Archive for May 2011
A love of books is important even before your kids can read. I hope to bring to you each month some new releases for the smallest ones in your family to enjoy.
eebees adventures: clean-up time. a play and put things away adventure
Sterling Publishing
board book (6 months – 4 years)
This sturdy lift the flap book is full of colourful photographs of babies and toddlers at play with things they would use at home: pots and pans from the kitchen, towels from the clean clothes basket, shoes of different sizes). After looking at the kids playing, lift the flap and eebee reminds kids to tidy up what they were playing and even shoes an photo of the items all put away or the kids tidying up. This is a great when talking to kids about play and then tidying up together; it’s just part of the play. Let’s not forget to thank everyone for all their help keeping things tidy, which eebee does on the last page of the book. The flaps themselves are part of the page versus a piece of paper glued on to the page; I find this makes the pages sturdier for little hands to turn.
The Night Night Book
Raincoast Books
board book (1 – 4 years)
Most bedtime routines include a night time story (I still read bedtime stories to all my kids, including my 9-year old). The Night Night Book is a great story to help kids wind down from a busy day into a quiet night. The book starts with the child in bed, remembering and saying good night to all the things the child encountered during the day: nigh night sandbox and shiny slide. Night night wagon and bumpy ride! Reading the book is also a great way to talk about your child’s day and things they would like to say night night to also. The paper mosaic images used throughout the book also have a child like quality to them versus realistic illustrations, like art a child might do to illustrate their special moments in a day. I found the rhythm to this story very calming too, just what you want for a bedtime book.
Can You Count?
Sterling Publishing
board book (1 – 4 years)
This simple counting concept book is lovely to look at. Each page consists of a large, colourful numeric number, along with the number simply written out too. That is the only text that appears on each page, making the focus quite clear. Along with the numbers there are whimsical illustrations of animals, depicting the number on the page. An alligator in a colourful shirt and a turtle in a scarf adorn the page for number two. The background colours for each page varies too, adding to the fun. Kids will love counting the numbers as they appear on each page. Counting the animals, the numerical and written form of each number all work to help reinforce counting skills from one to ten.
Flaptastic Farm
DK Publishing
board book (1-4 years)
Take your kids on a walk through a farm with this fun animal board book. Each spread consists of a farm animal photo placed into a fun farm illustration with the opposite page asking what animal it is (in the form of a animal sound question: Who goes oink, oink?) Kids lift the flap to find the answer (or confirm their suspicions). Also included in part of the flap is a second animal sound question surrounded by 4 different farm images with words. The correct answer is bolded. Kids will love revealing the answer to the animal question. And the inner animal questions are treated like games, for kids to pick which of the four images makes the sound. Great for encouraging animal recognition and associated animal noises (plus everyone, mom included, will have fun recreating the animal noises). Having the words of the various items visible also helps with expanding vocabulary within the farm theme.
If you like Dr Suess’ ABC book, then you’ll enjoy this. Each page calls out the letter and then offers an animal type starting with the same letter. I love the use of alliteration, giving descriptions of the animals using the same letter the animals starts with: C, cosy cobra curled up in a comfy chair. Use of descriptive words not only provides other examples of words starting with that letter but also increases a child’s vocabulary by providing other words beyond the basics to help describe something (adjectives and adverbs galore). Unlike Dr. Suess, all the animals in this story are real, except for Z (but I’ll leave that to you to discover). A fun read for kids to help reinforce the letters of the alphabet as well as letter sounds (repeating words that make the same sound).
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I want to thank Chris at DK Canada, Katie at Sterling Kids and Crystal at Raincoast books for my review copies.
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Carrie Anne is a contributing writer on No Time For Flash Cards , she is a mom of 3 , Managing editor of EverythingMom.com and an avid reader. You can catch up with her on her blog Another Day. Another Thought…Or Two
I love what we call butterfly pasta. Not only does my son eat it well, he plays with it well too. We made this ages ago but between Easter and Mother’s Day crafts it got lost in the shuffle. As we pulled it out to play with it again I remembered I never posted this sensory activity. Although I didn’t photograph it I popped some of these butterflies into a clear Take and Tozz sippy cup through a lid on it and my daughter has been using it as a shaker for weeks. So many uses!
- Gather your materials. You will need some bowtie ( butterfly) pasta, food coloring, vinegar, ziploc bags, cookie sheets, a medium sized plastic tub, scoops, a divided tray and play tongs. You can also through in some penne pasta as ” Caterpillars”.
- Start by putting a few drops of your favorite food coloring into a ziploc.
- Add 1 tbsp of white vinegar.
- Throw in a few handfuls of pasta. Shake until all the liquid is gone.
- Pour out on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper to dry. The vinegar smell will lessen in time, even if it’s strong initially in a day or two it will be all but gone.
- Make multiple colors.
- Pour dry dyed pasta into a bin with scoops for little ones to explore, add penne pasta as caterpillars.
- Using a divided tray you can sort the pasta by color using tongs.
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When people complain about my stance on flash cards they will often say to me ” Well how to you teach them the names of things? ” Well besides simply talking about the things you play with , things you eat and things you see as you go about your day you can play games like this with your littlest learners, but please don’t push that’s not how anyone especially infants learn. This should be fun, when they decide they are done move on to something else. Also this activity is a one on one activity, an adult needs to be able to reach the fruit easily at all times for safety reasons.
- Gather your materials. You will need some light bowls we are using Dandelion Bowls made from corn ( no worries about safety and they are light) , whole pieces of fruit. A knife for cutting some fruit for tasting after ( depending on your child’s ability to eat solids, you could use purees too).
- Start by putting one or two fruits under the bowls, I like that the bowls don’t completely cover the fruit because it teased her into investigating .
- As they turn them over label the fruits for them saying something like ” What have you found? Oh it’s an orange! Oranges are food. ” As they explore narrate their exploration but don’t lead it.
- Another reason to use safe bowls – everything ends up in the mouth at our house.
- After they discover all the fruit cut some up, mash some etc… for them to taste . This picture shows how close I am to her as well.
- The activity might just bring other people to the table too.
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Books About Fruit
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z
by Lois Ehlert is an alphabet book extraordinaire! Wonderful paintings of fruits and vegetables seem ultra simple and it is but somehow the way the author has pieced this simple book together is brilliant. Maybe it’s that children learn about food at the table multiple times a day and feel proud being able to identify not only some of the letters but some of the pictures too! From a teaching standpoint I love that there are both upper and lower case letters on each page! This book will grow with your child, and beware it will also make you
hungry!
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (Child’s Play Library)
by Audrey and Ron Wood is a fantastic book that children adore! The story not only unique in that the narrator speaks directly to the mouse , it’s illustrations will enchant your child’s imagination and make the most overtired parent smile. The little mouse is trying to keep the strawberry away from the bear, and his adorable attempts to hide it make my son laugh every time! Great book!
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Full Disclosure : I was given the Dandelion bowls free of charge to try out , I was not compensated to make mention of them.
We are a very outwardly affectionate family with lots of hugs, kisses and loving nick names , Stink Bug is loving right? But this activity isn’t so much about celebrating what we all love about eachother it’s about thanking , praising and even boosting self esteem. Although I wrote the specific awards my son dictated them and it was interesting to see what he valued most for both my husband and I as well as himself.
- Gather your materials. You will need some plastic ( metal will work too) lids, double stick tape ( glue is fine we are trying to keep glue to a minimum while we sell our house), card stock , a black permanent marker, colored markers , scissors, ribbon, glitter glue and strong tape.
- Start by tracing the lids on the card stock.
- Ask your child who they want to make medals for and what they want to write. If they can write have them do it. My son dictated them for me to write, his writing is too big and he would get very frustrated when it didn’t fit. Always ask though, don’t assume they want you to do it.
- Time to color the medals.
- Add some bling ( glitter glue). Let dry.
- Cut out.
- Add double stick tape to the lids.
- Stick the medals on.
- Add ribbon to the back with tape.
- Present to your family.
You may notice we didn’t make one for my daughter, she is simply too young to have anything around her neck even while supervised. Let that be your reminder to closely supervise kids when they have anything around their necks.
When my son started eating solids I made all his food… you can guess that is not the case with my daughter as I have this many baby food jar lids waiting to be made into something. I am just happy we made something useful and fun with them since they can’t be recycled like the jars can. This took me 5 minutes to make and $1 for the foam letter stickers. Frugal, Educational, Earth Friendly-ish ( foam letters are probably not eh?) and fun! Oh and super simple for the uncrafty or crazy busy .Oh and if your child is not ready for letters yet do colors, if they are way past letters try sight words. This idea can be adapted to any ability.
- Gather your materials. You will need some foam letter stickers and many jar lids (or milk jug caps would work too). You may want to do the whole alphabet but I didn’t bother letters work in all different combinations and you don’t need the whole alphabet each time you do activities with letters. You may also want a wet cloth to wipe any lids that didn’t get washed as well as you’d hoped.
- Peel and stick letters into the insides of the lids.
- Add them for each lid.
- Play.
For beginners play with the letters facing up saying only “Can you find…” giving hints using the color and what letters it’s next to.
- For more experienced kids play face down. My 4.5 year old needed more help than I thought he would, not naming the letters but understanding he needed to remember where letters were. He also had a hard time flipping the lids with Grandma’s gloves Batman gloves on.
- Yay a match!
Alphabet Books
Quilt Alphabet
A Was an Apple Pie 
“A” Was Once An Apple Pie
