Archive for May 2011
We live outside Seattle and even for us this spring has been rainy. This activity is a perfect example of simple being wonderful. As soon as I told my son about my idea he was eager to start, so this wasn’t our most polished project, but trust me we had a ball. I don’t know about the kids in your house but in ours we need to work up a sweat inside or out to ensure a smooth bedtime and great sleep. So rain or shine we need to move our bodies!
- Gather your materials – all you need are some card stock ( index cards would be awesome) , a marker, and scissors if you need to cut the card stock.
- Write out different actions, exercises, and physical feats twice.
- Cut and make two piles.
- To play you need two players ( I played as well- trust me you don’t need to see me do karate kicks in my Pjs…not a pretty sight). Each player gets a pile. The premise is simple both players put their pile of cards face down, count out loud to 3 and flip .
- Then do the action on the card.
- Keep flipping and moving!
- Exercise will make you strong!
Book
Like all the books this week this one Strong Stickfiggy is one of the ebooks available on the free MeMeTales’ Mobile Reader App . We read it on my iPod , under the covers pretending it was the Batcave ( do not tell me that shocks you…). You don’t have to read it in a Batcave or even at home , you can read it anywhere which is my favorite part of this app.
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Getting kids to talk about feelings is not always easy, one way to do it is to make it into play. These emotion masks can be elaborate with colors or simple and black and white like ours . The goal of this activity isn’t to have award winning art work, instead it’s to play with and open up a dialogue about feelings with your kids. We had a great chat about feeling sad which would have not otherwise come up. Have you blogged bout emotions? Ways to teach about them? If you have one link your post up below!
- Gather your materials. You will need 1/2 a paper plate per mask. We made only 4 emotions because my son at 4 is still pretty basic about how he feels and most emotions get lumped into these 4 : happy, sad, angry and silly. You will also need popsicle sticks ( or tongue depressors), crayons or markers , scissors and tape. I had crayons out expecting my son to want to color them… but alas he went minimalistic with this one.
- Start by cutting the plates in half.
- Write the emotion on the back, if your child is beginning to read have them help you read it, if not make your face look like the emotion and ask your child if they can guess. Talk about each emotion, but don’t lecture.
- I made the noses as per my son’s request and made two emotions.
- He made the other two. Yes that’s a permanent marker, my heart was skipping a beat while he used it.
- Tape the sticks on.
- Play with the emotions. We had fun making our eyes one emotion and our masks another.
Book
Inspiration for this craft came from The Way We Feel , we read it on my iPod and you can too with MeMeTales’ Free Mobile Reader App . We are celebrating e-books from this brand new app all week !
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Regular readers know that my number one passion isn’t paint or even glitter it’s reading, specifically getting kids to love reading. That is why I am so eager to share the free MemeTales Mobile Reader App with you. I have had the honor of working with MeMeTales for some time now . They published my Alphabet Crafts eBook and I act as an advisor on their parents committee. If you read my post about boys and reading last week you will know that one of the biggest lessons I have learned from children I have taught over the years is that it’s more important we get them to want to read than we force them to read what we want them to.
I can tell you first hand that my son loves reading MeMeTales books on my iPod , it’s novel it’s a treat and even though he’s not a reluctant reader I instantly saw how MeMeTales gamified reward system would appeal to those kids who have a hard time getting interested in books. See when you read books on this app you get points, then after so many points you get stickers and earn games too! Best part is it’s free and to celebrate the launch you get access to 20 free books.
So to celebrate the MeMeTales Mobile Reader App launching we are devoting this whole week to crafts inspired by the free books that come on the App. But as I said in January this year here at No Time For Flash Cards it’s not about me, it’s about WE so we are also going to be hosting a linky party every day. Each day the theme will be based on the book featured from the app. Scroll down to check out today’s book and craft.
Here’s the thing, the reason I love MeMeTales is because they are passionate about reading and they know that making crafts, doing activities and keeping the learning going with themed projects will only keep kids coming back to books whether they read them on an iPad, laptop on from a book. Speaking of books at the end of this week of celebration we will be giving away 20 picture books to one lucky reader . Awesome right?! We’ll tell you more about that on Friday .
Today’s Featured Book Alphabet inspired our letter of the week craft below.
N Net
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 pieces of construction paper, markers, scissors, glue, some tulle, double stick tape and some candy fish.
- Start by making a large uppercase N on one sheet of paper.
- Make waves if you want on the other.
- Invite your child to come decorate the N however they want. Mine wanted to do one single line on both sides ( I had 2 Ns, I really need some stencils)- glad I snapped the picture when I did.
- While you are cutting it out ( or they can too) have them draw the other fish in the sea, birds in the sky… or not. My son was like ” No thanks I did my line can we glue yet?”
- Cut a small piece of tulle and using double stick tape make a net on the bottom corner of the N. If you don’t have tulle the mesh bags from produce will work great too!
- Add glue – easily my son’s favorite part.
- Pop the N on the “sea”. I added a bit more double stick tape once the N was added to make sure the fish would be secure.
- Add the fish in the net.
- Eat the fish
Do you have an Alphabet activity or craft to share? Add it here :
Link up! I hope you have all had a great week- we are crazy busy and really excited about the week ahead here at No Time For Flash Cards. We have a week long special event happening with 5 days of link ups. So today definitely share your very best post you wrote last week but be sure to check back here all week to link up some more. I am waiting until tomorrow to share all the details and officially announce a great giveaway too ( trust me you will love it). Have a great week and thank you so much for being a part of this weekly round up of creativity!
With summer vacations on the horizon some of my book lists will lean towards school age kids in the next few months. This series by Joanna Cole are books I have been reading with my 4.5 year old but they are really geared towards Kindergarten and up, with the true target being 6 and 7 year olds. There is a lot of information on every page of every book so take your time. We grabbed the Medieval Castles book on Monday and by Wednesday we’d tracked down the other two, now on Thursday I am sharing them with you. I couldn’t wait to write about how much I like these books and how exciting they make history and travel, two of my favorite subjects. 
Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures: Ancient Egypt
Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures: Imperial China Takes readers from present day Chinese New Year celebrations to the rice fields and palaces of Imperial China. In this installment Ms.Frizzle explores China, explains the concept of taxes really quite well and covers many of the inventions that came from the country. My 4.5 year old wasn’t as into this book as the other two in the series but I think that’s because I read two of them to him back to back with this one at the end, which was obviously too much for his attention. I however loved this one and was fascinated by the little asides filled with information about Chinese inventions.
Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures: Medieval Castle
