Meerkats & Hullabalu!

Reminder Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by and share your child-oriented craft or activity and check out the other wonderful ones already shared!

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So I awhile ago I received a wonderful e-mail offering to send me and Hazel a stuffed animal of our choice from the website Hullabalu. Hullabalu is an invitation only site for now that sells adorable, first rate stuffed animals. They will be having their hard launch later this summer, but also want to be able to do exclusives with their site. All I need to do for this adorable stuffed animal is blog about it. Since Hazel and I both LOVE stuffed animals, this seemed like a no brainer. So, I open my private invitation to view their site and it is wonderful. They had so many (26 right now) to choose from, I was glad I was not the one picking. As I flipped through the choices, I was pretty sure Hazel would pick the unicorn or dragon since she has been into them lately. Or maybe the pink hippo since she likes the pink hippo ride at the zoo, but she once again surprised me.

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So the next morning I showed the website to Hazel. Needless to say she loved it! Of course it starts with the fact that I allowed her to do something on the computer. We are trying to be media free with her. Then she gets to pick one of these adorable animals. You can actually name the animal when you purchase it or you can keep the adorable names they have already given them. (If you would like an invitation to Hullabalu, stay tuned. I have 25 to giveaway! Or you can go to their site and request one.) The choices change monthly, so you have to keep going back to see what they have. To my surprise, Hazel picked Meerkat Moe!

Now we have seen meerkats at our local zoo (see below), so we have seen them in real life. And I did comment on how cute he was when we were looking at them, but she decided she wanted this one. I went with it because I saw it as a great opportunity to learn more about meerkats.

Sorry for the picture quality, the meerkat was sitting in the only spot in the cage where the sun was shining and wouldn't move. Plus the cage was indoors. Ugh!!

Well, I have to say when the package came from Hullabalu, it was like Christmas or her birthday. It came in a beautiful blue box with Hullabalu written on it. Then inside Meerkat Moe was wrapped in tissue paper.

 She loved opening it and loved him right away. In fact there have been a few trips where Ducky has not come with us and Meerkat has. Yes, she named him Meerkat.

I have to say, I find him adorable and he is so soft and huggable. When she doesn't have him in her bed, I often cuddle with him in front of the television. Though she has been taking him with her to bed most nights. How could she not, he is just so sweet and soft!!

 Meerkat Moe is made by Wild Republic. Here is the tag that came on him.

He is definitely high quality and Hullabalu has hand chosen the companies and products they work with to be the highest quality. I have to say this has been a wonderful experience and I definitely will be going back to them if/when I want another animal.


Now, I know you are wondering what my experience with Hullabalu has to do with Multicultural Monday. Well as I mentioned above, I took the meerkat as a learning experience. Meerkats live in the Southern tip of Africa, so we are traveling back there. The first thing I find most interesting about meerkats is that they live in burrows with 20 to 50 family members!! They have also been seen hugging. It is strange to see a meerkat alone--in fact they tend to stay together. When gathering food they have a couple of them standing guard (on their hind legs using their tails to help balance) for predators. Oh, and their favorite food is scorpions!

I found some great sources for information on meerkats on-line. National Geographic being the first. National Geographic Kids also has a page on them including a printable card with a picture and information on the meerkat. We did print out the card and glued it onto an index card. I may put contact paper over both sides as well to keep it better. Another good source is Animal Fact Guide. I also found some coloring pages. Here is a good collection of them. Laughing Zebra has a great link of Meerkat Mania Week and it has information as well as some projects. From this link I took several of the projects and did them with Hazel as well as expanding one to make shadow puppets. I took this mural page and enlarged the two meerkats to 150%. Then cut them out of brown construction paper. I then drew on the lines and coloring that the page had. We glued them on to tongue depressors. Hazel loves them!! We also printed the other meerkat front and back. She colored it so you cannot see the picture very well. We cut it out and glued it on to a tongue depressor as well. 

 We have not cut out the pictures to make a mural with it yet, but Hazel did color them as you can see. I did the enlarging of the meerkats before she colored them.

We also found some great library books about meerkats including story books with meerkats in them. The first two are Meerkats by Katherine Walden and Meet the Meerkat by Darrin Lunde. Both of these provide factual information about the meerkat and where they live. Thus we learn about another part of the world--the desert!

Then two great story books. First Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett. This book is about a meerkat who decides it is too hot in the desert and goes to visit his distance relatives. His family is very scared for him since the meerkat rule is to stick together. However he goes off and visits his various types of mongoose relatives (meerkats are a type of mongoose). He sends a postcard each day to his family to tell them where he is and what it is like. He discovers that the best place for him is with his family in the desert.


The second story book is Millicent and Meer by Richard Byrne. This is a great story about a young girl who is playing outside when a crate falls into her yard. She looks into the crate and sees a meerkat. The meerkat does not remember who he is or what he is, so she looks on the label and reads it (by sounding out the word) and decides he must be a cat named Meer. She has always wanted a cat so she keeps him. However her father gets quite upset with Meer's meerkat habits and kicks him out of the house. Well Meer meets a cat and the cat shows him how to be a cat and then they see a poster advertising meerkats at a show and realize that is what Meer is. They take the poster to Millicent and her father calls the owner of the safari show and he comes to pick up Meer, but Millicent does get her cat in the end. It has a very happy ending.


Ok, that is it for meerkats for now. However I still have 25 invitations to Hullabalu to give away. So if you are interested in being able to shop at this amazing site for wonderful stuffed animals, please do the rafflecopter thing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is where I share... 

Popcorn & Meerkats!

Well this week I am going to share two Multicultural topics with you. As you may remember I skipped Multicultural Monday last week, but then shared two Multicultural posts to go with the MeMe Tales Readathon. If you missed them they are Global Culture and Hazel Cooks Pancit.

Also, The Virtual Book Club for Kids July Author is Don and Audrey Wood. You can still link up any activities and/or crafts to do with any of their books! Just visit my two posts on it: The Dragon and The Princess and The Deep Blue Sea. Oh, and while I'm making announcement, Sharing Saturday is still open. Please stop by and share a child-oriented activity or craft and/or check out what has been shared and be inspired!

Ok, now onto my Multicultural Monday Post. Awhile ago I did a post on meerkats. The people of Hullabalu were kind enough to let Hazel pick out an animal from their website for me to review and she chose Meerkat Moe or as we call him, Meerkat. If you do not know what a meerkat is, it is a small desert animal that lives in Africa. Well, a web editor from National Geographic Education asked me to try their meerkat craft with Hazel. They only had adults make it so they were looking for some feedback of how it works with children. That said, Hazel is below their suggested age and I could see why.

My Meerkat

I did paint our forks. Their instructions did not suggest that, but I thought it would look better. We also did not have brown pipe cleaners (due to a little kitty who keeps stealing all my pipe cleaners as toys) so we used gold and we only had color googly eyes or at least that is all I could find. If I were to do this craft again, I would not use the construction paper for the stomach and would use the leftover felt from the head. I let Hazel do as many of the steps as she could on her own. This included drawing the face. I did add the dark shapes for the eyes since I was putting the glue on.

Hazel had trouble twisting the pipe cleaners to form the nose and the tail and she had trouble with the rubber bands. Otherwise she did pretty well. Oh, and I have one more meerkat book to share. I got this after I wrote the other post, but I think it was one of the best out of the books I found for information on them and I loved the pictures. The book is What on Earth Is a Meerkat? by Jenny Tesar. If you want to learn more about these cute little guys, go check it out.

The next thing I want to share with you is about popcorn. We happen to LOVE popcorn in my house. When I was in high school I would eat a huge bowl of air-popped popcorn every day. Now we do not make it as much, however I discovered this book, Popcorn! by Elaine Landau at the library when I was in the children's cooking section and grabbed it. As I read it to Hazel I realized it was perfect for Multicultural Monday.

Popcorn has a long history. Most of its history in the Americas however China and India had popcorn long before Columbus "discovered" America. Native Americans used popcorn as jewelry as well as food. The oldest known popcorn was found in the Bat Cave in New Mexico and was aged to be about 4000 years old. Its size was much smaller than corn is now since they did not use all the genetics we do. (Source: popcorn.org)

There are so many ideas on line for things to do with popcorn. From music and art to science and geography you can find a lesson involving popcorn for just about every subject. However I am more interested in the cultural parts. Native Americans throughout the Americas had popcorn from early on. Each one had its own way to pop the corn as well. There is difference of opinions as to whether popcorn was served at the first Thanksgiving since corn was not grown in the New England area yet though other sites actually name the Indian that brought it, so who knows. Popcorn also became more popular during the depression because it was a cheap luxury and during World War II since the sugar was being sent over to the soldiers there was not the sweets so people enjoyed popcorn as a treat. 

The book goes into the history, the science behind what makes popcorn pop and where it is grown as well as other interesting facts. When popcorn vendors first sold popcorn in China, you had to bring your own corn to be popped.

After reading the book, we, of course, made a bowl of popcorn. Don't you love Hazel's new smiling face when she poses for me. She always closes her eyes now! Oh, well. We also tried an experiment we found on www.agclassroom.org/ok. We filled a small plastic cup with kernels and added water. We covered it and let it sit for an hour. Much of the water was gone after an hour. We recovered it and will check it tomorrow morning! I will update you then. We are also planning on making some colored popcorn to make some popcorn pictures.

Update: On Monday the popcorn was coming out of the top of the cup!!

There are also loads of popcorn songs available on line. We sung one in parent/child swim class last year. It went "I'm a piece of popcorn put me in the pot. (Move child away from you.) Shake me up, shake me up (Move child side to side) until I pop (Lift child in air)." Hazel still loves when we do that swimming.

Oh, and I forgot to mention my friends who own a gourmet popcorn store in Melbourne, Florida. It is a good thing I don't live down there as I would be there all the time. It is called Tin Roof Popcorn. I haven't been there in years, but when I was it was like an old ice cream shop but with flavored popcorn. You could sit at the counter and get a sample so you would know what to order. Talk about dangerous for my diet!! If you are down that way, make sure you check them out (or if you feel like ordering some since they do mail order).

We made some colored popcorn by putting a small amount (I put too much) of water and some food coloring in a plastic bag, then add popcorn. Zip it closed and shake it until it is the color you want. Then give them some paper and glue and let them make popcorn mosaics or pictures.

What do you think of her masterpiece?

What are your favorite toppings for popcorn? Do you have any favorite activities to do with it?

This is where I share...

Can You Spot the Leopard? --Review & Giveaway of a Beautiful Picture Book about African Animals

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I am working with The Children's Book Review and Karen B. Winnick for this blog tour and will receive a small stipend for this post. All opinions are my own.

Do you know an animal lover? Or perhaps you have a unit coming up on Africa and its animals? I have a beautiful new book to share with you that is perfect for both!! It is Can You Spot the Leopard? An African Safari by Karen B. Winnick. This is the type of book Hazel would have loved when she was younger. 

Sharing Saturday #27

Have you entered to get an invitation to shop at Hullabalu yet? If not you have a couple days to do so. If you don't know what Hullabalu is yet, make sure to check out my meerkat post.

Have you checked out the amazing line up from last week? I featured many of the patriotic crafts and activities from the last two weeks on the Fourth of July. If you were featured there I pinned your post to my Patriotic Pinterest Board and feel free to grab a featured button below! If you haven't checked all the entries from last week please visit them and show some comment love! You will not be disappointed.

Ok, on to this week's features (which are pinned to the Sharing Saturday Board). 

There was a three-way tie for most clicked:

From Science Sparks: How to make a lemon sink

From Wesens Art: Quilled Butterfly

 From Learning Ideas--Grades: K - 8: Fun Fish Crafts for Kids

A Few of My Favorites

From Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational: Post-It Page Marker Math

From True Aim Parenting & Education: Pass the Manners, Please

From Having Fun at Chelle's House: Wall Decor from Kiddo's Art

From 2 Big, 2 Little: Black Changes Colors

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I always am blown away by your creativity and ideas! If you were featured here, please feel free to grab a Featured Button to display proudly on your blog!


 

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From Your Host:

Learning about Meerkats (and a giveaway sort of)

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Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. 

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