Animal Themed Books for Young Ones

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Kids love books about animals or with animals in them. Today I am sharing three books that are animal themed. They include one board book and two picture books (both released today). We will start with the board book. It is Peekaboo Zoo by Rod Campbell. It is recommended for ages baby to 2.

Picture Books about Night and Sleep

Disclosure: I was sent these books free of charge in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Tonight I am going to share some new picture books about sleep and nighttime. Are your kids afraid of nighttime darkness? Or perhaps they just do not like going to sleep? These books are perfect for you then! Our first book is Time Now to Dream by Timothy Knapman and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. 

Animal Fun -- Summer Fun!

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Hazel counted the days and realized she has eleven days of summer vacation left. We are trying to enjoy all of them!! So today we are going to share some animal fun with great activity books and kits!! Let's start with Disney Zootopia Collector's Tin.

Origami Zoo Kit -- Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

So Hazel's birthday was last week. We had a fun ducky themed party for family and a few friends. And we will be having a Wild Kratts themed party for her school friends. You will be seeing some posts about that party this week and next! However Ann at Tuttle Publishing sent Hazel a gift this year. It was one of the first gifts she got this year!

Picture Books Review

With the start of December and Advent, I thought I would share each post where our Mouse and the Miracle Mouse (Holy) has been up to. (He now has an elf friend named Elfie who often is hidden with him.)

Holy on Window with Angels and Elfie Hanging on Tree

Disclosure: Candlewick Press gave me a copy of this book free of charge to review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am going to share with you five wonderful picture books that help grow imaginations and wonder. These books will help the reader learn about the world and use their imaginations. We had so much fun exploring this five books and highly recommend them. I also shared some round-ups of crafts to go with three of the books. First I am going to start with a wordless book.

Zoo Scavenger Hunt with Free Printable

Since we missed the Earth Day Celebration Scavenger Hunt (it was too cold and windy to wait around for it), I promised Hazel we could go on one of our own. I even suggested we go to the zoo and have one. Well our plans for the zoo trip fell through and I forgot about it. For Mother's Day, we decided to go to our local zoo. Our membership ends at the end of May, so we thought we would use it one more time. Hazel of course remembered the scavenger hunt. I had to hunt around to find it, and did not find the copy I printed for us. I found it on my computer, but had changed the animals to more common zoo animals to share with you, so I made some quick adjustments and printed it for her.

For a copy of a zoo scavenger hunt with more general animals click here. The idea was to put a sticker on whichever item she saw. We spent the trip looking for the things on the list. However, the zoo is under construction and some of the animals were not there including our favorites: black bears and flamingos. We'll have to go back again later this summer.

We did get to see the snow leopards. They were sleeping, but it was one of the first times Steve got to see them at all. I had actually seen them from the car as we drove by their area to get to the parking lot.  We also saw one of the wolves.

We saw the usual reindeer, but then saw his mate and their baby. How exciting to see a mother and baby on Mother's Day.

I didn't take pictures of all the animals we saw since we have a lot of pictures of them already. Then near the black bear area there was a zoo worker with one of the macaws, so we got to visit with the macaw.

Usually the macaw is in the area that was closed, so it was nice to see him. By this point we were all tired and headed home. It was a pleasant Mother's Day overall and Hazel loved doing the scavenger hunt!

For other zoo trip posts check out:

• Franklin Park Zoo
• Learning about Australia with Zoo Animals
• Zoo Trip with a Friend
• Learning about the World with Animals (with book to go with visit)

Hazel's Christmas Gift is Finished

So for Christmas I finished Hazel's playmat. Awhile ago I made her a zoo play mat (for original post go here). I have been making her some animals for her zoo and bought a few. At her school holiday fair I bought her a wooden hedgehog and a fabric pig and turtle. Then I made a wool kangaroo, penguin and lions. I finally finished her male lion. What do you think?

I knew I wanted to make it reversible and decided to make a castle play mat on the other side. I bought her some castle blocks and then found some more that are at an incredible price at Michaels this week, so I bought her two sets.

I was going to make her a royal family, but ran out of time so I bought her one and a unicorn. I bought them at 50% off sale at least.

 I think she will love it. I can't wait to see her open it all. Are you making any of your Christmas gifts this year?

Now I just need to finish her birthday gift and all the decorations and plans for her birthday party.

Children's Museum, Friends & Zoo

We had a very busy week last week. On Monday we met my friend in the town we grew up in for lunch and then the three of us went to the Children's Museum there. Now the friend we met and I have known each other since we were around six months old. Yes, we are lifetime friends. We both now live in different states and our hometown is about halfway between us. Her youngest is my goddaughter who is looking at colleges for next year. Well, we took Hazel by the houses we grew up in and went to the New Children's Museum. Of course anyone from around the area of West Hartford, knows the museum by the giant whale in front of it. See above. After we went through the museum we went into the whale. Remember the picture I asked where Hazel was? She was inside the whale.

Multicultural Monday--The Land Down Under

G'Day, Mate! My dear friend, Kelly, over at Happy Whimsical Hearts sent Hazel an Australian package. Well actually it was technically Kelly's son and Hazel's pen pal, but when you are talking 3 and 4-year-olds let's face it, it is the mother. We received this package awhile ago. I found most of the parts to it again, but Hazel has really been enjoying it. Today we explored the land down under or Australia. (Yes, The Men at Work song, Down Under, keeps playing through my head.--I'm a child of the 80's--what can I say.)

The package included a post card of the Australian flag, a travel brochure, some vegemite packages, some play money, a little koala toy and a platypus finger puppet. When we got this package, Hazel loved the platypus. I keep finding it everywhere, but of course, today I couldn't find it. When we got the package, we took some books out on platypuses, but of course, I didn't take any pictures of them. Hazel keeps telling me she wants to see a real platypus, so I guess we will have to take a trip to Australia!!

Thanks, Kelly & Dino Boy!!

This morning we made some toast and tried the vegemite. I have to say that none of us really liked it. We were glad we had also made a piece of toast with some of our peach jam on it to get rid of the taste. But now we know what vegemite tastes like. I know I have always wondered ever since The Men at Work song.

Next we took out the books we had from the library and read them. One of them suggested making boomerangs from cardboard, so we did. Hazel decorated them. She and Daddy are going to try them out later after they dry. I also pulled out the travel book I picked up the last time I was at the AAA office. Nothing like dreaming of a great vacation.

The other day Hazel and I went with some friends to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. I will share more about this trip on Wednesday, but they have an Outback Trail. We saw emus (sorry the picture is not so great of them, but you can see it above the u), kangaroos, sleeping tree kangaroos, cockatoos and black swans. We also saw a kookaburra, but the picture was really horrible. Then I also included some sharks and the turtle from our aquarium trip last month.

For some more Australian crafts and activities check out:

Happy Whimsical Hearts

Daria Music
Making Multicultural Music
Irresistible Ideas 
Red Ted Art 
and another one here..
Glittering Muffins has several if you scroll down you will see the Australian ones

DLTK Kids

Friendship, Readathon, Book Clubs and More

   
Today I thought I would share a bit about friendship. It is the theme of the Readathon 2012 Week 2. Did you know that 1256 readers have signed up so they have donated over 1256 meals to hungry kids via FoodforEducation.org? (If you want to join just click on the Readathon 2012 button above and for each reader that joins a meal is donated!) For more information and some links to different friendship crafts and activities go to MeMeTales.

Multicultural Monday: Learning about the World through Animals

On Friday Hazel and I went to the first of three Toddler Treks that I signed us up for at our local zoo, Stone Zoo. We will be going to one each month this summer. Since the zoo expected 800+ students from various schools, the instructor decided to keep us in the Discovery Center since it would be too hard to stay together as a group. She had planned several activities for the kids including showing them cards and asking what animal it is and would you see this animal in your backyard or at the zoo. This got me to thinking that the zoo is a perfect place to look at some multiculturalism. It is where we go to see the animals we do not see every day or in our own neighborhoods. The Stone Zoo is one of two zoos in the Boston area known as Zoo New England. The other is bigger and is in Boston. The Stone Zoo is nice since it is a good size for a young one and we do not have to drive into the city and deal with parking. (You may remember I shared our last visit to the zoo in a Happy Family Times post.)

 A great book to go with this lesson is Around the World on Eighty Legs by Amy Gibson. The book has hand drawn animals from around the world--broken up by regions of the world with poems and sometimes information about them. It is a fun read, but not as informative as I had hoped. However it is a great starting point to see which animals live where and then you could easily research them more.

Stone Zoo itself is divided into sections having to do with where the animals are from (or at least the environment they live in). Since our class was to start (and ended up staying in) the Animal Discovery Center, we went to the right (which is the way we usually go anyway). The first animal you see is the American Bald Eagle. They also have a replica of a nest. As the visitors we were talking to said their family of three could lay in it comfortably if they had to. Then there are the black bears. This is one of the newest additions to the zoo and one of my favorites. Since both of these are native to the United States, I will not go into them. Then we looked at the llamas. By this time it was time to head to our class so we went to the Animal Discovery Center where they have a corner of the room as windows to watch the llamas. The llamas like to come and stare into the glass so it was quite fun. These of course are normally found in South America. Although according to Wikipedia, they originated from North America and migrated 3 million years ago.

Llama on left is staring at window!

Inside the Animal Discovery Center they have six Panamanian Yellow Frogs (I found four of them in the tank), corn snake (who was very active), gecko, tarantula, and box turtles. From this list you can see they are also from all over the world. The Panamanian Yellow Frogs are obviously from Panama. The other animals can be found in parts of the U.S.A. as well as other places. A box turtle was taken out of the tank for the kids to learn more and to touch. I did not take any pictures in here, but I did take a picture of Hazel's craft. They had the kids play a game where they were caterpillars and had to bring the instructor five of the foam leaves they had "hid" around the room. Once they had found five, they received a butterfly and then had to find a flower of the same color. Then they had the kids make a paper chain caterpillar and if they wanted they stapled the butterflies on to change them to butterflies.

Hazel's caterpillar

Turned into a Butterfly

After class we joined the crowds to check out some of the animals. We continued in to the Sierra Madre area of the zoo. This includes the llamas, coyotes, bats, coati, cougar, jaguar, and gila monster.

Sleeping Jaguar

We got to see the coyote, but did not get a picture of him. The jaguar and the cougar were sleeping.

Coati

We did see the coati briefly, but there were large crowds around their cages. We didn't bother trying to get into the bat area  or the gila monster because of the crowds. We did see the rosy boa (in a cage here as well as in the Animal Discovery Center). After all this, we went and saw one of Hazel's favorite animals--the flamingos! They were building their nests and sitting on their eggs. Hazel thought they were sitting on rocks, but I showed her that they were mud and not rocks. This of course took our journey to the Carribean!

We went indoors to the exhibits there. They have the African crested porcupines, the Inca tern, a hornbill, Emperor tamarins, blue macaws, meerkats, and two-toed sloths and a large tortoise. I did not get any really good pictures here because it is dark and the windows tend to show dirt in pictures. Sorry!

At this point we went to the gift shop. I found some great books for references and learning more.

This book was written by an 8-year-old about the zoo!

Dover Press Books that use stickers to help learn about animals and their environments!

A coloring book that gives details about each animal on the page

Some origami for us to try!

Next we saw the American river otter. Ok, I have to share this picture because it was so cute. The otter came out to say hi to a zookeeper. Maybe he thought it was feeding time or something. You can see him standing on his hind legs towards the back  here (look below here).

Then we saw the monkeys and the white cheeked gibbons. The white cheek gibbons take us to Asia. They have a family of them. The father lost part of his arm at his previous zoo. The mother was carrying her baby this time.

At this point, Hazel was getting tired and wanted to go to the playground which is in the barn yard. It was a bit crowded there with older kids and I had to help her get down the slide since the older boys wanted to climb up the slide and then were chasing each other around it. Then we went for the rides near the snack bar. She of course had to go on the train.

Then the pink hippo.

Then she went on the zebra truck. Then it was time to go. We were tired and hungry. We talked about getting lunch but the snack bar was full of all the school kids getting lunch. So we went to the car. There I called the vet's office and found out we could pick up Fluffy (second day of x-rays), so we headed there which is basically down the street from the zoo. We found out Fluffy was fine! Best news of the week but we needed to watch her as we started to feed her again. Overall it was a fun day with many things to learn about and how animals live in different parts of the world. I am sure we will share more zoo visits with you soon.

This is where I share...