Search Results for: Read.Explore.Learn.

12 Top Montessori Activities 2012

January 3, 2013 By Deirdre

A wonderful group of blogs that emphasis hands on learning called Montessori Bloggers is hosting a link called Top 12 Montessori Activities in 2012. JDaniel has always learned through hands on learning and playing with concepts. This past year provided him with various montessori activities that required he interact with concepts hands on. Many were included in my Read.Explore.Learn. posts. Others were shared in my Taking Time to Play series. Finally others were shared in posts I wrote for other blogs.

If you have Montessori activities that you have written about and shared on your blog I hope you will link them up below.

Here are some on mine:

12 Top Montessori Activities 2012 - Corn Cob Painting

JDaniel explored paint and texture while painting with corn in a post called Gimme Cracked Corn and I Will Share.

We explored Halloween safety rules and JDaniel explored how to follow them using the materials in this bin. The post was called Halloween Safety Rules and How to Review Them.

Placing bats alphabetically on a tomato cage that had been attached to clothes pins was one of the activities JDaniel did in a post called Baby Bats Lullaby- Read.Explore.Learn.

jdaniel4smom_new_years_eve_shakers_title

JDaniel sorted beans using chopsticks and then created New Year’s Eve noisemaker shakers with them. He also added pom-poms and pipe cleaners to beans in a water bottle. He is still playing with his noise maker shaker.

Hours were spent exploring this New Year’s Eve sensory bin. JDaniel and I explored it. He played with all of the contents and then he explained how to play them to his dad.

We had the best time trying to find out how many pennies we would need to make the water spill out of the cup in this water displacement experiment that was shared on the Kids Activities Blog.

Early in the fall JDaniel and I gathered bits of nature at a local park. Then he tried to use various kitchen tools to transfer them from the kitchen table to a plate on the floor. We tried spatulas, chopsticks, a whisk, and several other tools. This activity appeared in the Kiwi Crate Studio. They called it Transferring with Tongs.

JDaniel and I made alphabet soup using foam letters and some plastic treasures. The goal was to scoop up the letters and search the pot for the matching treasure. This post was called Cooking Alphabet Soup and was a guest post for a blog called Actually Amy.

I learned by watching JDaniel explore Bristle Blocks in a post called Taking Time to Play- Follow His Lead. Learning beside and from my son has really taught me a lot about learning.

This simple weaving project was just supposed to be something JDaniel and I did one afternoon on our deck for our Christmas tree. The boy next door came over to see what we were doing and he ended up making a set to take home. They both loved that there wasn’t a wrong way to weave these ornaments. I shared this activity in a post called A Christmas Spider’s Miracle- Read.Explore.Learn.

One of the best things I bought JDaniel this year was a bag of buttons. He loved to sort them, explore them, and pattern with them. We spent hours playing “I Spy a Button..” I shared some of the ways we worked with buttons in a post on the Kids Activities Blog called Button Activities: Color Matching and More.

St. Patrick's Day Activities: Leprechauns Never Lie Learning Fun

JDaniel had the best time hunting for plastic shamrocks in baby wipe containers. The containers were filled with beans and he used various tools including a little rake to dig them up. The post that contains this activity is called Read.Explore.Learn.- Leprechauns Never Lie.

My Posts From Other Blogs – Fall Crafts and Actvities

November 22, 2012 By Deirdre

Today I am taking the day to enjoy time with members of my extended family. The Smith clan is in South Carolina this year for a family reunion and a time give thanks. I hope you enjoy looking for this wonderful collection of fall crafts and activities.

I am giving thanks that they everyone from out of town is staying at the amazing Embassy Suites hotel and that almost all the food is catered. Our Cape Cod house would have been filled to its rafters if everyone had tried to dine at our house.

If you have stopped by for a moment or two of your Thanksgiving downtime, here are some of the posts I have shared on other blogs and websites this month as well as some of my old favorite from this blog.

The other blogs and websites represented are Kiwi Crate’s The Studio and Kids’s Activities Blog this month.

Here are the Fall Crafts and Activities:

A yummy Turkey Bento Lunch with apple feathers and frozen yogurt Thanksgiving molds was served to JDaniel two weeks ago for lunch.

JDaniel and I made a delicious Pumpkin Smoothie. It was smooth and just a tad spicy according to the JDaniel.

One morning for breakfast JDaniel had Apple Cider Pancakes. My husband keeps asking for me to make more the ones I made for him disappeared too quickly he claims.

The final picture in this collage isn’t food related, but we did have fun with the owls in it. They were for a post called Owl Craft for Skip Counting. We counted by ones as we counted their beaks, we counted by twos when we counted their eyes, and we counted by threes when we counted their claws.

A turkey activity for preschoolers and others to work on spatial terms like above, below, and over was created with feeling. JDaniel was told to place the small red feather on the large green one. Then we were asked to place it beside the large red feather. We had a great time making various turkeys with this activity.

Beside it is a turkey JDaniel created. His feathers were created by painting in a salad spinner.

JDaniel and I did our November shopping for our local food bank using a word and picture guide I created that displays food the food bank really needs.

We worked on symmetry while creating a found art object or centerpiece. JDaniel loved collecting the objects to create the project with.A paper boat was used to create a really simple Mayflower craft! I love how the ruffled edge of the plate looks on the sails.

Here are some of our fall crafts and activities :

JDaniel and I made two paper plate turkeys. They were a part of a post called Read.Explore.Learn.- Trouble at the Tappleton’s.

I made the turkey bowling pins for JDaniel when he was two and a half. The turkey’s bodies were made of his hand prints. The post was simply calledRead.Explore.Learn.- Thanksgiving

We made the turkey treat bag to take to our local fire station. We filled the bag with cookies. The post the bag was featured in was called Read.Explore.Learn.- The Firefighter’s Thanksgiving.

Our thankfulness tree spent last Thanksgiving on our kitchen table. It is filled with leaves that list things we are thankful for. The post that featured the tree is called Thanksgiving for Kids: Being Thankful.

The muffin tin meal on the top of this collage features a turkey and all different foods a turkey would eat. The post was called Muffin Tin Monday- Turkey’s Food Pyramid Meal.

The muffin tin meal on the bottom features a stuffing turkey, the best sweet potato casserole, and turkey divan with a turkey biscuit on top. The recipe for the sweet potato casserole is included in the post. It really is wonderful. The post is called Muffin Tin Monday- Thanksgiving with Sweet Potato Casserole and More.

I made my guys a Breakfast Turkey last year. They loved the pumpkin spice pancakes, bacon, and sausage.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

It’s Pumpkin Time- Read.Explore.Learn

October 19, 2012 By Deirdre

This week we have been working on pumpkin activities and reading It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall. It’s Pumpkin Time walks its readers through the stages of growing a pumpkin from seed to sitting carved on a front step.

The illustrations in this book are amazing. I love the coloring layers and vivid pictures. Sharl Halpern did a wonderful job sharing in pictures each of the stages Zoe Hall described.

What did we do to explore Its Pumpkin Time?

Pumpkin Emotion Game

JDaniel and I created an emotion box and facial features that expressed different emotions. We talked about emotions and how to express them.This activity was created for The Studio by Kiwi Crate. I have written several activities for The Studio. I hope you will check out my page of activities there.

Pumpkin Dice Game

I created a game sheet with ten pumpkins and wrote the numbers 1-10 on one of each of them. JDaniel rolled the dice and then put an acorn on the numbers as he rolled them.We used dice with dots on them so JDaniel could count them. An older child would be able to use a set of dice with numbers on them and add the numbers together to make sums. They could then cover the sums with an acorn.

Here are some of the wonderful posts that linked up last week:

Healthy Eating Starts At Home created an amazing lunch to go along with the book In the Tall, Tall Grass.

Tots and Me has a wonderful moon unit. I really like the activities she selected to learn about the moon. Her moon craters activity really looks like fun.

How have you been exploring books this week? Share your children’s book exploration posts below. I will be featuring them on the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page during the next week.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

Olympics for Kids- A Fun Book and a Bento Lunch

July 27, 2012 By Deirdre

I like to welcome the Olympic Bento Bloggers and Olympic Hoppers 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.

This week I am going to share a wonderful children’s book of poems on the Olympics along with an Olympic-related bento snack. I decided to join an Olympic Hop hosted by a group of Bento bloggers and tie the book I am sharing with a snack I made for JDaniel.

The book we looked at this week is called Elympics. It was a wonderful book of poems that talks about various summer and winter events in the Olympics. The poems were really fun to read and are filled with rhymes. JDaniel was able to learn about several of the events that he may see during the Olympics through the poem and really fun illustrations in this book.

I tried several times to make an elephant like the one on the cover of this book, but I wasn’t able to. An elephant cookie cutter proved to work out so much better than the elephants I tried to create a free hand.

This elephant is made of pita bread and he is carrying a slice of an ice cream cone with cheese flavored rice cakes as a torch. In the upper left-hand corner of the Bento box are fresh spinach leaves with a carrot and fruit chew medal. The bottom left-hand corner of the box contains hummus with the Olympic rings made of black olives.

I went with a greek food theme for part of the box to represent the fact that the Olympic started in Greece. Thankfully JDaniel loved everything in this snack Bento.

Olympics for Kids – Bento Lunch

The Olympics have been featured in a few other posts this summer. There have been posts on an Olympic Symbols Bento Snack and Fruit Filled Olympic Rings as a breakfast meal. I have a fourth meal coming on Monday. It is a gold medal meal featuring healthy foods and a couple of Olympic-related foods.

If you are here from the Olympic Hog, please visit Biting the Hand that Feeds You. They are the next stop on the hop.
If you are here for Read.Explore.Learn., please leave your book related link below.

If you are just stopping by because you are here to make my day, thank you for stopping by. I hope you will leave me a comment. It would be wonderful if you checked out the Olympic Bento Hop and the Read. Explore.Learn. links below.

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.

Friendship: Stickfiggy and Lott Share

June 29, 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 friendship. The books being spotlighted this week are StickFiggy Makes a Friend, Lott’s Tea Party, and Arthur (A dog looking for a home.).

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

While MeMeTales featured three books on friendship on the Readathon this week, we are just going to look at two. Both of the books I am going to share with you feature stick characters that reach out and do something for friends.

StickFiggy Makes a Friend is a very cute story about StickFiggy and an egg. While heading out to play StickFiggy comes across an unattended egg. He decides to stop and watch it until its mom returns instead of going off to play. It takes awhile for the mom to come back. By the time she does it is no longer an egg, but a chick.

Lott’s Tea Party is the tale of a little stick girl that plans a party for her friends. Readers of her story see all that she has to do to get rid of the party and read what it happening in each stage of planning in a single word that is placed on each page. One word is all that is needed to share all that she does to get ready for her friends to come.

What did we do to explore the themes of the books?

Invited a Friend to Play

JDaniel has been missing his best friend from school. I decided to invite him over for a play date so both boys could spend time together.

Made a Friendship Bread

I found a great recipe for Friendship Bread online that didn’t require starter yeast. JDaniel and I had a wonderful time making it. JDaniel had a wonderful time decorating it. We worked on making a StickFiggy character with painted popsicle sticks and a cardboard circle to help us remember to share the story with his friend.

JDaniel and his friends ate one piece. My husband and I inhaled most of the rest. It is really delicious. Maybe it is the chocolate pudding you add to the mix that gave it that little bit of extra something.

Created an Outdoor Tree Play Area

There is a tree line that separates our yard from the next door neighbors. At the end of the tree line is a large magnolia tree that JDaniel and his friend love to climb and play under. The branches of the tree bow down and form a tree play area.JDaniel and I hauled out a blanket, some learning activities, and some toys out to the tree to fill the tree play area.

The area contained the following:

1. Chalk to draw on the tree with.2. A writing a drawing activity that was based on the StickFiggy Finds a Friend story.

3. A cardboard tube that could be leaned against the tree to create a ramp of different levels for a toy truck.4. Activity mats that could be illustrated with small sticks JDaniel and I gathered.

JDaniel decided that there were leaves all over the ground and that they would be fun to play with too. He thought we should reattach them to the tree with clothes pins. I thought was a great idea.

When his friend arrived, they explored most of the playthings and climbed the tree. It was a perfect place for friends to hang out.
What are your favorite books about friendship?Disclaimer: I have been given access to the MemeTales: Readathon books and will receive copies of the books. All the thoughts and information in this post about the books are my own.

The 2nd Annual Tissue Box Challenge

April 16, 2012 By Deirdre

We are so excited about getting to see the projects you have created! There were so many ways to approach this challenge. We have no doubt that each of your creations will be unique and special.

Here is what I came up with. It is a bear hugging a box based on the book Big Bear Hug. I will be sharing more about the book and how we used this bear-hugging box on Friday’s Read.Explore.Learn. post.

Here are the Tissue Box Challenge Rules:

Reuse a tissue box to create something fun with your children.

Create a post about your creation that includes a link to the Tissue Box Challenge or the challenge badge.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.jdaniel4smom.com" title="JDaniel4's Mom"><img src="http://69.195.124.116/~jdanielf/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/TissueBoxChallenge2012.jpg" alt="JDaniel4's Mom" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Share your post on the Tissue Box Challenge linkup between April 16th –April 22nd.
Our wonderful judge Maggy Woodley of Red Ted Art will select first, second, and third prize winners.

What are the prizes?

The first prize winner will receive a $20.00 Amazon Gift Card.

The second prize winner will win a Plastic Bag Monster Activity Kit!

Please link your creation below!

This event has ended.

Read.Explore.Learn- How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

October 28, 2011 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.
Steps:

- Link your activity below.

- Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. 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:

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas is a wonderful book about counting pumpkins seeds. It turns out you don’t have be the biggest kids in the class to guess the right number of seeds.

Charlie is in the wonderful Mr. Tiffin’s class. Mr. Tiffin challenges his class to guess whether a small, medium, or large pumpkin will have the most seeds. He has the class brainstorm how many seeds are in each pumpkin. When it is Charlie’s turn, he thinks the best guesses are all taken.

The next day the class uses spoon, bowls, and bags they have brought in to scoop, hold, and later throw away the guts and seeds of the pumpkins. Before the students headed home, Mr. Tiffin asked them to think about how to count them.

The next day they decide to count the pumpkin seeds from the big pumpkin by twos. The seeds from the medium pumpkin will be counted by fives it is decided. Charlie thinks the small pumpkin’s seeds should be counted by tens.

After arranging the seeds into number groups, they were counted. The large pumpkin had 170 pairs or 340 seeds. The medium pumpkin has 63 groups or 315 seeds. Charlie had 35 groups or 350 seeds.

Charlie is thrilled to learn that size doesn’t matter in pumpkins. Mr. Tiffen says, “Small things can have a lot going on in them.”

Mr. Tiffin taught me that for each line outside a pumpkin there is a row of seeds inside. Pumpkins that grow longer get darker and gets more lines. Guess what? Charlie’s pumpkin was dark orange and had many more lines than the others.

What did we do?

Cleaning Out Pumpkin Seeds

We cleaned the seeds out of a pumpkin. JDaniel didn’t like the gooey parts.

Counting Seeds

I found a great placemat at Dollar Tree with a grid on it. We placed on seed in each square on the placemat and then counted them.

Cover the Spider Legs Game

We rolled the die to see how many seeds we got to put on each spider leg when it was our turn. It was fun to practice counting. At the end of each turn, we cleared the seeds on the spider.

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds

We tossed pumpkin seeds with olive oil, cinnamon, and sugar and then toasted them in the oven. They came out yummy. JDaniel loved them so much he asked that I take a picture of them.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Playtime .

This post contains affiliate links.

Winners! Winners! One for Dinner and One for Books!

August 5, 2011 By Deirdre

Deb won the Farm Rich Giveaway that ended on Monday! Creativity My Passion won the Barnes and Noble gift card offered as a prize to one of the blog posts linked to Read.Explore.Learn. in July. I randomly selected both winners and I have contacted them via e-mail.

There will be two new giveaways launched this weekend and another Read.Explore.Learn. link up contest that begins tomorrow. Please stop by and check them out.

Muffin Tin Monday- Brunch on a Stick

July 25, 2011 By Deirdre

I am been asking other bloggers to share their recipes with me this summer. I promised to feature them in one of JDaniel’s muffin tin meals. I had three bloggers share their recipes. Two of the recipes have been featured already. The other will be featured next week. Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas shared an idea rather than a recipe with me. Her idea was to spell Jdaniel’s name in French toast. I only have large letters in cookie cutters. The amount of French toast is would take to spell his name would be more than he would probably eat.

I decided to take her idea of French toast and search Pinterest to see what recipes came up. French toast on a stick stood out to me among the rest of the ideas I found. I had previously found a pasta salad on a stick recipe on Pinterest and pinned it to one of my boards on the site.

That gave me two meal ideas on a stick. Both ideas could be served at a brunch or a lunch. Voila! Brunch on a stick became the theme for this week’s tin.

JDaniel has fruit with French toast served on a coffee stirrer rather than a real stick. The pasta salad on a stick is made of cold cheese ravoli, pepperoni, and grape tomatoes.

There is a cup of syrup and a cup of Vidalia onion salad dressing and a cookie in the second row.

You may be asking what is Pinterest? It is a booking site that allows you to bookmark links you love and displays them on small boards. The boards are like bulletin boards. You can set up board for specific areas of interest. I have a board for Muffin Tin Monday Ideas and one for Read.Explore.Learn. Ideas.

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If you are interested in joining Pinterest, please let me know. It is by invitation only right now, but I can give you an invite.

I would still love to try some of your recipes! If you have one you want me to try, please include the link to it below.

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.