ABC's Word Food with Dr. Seuss

What is "word food" you ask? You shall see...

Today we started our count down to Dr. Seuss' (Theodor Seuss Geisel) birthday!

 Our featured book is:

To celebrate letters we ate words (in the form of pancakes) and played "Musical Letters!"

Eating your words is easy:


1-Just put your pancake batter into a bottle that has a spout
2-"squirt" your letters onto the pan.


Note: It is easier to do whole words if you use the bigger griddles. It also makes it easier to serve a whole word (or name) all at once. My kids loved these and ate a lot more letters than I thought they would!



To play the "Musical Letters" game you will need: a stack of paper plates, markers, music player.

1- Write a letter on each paper plate
2- Put them on the floor
3- March around to each one as the music plays
4- When the music stops, each person says the name of their letter and/or the sound it makes and/or something that starts with that letter (depending on how old the children are).
5- Turn the music on and do it again.
Note: you can take away a paper plate each time if you want to play it like musical chairs. We left all of ours out so that we got a lot of practice.
My kids loved this game and didn't want to stop playing!

Stay tuned for more Seuss fun...we will be celebrating and sharing what we do. Seuss' actual birthday on March 2nd. We will become authors and make a book too!

 

Check out more of our Dr. Seuss Food fun! 

-Dr. Seuss Muffin Tin Meal

-Cat in the Hat Drinks

Dr. Seuss {Edible Scrabble} Game  

Wordless Wednesday

Houston...we have a problem! Let's hope the fridge was left open a little. Otherwise, we're in big trouble with a baby that can get in!

Sugar + Salt = SNOW!

Our weather has oscillated between pleasant and downright fridged. When getting cold gets old we come inside and make our own snow.

This sugar etch-a-sketch has gotten a lot of use at our house.  Just pour some sugar in a cake pan and use it to practice writing all kinds of things: letters, numbers, math, words, etc.  

Then just shake it and you have a fresh pallet.  Tip for Tots: If you are teaching how to write, it works best if you have your own cake pan of sugar.  Then you can demonstrate and your Tot can follow along.  Also, it is sweet, so if you need a built-in-reward go for a quick lick after each one is completed :)


We used the sugar etch-a-sketch for a while and then I walked out of the room.  When I came back this is what I found:

Is the cougar (aka "squirrel" cozy in the snow?  At least it isn't too cold!
We got out the green "tree" marshmallows to make a little forest.  Those trees didn't last very long!

These Lava Legs are on my must-have list for winter.  Cute with anything and perfectly fun and functional.  We have worn a lot more skirts this winter thanks to these beauties.



We learned about how to make snow from salt here.  There are more complete directions there too.  I'm too lazy to type more, sorry!
One cup water

1/4 cup salt.

Get it to boiling.

Pour into a bowl

Add food coloring if desired.

Decide your string shape and put it in.
TIP!  Don't let the ends of the string get wet!  It ruins it.  Over time the water evaporates and your salt crystals (AKA snow) form on the string.  Ours made a nice little green snowflake!

These little paper dolls are sooo fun!  You may have a different opinion, but I like them because they aren't very gender specific.  So Kay and Jay could both play with them.  Today we dressed them nice and warm.  To get your own, go HERE.  You can dress them with whatever is around the house: paper, fabric scraps, yarn, ribbon, etc.  We got some ready for church on Sunday too!

Need one more sugar/snow idea?  Here is a February SnowLADY in all her PINK snow glory!  It is more fun to use the colored marshmallows!

Supplies: 3 marshmallows, 2 toothpicks (optional) felt piece for scarf, felt piece for hat, 3 M&M's, frosting, mini chocolate chips, candy corn for nose

We used a tooth pick to hold the marshmallows together.  But you could also just use frosting if you have kids eating them and are worried they'll hurt themselves.
Icing for the face and buttons:

Add the candy (this was Jay's FAVORITE part)

I used 2 pieces of black felt (front and back) with a toothpick frosted between them to hold the hat on.  We chopped the end of a candy corn off for her nose later, but the camera was put away.  There you go.  A snowLADY!


Stay warm with some fun Little Projects!

Craft It Forward

The first three people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year.
4- You have no clue what it's going to be.
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 3 people who do the same on your blog. The first 3 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!
Who's in?

What do you do with YOUR time?

I got a kick out of this and had to share:

(You can click on the image to see it bigger)


I have to add that today when we were having lunch Jay couldn't sit still at the table.
He kept getting up and running around the kitchen. I kept telling him that we sit down to eat and asking him over and over and OVER!
Finally he said, "But Mommy, if I sit down I will go potty on my chair!"

Oh, so that is the problem :)

Children are such a BIG wonderful "Little by Little by Little" Project!

Tot School #1

Today is our first "Tot School" post.  As a habit, I have been tracking what I'm doing to help create Jay's learning experiences, but I like the idea of tracking with pictures too because you can see the joy of learning in the moment. Hence, we are joining the fun of Tot School!  I've loved seeing what other families are doing at their "home schools" and there is another great blog to check out besides all the Tot School entries. 

If you want to join too, click here to learn more about it.  Basically, you take pictures of the things you do all week to enjoy discovering and learning with your tot/s.  Then once a week, you post about your week and we all meet up at the Tot School link to share our post and be inspired by other's ideas.  Sounds like fun!

Jay is 37 months, Kay is 16 months.

We have some bean counters at our house. This is the less efficient way to fill the bottle... It was a fine motor skills and counting activity.  There was all kinds of sorting and funneling and spilling the beans this week. Hint: only get as many beans out as YOU want to pick up. The kids don't mind them all over the floor!

Feeding the spilled beans to a friend.

Jay and Kay got these out MANY times this week. And we cleaned them up MANY times.

Wondering why Jay seems to be wearing the same thing in so many photos?  He doesn't like the idea of getting dressed lately.  So we have a new rule: Mom doesn't push it with getting dressed, but you can't go anywhere or eat lunch until you have your clothes on.  So you will see many PJ shots :)

Kay's favorite book: pop ups and touch/feel.  She loves to make all the animal sounds as we go along.

We are enjoying this game.  It is the only thing we use the tv for (we don't get any regular channels and there's no paying for cable at this house :)  

Jay LOVES spelling words on this.  He'll put the letters in regardless of whether it's actually on or not.  I like that it sounds out all the words out in the "games." 
Here's what the box looks like.  

In the "explore" mode he makes his own words.  How sweet to choose this one. :)

Cooking time.  These are red velvet cupcakes in the making.  Jay wanted to know if I put "red water" in them. Uh, do you mean blood?  Definitely not!  He's getting better at actually helping in the kitchen :)

Music time with Jay and Kay.  It always has plenty of dancing too!
Our version of the "Eensie Weensie Spider" with a hair clip :) We're working on it in Spanish right now.

Learning by rote only (no reading music yet). Jay finished all of Twinkle (do do sol sol la la sol, fa fa mi mi re re do) etc. So we started learning Mary and her little lamb.  I'm teaching with solfeggio syllables (do re mi) so he isn't confusing note names with the alphabet while he is learning to read.

One of the bazillion valentines we created for cousins and friends.

Jay doesn't need a "water table."  He has the bathroom sink!  Speedy the plastic frog has had many adventures in cups, bowls, and with bubbles.

Our sugar etch-a-sketch.  We've been carving letters into it.  All you need is a cake pan, sugar and your fingers.  I have one and so does Jay.  Then I make a letter and he makes it in his pan too.  Just give the pan a little shake and you are ready for another letter.
So that's what I actually remembered to take pictures of during this past week.  I meant to get it up at the beginning of the week...  My whirlwind created by the CPSIA law is dying down, so hopefully things will be better next time.

To see what the other tots did, go here :) That was a FUN learning Little Project!