Building a Reading Nest

The month of April we are studying Birds and Eggs. 

I have to admit, when I first heard the name of the unit, I thought it wouldn't be that much fun, but boy was I wrong.

It's only Day 1 and Sweet Pea is LOVING IT!  

Maybe it's the fact that her vocabulary is blowing up,
 or that she's been much better playing by herself,
 but whatever it is, she is absolutely loving this theme!

The first thing we did was build our nest.

I hung up a dead stem part from our hydrangeas from outside above the window. It'll be a great way to display all our bird learning... and even a nest we make later on today. 

Thanks Stacy for the great idea!

The nest idea was not mine, but Jennie's at Wonders Early Learning Center.

Once I saw her nest, I knew Sweet Pea and I would have to make one!

First dig out that kiddie pool from the shed and wash it out. (yuck)

Grab your kiddos and play pretend. 

Be birds and bring pillows to your new nest.  

Smile at the adorableness of your kid flapping his or her wings.

Put a sheet on it- flat or fitted.  We used a full size fitted, but a twin would definitely work.

After all those pillows were stuffed into that nest, Sweet Pea still asked for more.  

Girl takes after her momma about these pillows.

Now I am pretty crafty, but since Sweet Pea has been giving up her naps lately, I just haven't had the time to make her some wings.  I really want to though!  Seriously, check out Jennie's blog for the how to on making beautiful, easy felt wings for several types of birds! 

I had these angel wings stored (and never used) so Sweet Pea can now become a white dove.  

Once she put on those wings, she ran all through the house with her hands in the air "flapping."  I had to chase her to get a picture! She finally flew back to her nest.

The nest ready with her bird wings, and this spot is the perfect place for Sweet Pea to do one of her favorite things, READ.

She's obsessed with books.

As part of the Member Resources, each month Mother Goose Time sends a list of 20 books that go along with the theme and the daily learning activity. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.  It allows me to find books that normally we would never read!  In fact we have found some of Sweet Pea's most favorite books because of these lists each month.  (Fiddle-I-Fee is one I had to keep checking out).

I used my same method of planning that I did last month using our Planning Journal.  Once I knew what days we were definitely doing, I highlighted the above list of what books I wanted to try to find at my local library.  I went to their website and was able to use the card catalog to find what books they had available that I could add to our reading nest this month.  

Today is Library Wednesday where we  head to the local library for Story Time and crafts.  Because I did all the prep work at home, I could quickly and easily find the books we needed to complete our Reading Nest.

These books will stay in our home until the end of the month, where we will return them and get the next batch for the next unit we study.  

If you have not taken advantage of your local library, I encourage you to do so! 

I have been completely amazed and blessed by what all our local library has to offer.  

I'd love to hear about your library adventures in the comments below, or your favorite book to read with your kiddos!

Happy Nesting and Reading!

Tot School: S is for Snake

 

Hey friends!  Had a GOD sighting last week.  Let me tell you about it.  So every Wednesday we go to our local library for Preschool Story-time.  It just so happened that we were studying and reading books on snakes which was the same thing I had planned for us to study that afternoon with our Mother Goose Time!  I adjusted the order of our days using the Planning Journal with our Mother Goose Time and you can read about that here.  

Don't you just love it when you see Him working out little details like that?!   I love it!

Our craft at the library was a paper plate snake and you can see Sweet Pea's below. 

She's begun to focus more and more on drawing circles, and I must say she does a great job when she really concentrates. After she colored the front and the back of the plate, I cut out a spiral from the outside of the plate toward the center making the snake shape.  Glue down some googly eyes and you have a snake! He's dangling in our kitchen now.

Once we returned home, and after a nice nap and slipping on her Elsa dress,

 Sweet Pea and I started our Snake study from MGT.

If you read my Planning Journal post, you know that we aren't doing all our days, but I did choose the snake day because of the magnifying glasses pictured below.  Each month MGT sends these paper magnifying glasses for kids to search and find the same picture in the thematic monthly poster.  Sweet Pea is obsessed with matching things, and she loves looking at our monthly picture and pointing and finding things.  So naturally we had to do Snake day.  

I made an observation about my darling observant daughter today.  

If you look closely at the poster, you will see that there are several of the same type of animal living at the pond.  There are a few turtles, fish, and frogs.  When we started to play with the poster, I wanted her to do more than just match; therefore, I differentiated what we were doing.  

 "What animal is on a tree?" I asked.

You can see she had several options to choose from, and I thought it funny that she chose the smaller less noticeable turtle rather than the large crane.

When it came to matching the magnifying glass to the poster, Sweet Pea really studied the magnifying glass picture. For example, there is one of a frog on a lily pad with a forest green background.  Sweet Pea really had to study it to make sure she picked the right frog in the picture.  I knew she was observant, but the fact that she caught this without me probing at all, just spoke volumes to me about what she knows and her personality.

While Sweet Pea finished looking at the poster, I set up our Invitation to Create a Snake.  I really love that this was a different snake than the one we did at the library.  This invitation is great for fine motor skills by lacing beads and straws on to a pipe cleaner, but you could totally differentiate this for older kids. Maybe they notice the pattern on the snake's skin and create a pattern with the beads.  For Sweet Pea, who is 2.5 years old, she just worked on placing a bead or straw onto the pipe cleaner.

It wasn't long before she was more focused on pouring the beads from one tray to the other and rolling the beads around in her hands.  

I love how our activities can be easily modified to help her grow where she need to grow.  I love that I could do these activities in one shape or form at the age of 2 or the age of 5. 

Challenge your kids where they need to be challenged and simplify where it needs to be simplified.

You make it work for you and your kiddos!

Happy Differentiating!

Tot School: Snow Day in Texas

I live in the Pineywoods of East Texas. It doesn't snow here.  In fact, I believe the last time we had snow (which was absolutely beautiful) it was 2009... let me see if I can find a picture....

Here we go.  These are colored pictures that are completely unfiltered.  That snow was like God had placed a beautiful fluffy blanket completely untouched across our town.  It was breathtaking.

That was 7 years ago, and it has not happened again since.  In fact, yesterday the temperature was about 78 degrees, but dropped about 50 degrees overnight. Get with the program, Texas.

Anyway.... my girl has never seen nor touched snow, and who knows when she will.  This whole week we focused on The Woodland in out Winter in the Woods unit.  I skipped the lessons on Pine trees and Pine cones since we live in the Pineywoods, and we focused on the 3 topics we never see around here:

Icicles, Snowmen, and Snowflakes.

The first thing Sweet Pea and I did during Snow Week was make SNOW using this recipe card provided by Mother Goose Time! 

I made a half batch which was plenty for me and my girl and she had a blast packing it into her 1/2 Tbsp to make half snow balls.  

 

It held it's shape well and even was cold to the touch!  It was a mess, but nothing 30 seconds with the vacuum cleaner couldn't handle.  Look at that cheesy grin!  Totally worth the mess for the memories.

We then made a snowflake in our Invitation to Create.

Coffee filter, watered down blue finger paint, glue, glitter, and a pipette.  

I always attach her coffee filters to water color paper.  If you take the filter off before it dries completely, it leaves some of the most beutiful abstract images on the paper.  I didn't remove the coffee filter this time. 

If your child is able to handle scissors, I would first suggest cutting the snowflake and then proceed to paint.  We did not cut ours. 

She worked on her fine motor skills squeezing the pipette to get the paint on her snowflake.

After the paint, she added glue and glitter! 

She decided she wasn't done with the paint and added more... in fact towards the end, she just dumped all that was left over her work.

 

Beautiful! I love getting up close shots of Sweet Pea's artwork.

The last thing we did during our Snow Week was build a snowman!  Our Little Goose Guide had suggested an activity called "Dress the Snowman" which was a felt activity of changing out what the snowman would wear.

Instead, I set out a tray for Sweet Pea to dress her snowman permanently with glue.

Before Sweet Pea took her nap, I read the book Snowmen at Night...twice.  She really loved the book and hidden pictures.  There are paperback versions for less than $6.00.

While she napped, I put this Invitation to Create together and placed it on her table. In her tray, I placed sequins, jewels, googly eyes, pom poms, buttons, and ribbon cut so Sweet Pea could make scarves if she wanted.  I used my cricut to cut several 3 different sized circles.  I was hoping she would build lots of different snowmen, but she only built a few.  

See that snowman with the heart?  When I turned him around, he looked like this!

Isn't that amazing!  I don't know if she planned this or what, but the way he came together is absolutely perfect! 2 green eyes, a straight nose, a red circle mouth and a heart right where his heart would be in his chest!  I was floored when I turned her work around and saw this!

To top it all off, our public library talked about Snowmen on Wednesday at our story time and had a craft set up for us to make paper plate snowmen which Sweet Pea is pointing to below. 

Even though the temperatures here would never allow for snow this past week, we absolutely loved all our snow activities provided by Mother Goose Time!

Library Adventures on Wednesday

Every Wednesday at 10 am, our local library hosts "Story Time" for kids.  This is an amazing opprotunity to meet other stay at home moms and dads, make new friends, and enjoy an outing learning to love reading! Does it get much better?

Sweet Pea's favorite activity is reading.  Ive caught her several times crawling into her chair in her playroom "reading" a book. Just recently, she has been coming to me with a book, opening it, and "reading" to me. LOVE these moments.

This is our 3rd week in a row to go to our library for Story Time, and let me tell you, if you have not checked out what to see what your public library is doing, you are missing out!  I hope your library is doing as much for the kids in the community as ours is!  From story time, to Saturday matinees, and game nights in between, I am so grateful for my library.  And it's FREE!

What does Library Wednesday look like?

We pack snacks and water, head to the library, and sit in a big room with lots of other kids, parents, and 2 story tellers (librarians).  We spend about 30 minutes reading 3 different books under a main theme (this week's is bugs), singing songs (this week we sang the itsy bitsy spider, and the ants go marching), and watching some puppets get in on the action.

Then it's craft time and games along with searching for new books.  The ladies always prepare some kind of craft for the kids to complete with their parents.  Last week we made cow puppets out of lunch sacks, but this week we made these super cute fingerprint insects (ours were birds) and the Hungry Caterpillar from the story we heard during Story time!  

We used stamps provided to stamp flowers, and Sweet Pea used her fingerprint to make the solid purple flower in the center. 

 We started with this side of the paper, and Sweet Pea stamped her finger using the gold stamp pad provided to make birds.  I drew the lines to make the body and beak.  So cute.  It was based out of the book Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing Book.  So many things to create from your child's finger print!  The library provided a variety of stamp pads, paper, markers, and 3 copies of the book for us to flip through!

                         

Then we made the caterpillar from the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle which we just heard during Story Time.  The library provided all the craft items to make this cute little guy... wide popsicle sticks, puffs, glue, and googly eyes.  Such a great item to use when reading the story at home too! 

After craft time, kids can even play!  The library has an assortment of puzzles, blocks, and thinking games for the kids to enjoy!  LOVE!   Our day at the library ended with us picking out 2 new board books to read for the next month.  I absolutely adore our library and feel so blessed to be a part of this community! 

Check out your local library today! See what it has to offer.  Does it have any fun things for kids too?  I'd love to hear your library adventures too!

This post has been linked up to The Practical Mom's blog