Little House on the Prairie

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Malachi and I are enjoying reading the Little House Books. We've finished Little House in the Big Woods and we just started Little House on the Prairie this afternoon. I loved these books as a kid and I'm hoping Malachi enjoys them as well..

One thing that he's been really intrigued by is that these books are about REAL people. So today as we were reading about the Ingalls family leaving their house in the Big Woods and driving across Lake Pepin on the ice, I remembered I had saved a Pinterest pin about a virtual field trip tour of the Little House sites. It is a little hard for a 5-year-old in our culture to picture what it was like to live in a little cabin the the woods.... or what it was like traveling in a covered wagon for that matter. This site had some great pictures of the actual site where Laura and her family lived in Wisconsin. Even I enjoyed the pictures! I don't think I quite realized how large Lake Pepin is and I cannot imagine crossing it on ice! Yikes!

This is also a great site to find information and pictures about Laura and the places she lived - liwfrontiergirl.com.

Introducting Chapter Books

A couple months back I found a set of the first 10  Magic School Bus chapter books on a local free/wanted/for sale site. I wasn't sure Malachi would be ready for something with only minimal pictures, but he loved watching the Magic School Bus cartoon, so I thought I'd pick them up anyway. I got the set of 10 books for $5 - which considering each book originally cost about that much was a pretty good deal. (This person also sold me over 20 Magic TreeHouse books for another $5!)

Well, come to find out - Malachi loved listening to these books! We've finished the set we have and have started on some new chapter books. We've started Dinosaurs Before Dark #1 in the Magic TreeHouse series and I just got the first Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book by Betty MacDonald. He does an awesome job of just sitting and listening to the stories. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has even less pictures than either the Magic School Bus or Magic Treehouse. 

I am thinking of what other books I might be able to read to him now! This opens up a whole new set of options!

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Book Tour: My Name is Jake by Jennifer Turner w/ Giveaway!

Book Details:
Title: My Name is Jake
Author: Jennifer Turner
2012, Peaks Press
ISBN: 978-1938032059
Genre: Young Children's

Book Summary (from Amazon):
My Name Is Jake is a colorfully illustrated, rhyming book centered around a boy named Jake. Each page leads the reader through an activity that rhymes with Jake. This book is perfect for a young child or an early reader, just beginning to put letters into words and rhyming them together.

My Review:
My Name Is Jake is a sweet little children's rhyming book about a boy named Jake. Each page has one line that says something about and rhymes with Jake, like "We make sandcastles at the beach in the summer." or  "My family takes walks by the lake." Each phrase is accompanied by a lovely illustration like the one pictured above on the front of the book. My three-year-old son enjoyed the pictures and the story.

My only negative about the story is that the story line did not seem very cohesive. The story seems to start on a natural path, but then ends up kind of jumping all around. It mentions activities from Fall, Summer and Winter, but there is no Spring. It seems to start at the beginning of a day, but then it doesn't continue that way.

I'm not sure that those things matter much to a three-year-old though as long as it has fun pictures and wording. =)

Disclosure: The book was provided to me free of charge by Peaks Press  for my honest review. All opinions in this post are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.

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A is for Apple Mommy School

For September, I'm attempting to do another Mommy School unit with Malachi. He is really ready for some of these preschool like activities AND the one-on-one time he gets with mommy now that Baby Zach is here.

This month I've chosen the A is for Apple unit from OopseyDaisyBlog's Mommy School.

Our supplies for today's activities

Color Red, Letter A, Number 1

First we painted some craft sticks I found in our supplies.

Malachi thought the fact that I was letting him paint anything was pretty awesome!

Then we formed the letter A out of the sticks.

Next we used red paint and his finger to make an Apple Book.

We fingerprinted each tree with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 prints for "apples"

This was kind of a hard concept... he really just wanted to make dots everywhere.

Next was practicing tracing his A - this didn't hold much interest and we're going to come back to it. I think by the time we got to this he'd about had enough.

And finally he got to paint a giant apple and I think he did a great job keeping it in the lines. This is a kid who is not really that into coloring generally.

Our collection of apple books so far:

Apples for Everyone|Ten Apples Up On Top|The Giving Tree|Apple Cider Making Days

I'm thinking of planning a trip to our local cider mill, doing apple stamping and maybe some caramel apples.....we'll see what happens.

Nice Days and Mommy School

The weather has finally warmed up around here and we've been trying to spend some significant time outside! I have discovered a park/wetland area next to our development and we've been taking lots of walks over there...

I'm back doing Mommy School again this month! I've felt so bad because I've been working so much and I've been so tired that Malachi and I haven't really been doing anything productive together. I feel like this has added to some behavior frustrations between us also. So.... regardless of my work schedule and how I feel, I decided I needed to DO something with him.

Since we just went to the zoo in April, I decided it would be fun to do the Z is for Zoo unit.

We're working on identifying the Letter Z and Number 6. He can usually count from 1 to about 13 or 14 pretty well, but his identification of the individual numbers is a little lacking.

We also have been doing some of the activities like this one where he identifies the largest or smallest animal. Or the tallest or shortest. Fairly easy for him now, but still fun.

We also got some new books from the library for this unit. Our favorites so far are:

• I Love My Mama by Peter Kavanagh
• Welcome to the Zoo! By Alison Jay
• Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• Curious George Visits the Zoo by H.A. Rey

Welcome to the Zoo is unique because there is no text. You can go through the book multiple times and pick out something different to look at or focus on each time.

We were excited to find a copy of Caps for Sale at my grandma's house the other day when we were cleaning it out!

Mommy School Catch Up

Well, for the past month and a half we have been working on the same Mommy School unit "W is for Winter".

With moving and all my extra working I've been doing this month, we really needed some extra time to do some of the activities. I still feel like we could have done a lot more though! I wish I'd had a little more time. =)

I think I'm about to wrap it up at the end of the month though.

So far we've read:

Favorites:

These four that I've already blogged about...

-Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft

-Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

-The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

-Hello Snow! by Hope Vestergaard

Curious George in the Snow by H.A. Rey

Duds:

All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle

The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler

Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan Londan

• As always, we enjoy all the Songs and Fingerplays provided with the unit, such as Ring Around the Snowman. =)
• After our snowstorm, we went on a Winter Walk and talked about the difference between now and summertime.
• We used the Mitten ABC page to go over different numbers. He's too little to really identify the number of mittens in each square, but he loved talking about them.
• Snowman Sequence - we used the 4 sequencing cards to try to place what happened to the snowman in order. This was a new concept and I think he kinda got it.
• Snowman names - We created a snowman by spelling out his name! I did a lot of the work for this one, but he glued it all together! He was so proud! Then we drew around our hands on construction paper and decorated our paper mittens.

We also did some color matching with different colored snowflakes and assembled a mitten puzzle.

Well, that's about it. I'm thinking we will probably just repeat these for the rest of the month and then I have to decide on a unit for March which is looking to be equally busy .

Fun Winter-time Books

We have been having fun with some new library books lately.

It is fun to watch my Little Guy become more and more excited about particular books as he's gotten older. AND fun to see him actually "get" little funny parts or sad parts.

Some books we are enjoying right now come off of our "W is for Winter" reading list. We haven't done many of the activities, since we've been busy moving. But we DID get a bunch of books from the book list.

Favorites:

Hello Snow! by Hope Vestergaard

This is a very cute and funny book about a little girl who wakes up and spends the day playing in the snow with her daddy. Some of those funny parts that the Little Guy loves are in this book.

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

This one is a classic, but for good reason. The Little Guy loves it.

Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft

Explains how animals get ready for and survive winter-time. Kind of a hard concept, I think, but it has lots of animals in it.

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

This one is one of my favorites (and his too!) Bear is hibernating in his cave, when a bunch of other animals come in and have a party right under his nose!

Other:

These books were not on our favorite list for one reason or another. We read them once and then they went back to the library.

All You Need for A Snowman by Alice Schertle

The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler

Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London

Interesting? Shocking? Upsetting? True?

I came across this article today while browsing my personal Facebook page.

I was instantly interested and checked it out.

10 Worst Books for Toddlers, from the creepy to the weird

Doesn't that title grab you?

Well, then I read it. I have to say, I was pretty disheartened by some of the statements or observations made by the author. I'm sure the author thought they were being funny or amusing or something.... but I thought it was all kind of sad.

What do you think?

I'd like to hear your thoughts - although please be respectful! =)

Reading Friends & Moms

As I was perusing through my facebook posts today,

I came across friend Elle's post on 

We Give Books.

Read a Book. Give a Book.

She had tagged me in it, so of course I had to take some notice. =)

I followed the link to

www.wegivebooks.org

and it is exactly what it sounds like!

You choose a campaign - there are 6 to choose from -

and then you start reading books to your kids (or yourself!)

Book ages: 0 - teen

I immediately started going through, searching by Ages 0-3

 and saving books I thought my Little Guy would enjoy like:

Spot Loves His Mommy

Spot Loves His Daddy

The Snowy Day

Things That Go

I Knew You Could! (train book!)

I thought this sounded like a pretty neat program,

so I thought I'd pass it along to any other readers out there. =)

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Sticky Fingers

Hmm... you probably thought this post was going to be
about the Little Guy, didn't you?

Well!  You're wrong -
okay... it has something to do with him... but not the sticky fingers part. =)

Yesterday I stopped by the library to pick up a book for myself (Meg Cabot's Insatiable - which is GREAT btw!) and decided to pick up a couple for the Little Guy as well.

One was Goodnight Gorilla,

 

and the next one was a
Curious George Board Book.

Well, long story short - the Little Guy got a hold of the Curious George one and ripped the top layer of the board book off the inside back cover!  Ack!

He hasn't destroyed a book in quite some time, so I wasn't expecting it!

Sitting on my counter was a bottle of Elmer's Spray Adhesive -
and I got the bright idea to just spray the paper and stick it back on
(as you can see - it didn't stick very well)

Apparently, I got it all over my hands because
I'm the one with the sticky fingers! 
It's terrible - and very sticky!
I have lint sticking to my fingernails and, just now, I was thinking about
what I was going to write and had my hand up to my face
and it stuck to the hairs on my face! Ack!

The hazzards of being a mommy. =)

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New Favorite Book

You may remember a my post about the "Go! book" a couple months ago. Well, we have moved on to another favorite now (thank goodness for Mommy). 


The Little Guy's newest favorite book is another one we got from Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday a few weeks ago. This one is cute, rhymes and is fun to read!




Jesse Bear, what will you wear
What will you wear in the morning?

My shirt of red
Pulled over my head
Over my head, in the morning


Excerpt out of Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom
This is a super cute book about Jesse Bear and what he wears throughout the day. It starts in the morning, then noon, then evening, then night. Very fun and the rhyming of the words is catchy. 
Another great thing about this book are all the little details in the illustrations. The toys in Jesse's room or his sandbox, the sailboat on his pajamas and in the bathtub.... you could spend a long time just going through and naming all the stuff in the pictures. 
Apparently there is a whole series of Jesse Bear books and we might have to get a couple more from the library.


Yay for new books!



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The Go Book by the Little Guy

Thank you Grandma for this wonderful book.

I love it so much that I make mommy read it to me everyday

(and sometimes more than once a day if I can trick her into it)

I call it my "Go book!"

I am very insistent that she reads it to me every time we sit down to read together.

I shake my head and push all other books away.

If that doesn't work I shake my head, push the other book away AND repeat "Go?"

over and over until she gives in.

I don't think mommy really likes this book so much,

but I love it.

Thanks, Grandma.

Love,

The Little Guy

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Favorite Baby Books

As you can probably tell by the fact that I have a whole page of my blog devoted to it - I'm an avid reader. I've always loved reading and my mom says that they started very early reading with me. All through my childhood my mom would read out loud to me - even after I could read myself. I remember reading classics like The Little House on the Prairie series and Anne of Green Gables series as well as other books like Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster and others I can't remember anymore.

My husband hates reading and only reads his hunting magazine and what he HAS to read. But, I am determined to make my Little Guy into a reader. Almost from Day 1, I've had books to read him. Before every nap and bedtime we read 3 or 4 books together - and he loves it. He's getting to the point now where he'll ask to read more. =)

Sometimes I get kinda tired of reading the same books over and over though... so I head to the local library and pick up a couple new  board books. That said, we do have our favorites in our books at home. Here are some of them:

What are your kids favorite  books? Ours are pretty classic for the most part, but I'm always on the look out for new favorites!