Archive for January 2011
Valentine’s Day is less than a month away and I am trying my hardest to resist the candy that is already all over the place. What I can’t resist is sharing some of our favorite Valentine’s Day crafts from years past. If you don’t see what you are looking for here check out all our Valentine’s Crafts , I am sure you will find something just right !
We live so far south that we very rarely get to experience actual snow. When we do get snow, it’s often not enough to make a snow man. Even so, there are lots of holiday songs and stories about snowmen, so I thought I’d show my son how snowmen are made with a little play doh.
I used black and white play doh for this activity.
I went ahead and rolled all of the pieces in advance. My son has a lot of sensory issues, so he’s not a big fan of play doh. I still run him through the motion of rolling the big pieces, but if he had to do it all himself, we’d have a meltdown before we finished. 
So, we took each white ball, rolled it once or twice in his palm, and then stacked them. He was extremely resistant to the play doh with his left hand, so we switched it up and used his right–much better!
We then took the smaller black balls and helped him use his pointer finger to press them into the snowman creating eyes, a nose, and some buttons. We’ve worked on using pointer finger before, so this is a good way to reinforce that skill. Overall, using one finger was much better than using his whole hand. 
When you’re finished, you have a snowman guaranteed not to melt.
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Katy is a mom of one who loves art, mystery novels, and anything involving peanut butter–she blogs about raising her little miracle at Bird on the Street.
I had every intention of making this a lowercase q craft. The stars were simply not aligned, I turned 3 pieces of paper into scrap trying to make a lowercase q , cursed myself for not having a printer then made it an uppercase Q before my son lost all interest and ran back to the football game! Luckily the paper cutter was the big treat ( He has been begging to use it for months) and kept him at the table with me , because I think this is a darn cute letter craft!
- Gather your materials. You will need some white paper, some multicolored paper for the quilt pieces , another sheet of construction paper ( if you want to display it), a dark marker, glue and scissors. We used a paper cutter but I am not suggesting you do that, I do suggest you let your child use tools when they are ready for them, and he was ready and very careful.
- Start by writing an uppercase Q on the white paper. Feel free to do this as a lowercase craft just don’t ask me to write the letter, I am incapable. You want to use the white paper so that when you cut the q out you can follow the outline from the underside even if the paper pieces are glued over it.
- Cut the colored/patterned paper into strips , this will make cutting them into squares easier for your child whether they are using scissors or a paper cutter.
- Cut.
- He was very excited and he cut a lot , I was impressed with how careful he was.
- Add glue to the Q
- Add the quilt squares to the glue.
- Let dry.
- Cut the Q out.
- Glue to a second sheet of construction paper.
Alphabet Books
Bruno Munari’s ABC
Alphabestiary: Animal Poems from A to Z
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Wow over 70 of you linked up last week to share your best blog posts . It’s so easy to join in the fun and everyone is welcome . All you need to do is choose which one of your posts from the previous week you want to share, link it, then visit a few of the other links too. I can’t tell you how many great blogs I have found because of this linky . Don’t be shy, we want to see your best!
Yesterday on our Facebook page I asked readers what book they just don’t like! We got a big response, by the time I started writing this post there were almost 80 comments. Many of the books mentioned were ones I love. Books I have read and taught with for years but apparently are also passionately disliked. So today I am fishing out old reviews of some of these books and asking you what you think of these titles? Would you want these books on your child’s bookcase?
Goodnight Moon 
The Paper Bag Princess 
Where the Wild Things Are
No, David! 
But the most mentioned book was this one.
Love You Forever
So what do you think of these books?
Love them or hate them I am just glad so many of you are as passionate about children’s books as I am . Even if books make us wonder if the publisher was sleeping when they gave it the go ahead, reading to our kids is essential and in my opinion one of our great responsibilities as parents. So read on !
