Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids--Kevin Henkes' My Garden

Oh, I am so excited!! Today has finally arrived!! This month for the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids the author is one of our favorites: Kevin Henkes. Today we will be discussing his book, My Garden.

For those of you who have not read about the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids I am participating with 20+ other blogs to run this blog hop. Each of us is showing some activity to go with a Kevin Henkes book (and not all the same ones), so please stop in and check out some of the exciting things others are up to. The blogs participating in hosting this blog hop are:

Toddler Approved, Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas, Rainy Day Mum, Reading Confetti, Inspiration Laboratories, Play Dr. Mom, Mommy and Me Book Club, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Two Big Two Little, Creative Connections for Kids, The Golden Gleam, Juggling with Kids, Taming the Goblin, Crafty Moms Share, Ready Set Read 2 Me, Famiglia and Seoul, The Good Long Road, The Educator's Spin On It, Imagination Soup, 3 Dinosaurs, Royal Baloo, BeingAConsciousParent,  No Twiddle Twaddle, Crayon Freckles, Pleasantest thing, Adventures in Reading with Kids, and Teach Preschool. 

Please make sure you visit them and check out their posts. Also, several of us have exciting giveaways to run later this week thanks to Harper Collins, so make sure you check out later in the week each one as well!

"If I planted seashells, I'd grow seashells."--from My Garden by Kevin Henkes

Now onto some of our things with My Garden. My Garden was the second Kevin Henkes book we discovered. The first is Little White Rabbit. If you have not read either of theses, I highly recommend them. They are favorites in our house. Both inspire imagination as well. My Garden is told from a young girl's voice telling you about her mother's garden and how she helps then she tells you what she wants her garden to be like. This provides so many openings for educational ideas. You could easily plan a garden with a seed catalog. For younger kids just ask what they would like in their garden. For older kids you could have them look up the space needed for such plants and actually have them draw out plans for the garden.

We did not go that route. For awhile I considered having a My Garden Birthday Party for Hazel, so I have spent many hours thinking about the different things the young girl says she will have in her garden and how to represent them. As you see above, the seashell flowers that we used in her nursery rhyme party would also work here. But our major one is the jelly bean bush. I thought about this for awhile and even mentioned it to the children's librarian at our local library. I had decided to make Rice Krispie Treat Jelly Bean Bushes and she told me about Corn Flake Wreathes which would look more realistic for the leaves. So this is what we did. We found a recipe at Kelloggs. We followed the recipe but made mounds for bushes and topped them with our favorite jelly beans from a local candy store. I have to say this treats are not helping me lose weight since they are so delicious!! And for the first time, Hazel has actually said she likes jelly beans. She loved making these. By the way, we decided to make small bushes instead of a big one for ease of sharing and eating!

A little note about melting the marshmallows and butter in the microwave. Do not cover or the marshmallows balloon up. (Please learn from my mistake!)

Another idea we had was to make glowing strawberry lanterns. However with my being sick last week, it did not happen. I was imagining making decoupage around water balloons with red tissue paper and then painting black dots on them (and of course popping the balloons) and sticking in a battery operated light or a string of lights and stringing them. My other idea was red tissue paper on baby food jars and cutting out green felt leaves and using battery operated tea lights. Sorry we didn't get to try this, but maybe we will share it later in the run of this blog hop since it goes on for three weeks!

Our final simple idea is the flowers that change colors. I got this idea from a Sharing Saturday from a few weeks ago. A Happy Song shared her Scrap Paper Dolls. I loved this idea and as I started thinking about the flowers that changed colors I thought this would be perfect. First I found a stencil of a flower I liked. I found a border of them at About.com. I printed it on cardstock and then cut out the petals, center and stems with an Exacto knife. Then I just gave Hazel scraps of scrapbook paper to put under them. So much fun!

Ok, now it is your turn. Feel free to link up your Kevin Henkes inspired activities below and feel free to grab a button so others can find our blog hop! This button takes you to our Facebook page! Oh, and for those of you who like to plan ahead--we are continuing this for the whole year and September's author is Lois Ehlert.

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Caterpillar & Geometry Cube

So today we headed to Lakeshore Learning for their free Saturday craft. I had a burst of energy so Hazel and I went. I stopped at Starbucks first for my chai. The craft today was a really cute caterpillar. I may use this idea for our butterfly party. It was just a rolled strip of green paper (which they had prepared), a brown piece of construction paper and another strip of green and glue, eyes and decorations. The antennae are just a pipe cleaner poked through the head. Isn't it cute?

While there we did some shopping. As always, we never buy things that are not on sale or clearance. On our way out, however, I found this great cube. As a former math teacher it really intrigued me, so I bought it. Getting it home I realized it would be easy to make one. So I made one as well. I made it from milkshake straws and stretchy string. You need six pieces of string and 12 pieces of straw (I cut them in half).

Step 1 is to string four of the straws and make a square. Tie the string tight (tighter than you think you need to since I went back and tightened mine up). Next using one of the straws on your first square make another square with three additional straws. Now you should have two attached squares. Using a straw from each of those (in other words stick another string through each one) and two more  straws make the third square. Keep making squares using the sides you have until you have the complete cube. The final straw should have two strings running through it (actually all of them will).

Now for some of the neat things you can do. Hazel enjoyed playing with this. She needed some help, but had fun moving it around. The little tag on the one I bought showed each of these being made.

Two-dimensional shapes are square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid, and hexagon. The three-dimensional shapes are a cube (or square prism), tetrahedron (or triangular pyramid), and a square pyramid. It also showed how to make A, b, c, and d and discussed it as a game. Any letter that can be recognized by others works.

So much fun and so many things you can teach with it. Plus it is relatively easy to make and not too expensive to buy already made. Enjoy!

Tomorrow there will not be a Multicultural Monday since it is the first day of the Virtual Book Club for Kids Link Party. This month's author is Kevin Henkes. Stay tuned this week for lots of fun with this!

Sharing Saturday #33

Special announcement: I was quoted in an article at Ballooning Nest Eggs. Please go check it out!! I'm so excited!

I have spent the last two days in bed, but crawled out to check out last week's shared posts, and WOW is all I have to say. If you have not checked them out in awhile, definitely go visit some. There are so many great ideas!!

We had a tie for most clicked:

From April's Homemaking: Jonah and the Whale 

and From Happy Whimsical Hearts: Making Bells

Now a few of my favorites:

I always love to see new creative ways to color and paint! Check these out:

1) From Tutus and Tea Parties (with Megan from Posies to Petals Guest Posting): No Sew Busy Book

2) From Learn with Play @ Home: Painting with Seasoning & Spices

3) From Life with Moore Babies: Painting with Watercolors & Salt

Then with it being summer and the Olympics ending, these caught my eye:

1) From Taming the Goblin: Cardboard Crane (Oooh, Hazel would love one of these!)

2) From PlayDrMom: Mario Power Lemonade Stand (Such creativity and fun!)

3) From Brenna Phillips: The Three Little Pigs' Houses (Another one Hazel would love!)

4) From Learning To Be a Mom: Toddler Rhythmic Gymnastics-- Hoop (So fun and cute!)

5) From We Made That: DIY Sprinkler (So clever and looks refreshing!)

6) From JDaniel4's Mom: Olympic Values- Friendship (What great lessons tied to the Olympics!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: Teddy Bear Picnic from 3 posts

  Ear Headband Tutorial, Food, And Activities

  Now for This Week's Party  

A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow both hosts via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. A reminder: Mia is taking a blogging break. Hopefully she will be back soon to host again!!

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post.

3) Post the button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

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All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Teddy Bear Picnic Activities

Yesterday I shared our food preparation for our Teddy Bear Picnic. Today I'm going to share some of our activities. 

As the children arrived we gave them a teddy bear frame to color. I found this great picture at Twisty Noodle. I resized it and put two on a page and then added Teddy Bear Picnic 2012 onto it. I Mod Podged it to cardboard and cut them out and cut out a circle for the face so we can add the kids' pictures. My plan was to Mod Podge over their coloring, but none of them really finished them. Then I planned to add a magnet to the back.

We also had music playing. I burned a CD with any song I could find that mentioned teddy bear or just bear. Most of them came from Teddy Bear Tunes by Georgiana Stewart, and then we used some from The Wiggles (Let's Wiggle, Racing to the Rainbow, Pop Go The Wiggles, Go Bananas! and Hot Potatoes: The Best Of The Wiggles albums),The Countdown Kids; 150 Fun Songs For Kids (Disc 3), David Polansky's Animal Alphabet Songs, and VeggieTales' 25 Favorite Toddler Songs! We had these songs playing but we also used them for some games.

Another activity was to decorate teddy bear sugar cookies. The kids had a great time with this. I shared this yesterday as well. The decorated cookies above are Hazel's. We also dropped those capsules that melt into sponge animals into cups of hot water. Each one was a different teddy bear sponge. Each child got to do four.

Then the kids sat in a circle (a few of us moms also did since we only had three kids) and we played Teddy Bear to the Wonder Ball game. (If you do not know the Wonder Ball Game you can check it out here.) We changed a few words and used a slightly different wording of it to be:

Teddy Bear (to Wonder Ball pass teddy bear around circle)

The teddy bear, goes round and round
To pass it quickly, you are bound
If you’re the one, to hold it last
The game for you has surely past, and you are out
O-U-T spells OUT!

And we passed a teddy bear around. The person who won the game got to keep the teddy bear. I had bought it at Ocean State Job Lot for $3 or $4.

Next we played Pin the Tail on the Teddy. I hand drew a teddy bear in a sideways position and penciled in his tail. We blindfolded the kids or had them close their eyes (the younger ones did not like being blindfolded) and spun them around and had them tape tails onto the poster. I had written their names on a tail. Hazel won this one! She already got her prize which was this purple teddy sippy cup.

Then we played a game of Musical Teddy Bears. Everyone brought a teddy bear to the circle and placed them in the middle and then we removed one. I played music and had the kids walk around the blanket. When the music stopped they had to grab a bear (it did not have to be their own). If they did not get a bear, they were out. The person who won this one got the same sippy cup Hazel did. I found them at CVS Pharmacy.

It worked out that each child won one game. I love when it works out that way. Then we gave each child felt pieces to put together a two-dimensional teddy. They each got two colors of bows and could make boy or girl teddy bears. Each child also got two teddy clips.

The kids of course also played tag and on the swings. They had a great time! 

We had a few more activities to do, but didn't get to them. One is the Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Turn Around Dance. There are several different versions on-line. A couple can be found at Can Teach with some other teddy bear songs/poems. Songs for Teaching has Jack Hartmann's version. I also had a couple of books including Michael Hague's Illustrated The Teddy Bear Picnic by Jimmy Kennedy. There are so many great teddy bear books out there that there a lot from which to choose.

So now I need to start planning our butterfly party. Stay tuned for what we do at that.

Teddy Bear Picnic Food

Special announcement: I was quoted in an article at Ballooning Nest Eggs. Please go check it out!! I'm so excited!

Well we hosted our Teddy Bear Picnic the other day. It was so much fun. The idea came to me when we went to one at a local museum, and I was not very impressed. It was too large, loud and chaotic for the kids to focus. Hazel enjoyed visiting the museum but really did not enjoy the picnic. So I told her we would have our own. We did. We e-mailed some invitations and two of her friends were able to come (three if you count the three-month-old sibling). I made teddy bear ears for all the kids and the moms. The tutorial for them can be found here. I have to admit that one of the other moms and I were the only ones who wore them the whole time. Hazel and I spent a lot of time preparing for it. We made some sugar cookies in bear shapes. We used a mix. Then left them for the kids to decorate. Hazel had a bit of fun with the frosting and decorations. She always overdoes it!

We also made some bear paw cookies. We were going to use bear claw cookies, but I found this easy recipe on Disney Family and I liked that they actually looked like the bear paws. Since the two friends coming are allergic to nuts I had to find something to replace the almond slices. We used freeze-dried banana slices that I cut. It worked and it gave a nice taste to the cookies. Aren't they cute?

We also served some food we could buy that were teddy bear shaped. We used Teddy Grahams and gummy bears. It is not easy to find gummy bears that have no nuts or were not prepared where nuts were. I ended up with some without any, but they were prepared on the same equipment so the friend who is deathly allergic could not eat the gummy bears. 

Our final food was a fruit arrangement. We love Edible Arrangements, but I do not like their prices. My mother-in-law often buys these to bring to Hazel's party. I have kept all the containers and sticks, so we reused the small one. We used our cookie cutters to cut teddy bear watermelon and cantaloupe (Hazel did this with the slices I cut). Hazel also put the berries on the sticks. She also chopped the banana for me and put the slices on sticks. We then froze them and dipped them in chocolate like we saw at Sharing Saturday from School Time Snippets (we just put them on sticks as well). I also dipped some strawberries in chocolate. The only problem we had was that it melted a bit outside, but it was enjoyed by everyone!

I should also add that I asked everyone to bring their own lunch and let them know we would provide the dessert and drinks. With everyone's food allergies and what they eat, I figured this was easier. Tomorrow I will share some of the games, etc. we played. And now I will start planning our next mini-party with a butterfly theme. I hope you are enjoying your week! Happy Family Times is still open if you would like to share your family together time this week and inspire all of us to have more time with our families!