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+.

Great Posts I Came Across This Week- November 20th

November 20, 2010 By Deirdre

Child Related

Delightful Learning has an amazing unit she created for the book Corduroy. I love her button snake, graphing, texture, and all the other activities she did.

Little Helping Hands has a create post on creating a chameleons in her post Colorful Chameleons. The activity is genius.

Advent Related

I Blame My Mother has a great list of activities to do with your children during Advent in her post Celebrating Advent.

The Activity Mom has a great post called 2010 Activity Advent Calender. She has great learning activities to do during advent in her post.

Mom Related

Oops..There Goes My Mind has wonderful poem called I Heart Children. That will make you laugh, smile and maybe cry.

I Needed to Read This

Some Day You Gotta Dance has a post called A Prayer. That will make you think and then maybe even pray.

Recipe

Red Couch Recipes has an amazing recipe for a Turkey Cranberry Wreath. Yum!

Giveaway on Another Blog

Tiger Tales is hosting a six book giveaway on their blog. Here are the titles:

Starry Night, Sleep Tight: A Bedtime Book of Lullabies by Gail Yerrill

A Long Way from Home by Elizabeth Baguley

Hush, Little Baby illustrated by Petra Brown

I Love You All Year Long by Steve Metzger

If I Were…a Firefighter by Pat Hegarty

If I Were…a Princess by Pat Hegarty

Read.Explore.Learn.- Thanks Giving

November 19, 2010 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 the ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

Acorns Everywhere! by Kevin Sherry is about a very forgetful squirrel. He stashes acorns everywhere and can’t remember where to find them. He ends up taking berries from a few animals due to extreme hunger. Some of his stash of acorns is found and shared by some of the very animals that he has taken berries from. They are thankful that he is forgetful.

What did we do?

Math

We colored and numbered acorns and then looked for those numbers on a yardstick.

Outdoor Activity

We hunted for acorns in our yard.

Painting

JDaniel painted an A is for Acorn page. Apparently acorns are blue sometimes.

Individual Thankgiving Choices or Two for Thankgiving at Cracker Barrel

November 17, 2010 By Deirdre

If you walk into a restaurant on Thanksgiving and see two ladies in their seventies sitting together enjoying a thanksgiving feast, what do you think?

Do you think that their children must be spending Thanksgiving with their in-laws and will be with them for Christmas?

Do you think that their families live too far away?
Do you wonder if they have outlived their relatives?

If you walk into Cracker Barrel in Greenville, South Carolina on Thanksgiving Day, you will see two ladies in their seventies sitting together enjoying a thanksgiving feast together for two different reasons. One will be there because she didn’t have anyone to spend Thanksgiving with so she asked a friend to spend Thanksgiving with her. My mom will be the other lady. She was invited to spend Thanksgiving with one of my sisters in Georgia just as she has been for the last several years. She is sitting with her friend so her friend won’t be alone on Thanksgiving.

I bet that there are many people who end up spending Thanksgiving alone.

They may have to work on Thanksgiving Day and can’t travel to visit family.

They may be a college student who is going home for Christmas and can’t make the trip twice in two months.

They may not want to go down to dinner at the senior center and sit with others who haven’t anywhere else to go. It is just too depressing.

They may just want a quiet dinner for two.

They may not be able to afford the trip to see friends and relatives.

Whatever their reason for being alone, I hope that there is someone as special as my mom that will invite them to spend Thanksgiving with them.

Do you know someone that you need to invite to join you around the Thanksgiving table?

Evening Meal Thanks Giving

November 16, 2010 By Deirdre

I should probably pray with JDaniel before breakfast and lunch, but I haven’t started doing that with him yet. We do give pray before dinner. He has been reciting the same prayer every night for almost 9 months. It is very simple prayer. He just says, “Thank you, Jesus for our food.” Sometimes it is said with a mouth full of food. I really try to get him to wait until he has prayed to inhale food, but it is hard for him to wait if the food is in front of him. I thought it would be good for him to have food in front of him to thank God for. This may be a mistake.

I love the prayer my nephew Kevin sings before meals. I think he learned it in preschool.

Oh the Lord is good to me

and so I thank the Lord

for giving me the things I need

the sun and the rain and the apple seed.

The Lord is good to me.

I have thought about having JDaniel learn to sing this prayer. He has learned a number of the songs he has heard on his music CDs. I think he could learn to sing a prayer.

Last night he did add a new part to his prayer. He said, “Thank you, Jesus for our food and for my day.” I ask my husband how is day has gone when he come home each night. I guess JDaniel thought it would be good to incorporate thanks for his day into his prayer. Maybe if he keeps adding to his prayer I will set the song idea aside for awhile. It will be fun to see what he wants to give thanks for next. In our moring prayers he thanks God for fruit chews. The next addition could be food related.

What prayer do your children say before meals?

Muffin Tin Monday- Turkey’s Food Pyramid Meal

November 15, 2010 By Deirdre

Muffin Tin Monday’s theme is the food pyramid. I did some online research to find out what is a part of a turkey’s food pyramid and found that turkeys eat berries, seeds, grass, and bugs. Based on those findings I created the following meal: cranberries, corn (It is a seed.), fried okra (It looks like a seed.), a smashed rice ball covered in panko (It looks like dried-up grass with bugs on it.), a turkey sandwich with spreadable cheese feathers, and ants on a log.

JDaniel loved everything, but the celery. He hallowed out all the yummy things from the celery and left it in the tin.

The weather here in South Carolina has been balmy lately. JDaniel’s meal was inhaled outside on the deck where he could enjoy his meal in a picnic-like setting. He enjoyed it so much that we have been having picnics every day at lunchtime.

Christmas Book Exchange

November 14, 2010 By Deirdre

The Activity Mom and I are thrilled to be hosting a Christmas Book Exchange. It is such fun to get something special in the mail during the holidays. We believe it would be extra special to get a book that you can read year after year to your children or grandchildren.

Here are the details of the book exchange:

The deadline for signing up is November 20th, 2010.
We are asking that you spend $10 or less on the book including shipping.
We will e-mail you your partner’s information by November 23rd.
Please have your book in the mail to your partner by December 10th, 2010.
The Christmas Book Exchange is open to U.S. residents only to ensure that the book gets to you in time for Christmas.
If you choose to participate, please display the button above in your sidebar. It isn’t required but will let others know about the book exchange.

You do not need to have a blog to participate.

Here is what you need to do to participate:

Email JDaniel4’s Mom at jdaniel4smom@aol.com or The Activity Mom at nduggan2@gmail.com.

Your name

- Your address
- The age or ages of the children the book would be intended for

Whether the book should be religious or non-religious in genre
Whether you prefer a board book or non-board book

Please do not leave the above information in a comment.

Great Posts I Came Across This Week- November 13

November 13, 2010 By Deirdre

Mom Related

Things I Can’t Say has a wonderful meme called Pour Your Heart Out. The post she wrote last week is similar in its feelings about blogging to the Southern Institute post I mentioned above but is written in her own style. It is called Pour Your Heart Out: When Blogging Changes.

Mommy of a Monster (I Mean Toddler) has a great guest post by Organic Mother with Cool Whip called Baby Boot Camp that you will love.

Bloggers Need to Know This

Eat Move Make, had a post last week on scrapping. I had no idea what it was or how to stop it. Her post called Have You Ever Had Your Blog Scraped? taught me facts I needed to learn about it.

Marvelous Mom Reviews has a post called Featured “Twitter Partygoer” At TweeParties that introduced me to the fact that I can get an email letting me know about some of the Twitter parties coming up.

$15 Visa GC and Pillsbury Gift Pack Winner!

November 13, 2010 By Deirdre

The winner of the $15 Visa Gift Card and Pillsbury Gift Pack is Red Fuzzy Cow! I have contacted her via e-mail.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Veteran’s Day

November 12, 2010 By Deirdre

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

Veteran's Day Book for Children -My Big Brother

The book we read this week is called My Big Brother by Miriam Cohen. It is about a little brother who tries to fill his brother’s shoes when his big brother joins the army. This is a sweet story about how hard he works to do things just as his brother would have. It also talks about what he does to remember his big brother while he is away.

What did we do?

We have a number of members of my family that war veterans. My sister Kate has served in Qatar and Iraq. My grandfather and JDaniel’s grandfather GranDan served in World War II. I decided to share some of his GranDan’s memorabilia from his service.

Observed a Model

First, we carefully looked at a model GranDan made of the plan he flew in the Navy.

Created an Album

We looked through old pictures of GranDan and put them in a photo album from JDaniel to look through. GranDan passed away last winter. JDaniel loves to look at pictures of him.

Hungry Ants Come Marching In!

November 10, 2010 By Deirdre

We have a little ant problem in the kitchen. We have sprayed and put out traps. The ants seem to disappear only to reappear a few weeks later. As I started sweeping them up after breakfast this morning, this song came into my head. I have changed some words to fit our situation. Please feel free to sing along.

The Ants Come Marching In

The ants go marching one by one. Hurrah, hurrah!

The ants go marching one by one, the little one stops to pick up a crumb,