Meerkats & Hullabalu!

Reminder Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by and share your child-oriented craft or activity and check out the other wonderful ones already shared!

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So I awhile ago I received a wonderful e-mail offering to send me and Hazel a stuffed animal of our choice from the website Hullabalu. Hullabalu is an invitation only site for now that sells adorable, first rate stuffed animals. They will be having their hard launch later this summer, but also want to be able to do exclusives with their site. All I need to do for this adorable stuffed animal is blog about it. Since Hazel and I both LOVE stuffed animals, this seemed like a no brainer. So, I open my private invitation to view their site and it is wonderful. They had so many (26 right now) to choose from, I was glad I was not the one picking. As I flipped through the choices, I was pretty sure Hazel would pick the unicorn or dragon since she has been into them lately. Or maybe the pink hippo since she likes the pink hippo ride at the zoo, but she once again surprised me.

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So the next morning I showed the website to Hazel. Needless to say she loved it! Of course it starts with the fact that I allowed her to do something on the computer. We are trying to be media free with her. Then she gets to pick one of these adorable animals. You can actually name the animal when you purchase it or you can keep the adorable names they have already given them. (If you would like an invitation to Hullabalu, stay tuned. I have 25 to giveaway! Or you can go to their site and request one.) The choices change monthly, so you have to keep going back to see what they have. To my surprise, Hazel picked Meerkat Moe!

Now we have seen meerkats at our local zoo (see below), so we have seen them in real life. And I did comment on how cute he was when we were looking at them, but she decided she wanted this one. I went with it because I saw it as a great opportunity to learn more about meerkats.

Sorry for the picture quality, the meerkat was sitting in the only spot in the cage where the sun was shining and wouldn't move. Plus the cage was indoors. Ugh!!

Well, I have to say when the package came from Hullabalu, it was like Christmas or her birthday. It came in a beautiful blue box with Hullabalu written on it. Then inside Meerkat Moe was wrapped in tissue paper.

 She loved opening it and loved him right away. In fact there have been a few trips where Ducky has not come with us and Meerkat has. Yes, she named him Meerkat.

I have to say, I find him adorable and he is so soft and huggable. When she doesn't have him in her bed, I often cuddle with him in front of the television. Though she has been taking him with her to bed most nights. How could she not, he is just so sweet and soft!!

 Meerkat Moe is made by Wild Republic. Here is the tag that came on him.

He is definitely high quality and Hullabalu has hand chosen the companies and products they work with to be the highest quality. I have to say this has been a wonderful experience and I definitely will be going back to them if/when I want another animal.


Now, I know you are wondering what my experience with Hullabalu has to do with Multicultural Monday. Well as I mentioned above, I took the meerkat as a learning experience. Meerkats live in the Southern tip of Africa, so we are traveling back there. The first thing I find most interesting about meerkats is that they live in burrows with 20 to 50 family members!! They have also been seen hugging. It is strange to see a meerkat alone--in fact they tend to stay together. When gathering food they have a couple of them standing guard (on their hind legs using their tails to help balance) for predators. Oh, and their favorite food is scorpions!

I found some great sources for information on meerkats on-line. National Geographic being the first. National Geographic Kids also has a page on them including a printable card with a picture and information on the meerkat. We did print out the card and glued it onto an index card. I may put contact paper over both sides as well to keep it better. Another good source is Animal Fact Guide. I also found some coloring pages. Here is a good collection of them. Laughing Zebra has a great link of Meerkat Mania Week and it has information as well as some projects. From this link I took several of the projects and did them with Hazel as well as expanding one to make shadow puppets. I took this mural page and enlarged the two meerkats to 150%. Then cut them out of brown construction paper. I then drew on the lines and coloring that the page had. We glued them on to tongue depressors. Hazel loves them!! We also printed the other meerkat front and back. She colored it so you cannot see the picture very well. We cut it out and glued it on to a tongue depressor as well. 

 We have not cut out the pictures to make a mural with it yet, but Hazel did color them as you can see. I did the enlarging of the meerkats before she colored them.

We also found some great library books about meerkats including story books with meerkats in them. The first two are Meerkats by Katherine Walden and Meet the Meerkat by Darrin Lunde. Both of these provide factual information about the meerkat and where they live. Thus we learn about another part of the world--the desert!

Then two great story books. First Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett. This book is about a meerkat who decides it is too hot in the desert and goes to visit his distance relatives. His family is very scared for him since the meerkat rule is to stick together. However he goes off and visits his various types of mongoose relatives (meerkats are a type of mongoose). He sends a postcard each day to his family to tell them where he is and what it is like. He discovers that the best place for him is with his family in the desert.


The second story book is Millicent and Meer by Richard Byrne. This is a great story about a young girl who is playing outside when a crate falls into her yard. She looks into the crate and sees a meerkat. The meerkat does not remember who he is or what he is, so she looks on the label and reads it (by sounding out the word) and decides he must be a cat named Meer. She has always wanted a cat so she keeps him. However her father gets quite upset with Meer's meerkat habits and kicks him out of the house. Well Meer meets a cat and the cat shows him how to be a cat and then they see a poster advertising meerkats at a show and realize that is what Meer is. They take the poster to Millicent and her father calls the owner of the safari show and he comes to pick up Meer, but Millicent does get her cat in the end. It has a very happy ending.


Ok, that is it for meerkats for now. However I still have 25 invitations to Hullabalu to give away. So if you are interested in being able to shop at this amazing site for wonderful stuffed animals, please do the rafflecopter thing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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July's Author for Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

Sharing Saturday is still open. Visit and share your child-oriented crafts and activities and get inspired by what others have shared!!

 

Since today is July 1st I just would like to remind you of the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids. Over 20 blogs are hosting this book club and our June author was Mo Willems. You can still share your Mo Willem themed crafts and activities. Or be inspired by some of the ones shared.

However July 16th we will be opening the July Link Party. The author for July is Don and Audrey Wood! So go pick your favorite Don and Audrey Wood books and be creative with your crafts and activities and come back on the 16th to link up!! I cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with!


If you like to plan ahead, August's author is Kevin Henkes!

Patriotic Wreaths and Candles

As you know we have been working on decorations for our Fourth of July Barbeque. I need to extend an apology to all my readers who are not Americans--I know this may be getting boring for you. I'm hoping you can take some of these ideas and use them for your own parties with changes. This week we took some empty jars and Mod Podged some tissue paper on them. 

Hazel did one with squares of red, white and blue tissue paper (I added some sparkly ribbons to the top and bottom), and I helped her with one to look like fireworks. My idea was to have many colors on the underneath layer, but she only wanted to use pink. We did not have a navy or black piece of large tissue paper so I cut a firework design out of purple and Mod Podged it over hers. Then I added some glitter glue after it all dried.

I made a navy one with a white star. I covered the jar in white and then combined the purple and turquoise to make a navyish color and cut out stars and Mod Podged them over. I outlined the star with glitter glue. Then I covered a jar with white and added stripes of red sparkly ribbon. This was actually my second attempt. My first attempt of the red and white striped (with a bit of blue starred scrapbook paper) did not turn out as planned. Then I thought of the ribbons.

My first attempt

Then I spent Friday afternoon working on a couple of wreaths. You may remember the spring wreath I made for us and the red, white and blue one I made for friends. I'm going to make some red, white and blue pinwheels tonight to change ours over. 

In addition to that, I made one starting with a straw wreath. I hot glued red, white and blue silk flowers to it. (I bought all of the flowers on sale/clearance or at The Dollar Tree). Then I added some ribbon going across the center and hung some sparkly stars in the center. This is on our front door now.

For the next wreath, I started with a flat wreath made of cardboard or that other type of board. I can't think of the name of it right now. I wrapped some patriotic ribbon around it. I bought two rolls of the ribbon on sale at Michaels this week. Each roll had three yards and I needed the second roll. Then I wrapped some metallic star garland around it. It filled it in nicely. Since we have four doors I can decorate (three off the patio and our front door) I may make another one as well. I still have another straw wreath to work with. I'm thinking of just wrapping the "Let Freedom Ring" ribbon around it and tying a bow.

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Sharing Saturday #26

In case you have been wondering, my co-host, Mia over at Mama Mia's Heart2Heart is taking a little break from blogging, so that is why you have not been seeing her participating in our Sharing Saturday. 

Mermaid Bedroom

Note: Sharing Saturday will be up and running at 9 p.m. EDT!

July 1st is the last day to enter Taming the Goblin's The Mermaid Project. I had one more idea floating around my head, but didn't think I would get to it. However, I found a mermaid at The Dollar Tree (I let Hazel chose one), so I was able to do this quickly since it did not involve making a mermaid. Hazel and I had painted this gallon milk container awhile ago with hopes of making it into a house for someone. When I saw it again, I thought it was the perfect colors for a mermaid.

All I did was put a large shell in it and a couple of small ones to be a bed and bedside table. Then I added the mermaid. Then I cut out some seaweed blankets out of different shades of green felt.

Since we had the felt and shells and the recycled milk container and paint this new toy cost all of $1! Not too bad for something for Hazel to play with.

View with no seaweed blankets

What do you think?

I will be entering this in Taming the Goblin's The Mermaid Project.