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Showing posts sorted by date for query Mo Willems. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Mo Willems. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Outside In and the Inside Out: A Story About Arnold Lobel

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Every generation had its own beloved children's authors. For Hazel it was Mo Willems, Kevin Henkes, and Shannon Hale. For me I remember loving Beatrix Potter, Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. I remember loving Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad as well. I also loved the Paddington series. Of course there are also the other classics like Dr. Seuss. Today we are sharing a fun new book about Arnold Lobel and his amazing books. The book is Outside In and the Inside Out: A Story about Arnold Lobel by Emmy Kastner.  It is recommended for ages 4 to 8.

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Children's Book Reviews

Disclosure: Penguin Kids and Penguin Random House gave me a copy of these books free of charge for this review in return for an honest review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Penguin Kids has some fun books recently or soon-to-be released that I want to share with you. The first is perfect for a preschooler and/or emerging reader. It teaches the concepts of in and out, over, under and around, and on and off in a very fun manner. The book is In! Over! and On! (the Farm) by Ethan Long. 
http://www.penguin.com/book/in-over-and-on-the-farm-by-ethan-long-illustrated-by-ethan-long/9780399169076


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Virtual Book Club for Kids 2012-2013

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities or to be inspired by the features from last week and what has already been shared this week!
 
 VirtualBookClub

Well as August ends and September begins the end of the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids ends, however we have decided to make it a year-long event!! As you know in June, our author was Mo Willems, in July the author was Audrey and Don Wood and August the author was Kevin Henkes! If you missed any, please stop by and see the great ideas everyone has shared.

So the Virtual Book Club for Kids is a group of 20+ bloggers who will host a blog hop for activities to go with the author of the month. The Bloggers are:



Today I am going to share with you our line up for the next year!! The blog hop goes live the third week of each month and the dates are included in my list below! To participate read a book by the selected author of the month and do some activity with it. Be creative and have fun!! Then blog about it and come here to link up at the blog hop!! It is a fun way to get your child reading with you and enjoying books! Plus you may learn about some new authors that you will end up loving! Check out are great line up!
September 17th-Lois Ehlert
October 15th-Amy Krouse Rosenthal
November 19th- Tomie de Paola
December 17th- Jan Brett
January 21st-David McPhail
February 18th-Dr. Seuss
March 18th-Julia Donaldson
April 15th-David Shannon
May 20th-Leo Lionni
June 17th-Gail Gibbons
July 15th- Jez Alborough
August 19th-Donald Crews

I hope you will join us each month!!
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Virtual Book Club for Kids--Don and Audrey Wood Week 2

Looking for Multicultural Monday? Sorry, after a long night of taking a good friend to the Emergency Room, I decided to take a week off and do a bit easier of a post that I was trying to figure out when to write it this week anyway. Multicultural Monday will return next week though!! (Oh, and the good news is that my friend is home and all right. She did not need the surgery we thought she might need!!)

The July Author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Don and Audrey Wood. Last week the link party started and I shared our activities for The Dragon and The Princess. If you missed it, please go see it. I included activities for different age children including one on gender identity to open discussions about how we have preconceived ideas of what gender will do certain jobs or have certain behaviors.

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Virtual Book Club for Kids--Don and Audrey Wood Month

Today is the day the link party for the Virtual Book Club for Kids opens for July. Our July authors are Don and Audrey Wood. I am so excited to share with you today a wonderful book by Audrey Wood that still let's me have my Multicultural Monday theme. But first, let me explain about the Virtual Book Club for Kids. 
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July's Author for Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

Sharing Saturday is still open. Visit and share your child-oriented crafts and activities and get inspired by what others have shared!!

 
Since today is July 1st I just would like to remind you of the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids. Over 20 blogs are hosting this book club and our June author was Mo Willems. You can still share your Mo Willem themed crafts and activities. Or be inspired by some of the ones shared.

However July 16th we will be opening the July Link Party. The author for July is Don and Audrey Wood! So go pick your favorite Don and Audrey Wood books and be creative with your crafts and activities and come back on the 16th to link up!! I cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with!


If you like to plan ahead, August's author is Kevin Henkes!
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Friendship, Readathon, Book Clubs and More

   
Today I thought I would share a bit about friendship. It is the theme of the Readathon 2012 Week 2. Did you know that 1256 readers have signed up so they have donated over 1256 meals to hungry kids via FoodforEducation.org? (If you want to join just click on the Readathon 2012 button above and for each reader that joins a meal is donated!) For more information and some links to different friendship crafts and activities go to MeMeTales.
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More Mo Willems--Summer Virtual Book Club

We had so much fun reading Mo Willems books, that I have to say we were inspired to do several different crafts. It was hard to choose just one book. You may remember on Monday we shared our Piggie and Elephant masks, which of course can work with any of the Piggie and Elephant books. Hazel's favorites seems to be Elephants Cannot Dance and I Will Surprise My Friend.

Well we read Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. This story is about a naked mole rat who likes to wear clothes. The other naked mole rats tease him and are horrified at the idea of him wearing clothes. They go talk to the oldest and wisest naked mole rat who calls a meeting to announce that any of them should be allowed to wear clothes if they want and then it no longer matters whether they are clothed or not. 
Enlarged Naked Mole Rat

Well I thought of magnetic paper dolls with this story. (It may be since we were about to take a two-hour car ride to visit my parents and this is the perfect activity for it.) So I enlarged one of the naked mole rat pictures from the book, and I cut some clothes from scrapbook paper to fit the enlarged figure. (I hand sketched them on a paper on top of the enlarged picture and cut patterns.) I glued these cut clothes to the enlarged figure paper and copied it onto the magnetic page (which I got a Ocean State Job Lot for $1 or something for three different sheets).  Steve cut the magnets out for me since I was too busy trying to get ready for our trip. I picked up a metal pizza pan (they didn't have any baking pans) at the Dollar Tree for her to use this on.

This is something she can bring with her in the car or play with at home. Overall, a good activity!

Next month's author is Don and Audrey Wood. You can start reading their books and thinking of activities so you can share!! To see the list of blogs hosting The Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids go here.
 
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...
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Welcome to The Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

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



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Multicultural Monday: Book Clubs & Readathon Connections


As some of you know, we are participating in both the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids (look for the link party a little later in our next post) and a Readathon.

As I was reading some Mo Willems books to Hazel the past few weeks to prepare for the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids, I came across the Knuffle Bunny series. It took us awhile to get Knuffle Bunny Free (the third and final book in the series).  In this book, Trixie goes to Holland to visit her grandparents and loses her beloved knuffle bunny when he gets left on the airplane. When her father calls the airline to ask them to check the plane, he finds out the plane is already headed to China. This gives us an opportunity to look at the culture in two different countries for Multicultural Monday. Since I just got the book, I have not done any of these crafts but wanted to give some resources to you.
Holland:
--divided by country here is the link for Holland.
--coloring pages, worksheets, favorite characters and of course tulips and windmills
--post written by a guest blogger from Holland...much on art, culture and life as well as a felt board craft.
--written by a kid describing history and life in the Netherlands.

China:
--many different activities and craft ideas including coloring pages from animals to homes and holidays
--animals, fans, hats, drum, and much more
--a good list of crafts for all Asian with a strong showing on Chinese including a Chinese yo-yo
--divided by countries here is the link for China
--many for the Chinese New Year but more general the further you go down
--written from a kid's point of view describing life in China

While checking out MemeTales pre-Readathon I found some free books on their India series. Hazel and I have been enjoying reading some of them from the computer. (Memetales is no longer working.)

The first is about a girl who brings Stickfiggy to visit her grandparents in India and Stickfiggy learns about the country and culture. The second is a story about the wind, but uses the Indian word for wind, vayu to name it. This of course brings us a new country about which to learn.
India:
--written in a kid's point of view of life in India
--coloring pages, worksheets, crafts, animal crafts and more
--peacocks, henna and more
--Learn about India worksheets, maps, famous people and more!

Ok, this is my quick installment of Multicultural Monday. There will be another post later for the Summer Virtual Book Club including the link party. I hope you have been enjoying Mo Willems books as well so you can share with us!
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Mermaid Treasure Box

Announcements:
Sharing Saturday is still open. Please come share your child oriented crafts and activities with us and check out all the amazing ideas others have shared!

Upcoming this next week are the kick offs to two reading events. MemeTales Readathon 2012 and Virtual Summer Book Club for Kids (join me on Monday to share your Mo Willems book crafts), and we are participating in both!! I hope you will join us in them.
My frame and picture in my beach themed master bedroom

While thinking about our shell frames and picking up a few more wooden frames to make more, we found a wooden box that would make a nice treasure box for Hazel. She loved the idea and I let her pick out a blueish paint for it. I used this paint on the box and our frames. I decided I wanted to use one of the previous frames for the picture of Hazel at the beach and still wanted to frame my favorite mermaid picture. Hazel also wanted to frame another mermaid picture (her second favorite) and we had a piece of wood we covered in sand to make a sign for Steve. We glued some shells on it to say "Relax." Steve liked it and wanted it for one of his spaces.
 I let Hazel glue the shells on her frame after I had added some sand to the bottom. She of course wanted to put on as many as she could. We put this one in her room as well as the first one she did.

Now onto the box. While she was at my mother-in-law's I painted it for her including the inside. Then we picked out a mermaid picture. We chose one from The Graphic Fairy. I decoupaged a sparkly scrapbook paper first to the top of the box and then the picture on top of it and put a few coats of Mod Podge onto it. Then I added some sand to the bottom of the sides of the box.
After all of this dried  we put some mermaid stickers on the sides including bubbles and then I sprayed the inside and out with an acrylic sealer. Next I hot glued some shells, stones, and sea glass onto the top and sides.
Top View
Front View
Hazel could not wait for it to dry so she could put some treasure into it.
Back View
Finished Box
We will be sharing this over at Taming The Goblin's Mermaid Project. Have you shared your mermaid crafts there yet?


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Owl Graduation Gift

Reminders:
There is still plenty of time to share at Sharing Saturday! Please stop by and check out all the wonderful ideas already shared and share your child-oriented crafts and/or activities. I am also collecting ideas for teacher gift ideas. Please stop by the link party to share any and all that you have!

Special Announcement: 

I'm so excited to be a part of this. Fifteen + wonderful bloggers/blogs are getting together to host a Virtual Summer Book Club. Each month an author will be chosen and all you have to do to participate is read one book by the author and do a craft tied to the book. Then come back here the third Monday of the month and link your post about it to our link party. The author for June is Mo Willems. (I know we are having trouble choosing just one book!)

Now back to our normal post...
Today we were suppose to go to a graduation party for the main person who runs the nursery at my church. She and her sister also babysit for us, and often Hazel is one of the only children in the nursery at church so she loves getting the attention of the high school girls. Since we went to the doctor yesterday and found out Hazel does have a bug that is going around and is still contagious we did not get to go to the party. However, we do have a gift for her. While on Pinterest, I saw something that was an owl and it said "Owl miss you." (The pin came from Lisa Storms Blog.)It hit me that we would do something owl related and make a card from Hazel with that on it. I thought of making one of the toilet paper roll owls and filling it with candy hugs and kisses (like this one on Clean & Sensible), but wanted to do something more.

I went looking for a good owl pattern or picture that I could make a pattern from and somehow came to We All Sew and this pattern by Ashley Johnston. Now that said, I found this pattern through another blogger, but for some reason I did not save the link and cannot find it again. She had made a smaller version of Ashley Johnston's pattern. I saved the pattern but it does not have a source on it. If you are the blogger, please let me know! I did add buttons to the inner eyes as well and made the front a pocket. figuring it might be a good place for a college student to hide something she doesn't want anyone else to find.

Next we made a card. I used Printshop and made this. I had Hazel color the front. Here is the card in pdf form in case you would like to use it (I changed the fonts a bit, but it is basically the same). Sorry the front of it is so blurry. You can see it a bit better in the next picture. I also picked up an owl necklace at one of the craft stores for $1 and helped Hazel make it. We punched a hole in the card an attached it.
I will bring it to church tomorrow to give to her since we couldn't go to the party. Today it poured so I was kind of happy to have a stay-at-home day. How was your Saturday?

 This is where I link up...
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Sharing Saturday #22


What amazing ideas were shared last week. Once again I had a hard time choosing only a few to feature! If you have not had a chance to check them out, please go visit and leave some comments!

Come join the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids.  I have joined 15+ other blogs/bloggers to start a summer virtual book club for our kids. Each month a different author will be featured and to join all you have to do is read a book to your child or have your child read a book by this author. Do an activity inspired by the book and then come share that activity here on June 18th! The June author is Mo Willems. Will you join us in reading one of his amazing books this month? I know I went to our local library today and with the help of our amazing children's librarian checked out six Mo Willems books and have several more on hold. The children's librarian loves his books and had so many suggestions for me and Hazel.


Ok, back to Sharing Saturday...

Most Clicked:
We had a tie for the most clicked.

A Few of My Favorites:

From Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational: Ruler of the Ruler (Ok, I'm showing my math geekiness here, but how fun!!)

From Babylandia:): Crazy Bridge (Love this balance game that you can play with things you have in your house!)

If you were featured here, please feel free to get a Featured button here and display it with pride on your blog! Please visit my co-host, Mama Mia's Heart2Heart to see her features!

From Your Hosts:


 Now for This Week's Party
A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow both hosts via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  
2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post.
3) Post the button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.
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4. Optional: Like us on Facebook and Google+
Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest. 
All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!
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