Jingle, Jingle Bells

Have you entered my current giveaway yet? Also the Little Pim Giveaway?

So Hazel and I have been singing Old MacDonald's Farm on the way to school. We have added some more things to the song. One is that he has a Hazel whenever we both say the same thing. She giggles everywhere. We also added a Christmas tree to his farm. It jingles everywhere. This works perfectly with the wonderful ebook Daria has put out: Jingle Bells: 4 Easy Musical Crafts for Holiday Fun! Daria was kind enough to send us a copy of it for our use. I have chosen to review it here and did not receive any compensation besides a free copy of the book and all opinions are my own (and Hazel's).

We made two of the four projects so far. Yes, we plan to make all four. 

Hazel had the best time playing with them. Sorry I couldn't get the video to rotate on here. It is fine off-line.

 We made the jingle bracelets and the jingle sticks.

Hazel showing both of hers

The jingle stick is pretty simple and you can be creative with colors.

My Jingle Stick

 The jingle bracelet is very simple as well. 

My Jingle Bracelet

So head over to Daria's Little Village Store and purchase a copy of her Jingle Bell e-book for $2.99 and join us in some jingle holiday fun!

Thanksgiving Crafts & Games Past and Present

We did this fun and easy craft this year so far. We got the idea from Crafts for Thanksgiving by Kathy Ross.

 We changed the craft a bit because I wanted to put the corn on something stiffer than felt. I had these natural wood pieces and thought they would look nice and work well. Hazel had so much fun gluing on the Indian corn.

The Little Pim Giveaway!

 

Sponsored by Little Pim

   

Hosted by:

The Squishable Baby

   

There are many benefits to early acquisition of a second language.

• Young learners can acquire native-like fluency.
• Young learners learn naturally, like they learn their mother tongue.
• Young learners can hear critical differences in sounds.
• The brain is flexible in the young learner. It's made to learn new languages.
• Young learners acquire cognitive advantages - such as critical thinking skills, creativity and flexibility in thought.
• Learning a new language gives children a better understanding of their native language.
• Learning a new language opens up the child's sphere of friends and acquaintances
• Having a second language Increases marketability for colleges and beyond.
• And much more!

    Read what some of our Co-hosts have to say about the importance of learning a second language.

• The Squishable Baby Little Pim Review
• Brittnei of Homemaking With Style
• Carrie of Crafty Mom Share

   

1 lucky winner will receive The Discovery

set of DVDs in the language of choice

ARV $59.99 US and Canada (Canadian residents will receive downloadable copies)

 

Enter below for your chance to win!

   

Entry-Form

 

A huge thanks to all the blogs that are participating in this event!

 

Wife, Mummy, Nurse	Mommy's Favorite Things	Unschooling Momma
Kids Yoga Stories	Homemaking With Style	Momma Lew's Blog
P is for Preschooler	Mrs. Tee Love, Life and Laughter	Crafty Mom Share
Mommynificent

 

Teaching Spanish at Home

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Now if you have been following along for the past couple of weeks, you know I am involved in helping with the Little Pim Giveaway being run by Squishable Baby.  Part of my involvement is to also include a little about how I am going about teaching Spanish to Hazel.

Last spring we made the decision to switch schools for Hazel since we were having some issues with the discipline at her school. We moved her to a private Christian school that has a traditional curriculum. As part of a traditional curriculum she will be learning Latin. Now I do think knowing Latin can be helpful. I took a year of it in high school myself, but I also want her to have some experience with other languages (besides saying ciao to her Italian grandmother). I took Spanish from fifth grade until my junior year in high school and was in honors classes most of the time. However I have not spoken much Spanish since, so I need to relearn some. 

I know based on all the research out there, that now is the time to begin to teach her, so I am starting. I found some resources and have won some that we have been enjoying.

The first resource is a CD with book. It has songs that sings sayings in English and in Spanish. We often listen to this in the car. Hazel really enjoys it and is repeating some of the words. The next is a board book of Spanish numbers. It goes from 1 to 12 and then has 20, 50 and 100. Then it has adding and subtracting sentences in Spanish and English. We read this often at bedtime. She has started counting in Spanish, so it is working. The last two we have not spent much time with yet, but will be expanding our words with the dictionary and eventually she will not freak out that she does not understand the Spanish when I put on the DVD. Our only time watching it, she asked me to turn it off since she did not understand anything.

I also found some good resources at our local library. We are still exploring them and some are a bit ahead of Hazel's level, but we are working to it.

It is amazing what resources are out there. There are also some great ideas on many of the blogs I like to check out. 

• Spanish Playground
• Toddling in the Fastlane
• All Done Monkey

Needless to say I know I would find the Little Pim DVD series a huge aid in our lesson!! I hope you will come and enter the giveaway!!

Virtual Book Club for Kids: Mortimer's Christmas Manger

Yes, I still have Christmas on my brain--way too early! This month's author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Karma Wilson. Now Karma Wilson has some amazing books. I think the most famous ones are the Bear series. Lately Hazel has been scared of books with bears, so I stayed away from them. We however fell in love with Mortimer. We read the two Mortimer books and since Christmas is coming sooner than when I'll plant a garden again, we went with Mortimer's Christmas Manger. We however also loved the Little Pip series too!