Acts of Kindess Challenge Archives

New Year’s Customs Sheet and Activities

December 26, 2013 By Deirdre

It is fascinating to explore the customs and traditions people celebrate during New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day around the world. I made a New Years Customs Page that shares what people do to celebrate around the world. The customs sheet could be read and discussed or it could become part of a learning activity that you could do at home or with your students at school.

What activities could you do with the New Year’s Customs Sheet?

Red Suitcase Craft– Cut out each custom square and glue it to a red construction paper suitcase. The squares will look like the old fashioned travel stickers people used to put on their suitcases long ago.

Concentration Game- Print out two sheets of the New Year’s Customs Sheet. Then cut out each customs. Place 18 custom pieces upside down and search for the matches.

Custom Puzzle Match-Print out a New Year’s Customs sheet. Cut each custom piece into two sections. The top section should contain the picture and part of the world that celebrates that custom. The bottom section should contain the custom. The cuts can be made with various styles of jagged edges. Then try to match custom to its picture like a puzzle.

Guess the Custom Game- After reading over each custom, have one person describe one of the pictures and everyone else can guess what the custom is.

Pictionary Custom Game- Cut out each custom from the New Year’s Eve Custom Sheet and place them in a stack. Take turns selecting a custom from the stack and illustrating it. Everyone else tries to guess what custom is being illustrated.

I bet you can find more ways to this New Year’s Customs Sheet. If you do, please leave a comment below sharing your idea.

Happy New Year!

Acts of Kindness Project- Remembering Those Who Serve

February 5, 2013 By Deirdre

Toddler Approved and several other kid bloggers are hosting the second annual 100 Acts of Kindness Project. Each week one of the hosts shares the theme of the week and encourages everyone to demonstrate acts of kindness during the week. Last year I shared each of ways we shared kindness with others and how we recorded what we were doing to keep track of them. We are still working through the challenges, but I haven’t been great at sharing how we have completed them with you. I did want to share a care package that we put together to send my brother in law in Afghanistan. He has been serving there for a few months and still has a few months to go. Remembering those who are serving our country overseas as well as in the states is really important to me.

Acts of Kindness Project- Remembering Those Who Serve

I started the project by gathering some wonderful treats from Trader Joe’s. JDaniel and I love to shop there. He really loves the fruit leather bars. I was able to find a variety of cookies, fruit bars, and fruit leather bars. I should have asked my sister Kate what he really likes, but time got away from me.

Directions for Putting This Acts of Kindness Project Together

jdaniel4smom_acts_of_kindness_box_filled

Then I set out a bunch of art supplies for JDaniel to decorate the inside of the box with. I wasn’t sure if I should let JDaniel decorate the outside of the box. I didn’t want to to interfere with the box getting to my brother in law.

JDaniel decided the heart shaped dolies needed to be scattered all over the inside box. He placed in them everywhere. Even the bottom of the box ended up with a few.
After he had added some paper and felt hearts, he added a piece of ribbon to the bottom of the box. He really wanted to weave it in and out of the holes on the outside of the box. I wasn’t sure that the post office would approve. He was a little disappointed, but understood that we wanted the box to get all the way to Afghanistan.

We waited a while for the glue to dry under the hearts and then filled it to the brim with the treats I had purchased. On top of the treats we added two cards that had been part of a doile printmaking project we did earlier in the week. I simply cut a few squares out of it and folded them into cards.

When everything had been packed into the box, we wrapped what seemed like an endless supply of packing tape around the box. Everything should be housed safely and securely inside the box.

We hope Uncle Chuck will love getting it.

How can we remember those around us that serve others by doing an acts of kindness project?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Retelling The Five Little Ducklings Activities

June 22, 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 explore the book 5 Little Ducks.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

We have been reading a lot of the animal books that are being featured on MemeTales: Readathon 2012 this week. The one we focused on was The Five Little Ducklings.

The ducklings in this story one at a time keep heading away from home even with Mama Duck quacking they should return.

JDaniel and I did four retelling activities to go along with this book. We usually do a variety of different types of activities with a book, but different ways to retell the story kept jumping into our heads.

Retelling Activity One: Furniture Retelling

JDaniel decided that this chair on the deck would be a great place for the ducks to climb away from the mama duck. The ducks tucked easily into the various crevices in the chair. Notice the mama duck is at the bottom watching over them.

Retelling Activity Two: Water Table Retelling

We put the ducks into JDaniel’s water table. The section divider made a great hill for the ducks to cross as they went on their way.

Retelling Activity Three- Painted Ducks on a Cooling Rack

We painted some paper ducks and put them on clothespins. The clothes pinned ducks were then put on a cookie cooling rack.

We were able to move the ducks around the cooling rack as they went away and came back.

Retelling Activity Four- Pom Pom Ducks

The pom poms had been taken out for a different activity, but JDaniel thought they would be great to use with a clothes pin to retell the story.

He simply picked up a pom pom to represent a duck in the story and moved him far away.

Next week we will be looking at the MemeTales featured books on friendship.

Disclaimer: I am being given the MemeTales: Readathon 2012 featured books for free in exchange for providing a post about them. We are really enjoying them.