A great deal!

10 Little Rubber Ducks

Eric Carle

Today we took a trip to Border's Bookstore to check out their bargain books. We always find such great deals in this section. Today we found the book 10 Little Rubber Ducks, written by Eric Carle for $4.99. It is a hardcover book with a surprise squeaking rubber duck sound at the end.

The inspiration for Eric Carle's book 10 Little Rubber Ducks actually came from the true story of a shipment of rubber ducks and other bathtub toys that fell overboard and washed up on shores all around the world. A great book for teaching ordinal numbers or marine animals!!

I can't wait to share this book with Emily. We will be able to do some fun projects with rubber ducks!

Our Scrap Box

Monkey Paper Scrap Box

For Emily's Birthday she got a gift in this cute Monkey Box. It was not reusable as a gift box after it was opened so now it is our paper scrap box. Emily enjoys feeding the monkey paper scraps when we are finished with a project.

Paper and String Collage

Emily's Adventure with Cutting and Gluing

I gave Emily a chance to use scissors for the first time this week. She got the hang of it almost immediately. We started with string and then tried thin strips of paper which I held for her. Today Emily cut up different colors of scrap paper and then she asked to do string. After all her cutting we glued the pieces onto some construction paper to make a collage. This was great practice in cutting and gluing.

Cutting the paper strips

Cutting the string

Spreading the glue all over the paper

Emily enjoyed dumping all of the cut paper and string onto the glue.

Bubble Prints

Pop Pop...Paint!

Last night we were having so much fun singing a bubble song that we do with the parachute at Gymboree. So I thought Emily would love to do some bubble painting today. I had seen the idea for Bubble Prints in "First Art" by MaryAnn Kohl. We had so much fun we can't wait to try it again OUTSIDE!!

Emily blowing some bubbles onto the paper.

Dipping the wand into the colored bubbles.

Blowing some more bubbles onto the paper.

Here's what we did

First you need:

A large sheet of white paper

food coloring

bubbles and a blowing wand (We had a few different sizes of bubble wands that we used so we could get different sized prints)

• Divided the bubble mixture into 4 small plastic containers with lids (so I could store them when we were finished).
• Add a little bit of food coloring to each container.
• Put the paper on the floor and start blowing bubbles. Any bubbles that land of the paper pop and leave a circle mark. The little drops make a nice design too!

This project would work really well outside, but since it is still to cold to go outside we did it in the house.

Since we were working in the house I put an old plastic table cloth on the floor and then put the paper on top of that.

The song we sing at home from Gymboree with bubbles or just for fun.

Bubble Song

1 little, 2 little, 3 little bubbles

4 little, 5 little, 6 little bubbles

7 little, 8 little, 9 little bubbles

Here in Emily's house, or yard today

(For this part pop the bubbles with your hands or pretend to, we sit on a blanket and pull it up and tap the side, it is kind of like what they do if you are using the parachute)

Take your little hand and pop those bubbles

Take your little hand and pop those bubbles

Take your little hand and pop those bubbles

Here in Emily's house today.

(If you are sitting on a blanket be get off of it and then put it over our heads. This is Emily's favorite part at home and in Gymboree!)

Everyone get off we're going under

Everyone get off we're going under

Everyone get off we're going under

Here at Emily's house today

Silly Faces

Eyes and Ears and Mouth and Nose...

Silly Faces by Emily

Emily loves the song "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes." She also loves pointing out Eyes and Ears and Mouths and Noses. So I decided we should make silly faces from pictures of Eyes, Ears, Mouths and Noses I had cut out of different magazines. The result is some pretty funny looking faces and a couple of good laughs.

Once we were ready to start we sang "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and then got to work sorting our pieces. Emily was able to put the eyes, ears, noses and mouths into different piles. I taped contact paper to the table sticky side up so that we could just stick the pieces right on instead of having to use glue for this activity.

Here Emily adding the mouth she picked.

Smoothing down the nose she picked.

Posing for a picture with her Silly Faces Project and her Little People Baby (the baby helped pick some of the pieces too!)

Emily was so excited to show Daddy...she said "look at tato heads Daddy."

Bead Painting

Mardis Gras Bead Painting

Emily got some Mardis Gras beads at a block party over the summer. She enjoys playing dress up and putting them on. The other night when I was thinking about what we were going to do today I thought they would make a very interesting way of painting. Sure enough we had a blast painting with the beads, dropping the beads on the paper and just rubbing them around.

Rubbing the beads on the paper.

Dipping the beads in the green and purple paint.

Dropping the beads on the paper.

This one we did together on really big paper because it looked like so much fun I wanted to do it too!!

TOTSchool

We had so much fun this week!

Emily helping me make her Birthday cake. She loved pouring the ingredients into the bowl and watching the mixer blend it all together.

Taking pictures with her new camera!! This digital camera from V-Tech actually takes pictures and videos and is really sturdy. Right now we have a bunch of pictures of the floor. But it is still a lot of fun!

Practicing colors while playing Candy Land. Emily picked the green person for herself.

Emily loved naming the color on her card and matching it to the square on the game board! I was not sure if she was going to be able to play yet, but she did pretty good. At least it was great practice with color recognition!!

Our Favorite Books from this week:

Where Is Baby's Birthday Cake? ~ Karen Katz

Where is Baby's Valentine? ~ Karen Katz

The Napping House ~ Audrey Wood

The Giving Tree ~ Shel Silverstein

Today is...

Emily is learning the days of the week. I found a days of the week kit at the dollar store months ago and finally took it out...well actually remembered that I had it stashed away somewhere :0)

There are actually 3 holders, "Yesterday was...", Today is..." and "Tomorrow will be..." for each of the days of the week, but for right now we are just focusing on "Today is..."

So, every morning after breakfast we sit by the calendar and say the days of the week rhyme.

"There are seven days in a Week"

There are seven days, there are seven days, there are seven days in a week.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

I actually learned the rhyme when I was in middle school in my French class. We do not say it in French yet, however that will be the next step. Here it is:

Il y a sept jours à semaine (There Are Seven Days in a Week)

Il y a sept jours, il y a sept jours, il y a sept jours à semaine: lundi(Monday) mardi(Tuesday) mercredi(Wednesday) jeudi(Thursday) vendredi(Friday) samedi(Saturday) et dimanche(Sunday).

After we say the rhyme we go over what day today is and then talk about what we will do today.

Lenten Countdown ~ Lamb of God

Emily's Easter Countdown

Emily loved using an Advent calender to count down the days till Christmas, so for Easter I wanted to do something similar. I was so excited when I found this great idea for making a "Lamb of God" and adding a cotton ball for each day of Lent on Karen Edmisten’s blog (http://www.karenedmisten.blogspot.com/).

To make ours I used a heavy piece of paper and drew a lamb.

Next, I took 46 cotton balls and placed them over the drawing. This helped me number where the cotton balls would be placed each day, I also liked having the numbers so that I could point them out each day as we are counting, since Emily has been into numbers recently. I added two googly eyes because I had them around and thought they looked cute :0)

Finally, Emily will add a cotton ball for each day of Lent starting on Ash Wednesday all the way till Easter.

*There are 40 days in lent because Sundays are not counted, however for this countdown I included them.

Paper Towel Marker Art

Emily's Marker Water Color

When I was little I used to love painting on toilet tissue with markers and then watching how the colors ran when water was added. This morning I decided to try this project with Emily. We used paper towel instead of toilet tissue and the results were just as much fun!!

All you need are paper towels, markers, water and a paint brush.

First, Emily colored on the paper towel with markers.

She finished by painting over the markers with water and a paint brush.

The beginning

I have read and gotten some great ideas from different blogs, magazines, friends and family, and finally just figuring it out on my own. I love keeping my daughter busy and giving her creative and fun ways to learn about her world. Now that she is older it is fun to do projects and sing songs about the seasons, and holidays. This is the beginning of my adventures with Emily...hope you enjoy the ride.