cranky between being sick and getting up early. We did however talk about the second craft which was to make zebras out of envelopes. I told her how Kenya was one of the places zebras live.

We made Masai "Beaded" Necklaces out of paper plates. This is a very easy craft. you cut a hole in the center of the plate trying to leave a wide brim. Then you are suppose to use the back of a paintbrush to make different color dots all over it. We did this in our family room so we used crayons on one and her dot markers on another. Hazel even let me get some pictures of her with them on. She hates when I take her picture unless I say it is for one of her grandparents.

Source

The book did a nice job of saying the Masai men and women wear this very beautiful but very heavy jewelry. It also shows that the Masai live in Kenya and North central Tanzania. For more information about the Masai people please visit The Masai of Kenya site. To see pictures of these beautiful necklaces visit the Maasai Art and Beads Association site.

The final piece of information I will share with you today from Kenya comes from Hands Around the World by Susan Milord. This book has a different activity for each of the 365 days of the year to learn about different cultures. On January 14th it discusses the different customs in naming babies. Among some Kenyan groups a firstborn daughter is always named after her father's mother. A second daughter would be named after her mother's mother. I just found that interesting. It discusses many different cultures traditions. Most of it is for older children and this was the only mention of Kenya in the book, but definitely an interesting book.

What do you do to teach your child about different cultures and to be more accepting of diversity?

This is where I share...

Building a Bird Nest

Sparrow Nest on Our House

Ever have a bunch of ideas in your head, but not enough time to get everything done. That is how I have been feeling. So today I will post about one of my ideas. With the start of spring we have been noticing birds and nests around, so I wanted to focus a bit on birds and nests.I have been pinning many bird nest and bird ideas.  Awhile ago, I posted this picture of a quick bird nest that I got the idea from Kara at Pam's Party Planning and Practical Tips (shared at a Sharing Saturday).

Hazel loved making it and asked to make another, so we bought some supplies. While at Michaels and looking at birds we found this little pre-made nest. We bought the birds in it at The Dollar Tree and put in some faux eggs to make it realistic.

Then we bought a bigger grapevine wreath and a basket at the Dollar Tree to make another one to go with our bigger birds. I used the wool felted eggs I won around Easter. I figured Hazel could play with this one a bit more.

Oh and we changed the birds to the original to a cardinal and other bird Hazel picked out.

The mixture

Next we made some bird nest cookies. I googled for a recipe and found an easy one on Six Sisters' Stuff. It is very easy. You melt a bag of chocolate chips and a bag of some other flavor of chips (I used mixed chocolate and peanut butter) in the microwave by setting it for a minute at 50% power level then stir and repeat until melted. Then stir in a bag chow mein noodles. Drop by the tablespoon on to pieces of waxed paper and shape how you want (we didn't really worry about shaping) and add three or so jelly beans or candy eggs of some sort (we used M&M's). The best part of making them now is all the Easter candy is on sale.

Then you let the cookies harden.

Hazel has already asked to make more of them though I don't think she tasted any of them. I have a different type of recipe to try so we might try them next week.

We also looked at some books on birds and nests. Here are a few of our favorites.

In the Nest by Anna Milbourne is a great book that simplifies the making of the nest and the life cycle of the eggs to baby birds to their first flight and leaving the nest.

Baby Bird's First Nest by Frank Asch is one of Hazel's favorites. It is a story about a baby bird who rolls over and tumbles out of his nest. His sleeping mother does not wake up to his cry for help, but a little frog who lives in the pond next to the tree comes to his rescue. Together they build their first nest and then a raccoon comes so they hide and then the frog helps the baby bird get back to its nest by hopping from branch to branch. It is a great story about helping another and making friends.




Bird Nests by Theresa Hopkins has pictures instead of some words so it is fun for the kids to read. It explains the use of the nest, etc.




Then we started some starched yarn nests. You will have to wait for the glue to dry to see the final product, but I also added raffia. I got the idea from La-La's Home Daycare. She has been doing a lot with birds and bird nests as well.

I also cut the supplies for Hazel to do two paper plate crafts mostly on her own. I painted one of the plates brown for her (more because she was doing something else). Then cut the strips of paper and the beak and wings and gave them to her with a plastic egg (well two tops of blue plastic eggs) and explained it to her. This idea came from Busy Bee Kids Crafts. Hers came out a lot messier,but isn't that how the art of a 3-year-old should be?

The even easier paper plate craft idea came from Arts and Crafts for Tots. I changed it a bit and started with a blue plate and cut the bird, beak and tree for her as well as gave her the yarn and raffia cut up. She did all the gluing herself though. We are happy with it.

So today, I had a bit of an epiphany. Hazel brought her brown paper plate craft to show me and the beaks and wings were glued to the plate and not the eggs. I went to fix them and Hazel apologized to me for doing it wrong. I tried to explain that she didn't do it wrong and realized that I really need to watch what I change and what my expectations are. I know I try not to change much on her things and do not look for perfection in either of our crafts, but I need to remember just how sensitive she is and that she is still trying to figure things out. Anyway, just thought I would share it with you.

The other bird nest in our tree--this one looks huge!

Keep an eye out for more bird crafts as well as gardening, senses, zoos, and multicultural/diversity. Those are all in my head. Now to get them done to share with you.

This is where I link up....

Sunflowers, Seeds, and More

Sunflowers

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please come visit and share your wonderful child-oriented crafts and activities with us and check out all the great ideas already shared. Tonight Happy Family Times will be open. You will be able to share your wonderful family time stories to help inspire all of us to have more of them.

Watermelons

After our mini-vacation we came home to see how much our plants have grown. We need to begin repotting some of them and planting some new seeds.

Pumpkins

We also got to finally see some growth in our fourth seed container (half milk container) of celery plants!

Celery

We also were able to finish, well almost finish some of our sunflower crafts. Hazel also posed with her flower mask.

Then we got working on our Mother's Day gifts and added some pictures and I printed out the You Are My Sunshine with the specific names. Now I need to buy some magnetic strip for the back and attach the songs to the flowers. I got these ideas from DLTK.

For Me

For Hazel's Godmother

For Daddy

Hazel wanted to make one for Daddy and Pop as well, so I guess they will also be Father's Day gifts. I am thinking of covering them in clear contact paper just to give them more strength before I put the magnetic strips on and attach the songs. Aren't they cute? Here is how I finished them:

Covered in clear contact paper and added two adhesive magnets

A finished product

We are all set for Mother's Day and Father's Day now!

We also had a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Mallard. While at the Cape I visited the Birdwatcher's General Store and asked for advice on what to feed the ducks. We bought some cracked corn and they seem to love it!

Hazel and I also played outside and she decided we were taking the train to the zoo. On the train she gave out diamonds. These are my two--a white one and a blue one. Love her imagination!!

This is where I link up...