Disney Countdown Craft

Sunday
April 26, 2009

We are on the last part of our countdown to our Disney vacation. Instead of a link countdown I wanted to do something different this time. In the middle of the night I came up w/ the idea of Disney characters on sticks as the "link". Everyday Meara gets to take one Disney character out of the container until the castle is left.

I found some coloring pages on http://disney-stationary.com/ I copied and pasted them into a Word document and resized them. We colored them, cut around them and tapped them to popsicle sticks. We recycled a frosting container and added dried beans for the sticks to sit in.

Meara's two favorite things...gum and Cinderella!

Playing Card Number Match

Friday
April 23, 2009

Meara likes this activity. It was really easy and inexpensive to make.

Egg Letter Match

Monday
April 20, 2009

Don't put those Easter Eggs away just yet. I found this great idea in Alphabet Learning Center Activities Kit. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787972991

ABC Egg Twist

Write a capital letter on one half of the egg. On the other half write about six different lower case letters including the one that matches the capital letter. Collect 26 small objects or pictures matching the corresponding letter and place inside the eggs. The object is to match the correct letters, say the letter and then discover the mystery object inside.

Playing with Snails

Sunday
April 19, 2009


Meara and I LOVE to visit two specific friends' houses. We were able to go to one of them and spend time playing in the yard, eating popsicles and inspecting snails. Meara loves her friend Micah! He is one of five children and they all treat Meara with special care. They have a wonderful collection of snails that they shared with her. After one of the last big rains they found them in their yard and created a habitat for them in a plastic container. I was excited to see that she wasn't afraid to hold something slimy. YEAH! I think she likes bugs. ;-)

The popsicle picture makes me think, "By the power of Grayskull...I have the power", He-man cartoon.

Visit from the firemen

Friday
April 17, 2009

I heard a loud truck noise outside our house. Meara and I usually race to the window to find out where it's coming from. Today it was....A FIRE TRUCK!!! YIPPY! We raced to get our shoes on and make it outside to find out what they were doing. They were letting water out of the fire hydrant at the edge of our yard. Quickly we ran over camera in hand to meet the firemen and take a couple of pictures. They were all too happy to be in the shot and say hello. We didn't need to leave the house today for an adventure! ;-)

Family Tree

Thursday
April 16, 2009

Meara and I painted a tree and asked everyone in our family to cut out their handprint to place on it. This has become one of my favorite projects because everyone participated in it. It warms my heart every morning to walk into our classroom and see everyone's hands on the wall.

Easter

Thursday

April 16, 2009

We took Meara to an Easter Egg Hunt at the Nashville Zoo. They always put on a great hunt with plenty of eggs and prizes complete with inflatables, face painting and the Easter bunny.

The azaleas were gorgeous and in full bloom.

Meeting the Easter Bunny and Penelope the Ostrich

Meara in her Easter Sunday dress

Egg Game

Friday
April 10, 2009

I had been thinking of ideas for learning games with Meara. Two years ago I came up with this idea. As Meara has gotten older I switched from using the same color top and bottom to mismatching the colors. Now, she has to really think about the numbers instead of just automatically matching them by color. Their are 15 beans so she can count out the correct number for inside each egg.

Palm Tree Craft for Easter

Thursday
April 9, 2009

As Jesus made his way to the Temple in Jerusalem riding a donkey people lined the streets waving palm leaves chanting Hosanna! Even the children particitipated singing praises to our savior. The streets were lined with palm leaves and coats making the road appear like a carpet for Jesus and the donkey to ride across. My husband and I did this craft with our 4-year-old Sunday School class last week...they loved it. After church Meara saw what we did and wanted one too. You can find the template the the leaf here.

Materials needed:
Paper towel tube
masking tape
brown crayons
Green contrustion paper (cut out leaves using link to pattern above and tape to wire)
Stiff floral wire sticks or a coat hanger cut up into sticks


After coloring the paper towel tube pierce holes into top sides of tube and insert the wire then tape down to secure. We learned the hard way that you should bend the wire prior to insertion into tube or the tube will tear.

Make sure you check out my very first GIVEAWAY posting here ($45 value ends April 1, 2010).

Fruits and Vegetables

Tuesday

April 7, 2009

We're back...we took a break for a little while. We had family visit and so much going on but now we are back in the swing of things. I just went to a curriculum fair on friday and bought almost all of Meara's kindergarten curriculum for the fall. We are so EXCITED!!

Meara is a picky eater just like I was when I was growing up. The only vegetables she likes to eat are carrots, lettuce and celery. The rest takes some persuading her to eat. I found this great reward chart that we have started to use this week as incintive. http://www.ichild.co.uk/activities/reward-charts/fruit-and-veg-reward-chart-new.php

She likes to seperate food groups out using her play food. I made some food group cards...since we are talking about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables we only used those two.
I found this free website that is a worksheet generator. You can use it to create matching, crossword, word search, bingo games, dice etc... I used it to make a matching worksheet for fruits and vegetables. http://www.toolsforeducators..com I am trying to think of a game that I could use the dice.