Cook-a-Doodle-Doo!

We have about 30 books out from the library right now, some for pure fun and some for the betterment of the nine 5 and 6 year old minds I'm teaching in co-op this month. This book, Cook-a-Doodle-Doo! by Janet Stevens and her sister Susan Stevens Crummel, happened to be fun and educational.
I heard Janet Stevens speak many years ago and have since been a fan of her books and illustration. We picked this up not knowing it contained a recipe for strawberry shortcake, but once we read and enjoyed the story of Big Brown Rooster (great-grandson of the bread-baking Little Red Hen) and his friends making a cake, we had to make one to match.
The story takes Rooster through a process of being hungry, finding a recipe, recruiting help, making and eating strawberry shortcake. It's a cute and educational story in itself, but the authors have added side notes on several pages explaining elements of baking like sifting (above) or using measuring cups (In the story, Rooster's friend Iguana attempts measuring a pile of flour with a ruler) which add even more educational value to the book.
The book ends with Little Red Hen's recipe for Magnificent Strawberry Shortcake. The cake is a simple one-bowl recipe made with 7 ingredients plus the cream and strawberries. My kids and I found it very do-able, attractive and good to eat.

Vintage Frank Asch

I am so glad my parents kept some of our old children's books. This gives my children something "new" to read when we visit and allows me a nice trip down memory lane. Once in a while, we bring one of the old books home with us.
Sand Cake by Frank Asch was mine as a child (my name is written inside in my mother's young handwriting) and has made our apartment its home for a while. I love this book because I remember it from my childhood, because it's fun to read (you can't say that about all kids' books), and because my daughter has been reading it every day for a while now. It seems to be out of print, but I would definitely make it a library read.
We've also been enjoying the other Frank Asch books pictured above: Popcorn and MacGoose's Grocery (both out of print). I remember MacGoose's Grocery and still enjoy it with the kids. Popcorn is new to us, but also a fun read. I think we'll check out some other Frank Asch books next time we visit the library.

Cuckoo by Lois Ehlert

Today at preschool, we made paper cut out cuckoos a la Lois Ehlert's Cuckoo. This book was suggested reading in our Early Americas section, as it's an old Mexican folktale-a "you can't tell a bird by its feathers" story.
I had never seen this book of hers before, but as soon as I picked it up, I felt compelled to recreate her colorful Cuckoo. I have a feeling many of Lois Ehlert's books have that effect on adults and children alike.
For Cuckoo, I traced the shape of the main body parts from her illustration in the book and then made templates to trace onto brightly colored cardstock. After hours of cutting (I prepared this craft for 14), I cut small slits in 4 spots to accommodate the gold brads.
In class, the kids glued on the eyes and their choice of wing designs and hinged the body together with the brads. The end result was quite beautiful-a dozen unique and colorful Cuckoos.

The Scrambled States of America

This is one of our favorite books. So fun and surprisingly educational. I've shared our experience with this book over at Blissful Kids today. Come and see!

Jacques Cousteau and Jell-O

Today we learned a little about Jacques Cousteau's underwater adventures and enjoyed this fun underwater-themed snack.

Book: Manfish by Jennifer Berne. Biographical picture book (lovely illustrations by Eric Puybaret) with an inspirational author's note motivating children to not only learn more about Cousteau and the marine world, but also to care for our planet and pursue their dreams.

Snack: Berry Blue Jell-O with Swedish Fish and craft foam sea anemone. To weigh down the foam, I cut a slit near the bottom and stuck one of the gummy fish through it.

Felt jungle

Hello! We have been so busy with my mom visiting that I've quite neglected my blog. I used to try to catch up on crafting while my mom was here, but that's gotten harder to do as we've had more children and found that so much more time is required to just happily survive. Here's the one project I've managed to complete this week. Felt jungle.
My mom brought the kids some toy animals (they've been loving these in everyone else's homes) and I designed a little felt habitat for them. It's very obviously not geographically accurate and certainly not made to scale, but neither are the animals. We call this one the jungle. I intend to make a desert home, as well, but we'll see how it goes.
I started with a big piece of that stiff craft felt. I shaped the perimeter and sewed some grass around it. I sewed on a pond and a snow-capped mountain. The other pieces I purposefully kept separate so the kids could rearrange the land how they'd like.
The palm trees are made from tp rolls and felt; the standing grass and little cave are stiffened with cereal box cut-outs. I stuffed the mountain, a rock, and a fish with polyester batting. Finally, we added actual rocks, and, of course, the animals.
When my daughter saw the completed jungle, she declared it "A beautiful new land!" Right out of a book we've very much enjoyed called Whale's Canoe, which colorfully depicts the forests, plains, mountains, and rivers of Australia. I was glad she liked it.

Update: See our felt desert here.

Chinese Moon Festival

Sunday marked the Chinese holiday of Mid-Autumn. This is traditionally celebrated in China, and Chinatowns around the world, through the Mid-Autumn Festival. (Also apparently referred to as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, depending on where you look or with whom you speak). I found it timely that we happened to be studying China this week with our homeschool co-op and took the opportunity to make mooncakes, fortune cookies, and learn a bit about the Festival along with the culture.
I'm not intending a lecture here, but thought I'd share a few basic internet resources (for someone like me who doesn't want to take 3 small kids to the library to participate in group research):
A basic explanation of the Mid-Autumn Festival with links to related articles.
General info on China. Includes population, capital city, history, geography, travel and shopping tips, culture, and how to say "that tickles," in case you end up getting a massage while visiting China.
Super simplified recipe for mooncakes. These look nothing like mooncakes, really, but can be made quickly with pantry ingredients (I don't keep lotus bean paste around here). Preschoolers probably won't be concerned about the cookie's authenticity.
Really tasty sounding mooncake recipe. (I have made other dishes by Nina Simonds with success.)
Great read-aloud Chinese folktale: Tikki Tikki Tembo.
Colorful rhyming book of shapes and Chinese culture: Round is a Mooncake.
Almond fortune cookie recipe (pictured above).

To make fortune cookies a fun and educational experience, insert a combination of messages like the silly and sweet ones pictured below and these informational (and possibly interactive) ones:
1.2 billion people live in China.
Ni hao! Hello!
Let's build a Great Wall. (Easy to do with pillows, beanbags, cardboard boxes, etc. on the floor).
Beijing is the capital city of China.

Make Way For Ducklings

My kids checked out Make Way For Ducklings recently and have been enjoying creating games with the duck characters Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their 8 babies-Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oauck, Pack, and Quack. I came up with a project related to the book that I hoped would be fun for them and would help me use up some recyclables we had stashed for craft purposes. This turned out to be more of a project for me, so it may be better suited to older kids. The ones who probably won't be reading this book. Oh well.
Here's what I did.
First, I drew and cut out a large duck from cereal boxes. I traced that one onto another box (flip it over first), cut, and glued them together so it was sturdier and could be double-sided.
That's Mr. or Mrs. Mallard.
Then, with a toilet paper roll, two milk caps, two play-doh caps, two brads, some glue and an X-acto knife, I made feet (sort of) for the duck.
I cut a tiny slit through the middle of all the caps and stuck a brad through to connect the play-doh lid with the milk lid. See below. This style of milk cap fits perfectly into a cardboard tube.
Then I smeared the edges of the milk cap with glue and stuck it into one end of the tube.
After completing one side of the tube, I stood the tube on the duck and traced the circle to cut a hole and slide the tube through (It helps to do this now so you can see where the cap will hit the ground versus where the duck body will. You want the duck body slightly raised.)
I finished the opposite end of the tube just like the first.
That had to dry a long time.



After the big duck, I cut out the 8 ducklings. You may be able to enlarge the patterns I made and print them out for your own project, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Be warned, though: these ducks do not include the strip needed for connecting them to each other. You'll have to add that on when you draw or trace your duck. See photos at bottom.
Okay, so I drew 8 ducklings with a strip about 3" x 5/8" long sticking out from their chests. I cut these out of cardboard food packaging, most of them with the colorful side facing out, but a couple with the plain cardboard side.
I drew and cut wings, eyes, and some feet to be glued on. I included a little drawing here of how I did my feet, but you could make a bunch of single feet probably as easily. I found a couple ducklings needed feet to help them stand more steadily, but you wouldn't have to have them. Or, on the other hand, you could make feet for all the ducks.


After cutting out pieces, I made tiny slits with my X-acto knife at the rear of each duck and about 1/2" from the edge of the connector strip.
Finally, my kids glued on the eyes, wings, a few embellishments, and wrote the ducks' names on their backs. It was very important that they line up in order. Then they pushed brads through the slits connecting the ducks to each other.
To get the ducks to stand effectively, you'll need to bend (maybe score first) the connecting strips where they meet the ducks' chests, taking turns which direction you bend so they fold up like a fan.



Now you could tie a string around the big duck's neck to pull them or play with them as is. You could skip the kooky wheel-feet thing on the big duck and make it like the others. You could do...whatever you want. That's the great thing about craft projects, you can so easily make them your own.
On a much easier note, if you have enjoyed this book and want to create a project around it, but don't want to do all this prep work, try making play-doh islands, nests, eggs, ducks, etc. My kids enjoyed that, as well. Or make and bake them with clay.
One thing we considered, but haven't gotten around to, is tracing our hands, cutting around them, and gluing them to wide popsicle sticks for the kids to hold up like Michael the policeman did to stop traffic. Just discussing his action in the story reinforced to my kids that when we're outside and I hold up my hand that way, I need them to stop and wait. You could even use these little stop sign hands for visual help in getting your kids to follow directions at home.
Okay, I'm going to stop talking now. Enjoy the book and your projects!

Frog's new jacket

We have been enjoying the Frog and Toad stories by Arnold Lobel. Currently, we're reading from Frog and Toad Are Friends. In one story, titled A Lost Button, Toad thinks he loses a jacket button while on an outdoor walk with Frog. Frog and Toad retrace their steps, looking for the button. Toad is frustrated that they find a number of other lost buttons (black button, two-hole button, small button, square button, thin button), but not his own white, four-hole, big, round, thick button. In the end, he finds it at home. In gratitude to Frog who helped him look for his lost button, Toad sews all the found buttons onto his jacket and gives it to Frog. Frog loves it.
We love the story, so we created our own Frog's jacket. Except we don't have a frog, so it's for a rabbit. Whatever. This would be a fun little storytime/craft combo that's easily adaptable for various ages of children.
For ours, I drew something like the picture below on a piece of oilcloth. (For the real one, I measured and drew straight lines). I cut it out, folded it across the top, and stitched the sides (with a little help from eager children). My kids picked out buttons that fit the descriptions in the book (at least, whatever I had that most closely resembled them). They glued them to the jacket and when they weren't looking I sewed them on for added strength. I didn't measure any of their dolls before cutting and sewing, so I had to keep making little adjustments. You can see slight modifications when you look at our finished jacket below. Be sure to take simple measurements of your doll before you draw and cut.

Variations on this project:
Draw a jacket and have your children color it and glue on buttons.
Cut out the oilcloth jacket and punch holes down the sides. Have your child sew it closed with yarn. Glue or sew on buttons. (See photos above)

Earth Day

The Lorax is such a great book for teaching your children about caring for the Earth, I can't believe I didn't think of it today (yes, I can, what am I talking about??) I was reminded of it when I found this new earth-friendly edition and this related website full of earth-friendly activities. (Adding this to my book wishlist).

I'm really not on-the-ball when it comes to finding activities/events for our family to attend and missed a slew of great Earth Day happenings, but we did participate in one meaningful activity today with our playgroup friends. One of my girlfriends brought Target reuseable shopping bags (by Green Bag) for each of the kids in our group. After a brief Earth Day themed story/discussion time, we sent them shopping in the pretend grocery store where they collected pretend food items (used, empty boxes) and real food items (their portioned snacks for the afternoon). They practiced emptying their bags on the counter, paying the 3-year old cashier's dictated amount ($5.05, repeatedly) and filling them again to take outdoors for our picnic.
Now to tackle that old item on my to-do list: make more reusable shopping bags for myself.

Get ready to romp!

Random, but sort of related, links and recommendations.

We checked this book out from the library recently and my kids have been LOVING it. It has great rhythm, rhyme, repetition and encourages movement (and conversations beginning "Why don't we see dinosaurs outside?"). Mine have memorized portions of it and insist on reading it multiple times throughout the day. Here's an excerpt:

Laurie Berkner's We Are the Dinosaurs cd is great, too, for dino-song and dance (and a bunch of non-dino song and dance). We've never seen the video, but I hear it's fun. I feel like her music is unique because it's sing-along/move-along kids' music without being cheesy or annoying. Most of her songs are original so it's not the same old repetitive action songs you're used to. We just recently took this one out of our car, after an extremely long run, and replaced it with her Victor Vito album. I've enjoyed both.

Jean at The Artful Parent has a great post on picture books about making music. Be sure to read the comments for further recommendations.

A friend of mine has recently checked out a load of art books for kids including some in these series: Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists, Artists in Their Time, and Smart About Art.
The Crafty Crow lists several books for teaching kids about art and for encouraging making art. I'm sure the library would be very helpful, as well. We have yet to tap into this category so I don't have any personal recommendations, but I'm looking forward to trying some of these next time I'm at the library thinking, "Now, what should we look for?"

I may have to get a copy of Mollie Katzen's Pretend Soup for helping my kids with reading recipes, following directions, and having fun in the kitchen. With illustrated instructions, it sounds so much more interesting for them than watching me read from my own cookbooks or scribbled recipes. Check The Artful Parent again for pictures from the book and a more detailed review.

Unconventional Carrot Cake

We celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday this weekend. She had specifically requested a "big cake," instead of the small cupcake variety, cookies, and a pinata. She really only wanted one friend at her party and reasoned out that they would get more whacks at the pinata and more cake if they were the only guests. Impressive reasoning from a 3-year old, I thought, but we went ahead and invited some other good friends.
I decided to go with a subtle storybook theme for her party. Mainly, because I wanted to make this cake. The rabbits in the very cute book Shall I Knit You A Hat eat a layered carrot cake with whole carrots poking out the top and sides and I think it's great. Also, I want to live in their house. I brought the book and propped it up next to the cake to be available for reading and to prove I'm not crazy.
I made M&M/pecan/raisin cookies and displayed Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons next to them.
We had a little face-painting station with The Penny Pot (story of kids using money to pay for face-painting at the fair) on hand.
I had a games corner (sewing animals, puzzles, Memory, Cariboo) with Charlie and Lola's I've Won No I've Won.
A book corner made several of our favorites available to read and produced Giraffes Can't Dance to be read aloud.
Finally, The Perfect Pinata made way for our own pinata thrashing.
I intended to have a craft project inspired by a book (much like our Alice the Fairy crowns), but didn't have a chance to make the necessary preparations. Turns out, it wasn't really necessary, after all.
The party was fun. Faces were painted (my kids did a number on mine), the games were played, the food was yummy (thanks to a couple good friends for providing some great fruit and veggie platters!), the pinata did eventually burst spilling out lots of chocolate to be quickly snatched up and several tiny boxes of raisins to be left sitting neglected on the floor for the parents to pick up. Kids.
By the way, the cake you see in the picture was dumped onto the floor by my son, landed upside down in it's carrier and managed to get away with only scrapes and scars where the icing clung to the lid. That's Krazy cream cheese gluing that cake together.

FYI: Most of these books are in our home library and are read frequently, a couple are public library finds that suited our occasion. You knitters out there may enjoy Shall I Knit You A Hat if you'd like to share your knitting love with your kids. Instructions for a simple knitting project are included with the book.

Twenty-nine cent treasures

You can't go wrong with vintage children's books. Really, you can use them for anything and they're often very affordable. My friend Mandi gave me the one pictured above, so I can't say if it was still 29 cents (see price at top right corner of cover), but I bet it was close. The book pictured below cost me $1.00. At those prices, I find them very hard to pass up.
So, how to use them? How about...birth announcements (I've done this 3 times-once with the little drummer boy above), party invitations, gift tags, decoupage projects, collage art, scrapbooking, framing (I framed two pages from the ABC book below), reading (!), decorating, and the list goes on. For many of these purposes you'd want to scan the images first and then play with the newly printed pages instead of destroying a great old book that you could use again.



And here's a site for downloading entire vintage children's books: The Rosetta Project.

Yes, your Majesty!

Here is my daughter's new crown. (As if a 3-year old needs any more encouragement for ordering people around!) Making crowns seems to be a pretty popular activity for kids these days. Pre-cut crowns are sold at craft stores with cute stickers to decorate them, but we specifically made these to accompany one of our books. In David Shannon's Alice the Fairy, Alice feels bad for eating her dad's cookies and decides to make him a new outfit. As you can see from the illustration above, she decides clothes are too hard to make and settles for a crown. My daughter wants a magic wand like Alice's, but since I decided that was more than I could manage right now, we settled for a crown. Not bad!
Great activity for combining story time and craft project.

Good Stuff for Kids

The Charlie and Lola series of books and videos are great! The mixed-media, childlike illustrations are fun to look at, the dialogue is actually spoken like a child, and you can't beat British accents. I love hearing my kids mimic it. We have only four of the many books and I think my kids can recite part or most of each of them. Currently, they are most intrigued by the colorful drawings and explanation of germs in I'm Really Ever So Not Well.
The DVDs each have a collection of several short episodes so they're great for brief periods in front of the tv. Or, should I say, the "telly."



We were given a Stokke Tripp Trapp chair for my daughter's birthday last year and are so pleased with it. You can adjust the height and depth of this chair (seat and footrest, individually) to fit your child and your dinner table. You can get it with a 5-point harness or without. With a cushion or without. With a guardrail or without. In red or not. You don't have to clean up a nasty tray or booster seat when they finish eating (just your nasty table), your child doesn't have to sit uncomfortably on their knees or some other contortionist position to reach the table, and, surprisingly, I don't often find myself telling my daughter to get back in it, as I do with grown-up or child-size chairs. If you find you hate your high chair or the switch from high chair to big chair, put one of these on your wish list.
Oh, and it holds up to 300 lbs, in case you have the world's biggest baby.




My Giant Sticker Activity Book. This is...well, a giant sticker activity book by Roger Priddy, who has tons of kids books I'm sure you've seen or own. It comes with topical pages, like shapes or animals, and corresponding pages of brightly colored or photographic stickers. Each section has a simple explanation or question pertaining to the stickers to be placed in it and color-coded shadows showing your child where exactly to place the sticker. My kids love it. They are young enough that I have to do it with them, but it is pretty fun and a good teaching opportunity. Older kids could entertain themselves with it.
A great thing about this sticker book, besides just being fun matching the stickers, is that when your kids are finished placing the stickers you can go back and reread it like a regular book and they can (somewhat carefully) remove and replace the stickers.
We enjoy this at home, but it would be a great plane-ride surprise activity.

Favorite holiday book

We love this book. This is an Advent book with one uniquely illustrated door to open each day of December up to Christmas. Each door opens to reveal part of the story of Christmas. This would be a great gift to give a family with young children. We've been reading it twice a day (naptime and bedtime) but the kids would read it all day if we let them. Instead, we hide it the rest of the day so they don't look ahead or tear the doors off (they have a tendency to do that).
It's called, simply, The Advent Book, and was written and illustrated by Jack and Kathy Stockman who live in the Chicago suburbs.