Getting Ready for Easter with Peg Dolls

I like to give some non-candy items to Hazel in her Easter basket. Her grandmother (my mother-in-law) tends to give her a lot of candy and the truth is Steve and I end up eating most of it since Hazel eats healthy and is usually full after a bite or two of the candy. This year we are planning on getting her a book about Easter and I am making her some peg dolls. I made her a duck, bunny and chick for her basket.

Since her favorite toy is Ducky, we always seem to gravitate to ducks. This is my little duck that I made her.

An Easter basket is not complete without a bunny, so here is her pink and white bunny with a sparkly pom pom tail.

And of course we need a chick for her basket. Next maybe I'll make a lamb. I'm also going to maker her some spring flower fairies. I'll share those a different day though since they are not done.

What do you do for your child's Easter basket?

A Wonderful Winter Book--Red Sled

Today is just a quick post about a new book we have discovered, Red Sled by Lita Judge. It is a fairly new book, however the illustrations remind you of much older books. The only words in the book are sounds. We liked this book so much we gave it to Hazel's teacher and her former teacher for International Book Giving Day last week.

This book is about a little boy who puts his red sled leaning against the side of his house when he goes in at night. Then a bear comes by and sees the sled. He decides to borrow it. During the night many other animals join him on his sledding adventure. Then they return the sled. The little boy notices the foot prints and wonders what happened. That night he looks out his window and joins them for their sledding adventures.

It is such a sweet book about nature and play. I love it!

Royal Clothespin Dolls

After making Hazel the peg doll fairies and animals, she wanted some princesses, princes, knights, king and queen to play with her castle playmat.  I decided to use clothespins since I had a bunch of them. We needed to glue buttons on the bottom so they could stand on the playmat. I decided to paint the males and I painted the tops of the females and added felt to be their skirts. I used wool roving for the females' hair. Some of which I even needle felted into place.

She has named each one. One is Princess Moonlight and there is Cinderella (in blue), and Princess Carrie. The men are named after her father, grandfather and first cousin. She is still deciding which are princes and guards.

Now she loves to make up stories about all her princesses. It keeps her busy for hours and then she puts on a show for us.

Virtual Book Club for Kids: Dr. Seuss--Bartholomew and the Oobleck

If you are looking for Fairy Tales in Different Cultures, it is here.

This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring Dr. Seuss. Now I must admit, I was not too excited about Dr. Seuss. I feel like he is so well known and so over done, however I still visited the library and found some books I had not read by him. We have really enjoyed reading his books and have found some new favorites.  Here is a collage of all the books we own or took out of the library except one, My Many Colored Days, since it did not have a title on the cover. This however is one of my favorites since it hits so many lessons--colors, moods, etc.

For those of you who are new and do not know anything about the Virtual Book Club for Kids, I am joining a group of wonderful bloggers who each month pick an author for the month and then host a blog hop sharing one of the author's books and an activity, craft, etc. to go with the book. You are invited to join in the blog hop and link up all your Dr. Seuss (this month) book activities. It is a great way to find new books and new ideas to go with the books. The amazing blogs I am joining in hosting this book club are:

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids - 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo - The Educators' Spin On It - Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom - Mommy and Me Book Club - Crafty Moms Share - No Twiddle Twaddle - The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas - Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls - Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles - Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn - Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Coffee Cups and Crayons - Having Fun at Chelle's House- Love, Play, Learn - Juggling With Kids - Motherhood on a Dime

If you have been following the Virtual Book Club for Kids for awhile you will notice we have some new hosts.

Now another exciting resource for Dr. Seuss is www.seussville.com. You can visit there and find games, activities, printables in the teacher and parent sections. Above are some of the printables we printed and have done. We have many more to try. This is also our first post of this month's author. We have done some activities for a couple more of his books which we will share later in the three week blog hop time. Plus Dr. Seuss's birthday is March 2nd, so expect to see a lot of Dr. Seuss on the web (which also corresponds to Read Across America).

Today I am going to share with you, our projects with Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Now this is one of the books we took out of the library. I had not read it or heard of it, but we enjoyed it. For those who do not know the story, the King of Didd gets angry with the sky since sunshine, rain, fog and snow are the only things that fall from it. He wants something different since he is a special king. He has his page boy, Bartholomew, call the magicians. Bartholomew tries to talk him out of calling them, but he is ordered to call them. The magicians go to their mountain to perform the magic and have promised to have oobleck fall from the sky. No one including the magicians know what oobleck is or will look like, but it is not sunshine, rain, fog or snow, so the king wants them to do it. The next morning oobleck starts falling and Bartholomew discovers it is green and sticky--think slime but stickier. Birds are getting stuck in their nests from it. He goes to warn the people of Didd to stay inside but runs into oobleck trouble everywhere he goes. Soon the oobleck is not staying outside, but starts to come into the palace. The king gets stuck to his throne. He orders Bartholomew to go get the magicians, but he cannot since they are locked in their mountain cave and which cannot be opened by him. They decide to come up with some magic words of their own and Bartholomew suggests the king say "I'm sorry." The king gets upset since he is king and should not have to apologize. But after getting frustrated and crying the king says, "I'm sorry. It's all my fault." and the oobleck stops and the sky clears. And all of the oobleck that has fallen melts away so all the people and animals become unstuck.

We of course did the oobleck coloring page of the king stuck in it found at Seussville. After reading the story for the first time, we happened to make popcorn (using a hot air popper) and noticed the popcorn flying everywhere. We commented on how popcorn would be better than oobleck to fall from the sky. It is less sticky and soft and edible. Then for an activity we decided to try to make oobleck. Ok, we really made goo, but we pretended it was oobleck. We followed the recipe/tutorial at Science Sparks for glow in the dark goo, but we did not add the glow in the dark paint. She happened to share it again on her Facebook page right when I was going to go look for a goo recipe. This was the first time we made goo, so we didn't really know what to expect. My daughter who does not like to get her hands dirty usually absolutely loved playing with it. She got upset when I told her we needed to clean it up. It definitely has a very strange/unique feel to it.

We used a cup of corn starch and then I took a cup of water and mixed a couple of drops of green food coloring into the water and added it slowly to the corn starch. Otherwise we followed the tutorial at Science Sparks. When I mentioned to my mother what we were doing she thought we should be using corn meal. We tried it and it did not make a good goo, so we went back to our corn starch.

Now it is your turn to share your Dr. Seuss book activities. I know in the past I have some posts about Dr. Seuss. Here is how we celebrated his birthday last year. Here is my Multicultural Monday post on The Sneetches and What Was I Afraid Of?

Cendrillon: A Carribean Cinderella: Fairy Tales in Different Cultures

This week we will get back to celebrating Black History Month and travel to a place I wish I could be right now--the Caribbean. (Oh, how I wish to have some warm weather right now and not all this snow!) A bit about the Caribbean first.

Source

The Caribbean is the area that consists of the Caribbean Sea and all the islands in it. It comprises of more than 7000 islands including Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Saint Croix, The Bahamas, Antigua, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Dominica, Montserrat, Saba, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, Saint John, Tortola, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Trinidad & Tobago. The climate is tropical, but rainfall varies greatly. The Caribbean Islands are remarkable diversity in animals, plants and fungi, because of the diverse terrestrial and marine ecosystems. (Source) I know when Steve and I went to St. Croix for our honeymoon, one half of the island is desert-like and the other side is rainforest.

St. Croix

The ecosystems of the Caribbean have been devastated by deforestation, pollution and human encroachment. Many animals, plants and fungi have gone extinct or are in danger of becoming extinct. Since there are several different countries in the Caribbean, I will leave it with the European settlers first started growing tobacco and later sugarcane to be imported to Europe. (Source)

Now onto our Cinderella story for this week. This week we are looking at Cendrillon by Robert D. San Souzi. In the author's note it is stated that this story is loosely based on the French Creole tale "Cendrillo" in Turiault's Creole Grammar from the nineteenth century. San Souzi chose to incorporate elements from the West Indian culture and costume as well as drawing on details of life on the island of Martinique.

Cendrillon is told by the point of view of the godmother. The godmother is a poor woman who on her mother's deathbed, her mother gave her a mahogany wand and told her to tap it three times to change one thing to another for a short time and it would only work to help someone she loved. As an orphan she has no use for this wand since she had no one to love or to love her. 

She survived to become an adult and became a washer woman. One of her clients was a kind woman who was often sick. She nursed this client when she was sick and in return the client made her godmother to her baby girl, Cendrillon, when she was born. The client died shortly afterwards. Cendrillon's father married a cold woman who treated Cendrillon like a house servant. Soon the stepmother had a daughter of her own whom she spoiled. 

Even with the mistreatment, Cendrillon stayed happy and was always smiling, joking and singing. When she was old enough she would see her godmother and the other washer women by the river every day so she could wash the family's laundry. There she joked, sang and smiled. One day however she came and was sad and the women could not cheer her up. Finally she told her godmother about the party that she wanted to go to that night, but her stepmother would not allow her to join them. The party was for the birthday of the son of a wealthy man. The son was good looking, intelligent and kind. The godmother promised Cendrillon she would find a way for her to go. After praying she remembered the wand.

Manicou

The godmother rushed over to Cendrillon's house. The family was running late so the godmother helped out since both the stepmother and stepsister were yelling at her for help. As soon as they were gone the godmother told Cendrillon to find a piece of fruit from the garden. She came back with a round breadfruit, which the godmother tapped three times with the wand and they had a beautiful coach. Changing six agoutis to horses, five brown field lizards to footmen and a plump manicou to a coachman, completed the way they would get to the party. Then the godmother tapped Cendrillon and her rags became a beautiful sky-blue velvet gown with a matching turban with a pin of gold and a pale rose silk shoulder scarf and elegant pink slippers. She also had gold rings in her ears, bracelets, and necklaces with gold beads bigger than peas. Afterwards the godmother tapped herself since any proper young woman would need a chaperone and off they went. The godmother warned Cendrillon that the magic would not last long so they would need to leave by midnight. Cendrillon agreed.

Breadfruit

Agouti

Cendrillon made quite an entrance turning all the heads. Paul, for whom the party was for, asked her to dance and would only dance with her. The godmother was off enjoying the food especially the chocolate sherbert. They lost track of time and the bells started to toll midnight so the godmother told Cendrillon that they had to leave and she followed. Paul tried to stop her, but the people at the party got in his way. Cendrillon tripped on the stairs and lost a slipper. They barely made it out and found themselves a short bit away in the middle of the street with a smashed breadfruit and animals running for hiding.The only part of the magic that stayed was the one pink slipper on Cendrillon's foot. Cendrillon said she would keep it forever to remember the wonderful night she had.

The next day Cendrillon did not come to the river to do the laundry. The godmother stopped by to check on her and found she was sick in bed with a broken heart. Her stepmother and stepsister just thought she was lazy. While talking with Cendrillon the godmother heard a commotion and investigated. She found Paul had come and was asking all the single young women on the island to try on the pink slipper. The stepsister tried it on but could not get her large foot into it. The godmother rushed back into Cednrillon's room and begged her to come out. She did. The godmother tapped her three times with the wand, but Cendrillon said no more magic. Paul immediately fell to his knees and put the slipper on her and then he asked her to marry him. The godmother claimed there was no bigger celebration even for a king and queen. It lasted three days and she had only left to tell the story.

Here is my Cinderella Sheet to compare stories for Cendrillon.

For crafts we made two types of wands. The first are with milkshake straws and blue painters' tape for bumps. Then we taped them.

The second one I followed this wonderful tutorial shared on Sharing Saturday awhile ago by Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky! I used a wooden dowel and my glue gun to make the bumps. What do you think?

Also some coloring pages:

• Caribbean map
• Breadfruit
• Agouti
• Manicou (opossum)