A Little Fancy...

My daughter and I have been enjoying "Fancy Nancy" books. Fancy Nancy is a young girl who loves all things posh (which is a fancy word for fancy). People, clothes, food, writing, and colors can be made fancy or stupendous. The vocabulary in the stories is lavish, it opens up so many ideas for language. Nancy's fanciness is a form of self expression that is accepted and supported by her unadorned (plain) family.


On Tuesday, May 22 we will:

• Read Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor.
• Discuss how Nancy expressed herself by being fancy, how do you express yourself? What are things that you enjoy? What is something you wish others would understand or do?
• Have a "Fancy and Stupendous Tea Party."
• We will enjoy some chamomile or berry tea sweetened with honey, and other fancy treats.
• Talk about the fancy words from the story. What other fancy words can we come up with?
• Get as fancy as we can! I will bring our dress up box (which is overflowing) and we will have some fancy free play!

Please feel free to come dressed in your fanciest. Try to include as many colors as you can!

Ideas For Home:

• Spend a whole day or week being fancy! Start by reading some Fancy Nancy stories and then make a list of all the things you could do. Such as a tea party, meals, decorating, and clothing.
• Keep a word list going of the fancy words you use. Older children can be introduced to a dictionary and thesaurus.
• Make your own fancy pens like Nancy, for children to practice writing their names on own stories.
• Here is a family who enjoyed a week with Fancy Nancy.
• Have parfaits, fancy for yogurt or ice cream sundaes.

Where the Wild Things Are

Children's literature lost a great writer/illustrator recently. Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was best known for his story "Where the Wild Things Are." He was uniquely brilliant and I am so glad that he shared his imagination through children's books. 


Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 15 we will:

• Read "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak.
• Have a quick discussions about feelings. When Max was feeling sad and upset, he used his imagination.   We will make a list of things we can do when feeling sad or mad.
• Make a "wild thing" using symmetry art.
• "Sail" in boats through night and day.

Ideas for home:

• READ, READ,  AND READ SOME MORE!!! Here is a list of 10 reasons why reading is important.
• More info on the importance of reading here.
• Reading tips for parents.
• Developmental milestones for literacy.
• "The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. " -from ASLC

• List of Coldecott metal winners.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” 

― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."  ~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."  ~Attributed to Groucho Marx

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."  ~Paul Sweeney

"TV.  If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six.  Open your child's imagination.  Open a book."  ~Author Unknown

Happy Reading!!

Let's Celebrate

Let's celebrate Cinco de Mayo!
Read about the history of Cinco de Mayo here. I had thought that the holiday was to celebrate an Independence day for Mexico, but it's not! The date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.


On Tuesday, May 8, we will:

• enjoy some music and dance a "hat dance"
• Play "Jalapeno Hop"
• Enjoy some vegetarian burritos with Miss Kourtney's home-made tortillas and re-fried beans.
• Recipe here. I make these beans once a month in our house and the whole family loves them! I love that are simple to make and are made from scratch with a few "real" ingredients.

You can find Cinco de Mayo information, recipes, crafts, and ideas for home here.

Happy playing!

                                                

A World of Color

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.  ~Murasaki Shikibu

On Tuesday, May 1 we will:

• Read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle.
• Read Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton.
• Review the signs for colors (American Sign Language)
• Complete a color sorting/craft activity.
• Go outside to find colors in nature, and maybe bring some nature back to add to our craft!
• Sing a song of shapes.

Ideas for home:

• Always point out colors when interacting with children, especially younger children who are still learning their colors.
• Have fun mixing small containers of colored water. Let children experiment with mixing and making new colors.
• We love sorting bears at our house, we have these ones. I like this set because it has bears in 3 sizes/weights and 6 colors. There are numerous activities that for these bears to practice colors, counting, and sorting skills.
• I feel that it is important to point out beauty that we see in nature, music, art, architecture, and the kindness of people. A sunset, mountain or ocean view, a flower growing, a song, a painting, a photograph, sharing, giving and kindness are all things that can be beautiful and evoke feelings within us. Children are bombarded with images at such a young age that it can be confusing to understand what "beauty" is. They need to know that it is more than the images that they see in advertisements and other media. They need to know that beauty lies within them and they need to know that we see it too.
•    From thefreedictionary.com:          beauty [ˈbjuːtɪ n pl -ties
  1. the combination of all the qualities of a person or thing that delight the senses and please the mind

  2. a very attractive and well-formed girl or woman

  3. Informal an outstanding example of its kind the horse is a beauty

  4. Informal an advantageous feature one beauty of the job is the short hours
           5. Informal, old-fashioned a light-hearted and affectionate term of address hello, my old            beauty! 
• Pick a color for each day of the week. For that color each day dress in that color, plan a meal around that color, find it in the house or while out and about, find it in nature. Just have fun with it! 
• Play Candy Land! :)
• Sing:                
  Find the Color
  (Tune: The Muffin Man)
  Sing the following song and let children point to a (color) item:
  Oh, can you find the color (blue),
  The color blue, the color (blue)?
  Oh, can you find the color (blue),
  Somewhere in this room?
   "Colors" 
  ~Shel Silverstein,
  
  
  
  
  
  My skin is kind of sort of brownish
  Pinkish yellowish white.
  My eyes are greyish blueish green,
  But I'm told they look orange in the night.
  My hair is reddish blondish brown,
  But it's silver when it's wet.
  And all the colors I am inside
  Have not been invented yet.
  
  
  

Mother Earth

Earth Day is celebrated annually to increase awareness and appreciation of the earth's natural environment. Events are planned worldwide and it is celebrated in more than 175 countries. You can read more about Earth Day through Wikipedia.
                   
On Tuesday, April 24 we will:

• Make Earth Day Coffee Filter and Hand print Art
• Discuss how the Earth belongs to all of us and ask "What can we do to help care for it?"
• What do the words recycle, re purpose/reuse, preserve, pollution mean?
• Share our Milk Carton Watering Can to demonstrate how an item can be reused                      
• Use cardboard egg cartons to make Egg Cup Insects.

Ideas for Home:

• Try Recycling crayons! If it's hot outside you can use this method, or this one!
• Include the whole family in recycling at home.
• Plant some seeds or trees. Arbor day is April 27, 2012. Arbor Day Foundation
• More Earth Day ideas here.

Stop to Smell the Flowers

On Tuesday, April 17, we will:

• Read Ten Seeds by Ruth Brown and Big Yellow Sunflower by Frances Barry.
• Plant our own seeds in "Recycled newspaper pots." Idea from Cottage Hill.

My daughter and I recently attended a Green Team Kids event at Spider Web Gardens in Tuftonboro. We had tons of fun and went home with "nature bracelets" and "window sill seed starters." There are monthly events planned for Tuftonboro through October. Check out the facebook page for Green Team Kids events happening in other locations as well.


Why tell children about plant life cycles, when you can plant a garden and SHOW them!

Bunnies!!!

On Tuesday, April 3 we will:

• Read "Knuffle Bunny" by Mo Willems.
• Play "Knuffle Bunny Freeze Dance."
• Sing Hop Little Bunnies (from Everything Preschool)
   
  Verse 1:
  Have your children pretend to sleep while you sing.See those little bunnies sleeping, until its nearly noon,
  Let us gently waken them, with our merry tune,
  oh how still, are they ill, wake up soon,
  
  Verse 2:
  Have your children wake up and jump and clap while singingHop little bunnies, hop, hop, hop
  Hop little bunnies, hop, hop, hop
  Hop little bunnies, hop, hop, hop
  Hop little bunnies, and stop.
• Finger play/song: Little Bunny Foo Foo
• Make Yarn bunnies and paper bag goons.



Ideas for Home:



• We love all the Knuffle Bunny stories! Check out Mo Willems website for some fun activities!
• I found the site PreKinders, which has a lot of great ideas for preschool age children. I really liked the math games, but there is other great ideas too!
• Easter Crafts from Kaboose (a Disney website)

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." 

~Margaret Atwood