stART ~ Do You Have a Hat? and Go Dog Go

A Story + Art = A Great stART!

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our book and art project and maybe even share your own too! For an explanation of stART click here.

This week we read Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli, which is a cute rhyming book that tells about the different hats that some historical people have worn. We actually got this book for free inside a cheerios box when Emily was a baby!

We also read Go, Dog. Go! (Beginner Books) by P. D. Eastman. This is one of Emily's favorite books and it has a lot of great concepts in it, such as in and out, under over, colors, stop and go. Emily's favorite part of the book is when one of the dogs say "Do you like my hat?" and the other dog says "I do not like that hat"

Both of these books inspired us to make our own hats! I found the directions for folding a paper hat here and made one for Emily and one for me. Then I gave Emily some art supplies and let her decorate her hat however she wanted to.

Emily picked a green hat and wanted to color it with a green marker, green is curently her favorite color!

Emily enjoyed gluing some sequens and spangles on to her hat.

She also glued some feathers on and then added some sequens and spangles on top of the feather...I was very impresed!

Our finished hats!

Do you like our hats???

Emily decided to try her hat on Juliette too!

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My Family My Forever~Eating the Alphabet Ten Kids and a Dog - Ten Apples up on Top Superheroes and Princesses - Draw Me a Star BoysRuleMyLife - Planes and How They Work Jolly Mommy and Little Mouse handmade beginnings - Growing Vegetable Soup Mouse Grows Mouse Learns - Arnolds Apple Tree Almost Unschoolers - Snow Pumpkin Growing Up Our Style

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Sticker Face

Juliette, what is on Mommy's face?

I saw this game in the book Baby Play And Learn, by Penny Warner and thought it would be cute to try with Juliette.

After Emily went down for her nap I got out some of our colored dot stickers, I put Juliette on my lap facing me and let her look at my face. Then I put a blue circle sticker on my nose. After it seemed like she noticed it I moved it to my cheek and waited for her to find it there. She seemed to Enjoy this game. Or maybe it was all of the silly faces I was making too! I will be trying it again to see...

Muffin Tin Monday...

...puts a smile on this little girls face!!!

This week there is no theme for Muffin Tin Monday so we just had a fun lunch of some of Emily's favorite foods in her muffin tin.

Emily's Muffin Tin Lunch

Top Row: Homemade Banana Bread, Peasnap Crisps, Strawberry Apple Sauce

Bottom Row: Alphabet Soup in Vegetable Broth, Mozzarella Cheese Circles, Peanut Butter and Jelly Roll-Ups

Strawberry Apple Sauce

Emily and I both LOVE the flavored applesauce in the cups, however I usually buy the giant size of applesauce since I usually give it to Emily as part of her dinner to sneak in a fruit serving and it is so much more economical. So when we went strawberry picking in June, I pureed some of the strawberries and froze them in ice cube trays. Once they were frozen I popped them out into a Ziploc bag. Now when we want strawberry flavored applesauce I just thaw one of the cubes in the microwave and mix it with a serving of applesauce. I plan on trying this with peach, blueberry and mango too!

Unplugged Project ~ Feathers

Emily's Feather Painting

This weeks Unplugged Project theme is Feathers. I recently went to Joann Fabrics with my mom and she got Emily a huge bag of feathers. So I was all set for this weeks Unplugged Project, I just needed to figure out what to do with these feathers. Emily has been asking to do some painting so I thought it would be fun to try some feather painting. Emily actually enjoyed this and didn't ask for a brush or to use her hands, like she normally does. It looked like so much fun I joined her in this project too!

Emily painting with some feathers.

When we were all finished we decided to glue the feathers on to the paper.

Emily's finished feather painting

Mommy's finished feather painting

Simply Made Sunday ~ Apple Bread

This week we made Apple Bread, I got this recipe from my friend Sarah, however I changed it a little bit to make it my own :0) Emily was happy to help dump all the ingredients into the bowl, but her favorite part was helping eat the apples as I was grating them!

The only picture I got was Emily dumping in the grated apples. This was after some of the juices ended up all over the counter..oops!

Apple Bread

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1 egg
• 1 cup grated apple

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan and set aside.
2. Combine flours, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg in a bowl.
3. In another bowl combine the eggs, sugar oil and applesauce. Then add the grated apple.
4. Add all the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and mix until all combined.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

These also make amazing mini muffins ~ I baked them for 15 minutes and they were perfect!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool.
Emily is 31 months old.

Emily and I enjoyed playing with Juliette! This week I took a picture of Emily and myself loving on Juliette :0)

Emily and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. We baked, apple pancakes, apple bread, and apple pie. Emily also helped me dry basil from our garden.

We continued working on the letter Aa this week. I hid the magnetic Aa's in our rice bucket and Emily had a great time finding them. It was a beautiful day so we were able to do this project outside. Juliette really wanted to get in on the action. We can't wait till she can really join in on our projects!

Emily started a Mommy and Me 2 year old program at a local church. We go for and hour and a half each week. They have a sand table, lots of toys to play with, a play dough station, puzzle station and craft for the week. Then they have a Jesus time, snack and story time. In addition to a short separation period where the children play while the assistant watches them and the parents can discuss any issues related to 2 year olds. This is Emily outside of my parent's house after we dropped of Juliette on her first day. I am excited about this time to spend with just Emily!

We spent some time at my mom's house and she has some really great toys! Here Emily is working on a giant safari floor puzzle while Juliette watches. Emily has a great time working on this giant puzzle.


For our weekly stART project emily practiced cutting out pictures. I cut the pieces into wide strips and Emily had to cut around them. She did a great job! Check out her final project here.


Emily also really enjoyed playing with these BRIO and Thomas The Train sets at my mom's house. These were my youngest brothers and I remember having so much fun making all different layouts with them. My mom and I set up the trains and Emily spent a good hour playing with the green train, moving it all over the tracks and telling a whole story to go with it.

Our favorite books from this week:

• The Teddy Bears' Picnic
• Bear Snores On ~ Karma Wilson
• Go, Dog. Go! ~ P.D. Eastman
• Little Cloud ~ Eric Carle

Check out the great things that others are doing in their TOTSchools by clicking the button on the top of this page!!

Kids in the Kitchen ~ Dried Basil

Every year we grow Basil in our garden and never use all of it. Last year I dried it and loved that it didn't go to waste and that I could use it during the winter. This year Emily enjoyed helping me!

I cut a bunch of basil from the garden.

Emily helped me pluck off the leaves.

We filled up the salad spinner and then I washed the leaves.

Emily had fun pushing the top to make it spin.

Emily placed the leaves on the baking sheet and I put it in the oven at about 200 degrees until they were dried out.
(For this step Emily decided Big Abby had to come sit with us and help too!)


Visit A Little Fun with Me and Lu for some more great recipes :0)

Open Ended Art ~ Mosaics with Play Dough

Emily's Play Dough Mosaic

This month's Open Ended Art theme is Mosaics. This weeks material is play dough. I was really at a loss for something interesting for this one so I decided to just roll out some play dough, have Emily cut it into squares or squarish pieces and place it on some paper. When I gave Emily the black construction paper she asked for glue. At firsy I was like we don't glue play dough, but then I thought about it and decided we would give it a try. After all we glued every other mosaic. Emily was thrilled! We both ended up really enjoying this one :0)

Emily cutting the playdough into squares, after I took this picture we decided a pizza cutter was much easier to use for this!

Emily gluing on her play dough pieces.

Emily's finished playdough mosaic!

stART ~ The Teddy Bears' Picnic

A Story + Art = A Great stART!

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our book and art project and maybe even share your own too! For an explanation of stART click here.

We read the book The Teddy Bears' Picnic. This is a children's book illustrated by Renate Kozikowski for the song written by John Walter Bratton in 1907, with lyrics added in 1932 by the songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. Earlier in the week we had a Muffin Tin Monday Picnic after reading the book. We talked about the foods that Emily would like to take on a picnic too. Since we have also been working on the letter Aa I thought it would be fun to make a picnic blanket with all of Emily's favorite foods and some cute little finger print ants too! This project took us a few days to finish, but Emily had a great time working on each part.

First Emily painted some paper with red water color paint. Before she painted the paper I made it "Magic" paper by coloring squares in a checker board pattern with white crayon.

While we waited for the very wet paper to dry Emily colored in the foods she would like to eat at her picnic.

I cut the paper into strips and had Emily practice cutting the strips in apart.

Emily glued the foods onto the picnic blanket paper.

I helped Emily make fingerprints with black paint to look like ants. Here she is trying it on her own!

When the ants dried I let Emily use a marker to make their legs.

Emily's Ant Picnic!

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