Annie and the Wild Animals

Each month I join the following amazing blogs to present the Virtual Book Club for Kids. Each month we choose a different author and each of us picks a book by that author to present with an activity, craft, etc. relating to the book. Then we ask you to join us in our blog hop with your own ideas from this author's books. The blogs participating are:

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 - Crafty Moms Share - 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 the author is the amazing Jan Brett. Not only are her books fun to read with great stories and some classics, but she also does beautiful illustrations! Jan Brett also has a page full of ideas to go along with her books.This month we decided to focus on one of our favorites by her, Annie and the Wild Animals.

Annie and the Wild Animals is about a girl, Annie who lives with her cat, Taffy. It has been a long winter with a lot of snow and Taffy has been acting strange. One day Annie cannot find Taffy anywhere. She gets lonely so she decides to make corn cakes and leave them for a wild animal which she hopes she will be able to tame to be her new pet. Of course she gets more wild animals than she wants and none are small friendly animals. She keeps making corn cakes until she runs out of corn meal. Then finally spring comes and Taffy returns with three surprises.

We decided to try to make corn cakes. When I first googled corn cake recipes I mostly found corn pancakes, so we started with those. We adapted a recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

We used about two tablespoons of margarine and cooked frozen corn kernels in a pan. Then we used non-fat milk, egg, corn and the vanilla and mixed them. In a separate bowl we measured and mixed the dry ingredients using whole wheat flour. Then poured the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and then cooked the pancakes. Hazel did a lot of the measuring herself and helped at the stove.

Then we also made Annie's Favorite Corn Cake Recipe from Jan Brett's site, which is more like a corn bread. We had this with some beef stew at dinner.

Then we also did a craft project. I enlarged some of the border pictures of the wild animals and Annie, and Taffy and her kittens. We made them into a mobile by gluing them onto some cardstock and stringing them. On the wild animals we wrote the things Annie thought about each (the moose was too big, etc.).

Now you can check out each of the other ideas to go with a Jan Brett book as well as add your own to our blog hop!

Coping with Tragedy

We had a lovely weekend this week. Hazel and I left Friday to visit my parents to help decorate their Christmas tree and then Steve joined us on Saturday so all five of us went on a Polar Express Train Trip. I will tell you more about that at Happy Family Times on Tuesday. 

It was very hard in the middle of this nice experience to turn on the television and hear about the tragedy that happened in Connecticut on Friday. (For those who may not know what I am talking about here is a report from CNN.) Now this tragedy hit me on many levels. First I grew up in Connecticut and have many friends and family who still live there. As a former teacher all school shootings really scare me. I think of my students and my friends who still are teaching. Plus a close friend from high school is an elementary school principal in Connecticut somewhat close to Newtown. Then add to all of those reasons that this happened in an elementary school and really could have happened anywhere. It was not like many of the other shootings where the shooter was out to get people who had hurt him, but rather this shooter went to the school where his mother worked and shot innocent children and staff. I know I was thankful that Hazel was not up to see the news (we wouldn't have had it on if she was) and that we have decided to send her to a Waldorf School where I feel they are a bit more protected.

However, Sandy Hook Elementary School had the security set up. They had recently installed a lock where the front office could see who was at the door before buzzing them in. I could not at first understand why they buzzed him in given how he was dressed and his mother was not there then. However later I heard there was broken glass which made much more sense. He shot his way in. So here this school had done what it could to protect the children, and still had such a horrible tragedy. How do we cope with that and how do we explain it to our children?

With Hazel's age, we are doing our best of her to know nothing about this event. We want her to feel safe in her world and at her school. However I know with older children you cannot keep such news from them. I was teaching when the Columbine Shooting occurred. I remember being glad it occurred during our April vacation so we all had time to digest what had happened. I also remember high school juniors telling me that they went over escape plans with their parents should anything like this happen at our school. (They literally went through the students schedule to figure ways out of the building from each classroom.)  This was in response to something that happened on the other side of the country and not a neighboring state. 

Now if teenagers were that fearful, I can only imagine how elementary students must feel now. I think the most important thing as adults is for us to be there for the children. If they need to talk, listen and reassure them. It is important for us to remain our calm and let them feel safe. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) have some great tips on helping children deal with a national tragedy here.

My heart goes out to the family of all the victims including the survivors. I pray to God to help all who were present that day and especially the young children that witnessed death that day. I know there have been stories of teachers who were shot while protecting their students. I can only imagine what those children will deal with knowing that. It breaks my heart that children so young have to deal with such violence. I hope you will join me in taking time today to say a prayer for all who have been touched by this act of violence and for God to help the families and the survivors process this horrible event.

Sharing Saturday #50

Wow, once again I'm blown away by the amazing ideas shared last week! If you have not had a chance to visit them all, you should. I found it so inspiring and am definitely going to be trying some of them. I know this week I have not been on-line as much and thus not blogging as much and for that matter we haven't been doing as many crafts. This weekend I am taking some time to spend with my family and prepare for the holidays. Since Hazel's birthday is right after Christmas I always feel a bit stressed at this point. Plus I'm mostly handmaking all of her gifts for both Christmas and her birthday. What was I thinking? I will be sharing more soon.

Click picture to go to post!

Last week there were many along the same themes, but here are a few of my favorites (one is very similar to another one from 2 Big, 2 Little so I featured the other one since she already had the most clicked).

1) From Gift of Curiousity: DIY Christmas Snow Globes (Such an easy way to make it)

2) From Life with Moore Babies: D is for Dentist (I love this experiment and we will be trying it!)

3) From Little Wonders' Days: Gingerbread Playdough Activity (Great seasonal activity)

4) From Keitha's Chaos: Cutesy Elf Decorated the Bathroom (What a cute Elf on a Shelf)

5) From Vixen Made: Stamped Christmas T-Shirt (Love the ease of this!)

6) From Stay at Home Educator: A Felt Nativity Story (Definitely going to make this one!!)

7) From Housing a Forest: Stained Glass Nativity (Love this one as well!!)

8) From April's Homemaking: Easy Paper Angel (So sweet and simple!!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: Christmas in Kenya

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Coffee Cup Angel

I know I've been a bit MIA lately. Sorry. I spent the day working on my resume. I am going to apply for a part time job at Hazel's school. We also have a bunch of family activities planned the next week or so, therefore I may be MIA a bit more. 

So I saw this great idea on Our Life in a Click using Starbucks cups. Now I have to admit I'm addicted to chai lattes and I love Starbucks, so we have a few cups floating around. In fact when Hazel first started speaking she called Starbucks "Chai". She also has several empty cups floating around so she can pretend to drink a chai as well. Therefore, this craft was right up our alley.

I made a few changes. I did not have the wooden discs so I used the plastic cover. I cut the circle and added the face. To make it stand I used one of the green drink sticks they now have so your drink does not spill in the car. I poked it through the bottom of the cup and put glue on it and around it and glued the cover circle on it. I blocked it in the back with some yarn hair. Then I used a glittery pipe cleaner for the halo.

I honestly did this craft with Hazel in about 10 minutes. Tomorrow we are going to use different size cups to make an angel family. I'm also thinking maybe a Christmas tree. I have an idea in my head. I'll share it tomorrow if we do it. Have you done any recycled crafts lately? Any other creative ideas for using your coffee cups and its various parts?

Happy Family Times #37--Zoo Lights and a Living Nativity

Have you done something fun with your family this week? Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I would love to hear about it. We are gathering different activities to inspire us all to have more fun together times with our families. Please share yours below!

This week I am going to share two family activities. Both are seasonal. The first thing we did was to go to our local zoo for their Zoo Lights exhibit. They literally have the zoo decorated with many Christmas lights. For parts of it it is like walking through the woods with Christmas lights on all the trees (and getting to see the occasional animal in a lit cage). We went to the Zoo Lights a couple of years ago when Hazel was almost two but the night was extremely cold. This year we picked a night that was unusually warm.  Much more fun to walk around in less layers.

Daddy and Hazel strolling along the path

We got to see the bald eagle, the arctic fox, an owl and reindeer as well as a river otter.

The reindeer comes to say hello

After strolling through the animals we went over towards the gift shop and found this photo prop.

Sorry, Steve is not great with the camera.

Then we headed to Santa's Castle for Hazel's third picture with Santa this year. And saw the many displays outside of it which included lights, dolls, a train and much more.

Then it was time for the rides. Hazel wanted to go on the carousel. The last time we had come to Zoo Lights was the first time she went on a carousel ever.

And of course a trip to the zoo is not complete without a ride on the train.

Then we stopped at the snack bar for some hot apple cider and popcorn and headed home for dinner.

Our other big activity this week was on Saturday we went to a living nativity. We invited Steve's mother to join us. We traveled just over half an hour to a church that hosts a Journey to Bethlehem for three nights. They literally have you pretend you are journeying from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. You get to see Roman soldiers, the wisemen, shepherds with live sheep and goats, the inn keeper, angels, and of course the holy family. It was an amazing experience. Hazel is hoping to go back every year.

When you first get there you are taken into the sanctuary for a preview of the event and getting the important information before hand of the prophets and the history of Mary, etc. Plus you get to see the ruins of King Herrod's castle and all sorts of things. Then when it is your groups turn you are taken into another room which is set up as Joseph's Carpentry Shop and you are met with your leaders for the journey and are given your papers (and identity for the journey). Hazel's journey identity was Hazael! What a coincidence! The first stop was map maker who showed the journey on a map and explained why you do not take the direct route (it is not safe). Then you were stopped by beggars and stopped at a rabbi's encampment. Then the Roman soldiers stop you and ask to see papers and ask all sorts of questions of a few. Hazel was scared of the soldiers and was clinging to me, so they left us alone.

Then we met the wisemen who showed us their gifts and explained what each was. Then we saw the shepherds and sheep. There the angel came to give the good news and then more angels sang. Then we went to the inn to find a room and of course there was none and we were taken to the stable where we found Joseph and Mary and Jesus (a two-month-old baby well wrapped). After the shepherds left the children were allowed to move closer to the family and there was not much room for my shy little girl so the narrator lifted her onto a hay stack and held her there while he spoke to us. This is the one picture I took. You can see Hazel on the hay stack looking at the holy family.

Then we went back inside the church where they served cookies, coffee, hot cocoa and had a story corner for children and information on the church, etc. everywhere. We all agreed it was an amazing experience and we definitely want to go back again next year. If you get a chance to go to a living nativity I highly recommend it.


Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Christmas Around the World - Christmas in Kenya

I joined an amazing group of bloggers put together by Beth at Living Life Intentionally to present Christmas Around the World. Each blogger is presenting how Christmas or a winter holiday is celebrated in different countries around the world. Some will be writing from their own experiences and some, like me, will be writing based on research. Today I present Christmas in Kenya.

Source

Happy Hanukkah

Sharing Saturday is still open. Please stop by to see the features, share your child-oriented posts and be inspired by the amazing ideas shared!

With all my Christmas excitement, I thought it would be nice to include a Hanukkah post. I grew up in a town that had a large Jewish population, so I often think of the Jewish holidays. Since I am scheduled to do my Christmas in Kenya post for the Christmas Around the World series Monday, I will have two Multicultural Monday posts, but this one will be on Sunday.

Sharing Saturday Feature--from Boy Mama Teacher Mama: Clothespin Menorah

A little history about Hanukkah. I'll be honest, I did not know the story behind Hanukkah though I am sure I must have heard it at some point. I took some books out of the library to help me with it.

 
A World of Holidays: Hanukkah by Anne Clark, David Rose, and Gill Rose gives much information on the holiday historically as well as currently. So the story is a long time ago (more than 2000 years ago), a Syrian ruler of Israel, King Antiochus, demanded that everyone in his land believe in the Greek gods instead of the one Jewish God. He actually made it a crime to teach about one God and the punishment was death. He also sent his soldiers into the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem on their horses and put a statue of Zeus in there. He also ordered the soldiers to make pig sacrifices to Zeus in the temple. These acts made the Temple unholy for the Jewish people. Well a priest named Mattathias and his sons refused to give up their own beliefs. They fled to the hills and took the small number of Jews with them to remain loyal to their religion and to fight the Syrians. After Mattathias died, his son, Judah, led the Jews. Even though the Jews were outnumbered they continued to win battles and eventually defeated Antiochus and his men. They returned to their homes in Jerusalem and began to cleanse the temple so they could rededicate it to God. While cleaning it they found a jar of oil that had been used to keep the menorah lit. Antiochus had his men distinguish the flame since the light of the candles represented God's presence to the Jews. This jar of oil was enough to keep the candles lit for a day, but it would take much longer to get more oil. However they lit the candle using the oil (which was made from olives) and the miracle occurred--the lamp stayed lit for eight days!

Source

This is why Hanukkah lasts for eight days and is often called the Festival of Lights. Hanukkah means "rededication". The festival starts on the 25th day of the month of Kislev in the Jewish calendar. The candles are lit at sunset at each night of the eight nights. (The first night this year is/was Saturday the 8th.) The first candle is placed on the right side of the hanukiah (which many people refer to as the menorah), and each night after that a new candle is added to the left. An extra candle, the shamash or servant candle is used to light the other candles and then placed in the center of the hanukiah. Forty four candles are need in all to celebrate. The candles are lit left to right so the newest one is lit first.

Source

Latkes or potato pancakes and doughnuts are traditional foods for Hanukkah. The reason being the oil required to cook them. An easy way to introduce children to Hanukkah would be to make some latkes. There are recipes all over the web as well in many books. I have not made them since I was young so I will not attempt to share one with you.

Other ideas for introducing Hanukkah to children:

• Make a dreidel and play dreidel game (for excellent history/meaning and rules) (How to make one out of clay) (How to make a paper one with free printable one with the symbols already on it)
• Make a Menorah (Clothespin Menorah pictured above) (Coloring Pages and more) (Paper one for ages 2+) (Block Menorah) (Handprint Menorah)
• Other crafts, lessons and activities (Enchanted Learning) (Akhlah) (DLTk's Kids)
• Read a Hanukkah book: Here are two I found at the library but also check out this great post at We Bloom Here with her favorites.

 
 Hanukkah by Miriam Chaikin tells the story of Hanukkah in great detail and explains how to celebrate it.

It's Hanukkah! by Jeanne Modesitt tells how a mouse family celebrates the holiday. This is a great book for young children to understand how families actually celebrate. At the end of the book there is the history of Hanukkah, how to light the menorah including blessings, how to play dreidel, as well as a recipe for latkes and the words and music to O Hanukkah words by A. Evronin.

Sharing Saturday #49

Wow, I had a very hard time choosing features this week. Have you checked out the wonderful ideas shared last week yet? If not, you need to. They are so inspiring. I know I found several ideas I want to try with Hazel.

Click on picture for link to post.

I definitely have Christmas on the brain and I can tell many of you do as well. Here are a few of my Christmas favorites (I also shared one on Wednesday that we already tried).

1) From Family Home and Life: Scripture Ornaments
2) From Scissors and Spoons: Clothespin Stars
3) From Making Boys Men: Nativity Peg Dolls
4) From Raise a Boy: DIY Block Ornaments
5) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: My First Nativity

On Monday I shared many Advent calendar ideas from last week and several other Sharing Saturdays. I apparently missed a few so I am including them here as well as a Hanukkah craft and some other favorites.

1) From Boy Mama Teacher Mama: Clothespin Menorah
2) From Lewis Music Studio: Recycled Drums
3) From Explore and Express: Advent Nature Table (What an amazing activity!!)
4) From Science Sparks: Candy Cane Goo
5) From Mess for Less: Advent Calendar Jar
6) From Mess for Less: Meringue Snowmen


Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess:

Focus on the Nativity (This is a multiple blog--blog hop, but here are some of my ideas including play sets, books, music, printables, and crafts)

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).  
Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. A reminder: Mia is taking a blogging break. Hopefully she will be back soon to host again!!

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Focus on the Nativity

This year one of my goals is to really focus on the true meaning of Christmas. I feel our society is so much turned away from the religious side of Christmas and more into the commercialism and the receiving. I do not want to bring Hazel up this way. I want her to understand why we celebrate Christmas and why it is a special day. So I have been on the look-out for ways to do this. 

St. Nicholas

December 6th is St. Nicholas Day. And to let you in on a secret, he is visiting the Nursery Classroom at Hazel's school tonight. The children will be surprised when they go inside tomorrow morning. They will also hear a little about St. Nicholas. Do you know about him?

Saint Nicholas was born in the third century in Asia Minor, now Turkey, to a wealthy family. He was raised to be a devout Christian and lost his parents in an epidemic. There are many stories about his giving spirit and caring for the poor, the sick and the suffering. There are also many stories about how he cared for the children. For more information you should check out my source of this information, the St. Nicholas Center.

In the classroom tomorrow the children will hear about a good boy named Nicholas who was given so much good food and toys that he would walk with his pockets full of them and when he saw someone suffering or poor he would give that person his things. He went on to become a Bishop when he grew up and heard about an entire town that was suffering from hunger. He had all of his servants gather food and sailed a ship with blue and white sails to the town and knocked on the doors of the people. No one saw him, but when they answered the door there would be food at it.

There are also customs in some countries of leaving shoes out for your gifts. Apparently one of the times Nicholas threw the food in the windows it landed in a shoe and after that the shoe legend began.

So not only will Hazel get some St. Nicholas celebration at school in the morning, but we also made the hand puppet pictured above using the pattern I found at St. Nicholas Center. We followed the directions and glued everything. Hazel will get to play with it tomorrow.

I also made a felt ornament. I am going to give it to Hazel in the morning. I found the pattern at St. Nicholas Center as well. They also have stories, pictures, printables, find hidden object game and other crafts.

In the morning we will rush to school, but after school we will have some time to explore St. Nicholas a bit more. I printed the hidden object game (one of Hazel's favorite things to do nowadays) and pages to color as well as some of the paper crafts for us to try. 

We also found this book at the used book store, so we will be reading it tomorrow again. The book, The Gift from Saint Nicholas by Dorothea Lachner is a wonderful story about how children making a wish to St. Nicholas and he comes through with giving everyone what they wished even though it had been snowing for days and no one could leave their homes.

Now why do I love celebrating St. Nicholas? Well I love the fact that it changes Santa Claus to someone who believed in Jesus and followed God. I love that it takes the importance of what you receive away and makes it more important that you are a giving person. I feel that it reminds us of the true spirit of the holiday.  How will you be celebrating St. Nicholas Day?

Operation Christmas

So a few weeks ago, Annie from Annie One Can Cook shared at Sharing Saturday that she was co-organizing a sign up for Operation: Christmas. Operation: Christmas is volunteering to send a care package to a U.S. Military service person or in this case platoon for Christmas. We were assigned a platoon and the only message I received from its leader was he had a Christmas tree and a few things for it but anything else would be a blessing. I emailed him and asked if there was anything specific they wanted, but did not hear back, so I was on my own. I found a website from Military Missions in Kentucky that had a complete list of suggested things to send. So off I went.

A few of my goals were to have Hazel involved and to send useful things and fun things. I also tried to go a bit healthy with some of it. The platoon has 30 people in it so we made 30 cards. The tree style card idea came from Mudpies and Sunshine and was shared at Sharing Saturday this week. While we had the pom poms and pipe cleaners out, the snowman popped into my head. We made about 7 or so this way and the rest were just rubber stamped since Hazel lost interest. We sent two gift cards to itunes (which I purchased at church so my church got part of the money). Hazel also made one of her wooden color crafts--this one a nativity. I helped her a bit which helped her stay in the lines more than she normally does. We sent individual packaged almonds and trail mix and Craisins. Plus tea bags, iced tea and lemonade mix, hard candies, Lifesavers, candy canes and some Rice Krispie Treats (or I guess I should say Crisp Rice Treats since they are not made with actual Rice Krispie cereal but a crisped organic brown rice--I buy them at Trader Joe's). 

Now sending something to a military person overseas is interesting. They have special flat rate boxes at the post office to send it Priority Mail. Then you have to fill out the long custom form. I have not had to fill out the long custom form to send anything to Dino Boy (Kelly's at Happy Whimsical Hearts son) in Australia or to Kelly for that matter including the knitted farm swap squares.

I do not think Hazel totally understood who we were sending the package to, but she did want to help with it. I'm hoping it is something we can do each year so she learns more about it. Plus I love giving back to the military when they and their families are sacrificing so much to protect our country. 

Also one of my goals this year is to really keep the true meaning of Christmas present in our lives. Between this and donating a toy to the local toy drive done by the fire department in our town, I think Hazel is understanding a bit about giving to people even when we do not know them. Plus we always ask for donations to a local charity for her birthday party since she really does not need anything else and she goes with me to drop everything off (including things she has outgrown--toys and clothes) and sees the factory as they call it. I do hope to instill some charity in her.

What are you doing this year for others? Is this something you do every year or is this the first year you are doing it?