Time to Celebrate… MOM!

     Ok, ok!  I know Mother’s Day is long gone, but oh well.  I’m still playing catch up and I want to celebrate my mom.  As I said in the letter X blog, my mom is pretty fantastic!  I know I already posted a picture of her, but here’s another one just in case you missed it! And this time, my sister, Erika, make her blog debut!

     As you know, we have completed our alphabet crafts for the year, so I am going to continue this week with theme crafts. Below is the craft my two and three year olds made for their mothers.

     Mother's Day is a tad bit hard to celebrate at the library because most of the kids come with their mothers. I always try to add a surprise element, though. This year, I had the kids and their guardians cut out their hand and then give it to me. I had already prepared the poem, so it was easy to step out of the room for a couple of minutes and glue the hand down. I then gave the kids their hands back and asked them to give it to their mothers. So, there was a little surprise in it and the mothers' loved the cute little poem attached.

     As for my four to six year olds, I wanted them to be able to give their moms a bouquet of flowers.  Now I thought this would be a little bit difficult, however, after a quick little search on the internet, I took two different ideas to create the bouquet below.  It turned out great because each mom got a bouquet of flowers they could put on their tables that would never die!

Cut flowers out of pretty paper and punch a hole in the middle.
Have child put a "bendy" straw through the hole for the stem.

Cut a "vase" out of cardstock and have the kids decorate it.
Tape the vase to a toilet paper tube.  It is important to tape
the bottom of the toilet paper tube so that the flowers
do not fall through.

Place the flowers into the vase and VOILA!
A beautiful vase of flowers that will NEVER DIE!

     There are a lot of great picture books in the world about mom, and why wouldn’t there be?  Moms are REALLY important.  Here a few that I read to the kids.

     Lastly, I found a really great song on iTunes about Mother’s Day.  It’s very cute with a good beat. Here’s a quick little video I made.  Can you find my mom and sister in it?

     That seems to be it for our extra special Mother's Day post!  I hope you and your family had a fantastic Mother's Day!  Remember to appreciate your mom every mother's day, not just on Mother's Day.  Thanks and see you soon!

Z is for... Zebras and Zinnias!

     Are you ready for the last alphabet post?!  It’s been a long time in the making, but we finally made it to the letter Z!  Hooray!

     Ok, I will admit it.  I took the easy route with Zz and with zebra! There are lots of great zebra books and I wanted something a bit easier for my kids to be able to complete with little help!  Thus, without further ado… the letter Zz!

 

Materials:  Index card with capital z, black crayon, zebra head, google eye, and glue stick.

Front of card

Back of card

1)    Use the black crayon to draw stripes on the capital letter Z.

2)    Trace the upper and lower case Zz on the back of the card.

3)    Glue the zebra head on the Z and add the google eye.

     By now I am sure you all know what comes next.  The 2^nd craft for my four to six year olds, of course.  I really struggled with this.  Finally, I found a cute zinnia craft.  I know zinnia is a bit unexpected for Z, but it gave me an opportunity to introduce the kids to a new word while also being able to celebrate spring!  Hooray!  Click here to get the instructions on how to make this zinnia.  Warning:  you will have to scroll down a bit on the website to see this craft.

     As for my book selection this week, like I said previously, there are a ton of good books about zebras.  Though, unbeknownst to me, I actually revisited a zebra book from a series that I had previously read.  In October, we read a ghost book about a zebra named Zee.  Guess what, that’s actually the title of this week’s book, Zee by Michel Gay.   Both the children and their parents enjoyed this great little story about a zebra who is trying his absolute hardest to get his parents to wake up.  I don’t want to ruin the story, but let’s just say that Zee gets into all kinds of trouble when he decides that coffee is the only way to wake them up!

     I thought that finding a book to go with my zinnia craft would be difficult, however, it really wasn’t.  Eve Bunting authored the book, The Flower Garden, which discussed a little girl who lives in an inner city.  The little girl and her father are created a birthday present for her mother.  Of course, the book involves a flower garden with zinnias, but that is all I am going to say.  If you want to figure out how I the world a girl can plant a garden in the inner city, you are just going to have to pick it up and read it yourself!

     Slowly but surely I am getting caught up!  It’s nice though, to be officially done with the alphabet!  The kids enjoyed doing it, I thought it was really fun and educational, and the parents appreciated a craft that didn’t clutter their houses every week.  Stay tuned for my next post when I show all of the pictures of the alphabet crafts in order!

Y is for... Yellow and Yarn!

     Still playing catch up over here at Explore to Learn.  This week, we tackle the letter Y.  I know I say this almost every week, but for some reason, I struggled with Yy.  I thought about yak (which I am sure my kids have NO IDEA what that is) as well as yo-yo, but ended up going VERY simple.  Yellow!  I love the color yellow and my library has so many yellow stickers that I thought it would be fun and simple!

Materials:  Index card with capital Y, yellow crayon, and yellow stickers.

Front of card

Back of card

 

1)    Color the capital Y yellow.

2)    Trace the upper and lower case Yy on the back of the card.

3)    Stick the yellow stickers on the letter Y.

 

     As usual, my 4-6 year olds made a second craft.  As I was just relegating myself to the fact that I was going to have to do something with a yo-yo, I came across yarn in our crafting closet!  Perfect, right?  Thus, I took some craft stick, glued them together to make a picture frame, and decided we were going to work on our fine motor skills via yarn wrapping.  Needless to say, it took my kids forever and with their short attention spans, they were not happy with the craft. Oh well, I was happy they at least tried it out.  Most of my kids took home half-finished (like my own, below) frames to complete at home.  You win some, you lose some!

 

     The first book we read this week was all about colors.  Kitten Red, Yellow, Blue by Peter Catalanotto is a great book to not only discuss various colors but occupations as well.  My kids really enjoyed this book because they were able to shout out many of the colors and occupations, while also learning new colors such as teal and chartreuse.  It is definitely a cute book and a great read-aloud.

     Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett went spectacularly with my yarn theme.  Although this book is quite long, it definitely lends itself to being cut down a bit.  I did omit a couple of pages without losing any of the story.  The kids were able to follow along and understand that the little girl had a magic box of yarn.  They enjoyed guessing who the little girl might sew a sweater for next.

 

     I promised last week I would present a new song.  Well, if you haven’t heard of the amazingness that is Jim Gill, let me be the first to introduce you to his music.  My kids love his upbeat music and “The Color Game” is no exception.

     Ok, I have done it!  I have gotten two blog posts up in the same day!  I am making up some ground for sure!  Tune in again soon to see if I can get to Z.  Thanks!

X is for... X-RAYS!

     I think this blog post should start off with an apology!  I am really sorry I have been missing for so long.  Things at the library get really hectic at the end of April and beginning of May as we start to get ourselves prepared for Summer Reading!  With that said, there is no excuse, and I promise to try much harder in making sure I continue to post each week.

     With that said, the letter Xx was a fun one.  As you can imagine, there isn’t much one can do with the letter Xx, so I chose the typical Xx is for X-Ray. As I mentioned in my last post, I have to make a little “shout out” to my mom because she takes X-Rays for a living!  My mom is absolutely fantastic, just ask anyone who has ever had an X-Ray done by her! Haha!  And since it is almost Mother's Day, how fitting to make this one for my mom!

Materials:  Index card with capital X, black crayon, four white bones cut from cardstock, and a glue stick.

Front of card

Back of card

1)    Color the capital X Black.

2)    Trace the upper and lower case Xx on the back of the card.

3)    Glue the bones on the X to make it look like an X-Ray.

     As for our second craft, well, I thought about going with xylophone.  I even tried to figure out a way to create a xylophone, but guess what?  It was too difficult.  So I found another X-Ray craft at Spell Outloud that I thought would be fun as well as a little challenging.  My kids really did enjoy drawing themselves and then using chalk to draw their bones.  Here are a couple of pictures that I borrowed online.  I can't seem to find mine around here anywhere!

This is the blank person.  I had the kids draw the person to look
exactly like them, or as close as the could get.

This is the X-Ray person.  I gave a black piece of paper to the kids
with a piece of chalk.  I then asked them to draw what they thought their
bones looked like.  We attached the two pieces with a metal brad.

     Instead of the normal two books, this week, I just went with one.  It’s kind of hard to find books about X-Rays, so You Can’t See Your Bones with Binoculars by Harriet Ziefert was a perfect pull for a one book Story Time.  Warning, though, this book is REALLY long and filled with lots of details, thus I stuck to just singing the “Bone Song” which is at the top of each page!  The kids loved being able to point to the different parts of their body and didn’t even notice we didn’t read the whole story.

     I decided to take it easy and not introduce any new music this week.  I have planned for next week, though, and promise to add a video to the blog.  It does seem to be a little lacking without a music video, doesn’t it?  Let’s see if I can find a fun X-Ray song on YouTube.  How about a Phineas and Ferb song!  I love this show!

     Well, that seems to it for this week.  It feels good to be blogging again and I promise to try my hardest to get the next few letters up!  Keep checking in as I work really hard to catch up!  Thanks.. next up is Yy!

W is for.. Watermelon and Watches!

     The past couple weeks in Indiana have felt like summer!  Yes, we wake up and it’s a bit chilly, but by lunch time, it’s been between 70 and 80 degrees outside and I LOVE it!  Although I am a Hoosier through and through, I can’t stand Indiana weather so it was nice to get a mild winter and unseasonably warm temperatures early in spring.  With all of this summer-like weather, it was easy to use watermelon for our letter craft this week.  When it gets warm outside, nice, cool, refreshing watermelon is what I crave!

Materials:  Index card with capital W, green crayon, pink W cut from paper, watermelon seeds, and a glue stick.

Front of card

Back of card

1)    Color the capital W green.

2)    Trace the upper and lower case Ww on the back of the card.

3)    Glue the pink W on the inside of the green W.

4)    Glue seeds to pink W to make it look like a watermelon.

     As for our second craft, well, my library recently came across our old die cut machine in the basement.  Apparently everyone knew it was down there but me!  I found the cutest watch die-cut and decided it would be quick and easy to create.  When you are making 24 of anything, you definitely want to keep in mind the process of creating as well as the intended outcome.  This craft was the best of both world and I thought the kids would really like it! 

All from a die cut machine!

     This is the part where I always delve into my book choices and how easy or difficult they were to find.  This week, I didn’t choose the first book, Miss Suzanne did!  I was a little under the weather (rotten sinus infection) and called in sick!  Like a champ, Miss Suzanne stepped in for me and did my Monday programs.  The book she chose was Watermelon Day by Kathy Appelt.  After discussing this choice with Miss Suzanne, and reading it myself on Tuesday and Wednesday, we each decided it was a little too long and needed to be shortened for the attention spans of our listeners.  This was actually REALLY easy to do with this book without losing any of the important content.  Miss Suzanne did also say that it was difficult to find a good watermelon book! HINT HINT… authors and publishers... get on this!

     I thought a book on watches would be easy to find.  Instead of watches, most of the books at my library were about clocks!  So I went with it when I found a great book by John Archambault entitled, Boom Chick Rock.  This book is great.  The beat is great.  The mentioning of dances, including the Electric Slide, the Tango, and the Bunny Hop, is great! And the pictures are great!  Can you tell I really liked this book?  My kids also like being able to participate in the reading of the book when the line “Everybody rock! Around the room! Boom chicka rock, chicka rock, chicka boom!” came about.  The more times we read this line, the louder it got!

     I also want to take just a moment to brag about my good friend Carolyn Mueller, and this seems like the perfect place to do it!  My roommate Carolyn is going to be a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!  That's right.. a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!  When she told me about a month ago, I felt like a proud mom.  I was there with her senior year of college when she would hole herself up in her room for hours on end working on her senior writing thesis.  She worked so hard and I am so happy that it is soon to pay off.  So why am I just now blogging about her book?  Well, not only does it come out next month and you can pre-order it here, but my library just purchased it!  I have no idea what a dwarf zebu is, but I am super excited to get it and perhaps have it signed?  Don't worry, I definitely plan on reading it in my Story Time class sometime soon so we can all find out exactly what this mysterious animal may be!

     I didn’t introduce any new and fun music this week.  Like I mentioned, due to my missing of Monday, I didn’t have time to throw anything new together and I like to keep all of my classes on the same schedule.  I did, however, add an old favorite to my Story Time classes.  It’s another alphabet song, but this time you use a bean bag to act out the different letters.  The song, “Bean Bag Alphabet Rag,” by Hap Palmer, is an old favorite and I can’t believe I have put it on my YouTube channel before now!  I hope you enjoy it as much as my kids do!

     That seems to be all for this week.  I can’t believe we are almost to the end of our Alphabet Adventure.  It seems like yesterday that I started this blog.  Although I have a great craft for next week and the letter Xx, I am struggling a bit with Yy.  There is the norm of yo-yo, but if you have any other ideas, let me know!  I am a bit desperate at this point! Thanks and tune in next week when I give a little shout out to my mom!

U is for.. Umbrellas and Unicycles!

     The letter U is difficult.  Outside of the normal, umbrella, I was having a rough time coming up with something.  So I thought for a bit, and came up with unicycle.  Why not introduce the kids to something new and interesting?  I did, however, keep the umbrella for our letter card.

Materials:  Index card with capital U, umbrella cut from cardstock, raindrops cut from foam, crayons, and gluestick

Front of card

Back of card

1)    Color the capital U.

2)    Trace the upper and lower case Uu on the back of the card.

3)    Color the umbrella.

4)    Glue the umbrella to the U.

5)    Add the raindrops!

     The next craft is probably one of my favorites for the year.  As I mentioned, I decided to go with unicycle.  First let me state, I was very impressed that a number of my 4 to 6 year olds actually knew what this was.  I was also excited that I found a cute and somewhat simple unicycle craft online.  Find the craft with instructions and an instructional video here.

     I absolutely love the books I chose this week.  The first book, Ella, of Course! by Sarah Weeks,  is about a little girls who receives a beautiful umbrella for her birthday.  Ella, of course, loves her umbrella and wants to take it everywhere with her.  You can only begin to imagine the kinds of troubles created when Ella takes her umbrella to ballet class, her brother’s birthday party, and all sorts of other places.  You must, however, pick up the book yourself to see how Ella incorporates her umbrella into her dance recital.  I promise, it will not disappoint.

     My second book for the older kids was not about a unicycle.  I tried, I really did, however, there is only one book I could find with a unicycle in it and our copy was checked out.  So, I went a different route.  I chose My Sister’s Rusty Bike by Jim Aylesworth.   This book has a bicycle as the central focus, instead of a unicycle.  After reading it aloud, I then had the kids discuss what the differences between a bicycle and unicycle are.  It seemed to go over well. 

 

     I didn’t introduce any new music this week.  We are starting to wind down Story Time and before you know it, it’s going to be summer!  I can’t believe it.  Thus, I am waiting to introduce new songs until then.  Okay, truthfully, I am on kind of a strict budget, and although iTunes has cheap music, I didn’t find anything that I liked.  Oh well, maybe next week!

     Well, that’s a wrap for this week!  Come back next week for the letter V.  Trust me, you want to tune in!  There is going to be a VOLCANO!  See ya then!