Flamingo Friday

Today I am going to start a new series on flamingos. Now Hazel has loved flamingos from a young age. They were one of her favorite animals at the zoo from the first time we went there. Since she has shown an interest in them we tend to focus on them a bit. So each Friday we will share a book, movie, craft, activity about flamingos. I love this picture of Hazel at Sea World this June with one of the flamingos who was being taken back to his cage with a couple of his friends. You can see how big they actually are.

However today we are going to share a wonderful book we found at the library. It is wordless. The book is Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.

Flora is a young girl who dresses in her pink bathing suit and swimming gear to try to act like the flamingo. She tries to copy the flamingos poses.

We went through and tried some of the poses too. However a bathing suit would have made it easier to see the poses. Sorry!

The flamingo keeps checking out what Flora is doing, but Flora pretends she is not copying the bird when it looks.

Hazel and Flora did well until the sleeping pose came. Then they both ended in a bit of a somersault. 

At this point the flamingo invites Flora to dance with it teaching her the poses. They dance as a couple for some of it. We did this, but could not get pictures. I did take this last picture of her though.

We truly enjoyed Flora and the Flamingo and trying to copy the movements in it. I hope you will check it out and have enjoyed our first flamingo post.

Get ready to start exploring!

The Pinterest Scavenger Hunt has officially begun!

This contest is sponsored by Multicultural Kid Blogs to celebrate the official launch of our website.

The Scavenger Hunt will run from July 15 to July 28. Participants have until July 31 to submit their entries, and the drawing will take place on August 1.

You could win one of four fabulous prize packages!

Details about the Scavenger Hunt can be found below.

Today's Clue 

Travel the world to stretch the week.

 Now take a look around on this site and try to find the post that fits the clue. Once you think you've found it, pin it to the Pinterest Board you've created just for this contest.

Be sure to pop over to The Art of Home Education for the other clue for today. A full schedule and rules of the game can be found below. Don't forget to enter the Rafflecopter at the bottom for more chances to win!

How to Play:

Create a Pinterest board specifically for the contest and name the board "Multicultural Kid Blogs Pinterest Scavenger Hunt." Each day a new clue (or two!) will be revealed. Follow the clue to the blog of the day and pin the post described in the clue. (Any image from the post is fine). In the Rafflecopter below, enter the link to the Pinterest board you created for this contest. The Rafflecopter will also have lots of other ways to earn extra entries. The only required entry is the link to your Pinterest board. Please note: You can enter the Rafflecopter at any point during the contest. Obviously your board won't be complete until the end of the contest, but you can enter the link in the Rafflecopter before then. If your name is drawn at the end of the contest, we will check your board at that time. The final clue will be given July 28. Participants will have until midnight Pacific time on July 31 to finalize their boards. The drawing will take place on August 1. Winners must have pinned all of the correct posts to their board. Winners will be notified via email and must respond within 48 hours or another name will be drawn. Good luck, explorers!

Our Fabulous Prizes

GRAND PRIZE PACKAGE (Total Value $128.74)

Language Learning Box Set (3 DVDs) from Little Pim ($49.95): The Little Pim Box Set Volume I is a great way to introduce young learners to over 180 words and phrases in the language of your choice related to daily routines, food, and playtime! Winner can choose the language of the prize from among those available from Little Pim. (US Shipping Only. If the grand prize winner is located outside the US, the Language Learning Box Set will become part of the 1st prize package).

3 Month Subscription from Little Passports ($41.85): Little Passports is a unique subscription based service that can take your family on an adventure to learn about culture and history from all 50 states and across the world. With this educational, monthly package, kids will become excited about geography, history, and culture by following the world travels of characters Sam and Sofia on their magic scooter! Winner chooses between World and USA editions.

Luke's Beach Day storybook from Kids Yoga Stories ($15.95): Yoga-inspired story set on an Australian beach

The Skin You Live In book from Squishable Baby ($16): A book that celebrates the beauty in all of us.

One copy of Be Bilingual: Practical Ideas for Multilingual Families (eBook) from Be Bilingual ($4.99): A well-researched yet highly readable book on raising bilingual children.

1st PRIZE PACKAGE (Total Value: $104.88) US shipping only

Two books from Lee & Low ($29.90):

Rainbow Stew by Cathryn Falwell: Released in May 2013, Rainbow Stew follows three African American children and their grandfather as they pick fresh vegetables in his garden to cook up a lunch on a rainy afternoon.

How Far Do You Love Me? by Lulu Delacre: From the Swiss Alps Mountain Range to the Great Barrier Reef, How Far Do You Love Me? takes readers across the seven continents in a new take on the "I love you" game.

Educational toy from Plushkies ($24.99): Plushkies are educational toys in the shape of countries to awaken a curiosity in kids about the world, travel, & culture.

Spanish language bundle from Spanish Playground ($20): traditional wooden toys and digital downloads. Wooden chicken paddle toy and wooden top (una pirinola) to play "toma todo." Digital downloads of Spanish language story-coloring book Los pollitos and animal activity cards.

One copy of the Bamboo Dance and one passport ($14.99) from Hartlyn Kids: An illustrated children's book about the day in the life of a child in the Philippines. The book contains a mock passport sticker. Also included is an accompanying mock passport.

Caxixi Woven Rattle From Africa from World Music with Daria ($10): Awesome fair trade woven rattle from Ghana

One copy of Be Bilingual: Practical Ideas for Multilingual Families (eBook) from Be Bilingual ($4.99) See details above

2nd PRIZE PACKAGE (Total Value: $36.99)

Fire and Gold digital download from Nightingale Creations ($10): A CD on the theme of tests and difficulties

2 sets of postcards and a notepad from Paper Papel Papier ($22): eco & multilingual-friendly paper goods

One copy of Be Bilingual: Practical Ideas for Multilingual Families (eBook) from Be Bilingual ($4.99) See details above

3rd PRIZE PACKAGE (Total Value: $29.95)

One copy of Ramadan Cookbook and Meal Plan (eBooks) from MarocMama ($18): Two ebooks featuring traditional (and some less traditional!) Ramadan recipes and meal ideas

One copy of Coconut Oil For Your Skin (eBook) from Hybrid Rasta Mama ($11.95): an eBook filled with nourishing and simple recipes for skin care and hair care products featuring coconut oil as the main ingredient.

 

Scavenger Hunt Schedule

(Visit the Scavenger Hunt main page for a full list of clues as they are revealed).

July 15

All Done Monkey

Crystal's Tiny Treasures

July 16

The Squishable Baby

SpanglishBaby

July 17

Be Bilingual

July 18

the piri-piri lexicon

MommyMaestra

July 19

Creative World of Varya

Expat Life With a Double Buggy

July 20

Sprout's Bookshelf

Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

July 21

Open Wide the World

MotherTongues

July 22

MarocMama

Head of the Heard

July 23

For the Love of Spanish

July 24

InCultureParent

Moms Gone Global

July 25

Crafty Moms Share

The Art of Home Education

July 26

The European Mama

Spanish Playground

July 27

Vibrant Wanderings

A Hotchpotch Hijabi in Italy

July 28

Kids Yoga Stories

Adventure Bee

Final day to enter the contest is July 31, 2013, at midnight PDT. Drawing will take place on August 1, 2013.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Weaving

As a sewer I love the idea of Hazel learning to weave and to see where cloth comes from. I bought her an inexpensive potholder loom when I saw them on sale. (I think I bought it for $5 or maybe it was $2--I can't remember.)

When I showed it to her, she decided she wanted to weave a pillow for her doll, Sarah. She decided to make it yellow and green (until we ran out of the yellow and green loops). In the beginning I really helped/did it for her. You can tell where I stopped helping every step of the way. I decided today when she wanted to finish it to let her do it her way. Every once in awhile I took a turn to make sure it would stay together for her. I have to say she seemed to get the over and under concept better today than when we first started, but still did not get it every other one. Oh, well. She is happy with it. I convinced her that maybe it should be a blanket for Sarah instead of a pillow so we would have to try to sew the lopsided thing. She agreed since she didn't want to hand sew today. here is how it turned out.

Not the prettiest potholder/doll blanket, but she likes it and you can see why making sure you are over and under the right spaces matter. When she is a little older we will try again.

Don't forget to join us tomorrow (Thursday, 7/25/13) for our clue in the Multicultural Kids Blog Pinterest Scavenger Hunt!

Metamorphosis: Caterpillar - Chysalis - Butterfly Cycle & some crafts and activities

Congratulations to Tracey over at We Made That for winning our Sewing School 2 giveaway!

For awhile I have been eying the butterfly nurseries at Lakeshore Learning. I have seen so many wonderful posts about people watching the amazing metamorphosis of the butterfly with their children and really wanted to do it with Hazel. Then they went on sale and I couldn't resist. I bought one in May, but I told Hazel we could not send away for the caterpillars until after our trip to Florida so we would be home to watch everything and take care of them. She was so excited and could not wait to do it. When we returned home
we sent the coupon in to get the caterpillars. 

The caterpillars arrived on June 19th. They come in a jar with food in it. The instructions were not to open

the jar until all the caterpillars were in chrysalis. The caterpillars traveled to Cape Cod with us that weekend so Hazel would not have to miss a thing. We watched them grow, but apparently I did not bother to take pictures of them growing. One did not grow and we realized it had not made it so we were down to four. On June 29th all the caterpillars were in chrysalis, so we opened the jar after preparing the butterfly nursery and hung them on the hook. Then we watched. 

On July 5th, the first butterfly came out of its chrysalis. We were so excited! Soon two more came out. The fourth did not make it. Hazel had knocked over the nursery by mistake and one had fallen. Although we gently made sure it was on the bottom of the nursery (and not under the paper), it did not recover from the fall. So we had three beautiful monarch butterflies. We prepared by reading Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons. We fed them sugar water as the instructions said, and then on July 13th, we let them go. Hazel was very sad to let them go, but she understood why we did. I told her every time she sees a butterfly she can pretend it is one of ours.

It was truly amazing to watch!! I think I may have been more excited about it all than Hazel. I definitely checked the chrysalises more often than she did.

We also did some butterfly crafts and activities. I made Hazel a butterfly barrette, using this pattern from Bugs and Fishes. I love the mobile she had the pattern for, but we did not get around to making one.

Next we took some ideas from Making Learning Fun. First a butterfly life cycle bracelet. Each bead or group of beads represents one of the four phases of metamorphosis. The white bead represents the egg. The red and green represent the caterpillar (we used more green ones than suggested since we used flat green ones) and then the clear bead is the chrysalis and finally a butterfly shaped bead. I made it the perfect size for Hazel to wear and I think we will make some of these at Hazel's butterfly party for which we still need to pick a date. (This summer is flying by!!)

Then the next activities also came from Making Learning Fun. I happened to be looking for some Roll-a- activities because Hazel loved it when she tried it at the new school she will be attending this fall. The day we took a tour the Pre-K class was doing a Roll-a-Frog activity and the teachers had Hazel try it. I bought her some dice today and put them in the little containers I had bought ages ago for it. Then I went looking for some pages. I changed it a bit in I did not have her draw them like the directions from Making Learning Fun said. I knew she was not ready for this with her drawing ability. Also the school one was putting pictures together from paper, so I cut them out of construction paper. While searching for the activities I found Roll-a-Caterpillar and Roll-a-Butterfly.

I printed off and made several other ones as well, but I won't share those right now. So that is one thing I really wanted to do with Hazel that we got done this summer! And we loved it! For more butterfly activities and crafts, check out my Pinterest Butterfly Board!

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Fawzia Gilani's Cinderella: An Islamic Tale

Since the Islamic holiday, Ramadan, began a few weeks ago, I thought it was the perfect time to look at the Islamic version of Cinderella. Now, I had planned to share this last week, but with all the exciting things happening last week (Virtual Book Club for Kids, Around the World in 12 Dishes and the Multicultural Kids Blog Pinterest Scavenger Hunt began), we did not get it done. First a little information about Ramadan.

Prayer Beads for the Jesus Prayer

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Ok, I know I have mentioned how active I am at church. I am a Christian and I truly believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I tend not to be one who discusses it everywhere, however I do try to keep God in my life every day. When I visit my parents I have my favorite shops to go to and one of them is the Priory Shop at the Community of Jesus. It is located right at Rock Harbor and it is always so calming to visit there. You can also get tours of the Church of the Transfiguration, their million or maybe even multimillion dollar church that opened about ten years ago. While there I always love to browse the books and often find some inspiring books. This last visit was no different. While keeping Hazel busy with samples of the homemade jam on crackers and granola, I was able to find a new book. I'm only in the second chapter, but I am very interested in it. The book is The Jesus Prayer by Frederica Mathewes-Green.

Knowing nothing about the Jesus Prayer, I was intrigued. The book says that learning the Jesus Prayer and praying properly will bring you closer to God and hear God speaking to you. The prayer is simple, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." is the simplest form of it. A longer form is "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Now the trick is you need to say it one hundred times each day. To do this, you need some prayer beads to keep track of it. So I had Hazel help me make a prayer bead necklace and she wanted one too, but we did not put one hundred beads on hers.

I used the cross I had gotten that is made out of olive wood from Jerusalem. Then we lined out ten rows of ten beads. It was great to see Hazel figure out what one hundred looks like. I changed the first and last beads of each row so I could count by ten by the feel of the beads. I did not use a pattern to the beads beside that since I figured my prayers and my sins will be both small and large. Then while I strung my beads, Hazel laid out some for herself. She decided the round ball ones rolled around too much, so she used the flatter ones and we had a butterfly bead left from the Melissa & Doug butterfly bead collection she was given for her birthday, so we used that one.

We made hers into a necklace so she can wear it even when she is not praying. Then I taught her the Jesus Prayer. We of course did not make it through all the beads on either necklace before she got bored and I have yet to take the time to do it one hundred times let alone each day, but I'm still reading the book, so at least I am ready when I finish it. Supposedly doing this practice will get you to the point where your mind is praying continuously even when you are doing other things and thus living out the instructions Paul gives in several of his letters including 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

^"16 Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray continually, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

and in Romans 12:12

^"12 Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times."

and in Ephesians 6:18

"¹⁸ Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints."

and finally in Colossians 4:2

"² Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving."

The Jesus Prayer is widely taught in Eastern Orthodox Churches. The book goes through some history of it as well as some of the difference between Eastern and Western Churches. However if you want more information you can check out the book or you can read some more on Wikipedia.

So this is what I am exploring right now when I have time to read something that is not a children's book.

Sharing Saturday 13-28

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Thank you to everyone who shared at last week's Sharing Saturday. If you have not had a chance to check out all the great ideas shared, you should. It is inspiring! There was about a ten way tie for most clicked, so you are just getting my favorites tonight. I also want to say welcome to all the new partiers!! We had quite a few new bloggers joining us last week. Here are a few of my favorites!

1) From Adventures with Jude: Eastern Woodland Headdresses (Ok, I love learning about Native Americans and I love all the information provided in this post.)
2) From Domesticated Breakdown: Epsom Salt Sensory Bins (What a neat idea! I love the green she made it here and love the idea of the ocean theme having salt.)
3) From Paint On The Ceiling: Learning about Symmetry with Mirrors (A geometry lesson!! You know my love of math!)
4) From Green Owl Art: Beach Crafts (Love using things found at the beach for art and the vacation jar idea!)
5) From LalyMom: Fairy Wands and Toadstools (I loved these adorable toadstools!)

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

Featured Button Code:

<a href="http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/cpericola/SharingSaturdayoption2-002.jpg" /></a>

From Your Hostess: On Monday the Multicultural Kids Blog Pinterest Scavenger Hunt started. I hope you are joining us in the hunt!!

This week we shared Details on the Scavenger Hunt, Our study of chimpanzees with the Virtual Book Club for Kids--we did the Bobo series by Jez Alborough, Our exploration of Kenya with Around the World in 12 Dishes, Our nature art following a trip to the beach, and Song inspired activities! Plus my giveaway is still going on!! Have you entered yet?

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow Crafty Moms Share 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 newly updated button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

<a href="http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/search/label/Sharing%20Saturday" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/cpericola/SharingSaturdayoption2-150_zpsba88f805.jpg" /></a>

4) I would love it if you would follow me on Facebook and Google+

Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest. 

Song Inspired Activities

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Today I am going to share some activities we have come up with to go with Daria's song, Beautiful Rainbow World. I considered doing some rainbow crafts, but since we did them at the beginning of each spring, I thought we would go a different route. The song itself refers to the rainbow of skin color that makes the world beautiful, but since we have already done some skin color activities, I thought we would focus on the idea of the world being colorful. Our first idea was to look at food. We started with fruit and arranged a rainbow of them. 

We talked about vegetables, but never got them all together for it. 

Next we went for a walk in our neighborhood and looked for flowers and plants in the rainbow colors. We found that one of our neighbors had all the colors in one garden (see the above picture) and we found many more of the colors throughout our neighborhood.

Our next activity we tend to play when we are driving or out and waiting near a street. We look for all the colors of rainbows in cars and trucks. Purple is by far the hardest to find followed by orange and yellow. We have however found all the colors on at least three occasions. I however did not take pictures. Sorry!

Finally on another walk around our neighborhood, I gave Hazel a sheet to record the flower colors she saw. I gave her rainbow smiley face stickers and she had a blast. The red filled up the quickest followed by the yellow. Then I think she started just filling up the columns for blue and purple at the end. My plan was to use the graph for some of the other ideas we have had--cars, fruit, food, birds, etc. We just haven't done them again. If you are interested in a blank copy of this graph you can download it here.

I hope you enjoy the beautiful rainbow world we live on each day!!