Virtual Flat Stanley/Sophia

Do you have a great idea for a Mother's Day gift made by a child? Please share them here!

In my last post, I mentioned that my aunt contacted me to help with her step-granddaughter's Flat Stanley project. The person they sent it to never returned it and it is due soon. Since I live in the same state as them, I had the idea of contacting some of my blogger friends from around the world to give her more exciting stories to share. Then I had the idea of sharing some Flat Stanleys or Sophias on my blog so we could "visit" different parts of the world in the eyes of children. Are you interested in joining us? Read on for more details.

So for our invitation I thought I would start with our Flat Sophia (we made her a girl) and the adventure we took her on. First we decorated Stanley and decided he needed to be female. (I should add that this is our first one, we have to make a duplicate one to keep and another one just because she wants to have different clothes on it.)

Then we took Flat Sophia to see some local sights. We started with a National Historic Site nearby but it was not open (until next week). We took a picture by the sign anyway.

Then we went to our local library to look for the Flat Stanley book by Jeff Brown. I figured it was always good for Hazel to know the story of how Stanley became flat. (A bulletin board falls on him while he is sleeping.)

We also had two of the librarians pose with Hazel and Flat Sophia.

Then we found out there was a Mother Goose Story Time starting in five minutes so we went to it. All the children got stamps on their hands so we asked Ms. Martha for a stamp for Flat Sophia to show the class she went to the story time. Now we have to mail her and our pictures to my aunt.

We have also been hearing from some of our friends around the world with their Flat Stanleys. I am going to share one each week with you so we can learn a bit about the world together. If you are interested in joining us, print out this template and decorate your Flat Stanley/Sophia in a manner a child might dress in your area of the world. Then take your Flat Stanley some place in your area and take a picture of him/her with or without your child (depending on if you want pictures of your child shared here). E-mail me your pictures, your child's name or nickname and age, where you are from and where you took your Flat Stanley and any other wonderful information about your hometown, region, country that you might want to share (and if you want me to mention and link it to your blog, please make sure I have your blog name). By participating you are giving me permission to post your pictures and information you provide here at Crafty Moms Share and all of its social media connected with it. So tune in next week when I will share our first Flat Stanley adventure from a reader of Crafty Moms Share! And then you can help spread the word about our traveling Flat Stanley by posting a button on your blog. (I left the picture out of it so you can add your own picture in PicMonkey. Just right click the button and save it so you can bring it up in PicMonkey and add your picture.)

Mommy and Daughter Day

Do you have a great homemade Mother's Day gift idea? Share it here!

I know I promised another Mexican Cinderella post this week and here it is Monday's post and time for my Fairy Tales in Different Cultures post, but I decided to wait this week since we did not do the crafting I had hoped over the weekend. So stay tuned for the Mexican Cinderella coming soon with (hopefully) some great Cinco de Mayo crafts.

This weekend was a bit hectic. It was Stewardship Sunday at my church and since I head the Stewardship Ministries Team, I was in charge. Luckily I have a wonderful committee with many talents and many other volunteers to help. We did our final push on the campaign and then provided a luncheon. It went well, but I am tired. 

Yesterday, Steve went hiking with some of his friends from work, so Hazel and I had an entire Saturday to spend alone. The only thing we had to do was be at the church at 1 p.m. to set up for the luncheon. I had also received a message from my aunt. Her step-granddaughter needed help with a Flat Stanley school project. We decorated Flat Stanley (though we made her a girl so we call her Flat Sophia) and took her a few places to take some pictures. More on Flat Stanley another day since I thought a blog project to do with it. We stopped at the library to get a Flat Stanley book and found out there was a Mother Goose Story Time starting in five minutes so we stayed for it. Then we went to run our other errands and go to Lakeshore Learning for their free craft. Now it was after noon, so we headed home for a quick lunch and then to get to church. I bribed Hazel into helping at the church with ice cream afterwards. 

We headed to the local ice cream place/farm. Hazel wanted to check out all the animals, so we both got frappes (the Boston term for a milkshake) and walked around. We stopped in the middle section to see the cows and goats.

Then we headed over to the calf nursery. We had a fun time checking out the calves.

Next to the nursery is the poultry cage. They didn't have the food machine out yet, but the male turkey had his feathers up trying to impress the female. Hazel said he impressed her. The female turkey did not seem too impressed though.

Then we headed over to the big cow barn. This farm sells the milk and ice cream from their milk of their own cows. The first door of the big barn is the section reserved for the very pregnant cows--to birth in two to three weeks. We found one little baby sitting with its mother there as well.

Then the next two doors have the other cows. We found a few grooming themselves and these cows seemed hungry or at least were very interested in all the people at the doors. They came over to say hi and Hazel thought they got a bit too close (as did another girl who had gotten licked by one).

Hazel was almost licked by the mostly white one. We were petting them on the noses. Her tongue was the same color as her--white with black spots. Of course our favorite picture was of the cows kissing.

We saw the ones in the middle again. One was getting a drink this time.

Then we bought some milk and frozen yogurt to take home for Daddy. Hazel fell asleep in the car. She hadn't been sleeping well this week since I had so many meetings at night. She slept for a couple of hours and I took a nap as well. Then Steve came home and we went out to dinner, but the wait was too long, so we ordered take-out and sat at the bar while we waited. Hazel thought it was fun to sit at the bar and drink apple juice from a fancy glass. Then we headed home and had some dinner and went to bed. That was our fun Saturday!! The best part is we got outside for the afternoon!

Mother's Day Gifts

This year for Mother's Day we bought some wood boxes at one of the craft stores for $1. We also picked out some acrylic paints at Michaels when they were on sale. The other day it was warm out and our Mother's Day is only a couple of weeks away, so we painted outside.

Sharing Saturday 13-17

Well my first news is that Chelle over at Having Fun at Chelle's House has decided her life is a bit too crazy to keep co-hosting with me right now, so I am back to being solo. If you have not had a chance to check out last week's wonderful ideas shared, you really should. I was so inspired!! Here are my features. First of course is the most clicked from Gift of Curiosity.

1) From Gift of Curiosity: Earth Day Crayons I love this idea for recycling broken crayons to look like little earths!
2) From Little Wonders' Day: Garden Planting Picnic So fun to make simple food for a picnic in the shape of flowers after planting your garden all day!
3)  From Buggy and Buddy: Go on a Sound Walk What a fun activity to get you moving and outdoors!!
4) From Mums make lists: 25 Essential Toys for Babies Love that they do not require batteries!
5) From Toddlers Through Preschool: Measuring Shoes Full of such great ideas in learning about counting and sizes.
6) From Toddling in the Fast Lane: Paper Bag House Love that this craft goes with a lesson in both Spanish and English.
7) From Wesens-Art: Spring House Love this little paper house. It reminds me of springtime!

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

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From Your Hostess: This week has been busy for me, so only a few posts including Adelita: A Mexican Cinderella, The Rain Came Down a Virtual Book Club for Kids Book and a Trip to the Andes with Daria's new CD and E-book!

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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A Day in the Andes

Today I am going to explain our "trip" to the Andes thanks to Daria. Daria recently published a new CD and e-book about a child's life in the Andes. The CD is called Cancioncitas De Los Andes/Little Songs of the Andes and the e-book is called A Child's Life in the Andes.  Both were released April 2nd and Daria was kind enough to offer us a free copy of each to review and we LOVE them!! The combo pack of the book and CD are available at Daria's Little Village Store for $12.99. You can also buy just the CD at iTunes and Amazon.

Now before I go into how wonderful these activities are, I want to give you a little background. Daria lived in the Andes in Peru for part of her childhood. Needless to say she knows much about the area firsthand.

Now onto this great book and CD. Every time I play the CD, Hazel says to me, "Mommy, I like your music." The music is not like the music we normally listen to or even the other amazing album of Daria's that we have. We began our journey to the Andes by just listening to the CD a couple of times and loved it. 

Now that our mood was set, we sat down to read the book. We learned all about life in the Andes including what food was native to there. (Sorry we didn't have a play potato or I should say I couldn't find it if we still have it.) Plus about the animals and life in general for the children. Then there were all sorts of coloring pages.

Hazel only colored this llama so far, because we were busy doing the other activities like making musical instruments. We had already made a rainstick, so we some zampoñas following the easy instructions in the book. Hazel loves trying to play them!

Then we decided to follow the suggestion in the book to have a stuffed animal parade, but we decided to use our two llamas (one stuffed and one plastic) and also to use our two instruments. We had Steven video us. (Fair warning, he is not the best with a camera of any sort!)

Now if you are interested in exploring the Andes from your home, please stop by Daria's page and buy her new CD and E-book. They are amazing and we really enjoyed them! Thank you to Daria for sharing these wonderful resources with us!!