Sharing Saturday 14-40

Between meetings at church on Thursday nights and having Hazel home on Fridays (which we have now named Mommydays), I do not seem to get my Friday post written. This week at least I put the pictures together of our latest fruit exploration. Now to write the post before Thursday night so it will get up next week. Well at least it is time for Sharing Saturday! Once again I am blown away by the great ideas shared last week. Thank you to everyone who shared and to those who took the time to visit some of the other great ideas shared. We did have a tie for the most clicked--it looks like people are in the mood for fall and Halloween. We had a good number of spider themed posts, so I featured them as well as a couple of the fall ones (besides the most clicked) and of course some of my favorites including some multicultural ones as well as a spring one for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere!

Pine and the Winter Sparrow Book Review

Disclosure: Wisdom Tales Press gave me a copy of this product free of charge. 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.

Have you ever wondered why pine trees keep their needles in the winter and the other trees lose their leaves? Alexis York Lumbard shares an old Native American tale explaining this to young children and weaves through the message of helping others and charity. The book is Pine and the Winter Sparrow and the story is based on a Cherokee (or at least that is where Ms. Lumbard thinks it is from) fable called Why the Trees Lose Their Leaves.

Nature Anatomy Book Review to Celebrate the Earth

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge from Storey Publishing. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Here is a perfect book for Earth Day although I'm a little late. This amazing book was one of the prizes in our Earth Day Giveaway. When I saw it I thought it looked like a book Hazel would love. I was right. Not only does Hazel love it, Steve and I love it and my father was looking very interested in it (and he really doesn't do books). The book is Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman with help from John Niekrasz.

Math, Art, Crafting and More in a Box!

 

Disclosure: I was sent one of these kits in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Today I am going to share with you a fun building kit. It involves some crafting, math, art and more and I always love when you can make learning fun. Mind-Blowing Paper Puzzles by Haruki Nakamura does just that. 

Virtual Book Club for Kids--Extraordinary Egg

It is time for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. This month the author is Leo Lionni. The book we will be featuring is An Extraordinary Egg. If you have any activities, crafts, etc. to go along with a Leo Lionni book, you can share it below!

An Extraordinary Egg is about three frogs who live on an island. Two of the frogs like to stay near their inlet while Jessica likes to explore the island. Jessica is always bringing back things from her explorations that she thinks are extraordinary. One day she brings back a large white pebble. This time Marilyn and August were truly astonished and Marilyn told them it was not a pebble, but a chicken egg.  Since Jessica had never heard of a chicken, she believed Marilyn.

The egg hatched and a long, green, scaly animal came out and asked where the water was. The frogs called this animal, Chicken. Chicken was a very good swimmer and taught the frogs some tricks in the water. One day Chicken saved Jessica's life when she was stuck in some plants at the bottom of the pond. From that day on, they were inseparable. Chicken joined Jessica on her explorations. One day a bird spoke to Chicken saying her mother has been looking for her. The bird took them to Chicken's mother. Chicken's mother called Chicken her little alligator. Jessica went home and told Marilyn and August all about it. They found it so funny that the mother called a chicken a little alligator.

Reading this book got us to thinking about what animals lay eggs. We too out Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller to learn more. We learned the word oviparous which is the name for any animal that lays an egg. The oviparous animals are all birds, most snakes, lizards, crocodiles, alligators, turtles, dinosaurs (did), frogs, toads, salamanders, fish, seahorse, octopus, moonsnails, spiders, snails, insects, and the two mammals are the spiny anteater and the duckbill platypus (both mammals live in Australia). We used this information for our activity. We did it two ways: one with a homemade egg craft and one with plastic eggs.

With the plastic eggs, I collected some of the animals that would lay eggs and put them inside the plastic eggs. (Yes, I bought a Toob of animals for this, but used many we already had as well). Then Hazel opened each one to see what was inside. Our flamingo did not fit into the large plastic egg we had, but we pretended it did since flamingos lay the largest eggs of all birds. The animals we had were chick, duck, frog, alligator, flamingo, goose, turtle, beetle and dinosaur. She really enjoyed this activity and it was very easy to do since we had not put away our plastic Easter eggs yet.

Our next activity involved making three paper mache eggs. We did this by blowing up three water balloons and then covering them in strips of tissue paper dipped in a glue and water mix. Then we left them to dry overnight. When they were dry, I popped the balloons and slid an animal into each one. I had to cut the hole a bit bigger for the animals to go in.

Our Eggs

Then I lined them up and had Hazel guess which one was the alligator, the chicken and the goose eggs. She discovered she could see in the holes and changed her mind on all of them after peeking. Then she took away the eggs and animals so she could play with them.

That is our exploration of An Extraordinary Egg. Have you done some activities with a Leo Lionni book? Share it below and join all these wonderful bloggers who host the Virtual Book Club for Kids 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 - 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 - Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Coffee Cups and Crayons - Having Fun at Chelle's House- Love, Play, Learn - Juggling With Kids - Motherhood on a Dime - Growing Book By Book

- This Reading Mama - Fantastic Fun and Learning
 

An Upcoming Event: This summer there will be a Virtual Book Club Summer Camp at home for 5 weeks. Each week will feature a different theme and you will be asked to share links based on those topics--they do not have to be from books. To sign up, click on the button above! It starts June 24th and is geared to 2 to 8-year-olds.

Who's In the Backyard? -- Squirrels -- American Red Squirrels and Eastern Gray Squirrels

 

This week I promised to talk about some of the other critters in our yard besides our birds. Although I love watching the birds. In our backyard we have squirrels and this summer we not only had our usually gray squirrels but we had some red squirrels--lots of them. Most of the red squirrels have moved on now but we had so many of them. I named them all Squeakers because of the noise they made at me and at each other. We do not have black squirrels but I have seen them in my friend's backyard in New York State. Now both types of squirrels in our yard chased their own kind all around and stared at me when I was in my hammock. The red squirrel even squeaked at me when I was reading and not watching him in the tree. 

Origami Love Notes

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing sent me a copy of this kit in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Can you believe Valentine's Day is Thursday? Time is flying by but since we are in the month of love let's talk about love notes--Origami Love Notes that is. This fun kit is by Florence Temko and comes with easy to follow instructions and 36 sheets of double-sided origami paper (6.75" squares).

The Conductor--Book and Craft

Recently we got out of the library a book called The Conductor by Laetitia Dervenay. It is a wordless book that combines an orchestra conductor and a grove of trees and lots of magic. The conductor climbs to the top of the tree and begins to conduct. Soon the leaves begin to swirl and then take flight looking like birds. After the conductor finishes, bows and climbs down the leaves return to their place and the trees are no longer bare, but full again. It is a fun book. We made the leaf birds as we call them. Some of which looked like this but in black and white in the book.

I cut out the body of the bird from black paper (well I used black with gold sparkle) and some leaves from green and brown paper and gave them a slight fringe edge. Then gave Hazel a glue stick. She came up with this:

I cut out another and glued it myself. This time I made the leaves a bit smaller, so you could see more of the shapes we were using. The picture at the top of this post is mine.

This is where I link up...

Color Snap App - a Relaxing Friday Review

Disclosure: Candlewick Press sent me this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This week's Relaxing Friday is a coloring book more aimed at kids. It is Color, Snap, App! by Claire Fay. 

Sharing Saturday 17-34

It is time again for Sharing Saturday! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, crafts made for kids, activities and lessons as well as your parenting and/or teaching posts. So glad you joined us!!

On Sunday night we also host Crafty Weekends for all your crafts (done by any age), patterns, and craft product reviews! It is the perfect place to share your creative side!! And for all of your cultural posts come share them at the monthly Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop.

Two Fun New Picture Books

Have you entered my current giveaway for a custom canvas print?

Disclosure: Penguin Random House Books gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this 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.

Are you looking for some fun books to read aloud or have your children read to themselves? Here are two new ones that are perfect!! Now I will say that you may not want to read them at bedtime, because they had us laughing so much I think it got Hazel a little restless and not really ready to fall asleep (Sorry, Steve). The first book is a reimagined version of Hansel and Gretel, it is Hensel and Gretel Ninja Chicks by Corey Rosen Schwartz and Rebecca J. Gomez and illustrated by Dan Santat. From the name you can tell this book involves chickens!!

Book Review: Super-Cute Felt Animals

Today is the last day to enter my current giveaway. Have you entered yet?

Today I get the pleasure of reviewing a wonderful book to make felt animals. I am truly honored to get to review this book. The book, Super-Cute Felt Animals by Laura Howard is her latest book. However I fell in love with her designs from her first book, Super-Cute Felt. I was really excited when I stumbled upon Laura Howard's blog, Bugs and Fishes by Lupin, and it was announcing the newest book. I couldn't wait to see it. Laura has also been posting complementary felt projects to go with her newest book on her blog. 

Super-Cute Felt Animals features 35 projects and are divided into six chapters: In the Woods, On Safari, Under the Sea, On the Farm, In the Garden and At Home. The animals are three-dimensional, but a flat three-dimensional. They are perfect for making into ornaments, jewelry or to add dimension to a felt board. Laura also jazzes up the animals with sequins and beads as well as some stitches. 

I got into making felt things, especially animals, when Hazel was going to the Waldorf School. Now that she is not going there, I confess to switching to the cheaper felt, but I am still enjoying having small hand sewing projects to do. I have completed two of the animals in this book and am working on my third. Here are my projects.

From the In the Woods Chapter, I made this adorable deer. The deer has white seed beads for its spots and black seed beads for its eyes. I think I will sew a ribbon on it so it can be a Christmas ornament. Her book provides full patterns in the back to trace or photocopy (if you are lazy like me) as well as very clear directions on how to make each animal. She also provides help with cutting small pieces of felt and for each type of stitch.

From the Under the Sea Chapter, I made this flashy jellyfish. Hazel could not wait for it to be done. As soon as she saw it, she added it to her felt beach playmat. Again, the pattern and instructions were easy to use and follow. 

From the On the Farm Chapter, I am making this sheep. It is not quite done, but it is coming together very easily. I am making this one in secret since I plan to use it for one of Hazel's Advent calendar gifts. I also plan to make some pigeons, robins and parakeets from the book for her Advent calendar gifts. I'm hoping to make the birds from Tomie dePaola's The Birds of Bethlehem. I bought her a copy of the book as the first gift. Plus I want to make some felt nativity ornaments for our tree or hers and I figured the sheep would be perfect for this. 

So if you are looking for some easy but fun animals to make in felt, check out Laura Howard's Super-Cute Felt Animals. The book is perfect for homemade holiday gifts as well as for the beginning little sewers. The title describes her animals perfectly. You will also find wonderful tutorials at her blog!

Together Box--Product Review & Discount Code

Disclosure: I was sent this box to review free of charge from Together Box. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Today I get to share with you the fun we had with a Together Box and I get to give you a discount code at the end of my review. Now Together Box is a company that sends you a box with three to four activities in it every month and it has everything you need to do the activities, and I mean everything. Hazel is always excited when we get packages and she was really excited with this one. I noticed it by the side of the house when I was going to pick her up and grabbed it and put it in the car. She could not wait to get home to open it.

She was even more excited when she saw what was inside. She wanted to do all the activities right away. We received the Balloon Box. Now Hazel LOVES balloons, so she was even more excited to see two packages of balloons in there.

Hazel pulled everything out, so she could check it all out. Each box comes with an instruction booklet that also provides more ideas beyond the three to four activities. It also gives clear steps for each activity including which materials to use. The only thing we had to add on our own was water. Literally everything else was sent from a Sharpie marker to food coloring and flour.

Now there were four activities in the Balloon Box, but I am only going to share one with you. The rest were more activity based and I was having too much fun with Hazel and Steve to get pictures. Yes, we did these activities and had some quality family time!! These boxes are perfect for that! The first activity only Hazel and I did. We started with making yarn bird cages. Now Hazel and I had made yarn Easter eggs before, and I knew this was not a craft Daddy would want to do, so we did it while waiting for him to get home from work. Hazel knew it was going to be messy, so she put on her apron and then we mixed the glue.

Then she helped cut yarn. Next we glued them to balloons. We had to make more glue since Hazel put it on a bit heavy and we made two rather larger bird cages.

Hazel got bored and really doesn't like messy hands for long, so she colored the birds for the cages while I finished them up. Then we hung them from our kitchen light to dry overnight. We woke up to find the orange balloon had been popped by one of the cats. Oh, well. After popping the other balloon, I cut out the birds and hung them in our bird cages.

After doing this and waiting for Daddy, Hazel wanted to play with balloons. They happened to do an activity with balloons in her gym class that day, so she was so excited to try it more at home.

Daddy enjoyed making marshmallow shooters to aim at ninja balloons and the balloon powered fountain with us. We still need to do the balloon rockets. Overall our experience with Together Box is wonderful. They give you some fun ideas with all the supplies to have some quality family time. The activities are fun and educational and the instructions are easy to follow. Now Hazel of course wanted to expand her lesson and began asking questions about how balloons are made. I went to the library and we found a book: Balloon Trees by Donna Smith. It explains the whole process from tree to package.

Now if you want to try Together Box, they are offering my readers a special of 50% off your first box with the coupon code: "crafty".  The prices per month range from $24 - $29 depending on how many months you buy. If you are looking for a way to add some fun family time into your busy schedule this box program is for you. They send you everything you need and the activities are fun and easy and with three to four activities in a box, you have one for each week or so in the month. I would love to hear about your family experiences if you order them!!

A Belated Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Snack

So in the book we took out of the library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it defined celebrate with the word party in it. That is of course what Hazel took as the meaning. So she wanted to have a party. She called Nonni and asked if they could have a party since Nonni usually has her on Mondays. Nonni planned a pizza party for them. I got to wondering about snack/party ideas. I googled and really only found ideas for classes like have everyone bring a different fruit for a fruit salad or doing an entire multicultural meal. I did not have time to plan this and wanted something fun to do with Hazel. I had been saving a sugar cookie mix from Trader Joe's (they only sell them around Christmas, but we love them). So we pulled out our hand cookie cutter (that I bought for our church's Stewardship campaign last year) and made some sugar cookies. Now with more planning I could have been more creative. Next year I am thinking we will do this but the colors will be frosting using the book The Colors of Us as a guideline. You know start with white frosting and make different skin tone shades by adding food color similar to what we did with paint in this post.

Our first task was to bake the cookies. I had pulled out our hand cookie cutter as well as a dove one. Hazel wanted to make more doves, but luckily I was faster than she was so we got more hands.

While the cookies cooled we organized our decorations which was a task in itself since they were all in one bag. I thought of using M&M's since they are one of Hazel's favorites. In fact I bought a bag or regular and a bag of Valentine's Day so we would have pink, white as well as the brown, yellow and red. But I got to thinking about how the red is so red and they no longer do the tan. Then I thought of the candy store at our big furniture store where you can buy M&M's by the color by the pound as well as jelly beans. Since they did not have skin tone shades of M&M's there, I went with jelly beans. (And yes one of the local furniture stores has crazy attractions in it. The one near us is themed as Bean Town and has a candy store, a local ice cream stand, liquid fireworks, Omni theater and more. The one near where I use to live was themed as New Orleans and had a whole multimedia show of Bourban Street and looked like a theme park.)

Then we got to decorating. We did one hand of each color and then we did some of mixed colors to represent mixed races. Then we decorated one dove in white. The rest I told Hazel she could do what she wanted. While she finished them, I arranged the hands and put the white peace dove in the center.

Then to make her happy we put all the birds in the center.

And a close up of her birds:

So next year we will do something similar but take the time to make the different shades of frosting. I am also going to think of some other fun foods/party foods we could make to celebrate the day. Do you have any ideas? I would love to hear them!

Easter Around the World: Ukraine & Russia

Today I am going to share some information I found on Easter in Ukraine and Russia. Since the countries share some similar traditions, I thought I would share them together. Last week we shared Easter in Guatemala. The main thing they share is their beautiful technique for egg decorating. In Russian books I have seen it called pysanky and in Ukraine they call it pisanki.