Rainbows and Spring Hares/Bunnies

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.  Some of the links are affiliate links where I will receive a small percentage of any purchases made through them at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Crafty Moms Share!

Last week Punxsutawney Phil and Massachusetts official groundhog, Ms. G, saw their shadows so apparently there are six more weeks of winter and if today is any sign they will not be nice weeks of winter. We have snow with blizzard warnings and requests to stay off the roads. This makes me want to think about spring (and somehow this time of year always gets me thinking about spring no matter what the winter weather has been). Today I am going to share with you two new books perfect for thinking about early spring and nice weather. The first is My Color Is Rainbow by Agnes Hsu an Yuliya Gwilym.

Glow in the Dark: A Streak of Light -- Review & Giveaway

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. I am working with The Children's Book Review and T.J. Scripps to bring you this post.

Girls often go through a phase of loving rainbows and unicorns. Some never outgrow it. A couple of weeks ago Hazel and I were at the house on Cape Cod. We were trying to pack up and clean up as it was the day we were heading home. We heard thunder and a little bit later it started pouring. We kept going on with our chores. When the rain stopped the sun came out. It only rained for five to ten minutes. I happened to look out the window and quickly called Hazel downstairs and grabbed my phone. I was able to capture the full rainbow through the screen door and part of the rainbow without the screen. 

Multicultural Children's Books -- Rainbow Stew

Disclosure: Lee and Low Books sent me a copy of Rainbow Stew to review. I received no other compensation. All opinions are my own.

Today I am so excited to be part of the Multicultural Children's Book Day: Celebrating Diversity in Children's Literature. Valerie at Jump Into a Book and Mia at Pragmatic Mom joined forces to come up with this amazing idea! 

Coloring the Rainbow - Book Review & Giveaway

 

Disclosure: I was sent a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. I am working with The Children's Book Review and Catherine Rose to bring you this post and giveaway.

Today we are sharing a fun new picture book that is about the power of connection, diversity, and inclusion which is shown through musical instruments. The book is Coloring the Rainbow: A Story about the Power of Connection by Catherine Rose and illustrated by Jeffrey Dale. There is a giveaway at the end of this post!

Animal Books & Crafts for Earth Day

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books (digital for stories and physical for crafts) in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Happy Earth Day! I am one who believes every day is Earth Day but today is the day the world celebrates this amazing planet and the nature that fills it. To celebrate today I am sharing three new children's books about animals with perfect messages for Earth Day and craft round-ups to go with them as well as two craft books with animal themes. We will start with the first two books. They are from the Surviving Wild series by Remy Lai. The series are graphic novels for ages 6 to 9. The first is Surviving the Wild: Rainbow the Koala. 

Song Inspired Activities

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Today I am going to share some activities we have come up with to go with Daria's song, Beautiful Rainbow World. I considered doing some rainbow crafts, but since we did them at the beginning of each spring, I thought we would go a different route. The song itself refers to the rainbow of skin color that makes the world beautiful, but since we have already done some skin color activities, I thought we would focus on the idea of the world being colorful. Our first idea was to look at food. We started with fruit and arranged a rainbow of them. 

We talked about vegetables, but never got them all together for it. 

Next we went for a walk in our neighborhood and looked for flowers and plants in the rainbow colors. We found that one of our neighbors had all the colors in one garden (see the above picture) and we found many more of the colors throughout our neighborhood.

Our next activity we tend to play when we are driving or out and waiting near a street. We look for all the colors of rainbows in cars and trucks. Purple is by far the hardest to find followed by orange and yellow. We have however found all the colors on at least three occasions. I however did not take pictures. Sorry!

Finally on another walk around our neighborhood, I gave Hazel a sheet to record the flower colors she saw. I gave her rainbow smiley face stickers and she had a blast. The red filled up the quickest followed by the yellow. Then I think she started just filling up the columns for blue and purple at the end. My plan was to use the graph for some of the other ideas we have had--cars, fruit, food, birds, etc. We just haven't done them again. If you are interested in a blank copy of this graph you can download it here.

I hope you enjoy the beautiful rainbow world we live on each day!!

Sharing Saturday 15-10

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! There were so many great ideas. I had a hard time choosing features, but with all the snow outside, I am ready for spring. So my features this week are Rainbows and St. Patrick's Day and a few of My Favorites. Be sure to check back at last week's party for even more in these themes. This is just a sampling.

Themed Play Dates -- Oriental Trading Products Review

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

Perhaps it is my love of planning parties and such, but I love throwing themed play dates for Hazel and her friends and Hazel really enjoys them. This summer we have had or will have three different themed play dates and we used some products from Oriental Trading to make them even more fun. The themes are fairies, mermaids and Bible stories: Creation and Noah's Ark. 

Easter Celebrations

We have had a lovely weekend celebrating Easter. My parents came to visit and Hazel has been in her glory. On Saturday we went to church for the Easter Fun Day. I will share more about this tomorrow, but while there she was given a gift from one of our friends.

Rainbow sheep that she needle felted and the book Rainbow Sheep by Kim Chatel. Thank you, Barbara!!

The book is a wonderful story about a shepherdess and her sheep. They live through a week of rain and are all muddy when a sad rainbow comes out. The shepherdess tells the rainbow how she stays happy--often using some imagination of what might live in the forest and water below. Finally she gets the rainbow happy--so happy she is laughing so hard she cries and turns the tears turn the sheep colors. At the end of the book are instructions to make the sheep. All the pictures are needle felted and it is a lovely book and story.

Then at church on Sunday Hazel was given another gift. A few weeks ago when Hazel and I were cooking she asked if I could make her a can opener for her kitchen. Ok, I haven't made it yet, but said well what would you open with it. We decided to ask our friend, Jack, to make her a wooden can. Well, he of course agreed and made her not only one can, but three and more.

They are all labeled with Miss Hazel's Soup or Hazel's Soup. One even says home cooked and made with love and kisses. Aren't they wonderful?

He made her an apple and some eggs as well as blocks and wooden balls.

Sorry the picture of the wooden balls didn't come out. But wasn't this a great gift. Needless to say, Hazel loves it!! Thank you, Jack and Donna!!

Hazel was also extremely excited to receive two books from her aunt. She got two of her favorites and recognized them when opening them from their backs. She got Ant and Grasshopper by Luli Grey and Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes. I posted about the Ant and Grasshopper here. We still need to make Ant's house for Hazel. We love Kevin Henkes books. We fell in love with his Little White Rabbit last year and then My Garden. This year we have loved his Chrysanthemum and Sheila Rae, The Brave. His writing always shows imagination and these two also show some normal children fears and life. For a short time Hazel's Ducky was named Chrysanthemum after the book's character.

Anyway, that is all for today. I hope you are having a wonderful day!! Tomorrow I'll share more about our family activities this weekend for Happy Family Times!

Amazing Prizes I Won This Month

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.
 

Welcome, Spring!! Spring Craft Round-Up

What comes to mind when you think spring? There are so many wonderful parts to spring. The weather gets warmer; the flowers bloom; the world seems to wake up and then there are all the animals that return. Since spring officially began today at 12:57 p.m., I thought we would do a round-up of my spring crafts, activities and books so far on Crafty Moms Share. I will do an Easter round up another time and I did a Lent round up a couple of weeks ago.

Color Explorations: Color Wheel, Color Mixing & More!

Our color explorations have continued. This time we used a wonderful DVD, Drawing for All: Volume 5: Exploring Colors by Tina Cintron , a great book of experiments, Color by Ellen Lawerence, and a fun musical CD, Color Wheel Cartwheel by Laura Freeman.

 

The DVD first begins with drawing a color wheel. Tina Cintron gives simple steps to make your own.You start with a circle (we traced ours) and then number the circle like a clock. Then you connect the numbers 12 and 6, 2 and 8, and 4 and 10. Then you start making the first wedge yellow, skip one and make it red and then skip one and make it blue. She explains these are the primary colors.

Next she adds the secondary colors. She does an excellent job explaining secondary as well as intermediate or tertiary colors.

Hazel and I each made one and then I made a second one to discuss the warm and cool colors only because we had previewed the DVD earlier and I knew it was coming up.

Hazel's Color Wheel

My Color Wheel

In the second color wheel, she discusses complementary colors and what makes them complementary and what it means. Then she goes into warm and cool colors. I did the writing on all the color wheels since Hazel is still learning to write and read.  She also talked about the colors mixing together to make what is called neutral grey, but what she refers to as icky brown.

She also discusses the difference between photography and light colors versus paint, pencil or crayon colors. The primary colors in lights and photography being magenta, cyan and yellow (think of your printer). If these three lights combine they make white. She also talked about a prism and the spectrum (rainbow).  Next she drew pictures with warm colors only. We attempted this picture as well. Our leaves did not look nearly as good.

Hazel's Warm Color Drawing

My Warm Color Drawing

Next she made a picture of mountains and water with only cool colors. We tried this as well.

The next day we looked at the experiments in Color by Ellen Lawrence. The first one we did was to make a rainbow by shining a flashlight through a glass of water. I did not get any pictures of this since we had trouble getting the rainbow. The next experiment was about mixing colors and I have seen it on-line recently including being shared by From ABCs to ACTs: Preschool Science: A Color Mixing Experiment at a recent Sharing Saturday.

The book said to watch closely, but Hazel did not have the patience for this. It takes quite awhile for it to happen, so we let it sit and did some more experiments. The next one involved paper towels as well. You cut a paper towel so it will fit in a baking sheet and then draw dots of color on one end. Tape the paper towel to pan and then slowly add water so it just touches the bottom of the paper towel.

The colors spread out and the ones that have multiple colors in them separate, so you can see some of the colors that make them up.

Our final experiment involved a walk outside. We had to gather leaves of different shades of green. Then we looked at the shades and tried to mix green paint with white and black to make the shade. We found we had to add yellow for some.

 
Then Hazel wanted to paint the leaves that we tried to match with the color we made. Finally she wanted to make a shades of green painting. We have a few more experiments from this book to try still, but we have been loving it. Plus we have more books with color experiments. Stay tuned!!

We have also been loving the music on Laura Freeman's Color Wheel Cartwheel CD. It includes ways to say rainbow and the colors in many different languages and then a song about each color and finally a song about the rainbow of colors. It is very fun!!

For more on color explorations, check out:

• Color Explorations: Painting
• Book Inspired Painting
• The Colors of Us
• The Colors in Nature
• Luka's Quilt
• Dying Yarn with Fruit and Vegetables Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Outside Water Play
• Picture a Tree
• Mixing Colors
• Brown at the Zoo
• Color Experiment Pinterest Board

Beautiful Rainbow World Book Review

Congratulations to Marilyn N. for winning the 5 DVDs from NCircle Entertainment!

Disclosure: Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou gave me a copy of this book free of charge. 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 get to share with you an amazing book for celebrating diversity!! The brand new book is called Beautiful Rainbow World created by Suzee Ramirez and Lynne Raspet to the words of Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou's song Beautiful Rainbow World. Now I have posted about this amazing song before. Hazel and I spent some time doing activities to many of Daria's songs on her I Have a Dream CD, which I reviewed last year.