The Elephant Song

This morning's Pinterest find! Little man couldn't stop giggling.
 

Source: youtube.com via Danielle on Pinterest

Just a fun, silly song that's great for little one's!

Idea for Preschoolers and up..

Have your child illustrate an animal in a funny situation or acting like a different animal. Older children can write about their illustration as well. 

What did you find valuable on Pinterest today? Jen

Bendaroos Activities

Bendaroos... my girls have packs and packs of these.  Didn't realize that it would be one of little man's new creative toys.  He discovered that he can twist them and form them and then stick them on the chalk board. 

And if they start to fall off.. "Mommy, I need tape, pwease."  Such a calming activity for him and he will play with these Bendaroos for such a long period of time. 

Why Bendaroos for your toddler/preschooler?
 -sensory/fine motor play
 -teach colors
 -creative thinking
 -counting
 -to form letters or numbers

You also find more learning activities organized by age level on Bendaroos main site.

Do your children play/creative with Bendaroos?  If so, share ideas... please!!

Jen

Puzzle Activity

Just a quick post!  I found this cute puzzle template at Crayola.com today and thought that I would share. My kids love open ended activities, so they could create a puzzle based on a theme or just create whatever comes to mind. Great for a rainy day! 

Crayola- Coloring Pages

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! 

Jen



Learning With Puppets

Puppets!  If you've been reading my blog for some time now, you would know that we love them.  My children love to paint theaters and act out shows for the neighbors.  Our library has such a great collection as well. Often, I'll catch my girls making their own puppets and writing shows. 



We have quite the collection, so they have been great for not only inspiring creativity, but for teaching new concepts or preparing the kids for new experiences. Mom (that's me!) even had the opportunity to teach Bible stories using puppets to young children this summer- so fun!

Below you will find a variety of ways that we've used puppets...

Puppets and Conflict Resolution
5 Ways to Prepare Your Child for the Dentist
Making Puppets- Ideas!
Alien Invasion
Interview with an Animal

Peanut's dragon puppet- fun activity we did while teaching

about the Chinese New Year! Goodness, she's just a little squirt in this picture.

When I was a child, I was fascinated with Marionette puppets- remember the ones with the strings that you would control from the top?  Wouldn't this be a fun craft to do with our older children?

Family Fun: Make a Marionette

The video below shows how we've used puppets to enrich little man when he was just a tiny little guy! Love watching videos of the kids when they were just babies... tear!

Finger Play/Puppet Ideas for Baby

What are some creative ways that

you've used puppets?

Jen

The above photo of the Marionette puppet is from Family Fun.

Ice Cream Activities

Recently, I posted my ideas for an ice cream week with the kiddos!  Well, we had fun testing ice cream, making a craft, reading an ice cream mystery and more.  Take a peek.....

Ice Cream Craft

Materials: ice cream template, tissue paper, markers, stickers, scrapbook paper, scissors

Ice cream Word Search

Materials: Word Search, pencil, and ice cream for eating!

Literature:

The Ice Cream Mystery by

Gertrude Chandler Warner

Should I Share My Ice Cream?

by Mo Willems

Ice Cream Taste Test

Images courtesy of DailyClipArt.net

Choose a variety of ice cream flavors for your kiddos to try!  Blind fold them or have them close their eyes.  Which flavor is their favorite? Can they guess the flavor? 

We tested the following flavors: Spumoni, Rasberry Chocolate Chip, and Pecan Turtle Trail

For more ideas for an ice cream taste test, visit No Time For Flashcards: 5 Senses- Ice Cream Taste Test

We're not done celebrating the joy of ice cream just yet. 

Stay tuned for more ice cream fun!

Jen

Create a Multiple Intelligences Center

My storage room is filled with teaching supplies from my good old teaching days.  This comes in handy when working with my own children.  One of the gems that I pulled out recently was a Multiple Intelligences center that I used with my former students. 

Each pocket is labeled with the different intelligences and gives a short description of what each intelligence means. Inside each pocket are activities that focus on that particular intelligence. The theme for this center is friendship.

My original center included mathematical and linguistic intelligences as well.  I just decided to focus on these for now.



Here are a some of examples of the activities...

Spatial Intelligence: Create a map that shows how to get to your friends home.

Interpersonal Intelligence: List 8 qualities of great friend.  Create a flower and label each petal with a quality.

Intrapersonal Intelligence: Have you ever hurt a friends feelings?  Describe how you felt.  Create a story or cartoon to share.

Bodily/Kinesthetic: You haven't seen a friend for a long time.  Act out what you will say. Create a cheer to great your friend.

Naturalistic Intelligence: How are things in nature like friendship? Come up with one or more ways. 1. friend/butterfly  2. friendship/bumpy road 3. friendship/ flower

(I'm not 100% sure where I got this activity- possibly Challenge Magazine.)

If you'd like to create your own MI center and need ideas for activities, I found a great chart. Teacher Vision also has a helpful chart with activities that tap into each intelligence.  I think the first step would be coming up with a theme and then planning from there.  Also, please feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions.  I worked as a Gifted Support/Enrichment teacher and enjoy coming up with ideas!

Have an awesome day!
Jen

Googly Eyes

After sharing the fun music video with your child, foster creativity by having them design their own googly eyes pictures or products! My little man loves the above video- it makes him giggle. He made momma play it 3 times in a row. 

Sunshine (age 10)

Peanut (age 8)

                                          

You've got googly eyes.... you've got googly eyes..... so catchy, isn't it?

Jen

The Letter Ss Activities: Part 1

Little man and I had fun searching for the letter S in newspaper ads. I cut out the large S and then he glued all of his finds on.

Finger painting the Swirly letter S was fun! Find out in our next post what we made with his painting.  Hint: It's an animal that begins with the letter S.

S is also for St. Patrick's Day, so I hope you have a good one! 

Unfortunately it is also for the word sick :(- we've been oh so sick this week.  It has passed one by one though the five of us- not fun. Momma held on strong until the end. 

Here's to looking forward to a better, healthier week! 

Take Care!

Jen

Create a 3D Shape Creature

Using recycled materials, Peanut created a shape creature.  She had to use both plain shapes and 3D shapes in her design. 

She used the following shapes:

circle

sphere

cylinder

cube

rectangle

Can you find the different shapes? She used a cool glue gun to attach her shapes.  Not the best pic (she took it with a webcam)- but it still gives you the idea. 

Shape books we enjoy....

For more shape fun for little ones, visit my Rr is for robot post.

What a creative and fun way to learn about shapes!

Jen

5 Fun Pattern Activities

Patterns can be found everywhere in our world including music, math, and art!  There are so many fun ways to share patterns with kids.  We discovered this wonderful book- Pattern Fish by Trudy Harris.  It was enjoyed by both my toddler and 2nd grader.  Fun and interactive! Bubble-bubble-pop...

1. Create colorful pattern fish using stickers, markers, or crayons.  Great creative thinking activity.

fish printable

2.  Using colored fish manipulatives or goldfish crackers, have your child create patterns.  AB pattern- yellow, red, yellow, red... or ABBA green, yellow, yellow, green. Our crafts N things used dappers to create fish patterns- awesome idea!

3. At education.com, I found the article Preschool Math: Exploring Patterns.  Many wonderful ideas!  One of my favorite is Movement Patterns- jump, skip, jump, skip..... What  a fun way to get moving and teach patterns at the same time!

4. Make a colored pasta or cereal(fruit loops) pattern necklace.

5.  This pattern snake activity caught my eye on Pinterest! (mess for less)

Happy Patterning with your little one!

Jen

Creative Book Projects

Lately, I've been posting a plethora of Pre-K activities, so I thought it was time to throw in a couple of ideas for our older kiddos.  Of course, ideas can always be adapted for different levels with a little creativity!  Today I'm going to share Peanut's 2nd grade book project and Sunshine's 4th grade project.  I thought they did a great job!



Created by Peanut- age 7

 Storybook Diorama: After reading Heroes of the Vegetable Patch, my daughter created this diorama.  It includes one of the scenes from the story and the characters present.  Below is an image of the book and stuffed aimals that can be purchased with the book.  Both can be found at IKEA.  Adorable!  We have the broccoli character.

Sunshine read Night of the Twisters and then created a movie poster- see below.....



Created by Sunshine- age 9

Movie Marque Poster:  Here is another creative way to share a book report. Using information from the book- create a movie poster to persuade others!

Looking for even more creative book report ideas....
Ten Great Creative Book Reports from Minds in Bloom
Fresh Ideas for Creative Book Reports from Education World

What fun project ideas have you been doing with your kids?  Share, share, share!  Don't be shy-Iove hearing from my readers!

Jen

Wordless Wednesday: Bucket Head

Who says a play-doh bucket is just for holding play-doh?

*notice the leopard skirt on the bottom-

major bribary for when he is older!

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Be sure to visit 5minutesformom.com.

Jen

Wordless Wednesday: Dinosaur Fun!

and to read ....

Happy, Happy Wordless Wednesday!
Be sure to visit 5 Minutes for Mom, too.

Jen

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Charades

Just a quick round of Christmas Charades!  Take a guess...... (answers at bottom of post).  

Okay, Let's see how you did! 

Photo #1-a Christmas tree with and angel on top

Photo #2-Rudolph (only in my house. lol)

Photo #3- another reindeer (in camo)

Just a peek into my silly and creative household!  For more ideas for Christmas Charades, be sure to check out this post.

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

For more W.W., be sure to visit...

5 Minutes for Mom

Merry Christmas,

Jen

Spooooky Story Starters!

Spend some time with the family being creative by sharing in the fun of writing.  Here are just a few fun story starters that we used this evening during a group writing activity....


I couldn't believe my eyes....


It was a spooky night...


Oh no, my new neighbor is a .....

I wrote down the starters on paper and folded them.
Next, we each picked one. (Participants- Sunshine(9), Peanut(7), and Mom)

This was the story that we would start.
 
-Write for 5 minutes and then pass the page to the person on your right. 
-Read what the person wrote, then write for 3 minutes.
-Continue passing and writing until the paper gets back to the original writer.  They will finish the story. 
-Lastly, read each story out loud to see how the stories turned out! 

Even my daughter who complains about writing, loved this activity! And my little writer was in her glory. 

More scary starters from Scholastic

Have a spooktacular evening....
Jen

Beware of the Little Monster!

A sneak peak of little man's costume!

He was such a good model for me today!  What a cute little monster.

Are you making a fun costume for your little one?  If so, what creative ideas do you have up your sleeve? 

Jen

Cave Paintings

For a recent art lesson, Sunshine learned about primitive art.  I don't think she realized that art started so long ago! One of the caves that she toured online was the Lascaux from France. The above photo is from this cave.  If you are interested in learning more, tour the cave below!

Tour a cave in France!

Next, Sunshine collected items in nature to create her own art.  Using flowers, dirt, leaves, and rocks, she experimented with these earthly items to make art.  The dandelions and the dirt worked the best out of all of the items she collected.  She mixed the dirt with water to make paint. 

I think a variety of berries would have worked out well for prettier colors- blues and pinks. This concept can also be combined with using natural elements to die eggs.  We did this at Easter one year, but I think for an experiment, it could be done anytime of year!

Enjoy,

Jen