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

Spring Into Science DVD Review and Giveaway

Disclosure: NCircle Entertainment gave me a copy of the DVDs free of charge and is supplying the ones for the giveaway free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the DVD on Amazon for your convenience. You can also find their DVDs at local retailers!
http://www.ncircleentertainment.com/

 For spring, NCircle Entertainment invited me to review four DVDs with science themes and offer new copies of the DVDs to one lucky winner!! All four are popular shows!! These are a fun way to bring science into your home either as a homeschooler or just to reinforce the school lessons! All four DVDs have been or are being released in 2015!

Sharing Saturday 14:29

Sharing Saturday Button

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and to all who visited the posts that were shared. Once again I was amazed by everyone's ideas!! I hope you take the time to visit. They are so inspiring!! We did have a most clicked. It was Edible Water Beads from A Little Pinch of Perfect.

http://alittlepinchofperfect.blogspot.com/2014/07/edible-water-beads-sensory-play.html

I also picked a few favorites. I broke them into two categories: nature and school/story.


Nature Features

1) From The Kennedy Adventures: Backyard Dinosaur Dig

2) From Enchanted Homeschooling Mom: Gelatin Sun Catchers Kids Craft

3) From Cutting Tiny Bites: Fruit Theme Weekly Home Preschool

4) From Krafts and Kiddos: Easy To Make Sand Dough

5) From Joys of the Journey: Exploring in Ocala National Forest


Story/School Features

1) From Felt With Love Designs: One Year of the Best of Felt With Love Designs

2) From Growing Book By Book: Storytime Ideas: Superworm

3) From Little Log Cottage School: Back To School Kindergarten Spin and Graph

4) From Carrie Elle: Super Simple No-Sew Elsa Dress

5) From Frog in a Pocket: Storytelling Cubes Travel Set


 
  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. 

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From Your Hostess:
This week we did not post as much as we like. It has been a tough week with family visiting and my mom having heart surgery. We did share our review of the amazing book All About Indonesia, our book for Virtual Book Club for Kids, K Is for Kissing a Cool Kangaroo, exploring colors with music, quilts and a museum visit plus a purple people eater craft, finally some things from my sewing machine with a promise for a tutorial and pattern to follow with things calm down!







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 Sharing Saturday button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.
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4) I would love it if you would follow me on FacebookGoogle+, and Pinterest 

5) If you do not have a blog, but want to share an idea you can leave it in the comments or e-mail it to me with a picture (if possible).

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

Sharing Saturday 14-9


Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! There was a little technical problem on the part of Linky Tools and I apologize for it. Apparently they were upgrading there servers and had a hard drive crash. It was the one with the images for the linky parties. Of the three back-ups only one was good and it did not include anything from 2014. Thus why all the images for the Linky Tool link parties for 2014 are gone. However the few that linked up after this issue still have their image and all the links still work. However I did still pick many features to share with you and highly suggest you check out some of the great ideas even without the pictures.

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
Click to sign up for Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp

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.

Michaelmas

Hazel dressed at St. George ready to slay the dragon
September 29th is Michaelmas. If you haven't been following I posted some information about our preparations with dragons and harvest. Last year was the first time we celebrated this holiday, but it is a traditional holiday in the Waldorf education as well as the Catholic Church (though my Catholic husband didn't know about it).

To celebrate we dressed Hazel as St. George with her yellow cape, crown and sword. Traditionally it would be a wooden sword, but we have inflatable ones from a birthday party so we used one of those. I dressed up as the dragon using Hazel's dinosaur costume mask. It was definitely more dinosaur than dragon than I remembered so next year we will make a mask. I also held up the dragon I made her. Steve wanted nothing to do with our re-enactment, but I did get him to take a picture.

We also read the short story of St. George and the dragon from A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin (Steve did listen to this). Then at bed time I read Sunflower Swords by Mark Sperring and Miriam Latimer and Dragon Tooth by Cathryn Falwell.


Our other big activity was making salt dough dragons and fall decorations. We made three colors of salt dough: green, red, and orange. Then we went outside to get some things to make texture on our ornaments. We used cookie cutters (leaves, acorn, Halloween, and dinosaurs--to be dragons and circle for the textured ornaments). Then in the circle ones we pressed leaves, branches, flowers, acorns, pine cones, etc. to leave texture. Hazel used her own rolling pin and really had a blast doing this. They are still in the oven or should I say the first two trays are, but will come out soon. Oh, and we poked holes in all of them with a straw.

Then we had a lovely dinner. We made huckabuck bread using the recipe from our Parent/Child Waldorf class last year. I shaped it into a dragon bread and sword rolls. This was our favorite part of dinner. We also had Harvest Apple Soup, but I changed the recipe slightly. Then for dessert we had a raspberry tarte from Trader Joe's. It should have been defrosted a bit more, but we enjoyed it. I will share more details about our family dinner on Tuesday for Happy Family Times!

As for today, I am thinking about what inner dragons I can slay. Enjoy!! Happy Michaelmas!

Preparing for Michaelmas

Yesterday I shared a bit about the story of St. George and the dragon Now Michaelmas is viewed as a celebration of the harvest as well as the slaying of the dragon. Waldorf Schools like to focus on slaying your inner dragon. I will share a few more dragon books with you and also go check the posts at Seasons of Joy on Taming the Inner Dragons, so far she has done Guilt and ResponsibilityFear of Failure, Fear of Success and Anger.
  • Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges is the story of St. George and the dragon. I found it a little above the level for Hazel's understanding and will not read it to her. However for older children it would be great.
  • A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin gives summaries and a picture of various dragons throughout history including St. George and his dragon. I will read this summary to Hazel.
  • The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola is a cute tale about a knight and a dragon who go to fight one another and have a few issues. In the end they open a restaurant together.
I'm still waiting for three more dragon books from the library. Hopefully I will get them by Saturday. I will let you know if they are any good if I do.
I also have Hazel's things ready to reenact fighting the dragon. We have her sword (inflatable, but traditional Waldorf would be wooden), a yellow cape, a crown and of course a dragon. I just told Steve maybe we would make him a dragon costume and have him dress up as the dragon. Hmmm, come to think of it we have a dinosaur/dragon costume in Hazel's dress ups. I wonder if it will fit him. We'll see if he will go along with it.
Michaelmas is also about the harvest and food is very important. Blackberries are often served due to an old Irish folk tale of Satan landing on blackberry brambles when he fell from heaven and he returns each 29th of September to spit on the fruit of the plants he landed on and of course his spit makes the fruit inedible after that date. (Source)
Source

I think I will try this recipe for Harvest Apple Soup. I'm not sure Steve will like it but it sounds like something Hazel and i will love. We will also make dragon bread as I described yesterday. Our plan is to make it with our huckabuck bread recipe from our parent/child class last year. Then since none of us really like blackberries, I think I will serve either a raspberry tart (I have one in my freezer that we need to use up) or an apple pie.
A Simple Fall Craft Hazel Made from Mostly Natural Things from Walks

There are many recipes available on line for bread, stew/soup, goose, and pie. The tradition of goose has to do with paying quarterly rents in England and for Michaelmas you gave a goose with your rent. (Source) Here are a few:
I also plan to make some salt dough to make some dragon and autumn decorations.  Last year I shared a pretty good round-up of dragon crafts if you are interested. Depending on how Hazel is feeling, we will see what we get done. You could also do a harvest or fall craft. Above I shared a simple natural (or mostly--we used fake leaves) autumn wreath. Hazel just glued some things onto a paper plate that I had cut out the center. Most of the things were found on nature walks.

Well, I hope that gives you some ideas on celebrating Michaelmas! Enjoy!!

Happy Family Times #26--Family Walk, Play & Dinner

In case you have not entered yet, please check out my current giveaway for a fantastic book!!
Have you and your family done something fun or different this week? Kelly from Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are collecting all of our great family ideas so we can all be inspired to spend more time with our families! Please share yours below.

This week after Hazel's second day of school, we decided to go on a scavenger hunt at a local state reservation. However Hazel was a bit tired from school so we kept putting it off and decided to wait for Daddy to get home. He agreed to go with us, however we did not plan for the early sunset and the mosquitoes. So we did not get too far on our walk/scavenger hunt. We did however find some neat holes that we were guessing what could live there (well and wondering who would throw their trash there), a huge rock, and a maple leaf and an oak leaf.
Going into the woods only a short bit, we turned around and headed to the Visitor's Center. Of course this was after a bug flew into my eye and Steve had to get it out. Not fun. Then we headed for the small playground. (The big playground is by the lake and about a mile walk from the parking lot.) We let Hazel play for a bit.


She was very excited that she could climb the "rock" wall since she could not last year. And one of the most exciting things for Hazel was sliding down the pole. We had to help her get on it, but she loved sliding down it and did a happy pole dance after the first time!
Steven noticed the back of the "rock" wall the dinosaur skeleton imprint. It is the first time we ever noticed it. After playing for a bit, we headed to a local pizza place for some dinner. Hazel has discovered their ice cream freezer and always wants one after dinner there. As you can see she enjoyed it!

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


~ please link up (family time oriented giveaways are ok, but please no Etsy shops)
~just crafts will be deleted since this is to share family times ~ use our button so others can join the fun


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~ we'd love for you to follow us Crafty Moms Share and Happy Whimsical Hearts
~ check out our Happy Family Times Pinterest board where we will be pinning some of our favorite ideas



Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!

Children's Museum, Friends & Zoo

We had a very busy week last week. On Monday we met my friend in the town we grew up in for lunch and then the three of us went to the Children's Museum there. Now the friend we met and I have known each other since we were around six months old. Yes, we are lifetime friends. We both now live in different states and our hometown is about halfway between us. Her youngest is my goddaughter who is looking at colleges for next year. Well, we took Hazel by the houses we grew up in and went to the New Children's Museum. Of course anyone from around the area of West Hartford, knows the museum by the giant whale in front of it. See above. After we went through the museum we went into the whale. Remember the picture I asked where Hazel was? She was inside the whale.

Sharing Saturday #32


Once again you have amazed me with your creativity. There were so many great ideas shared last week. Please stop by and check them out and leave some comments.

This Week's Features:

1) From You'll Thank Me One Day: Chalk Farm (I love this idea!! We are definitely going to be trying it!)
2) From No Doubt Learning: Hatching a Dinosaur Egg (Oh, how fun!! Definitely need to try this one as well! Oh, and Hazel has a certain Dino Boy pen pal that would love this!!)
3) From Mandy Made: The Fairest Cottage of Them All Tutorial (I featured this before but now she is sharing the tutorial!! Isn't this a great play cottage!! I so love it!!)
4) From Bean Bug Crafts: Bird House Hair Bow Holder (Isn't this adorable?)

We had several delicious looking recipes shared, and I picked three of them that really made my mouth water to share with you, but you really should check them all out!! BUT make sure you are NOT hungry when you do!!
1) From Making Memories With Your Kids: Campfire Eclairs (Oh, how I wished we made these when I was camping!)
2) From School Time Snippets: Chocolate Banana Bites (I'm trying to figure out how to use these and make them look like teddy bears for Hazel's Teddy Bear Picnic!!)
3) From We Made That: Pinkalicious Pancakes (Oh, we are going to have to check out the Pinkalicious books and make some of these!)

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.
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From Your Host:
 Butterflies Part 2 (Origami) and Part 3



  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!!

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!!

Imagination--Readathon Week 4

Sharing Saturday is still open through Wednesday!! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities and to check out all the inspiration others have shared!

Also Happy Family Times is open! Please stop by and share your fun family activities this week! Help us to inspire each other to have more quality family time!


As you know, we are participating in several book clubs, readathons, etc. this summer. The Memetales Readathon 2012 has imagination for its theme this week! I love this theme!! For the people signed up, there are three free electronic books to read with this theme. (Plus for every child who signs up a meal is donated to FoodforEducation.org!)

The first is Night Boy by Anne Laurel Carter. I love this story. Night is the younger brother and Day is the older sister. Night cannot wait to play hide-and-seek with his sister, but he has to wait until it is dark. He pulls out his blanket to make it dark and she goes and hides (to the west of course), but he jumps in his spaceship and heads in the wrong direction and gets distracted creating constellations and the night sky. Day calls him back and it is his bed time, so she tucks him in for the daytime. The perfect activity is to study the night sky of course. Although Hazel's bedtime is well before the sun sets during the summer here, we did some exploring of constellations. We talked about how people saw images in the stars and named the constellations using their imaginations. Then we created some of the constellations using flashlights and black paper or tin foil as suggested in the links below.

Play Dough Day 2 And Mixing Colors with Ice


nurturestore

This morning when we got up, Hazel asked to play with her play dough again (click here to see yesterday or day one of our play dough pledge play). I had put most of it in the refrigerator since I knew the Jello play dough had to be kept in it. I had left the cloud dough out. The oatmeal play dough was hard to work with after being in the refrigerator. It may be because I made it a bit dry since I didn't want it to be so sticky. First we played with the cloud dough. (I think I could have used more oil in this recipe.)

Happy Family Times #8

 

Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I run a link party to share your family times every Tuesday. Please link up below and visit Happy Whimsical Hearts to read about her quality family time!

This week we spent Saturday as a family. We started our morning going to the local zoo--Stone Zoo. We have a family membership there, but hadn't used it since we renewed it last month. We finally got a gorgeous day with little plans so we headed over there. The first animal we saw was the American Bald Eagle. They also have a replica of its nest.

Then we went to see the black bears. They are two brothers. Some days we have caught them playing with one another, but I think today it was near feeding time since the one above went to the door and stayed there after having a drink of water in their "pond." His brother however had a great time with the big blue ball!

 Then we saw the llamas and owls. Hazel couldn't see the Great Horned Owl, so Daddy picked her up.


The coyotes could not be found. And usually we always see the cougar and jaguar doing something fun, but today they were both sleeping. Not too exciting. We did see a snake drinking water. The picture of the snake didn't come out too well, but here are Steve and Hazel checking it out.
We saw a few more caged animals and then we went to see Hazel's favorite--the flamingos!!
Then we went into the inside displays. The pictures did not come out well in there for the most part. Some of the "glass" was dirty and it also reflected light. Then we stopped at the gift shop. We picked up some postcards for Hazel's penpals and a present for each of us. Then the river otter was out and swimming.
They have several types of monkeys or monkey like animals. Some were sleeping and one was hanging on the edge of the cage checking us all out.
Next we saw the white cheeked gibbon family. They had a baby in the fall!
The father, the black one, is one armed. He lost part of his arm at his previous zoo when a visitor tried to feed him something or threw something in to his cage. They have a sign telling the story. He gets around pretty well all things considered. Here he was sleeping though.

Next we took Hazel to dig for dinosaur bones. This is the first time we took her to this part because of her age and the crowds that can be there. She seemed to enjoy it. It is also right next to their Birds of Flight Show. We skipped that due to timing, and I think Hazel would be scared and it is not something you can get out of during the show. Then we decided to go have lunch. We had brought some sandwiches but headed over to the grill for some French fries and so Hazel could go on the rides. We brought quarters from her piggy bank for the rides. Here are a couple of them.

Then we went through the barnyard and or course Hazel wanted to play on the playground there. She had fun. Oh, and I got someone to take a family shot of us. And it actually came out pretty well.


Then we saw the zebu. I had never seen or heard of a zebu before going to this zoo.
Then we got really lucky. The snow leopard was out! Steve had never gotten to see it before. And this was the best view I have ever gotten of it.
We walked up to see the wolves but they were not out. We did see the black necked crane. And the snow leopard was still out on our way back down the hill. Then we saw the markhors. Then we quickly went down the path with the foxes, porcupines and barnyard owl. By this time Hazel was getting tired so we hurried through, but on our way to the path we saw this little turtle not in a cage but on the path.
Then we were on our way to our local Rite Aid. They were having a fundraiser today for Children's Miracle Network. All the proceeds from it would go to the Children's Hospital in Boston. They had Elmo there. Hazel did not want to leave once we were there. She loved sitting next to Elmo and she even got pictures of her with Elmo and the store manager and the assistant manager--two of her three friends at the store.  Rite Aid is like a second home to us.

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



~ please link up (family time oriented giveaways are ok, but please no Etsy shops)
~just crafts will be deleted since this is to share family times
~ use our button so others can join the fun

Photobucket

Button Code:


~ we'd love for you to follow us Crafty Moms Share and Happy Whimsical Hearts
~ check out our Happy Family Times Pinterest board where we will be pinning some of our favorite ideas


Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!