Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and to everyone who came to be inspired and visited all the great posts shared. I once again am amazed by the great ideas shared. If you have not had a chance to visit them, please do so!! Also make sure you check back here on Sunday for a new giveaway!!
Today we are going to share the book Flamingos, Loons and Pelicans by Mel Boring. This book has a good amount of information about many different types of water birds. The reason I am sharing it today is because I was trying to think about a way to make a model of the flamingo beak and low and behold I open this book and discover they have an activity to do just that.
Some things I learned from this book about flamingos. They have yellow eyes. Airplanes are the flamingos biggest enemy. When one flies near a flamingo, the bird will go into a frenzy and may smash its own egg. Years ago there were no flamingos born in the United States, but then some came to live near Miami, Florida. The lake there is home to about 900 flamingos. Now more about how flamingos eat. Flamingos are upside-down filter-feeders. So to eat, it sticks its beak between its legs, upside down. The beak works like a cup. The top of the beak is hinged like our bottom jaw, so it can move and scoop. It scoops up the murky water and the flamingos pump their tongues to filter the water through slits in their billtops. Once the water is out the flamingo is left with algae and small fish for food.
Flamingo Beak Set Up
Now following the books suggestion on trying to "eat" like a flamingo, I put some small stones and water in a a large bowl. Then I found two spoons--one slotted and one not. They suggested a slotted spoon and a wooden spoon, but I could not get this to work with the bend on my slotted spoon.
Next I had Hazel stand over the bowl and try to scoop rocks and water into the spoons (while bending in half). She however had trouble not squatting to do it and had more success by squatting.
The rocks after the water is drained out represents the food the flamingo would have eaten. The other activity in this book is making bird tracks. A flamingo's is about nine inches long. Flamingos have webbed feet too. I hope you are enjoying our adventure in learning more about flamingos.
Today I am sharing two books with you. We have been enjoying each of them and one will teach why numbers are important and the other will help teach about twelve as well as dividing. I made up simple worksheets to go with both books.
Our first book is Missing Math: A Number Mystery by Loreen Leedy. This book is a wonderful story (one of Hazel's favorites) about a town where all the numbers disappear. Throughout the book there are vocabulary words like numberless, infinity, and more. The words are used in the story but then are defined in another spot on the same page. I put a place to define each word on my worksheet as well as think about where numbers are used in a child's own life. The book gives many examples like birthdays, time, dates, sizes and many more! You can click here to get your own copy of the worksheet.
Our second book is A Dozen Cousins: Exploring the Number 12 by Marcia S. Freeman. This book discusses the word dozen and its meaning. It has plenty of places to practice counting up to 12 as well. It also goes into dividing a dozen into equal groups. It also introduces the reason 12 is important to us--the number of full moons in a year and thus the number of months. For this book's worksheet I suggest giving the child 12 objects (we used marbles) to have them work some calculations out. You can get the worksheet here.
We went through the activities with marbles and I took pictures of Hazel dividing them into groups but did not take pictures of the subtracting. For the dividing I suggested counting out the number of groups we wanted and adding one to each group until she ran out.
I hope you enjoyed today's math lesson!! The next one will be for older kids and especially for the ones who do not like math.
This month I have been very lucky! I won two contests!! I won first place in the Multicultural Kid Blogs Pinterest Scavenger Hunt and I won one of Daria's contests on her Monthly Song Page. I thought I would share with you some of the amazing things that have been arriving in the mail the past two weeks.
Now first we won some electronic books. Now we are a pretty low-tech family (old fashion cell phones, etc.), so I do not have a Kindle or anything of that sort, so I got the pdf versions. From Be Bilingual, we got the pdf version of Be Bilingual Practical Ideas for Multilingual Families by Annika Bourgogne. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but since Hazel's new school focuses on Latin, I think I may try to refresh my high school Spanish and teach her some as well. Which leads us into our next electronic prize. From the Spanish Playground we got Los Pollitos Story and Coloring Book and we got Spanish Animal Cards (cards are available for purchase here). To go with the Los Pollitos we got this adorable wooden chicken toy.
When you hold the toy by the handle the chickens peck at the food. The toy next to it also came from Spanish Playground. It is a top game called Toma Todo. Hazel and I tried to play the other day. It is a great introduction to learning Spanish for us.
Next we got some books. From Hartlyn Kids we got The Bamboo Dance by Cress Sia and one mock passport. The book contains a sticker for the passport. The Bamboo Dance is about two boys in the Philippines. It introduces some Philippine food, dance and culture. It is a perfect book to add to our Multicultural Library.
We also received two wonderful books from Lee & Low Books. The first is Rainbow Stew by Cathryn Falwell. This book is about a group of kids who are visiting their grandfather on a rainy day. Normally they go out to play, but with the rain, they cannot. Their grandfather suggests making his famous rainbow stew. It requires going out to the garden and picking all the colors of the rainbow to put in the stew. It is a wonderful book about family togetherness, healthy eating and more. Hazel asked to make rainbow stew after we read it.
The second book from Lee & Low Books is How Far Do You Love Me? by Lulu Delacre. This wonderful book travels the world with how far a parent loves her child and the child loves the parent. It covers all the continents and gives a quick view of each as well as culture there. Another wonderful addition to our library.
The next thing we won is a stuffed China from Plushkies. I thought Hazel would be more into this, but she did not seem as interested as I expected. However maybe the next time we discuss China she will get more into it. She was also overwhelmed since there were three packages awaiting our return from Cape Cod this week.
Our final prize for the Multicultural Kid Blogs Pinterest Scavenger Hunt is a Caxixi Woven Rattle from Africa which was provided by World Music for Children by Daria. We also happened to win Daria's monthly contest and won two kazoos. Hazel LOVES the kazoo. She figured since we won two, one is for her and one is for me. She has not stopped playing hers since we opened them the other day.
Now Daria has several contests on her Monthly Song Page each month and this month she has a link party for African posts. Make sure you stop over to enter and share!
Thank you to everyone who provided prizes for the contests!! We are loving ours! And a huge thank you to Leanna over at All Done Monkey who organized the amazing scavenger hunt!! And if you are interested in checking out the posts that needed to be pinned for the hunt, you can check out my board. There were so many great multicultural ideas shared there.
Today we are starting our exploration of Egypt. Since there are so many wonderful resources out there, we will be sharing our adventures over several posts. The first recipe we tried was for a date cake. The recipe came from A World of Recipes Series book called Egypt by Sue Townsend and Caroline Young.
Dates are plentiful in Egypt, so they are used often in Egyptian cooking.
Date Cake 11 oz fresh dates 5 oz blanched almonds 4 oz soft brown sugar 1 orange 4 eggs, separated 1/4 cup granulated sugar 1/2 tsp ground cardamom 1 1/2 oz butter 3 tbsp cornstarch 1 tsp confectioners' sugar to dust Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9-in cake pan with butter or margarine and line it with wax paper. Cut dates in half and remove pits. Put almonds and brown sugar into a food processor and chop/blend them until coarsely chopped. (The recipe called for a blender, but I found my blender didn't do the job and I needed the food processor.) Add the dates and chop until finely chopped, but not ground. Put aside.
Using the fine side of a grater, grate the rind from the orange and set the rind aside. Then cut the orange in half and squeeze the juice from half of it. Whisk the egg whites until they make soft peaks and set aside. In a large bowl, beat the yolks, granulated sugar and cardamom. Stir in the date mixture, butter, orange rind and 1 tablespoon of orange juice, and cornstarch. Carefully fold in the egg whites. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 35-45 minutes until the cake springs back when pressed. Cool the cake in the pan for 15 minutes and then place it on a wire rack. Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.
Here are some of the resources we have been exploring. The first are a set of books that were definitely stories from modern times. Some are meant to take place in ancient times and/or explore ancient times. Hands Around the Library Protecting Egypt's Treasured Books by Karen Leggett Abouraya is a wonderful modern book about the student led protests they had a few years ago. It is really one of the only children's books I found about more recent events in Egypt. Mummy Math and Count Your Way through Egypt I shared as our math exploration on Sunday with activities to go along with them. The other two are modern twists on seeing the sights and understanding Ancient Egypt.
Here are our non-fiction reference books. These books give a good look at Egypt both present day and ancient and also offer quite a few great crafts to go along with them. One of my favorites is What Did the Ancient Egyptians Do for Me? by Patrick Catel. It really explains how some of the things we use in every day life came from Ancient Egypt.
So far we have played with pyramids. We made one out of Legos and made some out of paper nets we found at Activity Village. We are hoping to make the sand clay ones from The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians by Joann Jovinelly and Jason Netelkos, but have not had time yet. Hopefully we will have them to share next week.
I hope you will join us next Tuesday for our second adventure in exploring Egypt. We will share more food, ancient tales and music. Here is a great Egypt placemat to color for the younger children. Here is the four page passport for Egypt. Now you can check out these great Egyptian posts or add your own.
Next we got some books. From Hartlyn Kids we got The Bamboo Dance by Cress Sia and one mock passport. The book contains a sticker for the passport. The Bamboo Dance is about two boys in the Philippines. It introduces some Philippine food, dance and culture. It is a perfect book to add to our Multicultural Library. 
We also received two wonderful books from Lee & Low Books. The first is Rainbow Stew by Cathryn Falwell. This book is about a group of kids who are visiting their grandfather on a rainy day. Normally they go out to play, but with the rain, they cannot. Their grandfather suggests making his famous rainbow stew. It requires going out to the garden and picking all the colors of the rainbow to put in the stew. It is a wonderful book about family togetherness, healthy eating and more. Hazel asked to make rainbow stew after we read it.
The second book from Lee & Low Books is How Far Do You Love Me? by Lulu Delacre. This wonderful book travels the world with how far a parent loves her child and the child loves the parent. It covers all the continents and gives a quick view of each as well as culture there. Another wonderful addition to our library.
