One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish

Another favorite Dr. Seuss book at our house is One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish. Since Dr. Seuss is the February author (and his birthday is this Saturday), it seems only fitting to do something with this book.

In church the church school has just finished studying the story of Jesus Feeds 5000. Part of the three to five-year-old classroom was passing bread at prayer time. The Christian Ed Director had bought a package of Goldfish bread which of course seemed perfect since it was both a loaf and a fish. Since they did not use them all and Hazel loved them, the Christian Ed Director had me bring them home for her. We used them for our activity with this.

We used food coloring and milk to make the red and blue. Then to make the black I added green to the red dyed milk. Hazel loved this activity. She did not try the painted bread, but loved painting them with eye droppers.

We also did a few of the sheets from Seussville. We did a matching opposites. I had to help Hazel of course since she could not read them, but she liked connecting them. And we did a color page.

Last week we shared our activity and sheets on Bartholomew and the Oobleck. And of course this is a blog hop, so please add your Dr. Seuss posts to our list!

Michaelmas & Fighting Your Inner Dragon

I almost forgot to announce the winner of the Show Me a Story Giveaway! The winner is Rondah. Rondah, you have 48 hours to email me back to claim your prize. Congratulations!! Thank you to everyone who entered!

Source

Last year I learned about Michaelmas. It is a Christian Festival celebrated at the Waldorf Schools. It is on September 29th each year. In the Catholic Church it is known as the Feast of St. Michael or All Angels Day. For more information on the Catholic Feast visit here.

Multicultural Monday: Meet DARIA

 

I have always had a strong belief that everyone is equal and should be treated equally. As a high school teacher I found a great way to support this believe through advising diversity clubs, GSA's (Gay, Straight Alliances) and going through on many diversity/multicultural trainings. I have decided to try to do a weekly multicultural post with some educational part to it for all of you who are teaching your children. I have many resources to pull from and am finding more all the time.

Recently I was contacted by Daria an amazing musician. Here is her official blurb: Award-winning children’s performer, DARIA (Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou) has five cd’s that have won national honors.  She has the most awesome job of traveling the world to sing for kids and peace.  Her website; located at dariamusic.com, was given a 2009 Parents Choice Award for its musical and cultural content. You can find a complete list of her musical crafts and coloring pages at: http://www.dariamusic.com/crafts.php. 

Daria asked me if I would be willing to listen to one of her amazing CD's (ok I'm the one calling it amazing) and make one of her musical instruments with Hazel and blog about it.She would send me the supplies for the instrument of my choice and the CD. Needless to say I said yes. The hardest thing was choosing a CD. In fact I think I'm going to go purchase a few more of them. I decided to get what I thought I would enjoy most and not what I thought Hazel would enjoy most and picked her I Have a Dream CD. Daria mailed it to me so quickly and I love the music and so does Hazel. I finally have something I can play besides Elmo in the car and make Hazel happy. Plus I enjoy listening to the music even without Hazel in the car. I also found some of the songs so moving that I actually loaned the CD to the Christian Educational Director at my church because I thought there might be some songs on there that she could use in Sunday School.

Needless to say I highly recommend this CD and I am going to purchase at least one more of DARIA's CD's. 

Then I got to choose an instrument for us to make. If you visit Daria's website http://www.dariamusic.com/ you will see she has many crafts and instruments on there for you to do/make at home. She also gave me the choice of a quilted rainstick. Ok, Hazel has played with a rainstick at the Peabody Essex Museum and loves it (actually she loves any musical instrument) and I like to quilt. I figured this would be a perfect instrument for us to make. (For more information on rainsticks visit Daira's post on Making Multicultural Music.) Daria again sent me the supplies quickly. She however was still working on the instructions, so I had to wait. This week I got the instructions and we made our rainstick. Hazel loved it even before we decorated it. It was relatively easy to make. Daria sent us a mailing tube with wire and pipe cleaners. I gave the wire to Hazel to bend and kink up. She did an ok job at this, but I had to add some to it and then we put the pipe cleaners on to it. Then I taped the wire into the tube (making sure it went all the way through). Then we added some beads and sunflower seeds to make the noise. I played with the wire and what we put in it to get a noise we liked. You can watch the video to hear her play with it.

Hazel playing with the undecorated rainstick

Then we waited a few days to decorate it. To make it quilted we just glued fabric squares on to it. Since I had some pieces leftover from Hazel's quilt, I used them. I let her do most of the gluing so it is not perfect, but we like it. 

As soon as the glue dried she wanted it. She loves playing with it.The fabrics add such nice color to it.

Now I need to thank Daria, not only for the CD and supplies to make the rainstick but also for motivating me to blog about multicultural topics. If it had not been for her, I probably would not have explored this route and share one of my passions with you. So thank you so much, Daria!! I hope you will go check out Daria's music and her wonderful resources she has on her site and if you get a chance to see her in concert definitely go--I know I'll be jealous!!

This is where I link up...