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+.

Taking Time to Play- At Home with Ali

July 24, 2012 By Deirdre

It is beyond wonderful to have At Home with Ali taking time to play here to today. She hosts a wonderful blog that focuses on being creative with your children. After reading the post below, I would love for you to check out her post on a little construction site. It will inspire you to create and make you want to get down in the sand and play with your children.

I am thrilled to be guest posting at JDaniel4’s Mom today in the Taking Time to Play series.

I thought I would feature an activity that I used to do with my eldest daughter and is now seeing a resurgence with my youngest (almost 2 years). We call it ‘felties’ and it is a very popular game in our house.

I always do this quiet activity one on one, so we have to save it for days when my 4-year-old is at preschool. It is a great springboard for interaction with lots to talk about – size, shape, color.

‘Felties’ is very simple. I have some large felt pieces in blue, purple, yellow, green and pink. I grab a pair of scissors and we sit down on the rug together. We use one piece of felt for the base and use the others to cut shapes and objects.

We normally stick to simple shapes – squares, triangles, circles, flowers, fish, ponds, and boats. The momentum is lost if I spend too much time perfecting a complicated shape or object so I try to be quick with the scissors. I ask her what she wants me to cut out or give her a suggestion if she needs a prompt. It has been during this game that I have learned just how many colors and shapes she already knows!

Each time we play ‘felties’ she does different things with the pieces. Sometimes she colour matches – placing a pink triangle on a pink square, a purple square on a purple circle. Sometimes she tries to fill the entire felt mat and sometimes she lines the pieces up in straight rows.

We also use the commercial felt boards and pieces that you can buy in a variety of themes. Both of my kids also like these but prefer sitting down with me and asking for mommy-made custom felt pieces. It certainly isn’t about the quality of the felt pieces, as there is no way I could cut out a unicorn! In fact, I am always surprised at how much my kids like this activity, I guess it proves that the simpler things in life are often the best.

Olympics for Kids- Olympic Symbols Bento Snack

July 23, 2012 By Deirdre

I am so excited about the Olympics in London! I guess you have been able to figure that out. Last Monday I featured Fruit Filled Olympic Rings for a breakfast meal and this week I have created an Olympic themed snack Bento.JDaniel and I have been talking about the Olympic symbols and what they mean. He was so excited to see some of the symbols in this snack Bento. The fact that the symbols were made of some of his favorite foods might have added to the excitement.The Olive Wreath or kotinos is made of fresh green spinach. JDaniel loves fresh spinach so much that he asked for full-size leaves after eating the smaller ones.

The ham and cheese creation on the right is supposed to a torch with a flame. I think if I had narrowed the handle of the torch it would have looked more torch like. If you imagine the end of the torch as being a little long, it might help too.The Olympic rings are round crackers with wonderful toppings. There is grape jelly, black olives, rhubarb jelly from Two Bears Farm, bananas, and pear applesauce on one of each of the crackers. If these are not your children’s favorite foods, you can always substitute other foods in the Olympic colors. They are blue, yellow, black, red, and green.JDaniel completely cleared out this Bento so, I guess you could say this snack won a gold medal in my Olympics for Kids food challenge. I just love it when that happens.

If you like this Olympic idea, I think you will love these Olympic themed activities too.

Olympic Torch IdeasEasy Painting Ideas- Gold Medal PaintingFruit Filled Olympic Ring Snack

Elympics – Storybook and Lunch Creation Idea

Olympic Printable Passport

Olympic Torch STEM Activity

Olympics for Kids: Olympic Torch Painting Projects

July 21, 2012 By Deirdre

We have been exploring the symbols of the Olympics at our house this week.We started with the Fruit Filled Olympic Ring last Monday. Then we moved on the Olympic Torch. We did two painting project using the Olympic torch.

The first paint project involved using flame shaped sponges to create different colored flickers of flame on orange paper.

I had planned on using red and yellow paint for this project. JDaniel pointed out that flames can burn things and cause them to be black. He though we needed to make black flames too.

I have to confess the idea of using black paint at the beginning didn’t seem like a great idea, but I was wrong the black paint made really pretty flame flickers.

When the paint had dried, I cut flame shapes out of our drawing. We then glued them onto a brown torch made out of a old envelope.Later we glued the torch to black paper. The layering of paint colors contrasts well with the black paper and really add to the flickering effect we were trying to get on the flames.

Olympic Torch Painting Projects for Kids

The second project using a torch like painting tool was more fun to create then the final product would show. I don’t think I used enough paint in the paint and water mixture.

I wrapped a paper towel around a kitchen spoon and then secured the towel to the spoon with twist ties from loaves of bread.

We then dipped the spoon into several different colors of paint mixed with water. Once we had finished dipping the torch like painting tool into the paint, we took the twist ties of and set the paper towel out to dry

The colored paint really only took hold on a few of the edges. The torch should have been dipped in darker colors for a longer period of time for this to really turn out well.We did have fun creating this project. I guess that sometimes it is fun to just enjoy the process of creating art even if the final product turned out differently then you thought it would.

You will find more Olympic Themed activities on my Olympics board on Pinterest

Read.Explore.Learn.- Green Earth #readforgood

July 20, 2012 By Deirdre

I am participating in the MeMe Tales #readforgood Readathon 2012 this summer. During the Readathon, anyone who signs up on the MeMeTales site is given access to the books being featured for free. Each week the books follow a theme. The theme this week is Green Earth. The books being spotlighted this week are Let’s Go Chipper and What Does It Mean to Be Green.

Links below are affiliate links

Lets Go Chipper-Into the Great Outdoors is a really cute story about a squirrel who know all kinds of wonderful facts about the great outdoors and taking care of the earth. He helps you to learn what to pack when you go camping and information about the animals you might see.

What Does It Mean To Be Green? takes a child through ways to recycle and help take care of the Earth that are practical and shares tasks that would be easy for them to complete.

What did we do with these books?

Nature Observation Hike or Walk

I planned to take JDaniel on a nature hike at Paris Mountain Park with a nature guide, but the hike got rained out.

Plan B was to wait for a sunny day and visit a community park not too far from our house called Legacy Park and observe nature there.

The section of the park was perfect for doing an observation walk. It contains two water structures, pathways, a small bridge, stepping stones, and beautiful flowers.

You could create a checklist for an observation walk, but on this walk, I just followed JDaniel’s lead as to what he noticed.

The waterfalls in the park are always JDaniel’s first stop. He loves to find rocks that will guide him as close to them as he can. The rocks can get slippery as you get closer to the falls and it is possible to end up with wet sneakers when you “accidentally” fall in.

Chipper found all kinds of creatures during his walk. Although JDaniel looked very carefully, he didn’t find any animals in the water.

Cracks and crevices can often contain natural treasures. Slimy rocks were all that JDaniel was able to find.

After our time exploring water, we headed over to the beautiful bushes and finally found some creatures. This beautiful blue butterfly stayed close to the buses so, we were able to watch him for a long time.

When the blue butterfly had finally taken off, we found this really pretty orange butterfly to watch. We had to be really careful about keeping quiet while observing. The butterfly seems to jump when we talked.

Research the area you are planning to observe to find out what animals you might see.

- Decide how you are going to record what you observe. (Photos, drawings, journal entries, etc..).

Wear comfortable shoes and clothes.

- Bring a snack and some water if you will be going on a long walk.

Go over the park rules. Some parks don’t want to take physically take stocks or even sticks from them.

Bring a plastic bag to store your trash until you can get to a trashcan.

Disclaimer: I have been given copies of the book mentioned in this post by MeMeTales for participating in their Readathon 2012 #readforgood program.

Outside Play- Water: Old MacDonald’s Beach Trip

July 18, 2012 By Deirdre

It has been so hot this summer here in South Carolina. We have spent a lot of time exploring and playing with water. It has been a lot of fun, but we keeping doing the same things over and over again. Today I want to share with you a way your children can take the animals of Old MacDonald on a field trip to the beach.

I thought that it would be fun to have people share what they have been doing outside with water play to help us come up with new and exciting ways to play. There are several other blogs that share child-related activities that have joined me in co-hosting this event, but it is open to everyone.
My amazing co-hosts are Rainy Day Mum, Inspiration Laboratories, and Mama Pea Pod.
I hope you will enjoy the trip Old MacDonald and his animals had to the beach in my post below and that you will visit the posts of my co-hosts.

Oh! I do hope that if you have a post related to outdoor play you will link it up below and add this badge you see below to your post.

Old MacDonald’s Animals Beach Trip

Outside Play- Water: Old MacDonald's Beach Trip

It has been so hot on the farm that Old MacDonald decided to take some of his animals on a road trip to the beach!

Several animals that like to live on the wild side decided to travel on the front of the tractor while others arrived in a white plastic basket.

Outside Play- Water: Old MacDonald's Beach Trip - Traveling to the Beach

Oatmeal sand was spread in both the wet and dry area of the water table. JDaniel explained that they are in the sand in the ocean and on the beach.

Outside Play- Water: Old MacDonald's Beach Trip - Traveling to the Beach - Oatmeal Beach

The sand in the ocean caused the water to be rather cloudy, but the animals seem to enjoy floating around in it.

Old MacDonald must be confident that all his animals can swim. He seems to be looking away from the water instead of toward it.

Several animals seem unsure as to whether they want to get in the water or the sand. They spent time looking down at the sand but hesitated to get in it.

Eventually, everyone jumped in and took a swim. Even a tree seems to have made a trip from the farm and has started to float.

The water slide into the ocean had gotten very crowded.

It looks like a wonderful time at the beach was had by all.

How to Prevent Internal Drowning

JDaniel’s farm animals have holes in the bottom. We had to make sure they were carefully drained of water when we were done.

You may decide to place a drop of hot glue from a glue gun over the holes on your farm creatures to prevent water from getting into them.

The link below is an affiliate link.

If your children love this activity, I bet they will love the slime activities in this Ultimate Slime Book. It is filled with pretend play activities.

Olympics for Kids- Fruit Filled Olympic Rings

July 16, 2012 By Deirdre

With the Olympics starting in a few weeks I thought it would be fun to create a set of fruit filled Olympic style rings for JDaniel to have for breakfast. Each Olympic ring would feature a different kind of fruit.

JDaniel loves fruit and so I knew he would love these rings. He has gotten more particular about some of the food groups he used to enjoy, but the fruit group has remained wide open.

In fact he helped pick out all of these fruits during a recent grocery store run. I love that he picked ones that fit so well into the colors I needed for the rings. I bet your kids would have fun searching for fruit that matches the colors of each Olympic ring too.

The rings are made up of mini whole grain bagels topped with low fat cream cheese and then the fruit. The fruits we used were blueberries, raisins, red grapes, crushed pineapple, and kiwi. We tried to squeeze as much fruit as we could on each of the bagels. If your children are trying out a new fruit, you may just want to put a little taste of it on a bagel.

A great thing about this breakfast is that it contains fruits, a diary product, and whole grains. I felt good about having him eat the rings as his breakfast meal. It would have been great as a main dish for lunch too.

If you are looking for a fun way to introduce new fruits or even veggies to your children, have them search your fridge for items that match the colors of the Olympic rings. They might find that they really enjoy them.

Here are some more Olympic Ring or Symbol themed activities for kids:

Olympic Themed Graphs and Charts

Olympics for Kids- Printable Passport with Learning Activities

Olympics for Kids- Olympic Symbols Bento Snack

You will find more Olympic themed activities and snacks on my Olympic Related Ideas board on Pinterest.

Two Meals from Chipper the Squirrel #readforgood

July 15, 2012 By Deirdre

This week’s theme on MeMeTales: Readathon 2012 is Green Earth. One of the free books offered this week is Let’s Go Chipper featuring Chipper the Squirrel.

I had a great time making two meals based on Chipper this weekend! They were supposed to be a part of my Read.Explore.Learn. post for Friday, but I couldn’t wait to share them with you.

Chipper the Squirrel Food Creations

The first thing I made was a Summer Garden Lasagna. The recipe is located on Chipper’s blog. It is filled with all kinds of wonderful vegetables. My family really enjoyed this version of lasagna. I have to confess that I added a little more tomato sauce to the recipe than was called for. My guys really love tomato sauce.

The second thing I made was a tortilla Chipper. He came out a lot darker than the Chipper from the book. My Chipper ended up more purple than light brown. I don’t have brown food coloring and tried to create brown using the colors I have. In fact, my version of Chipper has darker fur and his clothes have a more neon tint due to the colors of food coloring I have. He was really fun to make though. I asked my guys and they both think is could be a close relative of Chipper.

If you haven’t joined the MemeTales Readathon 2012, it is not too late. We have really enjoyed reading their e-books this summer. I think you and your children would too.

If you like this food creation, here are more creations I have made.

Star Wars Food Creations

{Fun Foods} Cookie Cutter Creations Made of Watermelon

Marshmallow Recipe- Fruity Marshmallow Cloud Fluff

Christmas Snack- Decorating Cheese Trees

You will find more fun foods for kids on my Food Creations board on Pinterest. Please take a moment to check it out.

Olympics for Kids: Color Sorting

July 15, 2012 By Deirdre

With the Olympics right around the corner it is the perfect time to use the symbols of the Olympics to create Olympics for kids activities that allow children to review or explore learning concepts.

The Olympic symbol of interlocking rings of red, blue, green, black and yellow is a wonderful tool for practicing color identification. Placing colored pom poms to their appropriate colored ring with chopsticks is a fun way to practice finding color matches.

This Olympics for kids activity is so easy to put together. You will need a bag of multi-colored pom poms, a container to hold the pom poms before they are transferred to the rings, a copy of the Olympic rings with the rings colored in, and a fun way to transfer the pom poms. Chopsticks can be used to transfer the pom poms if you have them, but a spoon or tweezers could be used instead.

After moving the pom- poms to the rings on paper you can, introduce moving them into plastic cups that have been arranged into the Olympic ring configuration. Children will need to have the paper displaying the color arrangement of the Olympic rings to use as a guide or a single pom pom could be placed into appropriate cup to let the children know which color belongs in each cup. Using the paper ring display as a guide will provide an extra challenge for children who might easily move the pom-poms into a cup already displaying the color.

There may be some pom-poms in the container that are not the right color for this activity, but you may choose to use them in your pom- pom mixture. This will make sorting more fun.

Why?

They will cause your child will have to dig into the container to search and find the colors they need.

Children will have to analyze whether pom pom is needed before they have it in their transfer tool.

The extra pom poms will also give your child objects they can use to create a border around their Olympic rings or a flag pole at the edge of their ring paper.

More Olympics for Kids Activities

Olympic Torch Painting

Olympic Themed Graphs and Charts

Read.Explore.Learn.- Imagination #readforgood

July 13, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

I am participating in the MeMe Tales #readforgood Readathon 2012 this summer. During the Readathon, anyone who signs up on the MeMeTales site is given access to the books being featured for free. Each week the books follow a theme. The theme this week is imagination. The books being spotlighted this week are There is a Dinosaur in the Park!, Doors in the Air, and Night Boy

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

I chose to focus on the story There’s a Dinosaur in the Park! this week. It is a wonderful tale of a dinosaur that only a little boy can see that the park. The boy and the dinosaur play together, explore together and have just plain fun.

Can you guess the reason that no one can see the dinosaur? It really is green and is probably fierce in the smell, but it isn’t a dinosaur it is a trash can.

I chose this book because I wanted JDaniel to open his mind to the possible of things being more than the seem. I also thought this book would help with the book extension I wanted to do.

What did we do with the book?

Story Elements Box

JDaniel and I created a story elements box. We started by going over the elements or parts of a story. The who, what, where, and when that need to be part of a story. We skipped the why. Why? I decided we had enough elements to contend with given his age. He was pretty familiar with the terms, but we did take a few minutes to break down some familiar stories into their elements to make sure he really understood them.

Then we took an old plastic briefcase that I think came filled with baby care items, and filled it with objects from JDaniel’s room that he thought would be good in a story. He really loved the idea of a character in a story being a letter A and a rocket would be a good setting for a story.

I went through some magazines and pulled out some other pictures that I thought would be good settings for stories.

Once we had gathered everything we thought we needed, we took the box down to the kitchen table and started story building. I asked JDaniel to select what he wanted for each of the elements of the story.

Then it was time to start the story. We chose to tell the story orally although I could have had him dictate the story to me.

How did your story go?

A lion and a snake live in a birdhouse high up in a tree. One day they notice that a large object has landed in front of a red bear and his car. The car needs to be put into the shop for the weekend. The lion and the snake invite the bear to stay with them while his car is in the shop. He has a great time. They are good friends by the time the bear’s car is ready.

It is not a story that has a lot of details in it. I think they will come as we build more and more stories.

The wonderful thing about a story elements box is that it can be filled with all kinds of treasures. The objects in the box can be changed as often as the storyteller feels necessary. The box is portable so it can be taken with you on car trips or to doctor’s visits. It could also be taken into a child’s bed just before bedtime to create original bedtime stories.

Disclaimer: I am being given copies of the books being featured in the Readathon 2012 in return for writing post based on the books.

Help! This Duck Has Low Self Esteem!

July 11, 2012 By Deirdre

JDaniel doesn’t have trouble with low self-esteem at this point in life. He is confident about what he knows, how he looks, and who he is. I am working hard to help him have a good and positive self esteem. His self image shouldn’t be filled with arrogance or cockiness but I would like for him to like who he is.

We try to control what he sees and reads. I strongly believe that children can take in ideas from everything they are exposed to and those ideas can lead them to fears, misbelieves and confusing concepts. (JDaniel is only four. I know I won’t be able to always do this.)

Guess what I ended up exposing him to? A horrible cartoon with a terrible message. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until it was too late to stop it. I guess I could have stopped it and maybe should have stopped it, but I let him watch it and talked to him about it as he did.

Here is what happened:

JDaniel and I were at my mom’s house last Friday afternoon. My mom has her TV. on a lot and it was on when we were there. JDaniel noticed the TV wasn’t turned to a kid’s network and he asked her to change the station.

She changed it to a cartoon network and we proceeded to watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon called Downhearted Duckling. Jdaniel has watched Tom and Jerry cartoon with my husband and it hasn’t ever been a problem so, I said it would be alright.

Downhearted Duckling is about a duckling that reads the story the Ugly Duckling and decides he is too ugly to live. He tells Jerry that he is too ugly to live and he won’t believe him. Jerry tries to clean him up and dress him up. He still thinks he is ugly and wants to die.

The duckling then spends the rest of the show trying to be Tom the Cat to eat him. Tom doesn’t know the duckling has a problem and just wants to eat lunch.

At the end of the show a girl duck walks by the duckling who is now wearing a bag on his head. He sees her and tries to run away. She stops him and tells him that he is cute after the bag is removed.

I am glad the duckling finally sees that he isn’t ugly. I am glad he decides to live. I am so upset that a cartoon exists and is being shown at a time when children might be watching it. Some of those children maybe watching it on their own without some sitting beside them telling them the message is wrong.

I know there are children that feel ugly or unlovable. I think that they would totally take what this duckling was saying and his feelings to heart. Maybe they won’t, but I really hate to think that they would.

Beyond this terrible cartoon (This is my opinion of it.) there are so many messages being sent to our children young and old about how to look and what is handsome or pretty.

The duckling did what lots of kids do. He didn’t wait to see how things would turn out. He took the message that fit how he was feeling about himself and he ran with it.

If he had read the story to the end, he would have seen that the ugly duckling had a tough time, but he grew up to be swan.

Whether children grow up to be beautiful on the outside like a swan or beautiful on the inside or both, I want them all to grow up knowing they are each gifted, special , and unique.

I want them to understand that it is totally impossible to be someone else. They can emulate other people and work on areas they would like to improve, but each of them is wonderfully made.

How do I know that I read it is a trust worthy book that shares the truth?

This truth is I want my son to cling to:

“..I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made: your works are wonderful…” (Psalm 139:14)

The duckling in the cartoon needs to learn that or he will be back to thinking badly about himself if the girl duckling ever ends their relationship.

My son needs to know that who he is wonderful and special. He may not always here that from the world, but I am working on helping to bury that truth in his heart. I think the duck could have used that too. He had such trouble with his low self esteem.

Disclaimer: I purposely didn’t link to the cartoon I mentioned in this post. If you want to view it, you can find it on Youtube.com. I was afraid to have this post lead traffic to something I don’t want to see have a rise in views.

This post is linked to Pour Your Heart Out and Alpabe Thursday.