Deirdre, Author at JDaniel4s Mom

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

Kids Gardening – Planting a Pumpkin’s Seeds in a Pumpkin

October 11, 2013 By Deirdre

Planting pumpkin seeds in a pumpkin is our latest attempt to grow pumpkins. Last summer we tried several times to grow pumpkins in our backyard. The seeds grew into long vines with beautiful blooms. The blooms were then eaten by big beetles that apparently love pumpkin flowers and live under the shed we planted our pumpkin seeds beside. This fall I decided we would try to grow them one more time with seeds fresh from a pumpkin.
Why?JDaniel and I recently read a book called Pumpkin Hill and that same afternoon I came across a post from Growing PreK called The Pumpkin Project. We didn’t think that this was a coincidence. It was like we were having a kids gardening project put in front of us that we really needed to do.

Kids Gardening Project with Pumpkin Seeds

Preparing the Pumpkin
I love the idea of growing a pumpkin in a pumpkin. Growing in PreK cleared the pumpkin seeds out of the pumpkin and left the guts and everything else inside. We cleared everything out of the pumpkin using our hands at first. We clawed and pulled the guts and seeds out. Our hands were soon covered in slippery and slimy substances. Then we used ice teaspoons to scrape along the inside of the pumpkin to separate the remainder of the pumpkin’s guts from its interior wall.

Most planters and pots have holes in the bottom of them for drainage. We pushed a screwdriver into the bottom of the pumpkin to give it some areas for drainage too. That and one of us might over water the seeds and I didn’t want them to drown.

When we had completely cleaned out the pumpkin, we headed to the kitchen sink to rinse off the seeds. I am not sure that we needed to clean them off, but I thought it was the right thing to do for this kids gardening project.

Planting in the Pumpkin

With the seeds clean we headed back outside to fill the pumpkin with potting soil. We couldn’t decide how deep into the soil the seeds needed to be. What we decided to do was to add soil then seeds, add soil then seeds, and add soil then seeds. The hope is that we have some seeds at the right depth.

Finally, JDaniel watered the soil to give the seeds a moist area to grow in. We must have put in too much water. Just beneath the pumpkin on a rubber mat, we placed the planted pumpkin on a pool of water appeared. I was so glad we had put drainage holes into the pumpkin for this kids gardening project.

Exploring a Book

The link to Pumpkin Hill below is an affiliate link.

Pumpkin Hillby Elizabeth Spurr is the wonderful story about how a lonely pumpkin became a whole patch of pumpkins. The lonely pumpkin grew alone on a hill. One day it broke from its vine and rolled down a hill and into a field. When it finally came to a stop, it broke open and scattered its seeds all over a field.

The owners of the field couldn’t decide what to grow in the field that falls and so it was left unplanted. As time went on pumpkins grew in the field. No one knew they were there and so no one came to get them. The pumpkins withered and died leaving their seeds in the soil. Once again the farmer plowed the field and left it without seeds. He just couldn’t decide what to plant.

This time a wind blew the pumpkins out of the field and into town. There were pumpkins everywhere. What happened next? Well, you will have to read the story to see what happens to all of them. Let’s just say that were just like they grandfather pumpkin.

In our case, our pumpkin and its seeds are sitting on our front step. I am hoping that we will have little sprouts by Halloween. The weather here in South Carolina has stayed warm and sunny. If it stays warm, planting a pumpkin this late in the year may still work out for us. Hooray! This kids gardening project has been a success.

Here are some more fun kids gardening activities:

Plastic Egg Greenhouse

Paper Plate Greenhouse

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

Mama, Do You Love Me?

October 9, 2013 By Deirdre

My family wasn’t big on saying the words “I Love You” out loud. They wrote it in cards at birthdays, but beyond that I don’t remember hearing it. ( I could be forgetting other instances though.) I tell JDaniel that I love him all the time because of that and well because I love him a whole lot.

When the two of us were together most of the day, I would say it all during the day. He must have loved hearing it, because he has started asking me if I love him when he gets up in the morning, when I pick him up from school, and when I tuck him in a night. It is like he has a deficit in his heart my telling him that I love him.

Starting school has been a transition for us. JDaniel being in school all day has been new for him. It means a longer time of following school rules. There are 27 children in his class and that means there are twenty six other children who need attention from the kindergarten teacher and aide. It means there isn’t someone reminding him that he is special and loved as often.

I am sure the teachers and aides at his school love the students, but it is a different kind of love than he has enjoyed being given to him when he was at home.

There aren’t the constant reminders of being loved. There weren’t constant reminders at home all the time though. We did and still do lock horns. He is expected to follow family rules and when he doesn’t follow them I am sure he doesn’t feel that I love him. JDaniel has shared that very thing with us from his “timeout” spot.

Still right at this moment he need more reassurances that I love him. In many ways he reminds me of a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter. It is like he is stockpiling reminders that I love him to carry with him to school. It feel like he should have had a number of I love yous stored from his younger years, (I know I said it often.) but he doesn’t seem to have enough.

There have been so many changes this fall. Kindergarten full day was a huge change, but there have been others. Knowing his dad and I are both job hunting has made him nervous about the future. We have tried to upbeat and remind him that God will give us the jobs He wants us to have. Having less time to play and do things together do to fuller days is something he has complained about.

So, I am snuggling with JDaniel in the morning and whispering into his ear, ” I love you.” I am placing notes in his lunch telling him that I love him. I am creating I love you lunches. Finally I am hugging him a little longer at bedtime and saying, ” I love you! I love you! I love you!”

We all can have times when the I Love You sections of our hearts need filling so, when JDaniel asks,” Mama, do you love me?” I will answer him back with words of love. He loves to hear them and I so love to say them.

This post is linked to Things I Can’t Say and Mrs. Matlock.

Sight Word Game – Apple Tree Words

October 8, 2013 By Deirdre

When JDaniel came home from school last week, he found an Apple Tree Words sight word game hanging from a tree beside our driveway. “What is that? ” he asked me. “It is a fun way to work on sight or popcorn words,” I told him.
He gave me a look like more sight words. Yes, we have been working on sight words a lot this fall. JDaniel is learning some of them at school and we have been working on some at home. We have worked with them several different ways. There has been sight word snacks and sight word eye charts to name a few. Apple Tree Words gave him a chance to play a game that required him to get up and move.

Sight Word Game – Apple Tree Words

Create
I found some apple cutouts in my fall folder of ideas. ( I love when I find treasures like that.) On each of the apples, I placed a sight word. The apples were then mounted onto a blank index card. The cards had holes punched into them and ribbon placed through the hole.

When the cards are completed, I hung them up on a tree with low hanging branches.

Play

JDaniel was given a plastic basket to collect the apples from the tree. Each apple could not be picked until the word on the apple had been read. If I had to help me sound out the word, the apple had a remain hanging until he had read one other apple word correctly.

JDaniel’s favorites are the one and two letter words. He went for those first.Word after word came down from the tree. There were only a few words that gave him any trouble. He actually ended up having to capture each word between his fingers and reading it.

After the Activity Idea
The one thing that I didn’t plan for in this sight word game was that JDaniel might try to pull the apple tree words down instead of trying to slip the ribbons off the branches. Thankfully the tree we used for the apple tree word sight word game has flexible limbs. When he pulled the words down the limp bowed down and let the word’s ribbon slip right off.Have you picked apples this year?

Fire Ladder Learning Activities

October 6, 2013 By Deirdre

Today begins Fire Safety Week! To celebrate Fire Safety Week along with Fire Prevention Month I placed a fire truck ladder made of tape down a hall on the first floor of the house. When my husband asked what we were going to do with the ladder, I told him that JDaniel and I would brainstorm ways to use it.I hadn’t really thought about how we would use it initially. It was just time to take up the hallway numbers that had been going down the hallway for a couple of months. It did know that between JDaniel and I we would come up with a wide range of ideas.

Pretend Play

The first idea we came up with was to pretend to climb up the ladder. It looks easier than it is. You have to get down on all fours. Then you reach for the next rung and climb and reach and climb. Young knees may not feel the challenge of moving along a wood floor. Old mom knees felt the challenge!It was fun to pretend to be a fireman climbing the ladder. Climbing horizontally instead of vertically was new and unique.

Number Recognition

Calling out the numbers on a flashcards one at a time in order to move up a rung of the ladder was a simple way to review numbers. Early learners may want to work on the numbers 0-20. Older learners might want to work on larger two or maybe even three digit numbers. We worked on a variety of numbers.

Counting On

Agreeing on a number you want to start counting with on the bottom rung and then counting on until you reach the top of ladder is a second way we worked on number recognition.Some children like to start counting by counting from 1 on up to the number they need to start with. This is one of those learning activities that can help them wrap their brains around starting at the agreed number and going on. It helped us build a foundation for counting on.

Math Facts

Reviewing addition facts by starting on the bottom rung with first addend and then stepping up one rung at a time while adding the second addend is a lot of fun.Hint: You may find that you need to make more rungs or a longer ladder if you are working beyond early addition facts. We had fun adding movement to simple addition facts.

If you want to work on subtraction facts, you could move down the ladder instead of up or by taking steps backwards.

Sight Words

Just as you moved forward a rung by recognizing numbers, you could move up the ladder one rung at a time as you read sight words. Reviewing sight words is not always exciting. Putting on a fire hat and firemen’s raincoat and climbing rungs of a tape ladder can make reviewing them more fun.

Conclusion

The idea of doing fire ladder learning activities is to get children moving while learning. Some children enjoy getting up out of their seats to learn often. Others may be able to sit for longer periods of time, but need some variety of leaning activities offered to them. Either way fire ladder learning activities are fun and allow children to learn in a new way.

Fire Truck Craft

October 6, 2013 By Deirdre

One of the fun things I have been doing to help JDaniel’s class this year has been to help with the SEEDS program. It is right up my alley. The program is like Read.Explore.Learn. and you know how much I love to explore books.

I decided to share a fire truck theme book with them called Meeow and the Big Box is about a kitten who uses a big box to create a fire truck for pretend play. We first heard this book shared at a library storytime focused on fire safety. The librarian created a visual using a box that walked us through each of Meeow’s steps. The children just loved this book.

Creating the Fire Truck Craft

I only get about half an hour to read the book and do the craft. To save time I try to have everything cut out and ready to glue down. I even do a trial run on my own or with JDaniel to time it. He loves getting to be a guinea pig for his class.

Here is how the trial for this craft turned out:

First, we put the body of the fire truck on black paper. Then JDaniel added the windows and white bumper area. I think I could have cut a long strip for the bumper. It didn’t stick out very far in the front or back of the fire truck. I may need to make these a little longer for the class.

The windows for the fire truck were moved around a lot. JDaniel had ideas about where they needed to go and not go a couple of times. They really could go anywhere on the front of a fire truck and could be turned vertically or horizontally. I think not having a specific place for the windows gives the children can invite to make their trucks unique.

After working on the windows, JDaniel worked on adding the yellow accessories to the truck. The ladder could have gone anywhere on the truck or even on the roof of the truck. Both of the lights could have gone on the top or on the front. The trial run ended up with one of the top and one on the bottom.

The last thing to go on the fire truck craft was the wheels. I am not sure that fire trucks have brown wheels, but black wheels would have blended into the black background so, I went with brown.

I think it will be fun to do this craft with JDaniel’s class. We had fun working on it together. It would also be great to create with your children during National Fire Safety Month in October. They would probably like to read Meeow and the Big Box and make a fire truck too.

Read.Explore.Learn. – Fire Safety Themed Activites

October 4, 2013 By Deirdre

October is Fire Prevention Month. JDaniel loved to climb all over a fire truck when it came the library for Fire Prevention Month. Now that he is in school all day we can’t head over for story time and the fire truck’s visit. I decided to share with you and him fire themed learning activities and book designed to help children learn about fire safety.

This post contains affiliate links

Most children love fire trucks, dalmatian dogs, and well everything that is fire safety related except maybe fire alarms. Sparky the Fire Dog is a book filled with cute and informative pictures about a dog how he keeps safe.This books opens great discussions about fire safety and what children need to do encase of a fire. It is written in such a way that it doesn’t scare kids or place ideas in their heads about fire that they don’t need there.

Fire Safety Themed Activities to do After Reading the Book

Fire Roll and Count 1-20

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Roll and Cover Fire Truck

One of the areas JDaniel is working on at school is number recognition. He can count almost to 100 without skipping numbers, but recognizing numbers can be a challenge. I decided to focus this number recognition game of the numbers 1-20. He is actually good at recognizing most of the numbers in that range. I thought introducing a new number game would be easier with number he knew most of the numbers. I can always go back and put in more challenging numbers on the board later.

Fire Truck Roll and Cover 1-20

The game is really easy to play. You simply roll the three die and then you count the dots displayed on the dice. Once you have the number, you place a red button on the number.

I like using buttons for game board pieces. They are great for fine motor skills and the game board came we used again and again because it is mark free.

Options:

You could use any of the following to mark the game board permanently if you like:

bingo marker
magic marker
pencil
crayon

You could also put the boards in a plastic sleeve and mark on the sleeve instead of the board itself.

You could used dice with number instead of dots to make the adding more challenging.

Fire Safety Lotus Chart

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Lotus Chart

JDaniel’s teacher mentioned that they will be using lotus charts a lot this year. I wasn’t familiar with them and how they were used when she mentioned them at Back to School night so, I googled them. A lotus chart contains a central box that displays the theme or concept of the chart. Around the center box words or pictures can be placed that illustrate the concept or theme.

I created a lotus chart that JDaniel and I could used to display fire safety words. The wonderful thing about doing a chart like this while exploring a book is that you can look back in the book for words that you want to use and how to spell them.

This is not one of my a fire safety themed activities focused on math, but I thought you would like to see it.

Fire Dog Number Count

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Spot Counting

This is more of a preschool center activity than one for kindergartners, but I love how cute it turned out. JDaniel didn’t have any trouble placing the correct number of button onto each dog to give it spots. I guess I could have made it harder by giving him bigger numbers and bigger dogs to put the buttons on.

Free Worksheets

I get comments all the time about wanting to have the handout or worksheet we have used to explore books. Up until now I have been sharing them. Not because I didn’t want to share them, but because I haven’t taken the time to create PDFs of them.

This week I have copies of the Fire Roll and Count game and the Fire Safety Lotus Charts. All you have to do is click on this Fire Themed Learning Activities and they are your.

What books are you exploring this week?

Picking Apples with My Kindergartner

October 2, 2013 By Deirdre

Visiting an apple orchard was one of the things on our fall bucket list that we wanted to check out first. Actually with only a few weeks left in apple season here in the Carolinas, it really needed to be done first. JDaniel and I decided to check it off our list. Picking apples with my kindergartner was going to be so much fun.

Details on Picking Apples with My Kindergartne

The only draw back with doing it the weekend we did was a forecast of rain. JDaniel and I headed out early in the morning to try to beat the rain.

My husband would have loved to come, but he really needed to study for a class he is taking. It turns out we really could have used him to reach the beautiful red apples at the top of the tree. There were tons waiting at the top of the trees for a really tall person to come and get them.

Both JDaniel and I tried climbing up the trees to get to some of the apples that were out of our reach. Climbing inside the tree also helped us keep warm and dry. It had started to drizzle a little by the time we reached the rows of Galas apples. The temperature had started to drop too. It was way warmer inside the tree than it was outside the tree.

Due to the weather I would say that we spent as much time in the trees as we did out of them. After a long time moving through the archway of branches created by the trees and climbing up them, we both stopped to take a rest. I just love this picture of JDaniel. He looks so comfortable sitting in the branches.

When we had finally filled out baskets, we headed out from the canopy of trees to find that fog had rolled in. It was really odd to hear people coming towards us before we would see them. It reminded me of a scene from the movie Brigadoon. The fog faded as we headed into the the orchard’s purchasing center to pay for our apples and to buy some apple doughnuts.

Apple doughnuts are something Sky Top Orchard is known for. Despite there being a really long line for doughnuts, JDaniel thought we totally needed to wait. After tasting one, I totally agree with him. They were really wonderful. Actually we decided to eat a second one just to make sure they were really good.

By the time we wove around the store in the doughnut line the rain had started to fall again. Picking apples with my kindergartner was fun, wet and slightly chilly adventure. This year he was old enough to climb safely up tree branches and enjoy picking apples.

9 Apple Recipes for Kids

October 1, 2013 By Deirdre

We love apples at our house. They are on our shopping list every week. They are great to eat on their own or as a part of a dessert, dip, or lunchtime main dish.When I looked back through the archives, I found that we had created and/or made 9 apple recipes for kids. Each was wonderfully delicious and super easy to make. I hope you will find one or two or nine that you like and want to try at your house.Dutch Apple Dessert is one of my husband’s favorite apple dessert. JDaniel and I made it for Father’s Day last spring. It is made up of several layers of delicious ingredients that blend well together.

Apple Crisp is JDaniel’s favorite apple dessert recipe. He has been asking me to make it since we got back from picking apples. If you head over to check out this recipe you will see that I didn’t take the best picture of it. I didn’t include it in the collage for that reason, but t is awesome!

Apple Enchilada is a super easy dessert for kids to put together. We made them of Cinco De Mayo last year. Strawberries were used to garnish our dessert. I think dried apples would be great if you were making it this fall.

Mrs. Marnier’s Homemade Applesauce is super fun to make. We had to borrow a food mill to make it. The food mill was loaned to us by Mrs. Marnier. That is how the recipe ended up with her name on it.

Homemade Apple Chips have become a go-to afternoon snack at our house. They are super easy to make and taste delicious. They don’t last long at our house!

5 Dips for Apples were such fun for JDaniel and I do create. I wanted to come up with dips that didn’t have a caramel base. (Though they are awfully good!) It was fun to go through the fridge and pantry to come up with delicious dips all our own.

Apple Chicken Salad turned out to be a lunchtime favorite of mine. JDaniel enjoyed it and I really loved it. I will be making it again and again.

Apple Cinnamon Bread was made to take to JDaniel’s teachers during the first week of school. We had one problem with it. Can you guess what it was? Answer: We kept eating it. I had to resort to making double batches of it.

Apple Sandwich Sushi Rolls were made for JDaniel to take in his lunch to school. His bento box came home empty that day. That means they were a total success. This post will walk you through how to make them.

I have shared with you 9 apple recipes for kids. Do you have a favorite apple recipe you like to make with your children?

Kids Lunch- Apple Filled Lunch

September 30, 2013 By Deirdre

I should be thinking of lunches with leaves or maybe pumpkins, but I am still creating kids lunches with that are apple filled. Our recent trip to an apple orchard has filled our house to the brim with apples. Apples have been appearing during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Oh! and sometimes snacks. I hope you will like this apples for kids lunch Bento.

This lunch contains several of the things that were leftover from my apple recipe experiments. The applesauce actually isn’t homemade. JDaniel has been dying to help me make some, but we haven’t had a chance between school, soccer and swimming. I did use red sugar to create an apple on top of the applesauce.

The apple chips are something we have made several times this fall. I share the recipe for them last week. They spend a lot of time in the oven, but take every little time to make. JDaniel was thrilled to find them in lunch.I found a wonderful recipe for turkey meatballs in a Taste of Home magazine that had apples in them. I followed the recipe almost completely. Instead of using turkey stuffing along with the egg, ground turkey, grated apple I used cornbread stuffing.

JDaniel complained that the meatballs were to spicy so, I gave him cup of apple jelly to dip the meatballs into. Apple jelly is really bland. It coated the spiciness of the meatballs and made them something JDaniel enjoyed having in his lunch. We will have to try using dips with other foods that a deemed spicy.

You will find more apple themed ideas on my Apples board on Pinterest. There are more Bento ideas for kids lunch on my Bento Lunch board.

Here are some other wonderful apples ideas:

Applesauce Toppings Bar

Apple Chicken Salad Bento

Apple Cinnamon Bread

What apple dishes does your family enjoy?

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Reading Activities with an Apple Theme

September 27, 2013 By Deirdre

Apples is a wonderful picture book that shares tons of information about apples. The illustrations help young readers picture walk through the book. There is a lot of text on each page and many young readers will need to have this book read to them. It is so worth reading with them even if it is only a page or two at a time.

The book shares how bees help pollinate apple blossoms, young trees are encourage to grow, the history of the apple and so much more. My son loves to know why things are they way they are. This book shared with him a bounty of information on apples. He really liked the history of apples the best. It discuss ancient Greece and Rome. JDaniel is really into that time period right now.

As I mentioned the illustrations are wonderful. Phyllis Limbacher Tildes pictures really illustrate what the text is sharing. I think you will really enjoy exploring this book.

What did we do to explore this book?

Working with Syllables

When I was teaching syllables were taught in second grade, now identifying syllables is taught as a pre reading activity. JDaniel came home with worksheet focusing on syllables. I decided maybe we should work on them at home too.

I used the same template I created of the math activities last week to create syllable cards with apple themed words on them. JDaniel and I sounded out the words on the cards and clapped the number of syllables each word has.

Then he put a paper clip over the number of syllables each word has. We had fun clapping and clipping. This maybe a style of task card that I make for him again and again for reading activities and other content area skills.