Kids love to paint

A beautiful painting by D, using tempera paints.

Growing a Kid Music Library

 


More additions to our Kids Music Library:

• Sesame Street - Platinum All-time Favorites
• Kidapalooza - Vol. 1
• Ziggy Marley - Family Time
• They Might Be Giants - Here Comes the 123's
• They Might Be Giants - Here Comes the ABC's
• They Might Be Giants - Here Comes Science
• Wee Sing - America
• Songs About America - Celebrating America's History
• Baby Einstein - Naptime Melodies

D has informed me that I keep choosing "baby music" and that she doesn't want to listen to "baby stuff", so she has made some CD selections which have included:

• Shake It Up - Live 2 Dance
• The Cheetah Girls - One World
• Glee - The Music, Vol. 1
• Glee - The Music, Vol. 3: Showstoppers

I'm not sure how I feel about Glee.  On one hand I think it's cool that D can sing along with songs like "You Keep Me Hangin' On", "Hello, Goodbye", "One", and others like that.  But when I play the originals for her to hear, it makes me sad that she prefers the Glee versions over The Supremes, The Beatles, U2, etc.

Miscellaneous Past Activities

D loves to do projects and we've done a lot of them in the past month.

We have made felt flowers, beaded necklaces, felt cat ornaments, paper chains, and beaded flower hair clips.

We have sewn a skirt for D, several pillows, a Barbie-sized kimono, a tote bag, and a quilted baby doll blanket.

We made clay ornaments with cookie cutters and then painted them.

We made patriotic crazy crayons by melting broken old red, white, and blue crayons into star-shaped molds.

We've also done a bunch of baking projects including making banana bread, dark chocolate and mint chip cookies, and ginger bread men.

Different art activities have included using watercolor paints, painting with acrylic paint and tempera paint, using watercolor pencils, and drawing with cray-pas.

One of D's favorite art activities is drawing on the sidewalks with chalk.  We are already on our third bucket of chalk.

And we've also done some gardening, including planting beans, picking strawberries, picking cherry tomatoes and cherry peppers, picking flowers, and some light weeding.

Learning about Germany

We've been learning about Germany and these are some of the books we read or looked at this week.

It's been fun going through a bunch of the classic fairy tales from Germany.  D's favorite one was Rumpelstiltskin.  Before this week, she only knew the ones which there are Disney versions of.

We also watched a couple of DVDs:  The Little Travelers Germany and Families of the World:  Families of Germany.

Flower Garden

I wanted to post some pictures of the flower garden because it adds so much to the outdoor environment.  The earlier pictures of the outdoor areas were taken in May before the garden really had a chance to get growing. 

The front garden passed it's prime a few weeks ago.  The raised beds containing vegetables are still growing strong, but most of the flowers that hide it have already bloomed and faded.

The container garden in back is just about at it's peak.  Each summer I grow well over 60 containers and hanging baskets filled with flowers and herbs.  This year, I'm growing cherry tomatoes too.

I think the colorful flowers add a lot to the outdoor environment and kids like to help water the plants.

Next year, I hope to involve kids in the process of starting seeds indoors, and also in preparing and planting the many containers.

The butterflies and bees that the bright flowers attract are good for learning about insects and how the natural world works.  There are a lot of things for us to sketch and make note of in our nature journals.

Being able to pick some flowers and make a colorful arrangement is a nice way to bring the outdoors inside too.

Take a peek at D's passport

Over the past few weeks we've been learning about different countries.  Each time we "visit" a different country, D gets two stickers for her pretend passport.

I got these "My Passport" Sticker Books from Oriental Trading (12 for $6.25).  Each passport comes with a set of travel stamp stickers.

For any countries that we don't have a sticker for, I've been doing google image searches online and printing out my own.

I also found a website where you can print out a whole sheet of place stickers for major cities.  We are using these to compliment the stickers that came with the passports.  They show a famous monument and give D another aid for remembering the countries we've explored so far.

Vegetable Garden Update

Here's what the beans we planted last month look like now!

The yellow bush beans have lots of buds that will soon start growing into beans.

The green pole beans just got to the top of the bean tower, but I expect them to fill-in all the way over the next few weeks.

D can't wait to pick beans and asks to check on them daily.

And she likes to pick the cherry tomatoes that we are growing in containers in the backyard.  

Unfortunately, she still refuses to eat them.

Learning about India

These were some of the books we read this past week while we were learning about India.

D didn't appear too impressed with any of the book selections this week, but I really enjoyed Monsoon, Sacred River, and Look What Came From India.

We also watched a few DVDs including:

• Going to School in India
• Families of the World:  Families of India
• Global Wonders:  India

Playing with the pooches

It has been over a month since getting started and by now, D has had a chance to go through ALL of the children's toys.

Today, she decided to take a look at the dog toys.  Keeley and Teagan watched as D rolled out their toy box and then sorted them out one by one between the two dogs.

Teagan (top picture) got all the tennis balls and chew toys.  Keeley (bottom picture) got all the more pricey and different toys.

Occasionally, D would ask me who a toy belonged to and I'd tell her it belonged to both dogs.  Then she'd look at it and decide who to give it to.

She also liked to ask me the names of the toys.  I'd respond with, "Oh, that's a wiggle-giggle ball." or "That's a hurley and that's a hole-y roller."

I took these pictures of the pups because I thought it was funny how they sat calmly and patiently through the whole thing.  They let D do things that they would never put up with from me.  Keeley even walked around the house for a good 30 minutes or more with that boa constrictor tied loosely around his waist.

Picking Flowers and Making Rangoli Designs

Today we did our outdoor activities in the morning, before it got too hot out.

First we picked lots of flowers from the garden and arranged them in 3 vases.  Don't they look gorgeous?

D saw a big yellow flower that she wanted to pick but I told her that it wasn't the right kind of flower for picking because it was on our pumpkin vine.  I told her it was the kind of flower that only lasts a day or two and that with any luck, soon it would start to grow into a pumpkin.  So we let that one be for now.

This week we are learning about India.  The other outside activity we did this morning was inspired by reading about Rangoli in a book we got from the library called:  Recipe and Craft Guide to India.  Rangoli is the Indian art of making designs with colored sand or rice flour.

Since I didn't want lots of sand or flour where the dogs frequently walk, we decided to just draw our designs with colored chalk instead.

We started by looking up "rangoli designs" on google.  We choose 3 that we liked best and that seemed easy enough for us to do a good job with.

These are the first two that we made.  I think they turned out great!

We made a third one too, but by then the heat was starting to get to us as we were rushing to get it done quick.  D wanted to do more but there was a heat advisory today and so we spent the rest of the day indoors.

This week was about FRANCE!

These are some of the books we read and looked at this week while we were learning about France.

We also viewed the following DVDs:

• Families of the World:  Families of France
• Ratatouilli
• Madeline
• Travel With Kids: Paris

(I would have liked for us to watch "Le Petit Nicolas" but the library didn't have it.)

The things that D seemed to like best were:  learning about Coco Chanel, Madeline (the film),  and watching the cancan dancers at Bastille Days.

We did lots of activities like trying to draw with scissors like Matisse, listening to some french pop, pretending we were eating at an outdoor Paris Cafe at lunchtime so we could do some people watching, and coloring pages of the French flag, Marie Antoinette, the Eiffel Tower, and more!

A short week...

These are some of the books we read during this past week.  It was only a 3 and 1/2 day week because of the July 4th Holiday.

Some activities we did were:  making paper chains, making clay cookie cutter ornaments and painting them, going for short morning walks (before the heat got bad), playing Barbies, board games, puzzles, and more!






We saw a small American Goldfinch in the front garden one morning.  We documented it in our nature journals by coloring in goldfinch pictures and glueing them into our journals when finished.