Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Make Your Own Foot Book!

Typically on Fridays, I try to share ideas that you could add to your 2016 Calendar… but this one is a little off topic… yet still right in line with keeping the ART in STEAM… so… we made our own Foot Book! As you know from Wednesday’s post, Becca LOVES The Foot Book (Aff link, thank you!) So I thought we’d have a little fun and make our own.

I grabbed some old shoes that we couldn’t do anything with anyway, and we did some paint stamping. But, we also stamped with our actual feet, and had fun (LOTS OF GIGGLES!) running to the tub (after having painted in our skivvies) and hopping in to wash all the paint off. WORD TO THE WISE: Tempera pant washes off tile super easily… the grout, well… the grout is still blue. (Insert super embarrassed Mommy face here, and a not-so-thrilled Daddy face… sigh. Please learn from my mistake and use washable finger paints… and still, be careful of the grout.)

Anyway, after all of our art was dry, I taped the pages together with the Washi tape of her choosing, and then she helped me pick what words to put on which page. We didn’t make enough art to do a page for the entire Seuss book – we just picked our favorite pages. Definitely had a blast making it, and she loves reading back through it and giggling all over again about running to the tub with Mommy to wash off our blue and yellow feet. Good times. (Even if I do still need to make a baking soda paste and see if I can scrub the grout with a toothbrush….)

Fraction Feathers With the Fuzz

This week’s topic: MATH

Becca is totally in love with Gertrude McFuzz. She has the app on her Kindle Fire HD Kids (find out more about it from my post here and here.) and listens to it/watches it FREQUENTLY. So much so that she pretty much has the entire story memorized, and can take Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (aff link) and almost read Gertrude line for line. (And honestly, it’s a fabulous moral/life lesson to be engraining in her brain – if you haven’t read it, you really must!)

Another one of her recent fascinations has been fractions. I recently said something like “let me cut that in half for you,” and she said, “what’s half?” And then we had a conversation about something else that was divided into equal pieces… and then she asked about my measuring cups… and then she finally said, “You keep telling me things are fractions. Can we do them?” Hahaha. Seriously. This girl. She LOVES math! So, working from my background knowledge of introducing fractions, and combining that with the way I know her brain works, I came up with this super fun activity that she just absolutely LOVED!

$fraction feathers$

(Get your FREE PRINTABLE HERE!)
Please note – the photos the front cover of my printable are just google search images.
The photo of Gertrude used for the feather pages was snapped by my camera from the book.
Can be printed in color or b/w.

So here’s how it works – print the sheets on card stock – so the glue won’t mess up your paper. Then, get some feathers (Becca knew we were doing Gertrude when we bought the feathers, so she selected the blue/green/yellow pack because Gertrude’s feathers are those colors in the story – you could use any colors). A great way to introduce the concept of fractions is to talk about what the top number and bottom number mean. You don’t have to call them numerator and denominator, but you can if you want to. For Becca, I started with the bottom number. The bottom number is the total number of feathers we need to glue on. Then, the top number tells us how many special feathers we need to pick of the same color.

She didn’t want to mix the colors up, but you could obviously easily have 2/5 be one color, and the other three be other colors, etc. We glued them on to Gertrude, and let the pages dry. Then, we went back and talked about the fractions, and she told me what color feathers matched with the fraction. I wrote the color word on the line for her. Then, we made them into a book just by punching holes and tying ribbon through the holes. You could easily laminate them and put them in a ring binder, but she loves to feel the feathers. I know that it won’t last forever, but it was a super fun project, and every time we read her book, it’s fabulous fraction practice all over again!

Like this activity? Please share it with others! You can also share my Facebook page with others – I share activities like these regularly – not only from my own blog, but also from other bloggers. And, each day at noon, I share a new must-have book to add to your personal library! Coming up this next month, March is all about “real” books – you won’t want to miss these fabulous non-fiction finds for ALL ages of kids!

Wacky Wednesday

So, of course today’s book would be Wacky Wednesday (aff link, thank you!) because of course, I titled my Wednesday commentary by Becca after his book to begin with! I love it. I can’t say it’s one of my favorites, though, because I love so so many Dr. Seuss books that I don’t have a favorite. Ok, maybe it’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! (aff link, thank you!) But I’m not really sure! I do so love all of his books.

I’ve been busy. Really, really busy. God has blessed me with a lot of work, and I guess I need to see all the household chores as blessings as well… so yeah, my cup has been running over. And one of the things that I have been falling down on has been jotting down the little cute things that Becca says. Sigh. So, I decided to sit down and ask her some specific questions about Dr. Seuss’ books.

Here we go – Becca’s thoughts on Dr. Seuss:

Which Dr. Seuss book is your favorite? “Gertrude McFuzz, Mommy. You know that.”
What other Dr. Seuss books do you like? “I like The Foot Book.”
Ok, let’s put your Dr. Seuss books in order by how much you like them.
Which is your favorite between There’s a Wocket in my Pocket and Oh the Thinks You Can Think? “Thinks. For sure.”
Ok, what about between Thinks and The Shape of Me? “Shapes of Me. I love that one.”
Well, what about between Shapes of Me and Fox in Socks? “Fox. Fox is so so silly.” (insert giggling)
What makes Fox silly? (She proceeds to flip through the book to her favorite page.) “There! When the fox is on the top of the box and the box is on top of Knox!” (Insert some serious giggling here!)
Ok, well, if you like the Fox so much, which one is your favorite between Fox and The Foot Book? “The Foot Book. I told you. It’s my favorite after Gertrude!”
Ok, so other than Gertrude, who is your favorite Dr. Seuss character? (Insert a discussion about who the main character is in a ton of Dr. Seuss books – I’ll spare you the details!) “I like Horton. He is nice to the Who’s even though they are little. That’s good.”
Who is your favorite author? (Honestly, I fully expected her to say Eric Carle – this is the girl who opened up her Eric Carle alphabet puzzle the other day and said “I love Eric Carle.”) “I don’t know. I don’t know who’s my favorite. I just like them all. That ok?”

Gross Motor Strengthening – Playground Exploration

playground exploration

To finish out this month’s Tuesday mini-series on Gross Motor Strengthening activities, today I want to share with you some ideas for your kids for when you take them to the playground. Something about having a second child has made me be not quite the same helicopter mom that I used to be. And combining that with Becca’s age and growing abilities has been a really good thing for her physically. Because I’ve started letting go and letting her do more things on her own. She used to be really scared on the playground. Everything looked big and overwhelming. She needed help with everything. Part of that was her age, and part of it I truly believe was her reflecting my emotions toward the whole event. Last year around this time, we enrolled her in a six week gymnastics class at a local place. That made a huge difference for BOTH of us on her confidence level, and she started being more willing to do things! YAY!

But, with the arrival of little brother, new changes began to occur for Becca – I needed her to be able to get into the car by herself. (Once I open the door.) Showing her how to climb into the car and into her car seat was a process, but now that she has mastered it, I’m starting to see her really gaining confidence on the playground. Because she knows how to crawl, stretch, and climb into places that aren’t right on the ground anymore. And also because Mommy is often holding baby brother, and she needs to do things herself.

Enter the metal bridge/stairs at our local park. It had been a while since we had been to the park, and one sunny afternoon recently we went on over, and she really wanted to do the metal stairs. She asked me if she could try them. For some reason, I didn’t hesitate. I said “sure, just be careful! Watch where you put your feet.” Here I am, holding Grayson, didn’t think to bring my carrier, didn’t have the stroller… just trusting that she, my super dramatic, fall all the time, run into every wall child would be ok. And she was. I just knew she would be. I watched her carefully, and guided her through verbally the first time. She was SO proud when she reached the top. She did it over and over again that day. One time, her foot slipped off of the bottom rung (thank God it was the bottom!) and she felt what it feels like to step through. After that, she was cautious, but I encouraged her to keep going, and she did it several more times. I snapped these pictures from the bench.

Young children often have irrational fears, and as parents, it’s often hard to know how to combat those fears. One fabulous source for talking about fears is our Dr. Seuss connection today, in our week long Seussical tribute to the man and his work. Have you read this book with your kids yet? Becca loves this book, and it’s a fabulous way to approach fears with humor, and to realize that maybe there’s not really so much out there to be afraid of after all. (Buy your copy here – aff link thank you!)

It’s amazing how once they conquer one of those fears they have, they are empowered. Once Becca conquered the metal bridge, when we went back a week or two later, she immediately went to the chain ladder and asked “Mommy, do you think I can climb this? I think so. Ok?” I replied, “Sure you can! Just watch your feet AND your hands.” I verbally guided her through where to put her hands and feet as she climbed, and stayed back so she had to do it herself. She did it just great, and did it over and over again all by herself without verbal cues or even me standing close. It’s just baffling to me why sometimes I think she can’t do something, but when I am forced to step back and let her just do it, she does great. Maybe I need to take a lesson from Dr. Seuss too… and let go of some of my irrational Mommy fears… how about you?

Shadow Play

This week as we begin this mini-series of Dr. Seuss activities leading up to his 111th birthday on March 2nd, I thought I’d start out with a little activity that you can do regardless of weather – since I know many of my readers are not down here in South Texas!

Becca LOVES to play with our flashlights. She’s seriously flashlight obsessed. She’s always asking for it and wanting to spotlight things. And, she really enjoys Dr. Seuss’s book, The Shape of Me and Other Stuff (aff link – thank you!)… so, this activity idea was born in my head!

I started by showing her my hand on the wall. She really wanted to hold the flashlight, but didn’t understand the concept of holding something between the flashlight and the wall. It was a great lesson on listening to directions, as well as discovering – the shadows looked better the closer the item was to the wall, and the closer it was to the center of the flashlight beam! She tried all kinds of her brother’s toys, and enjoyed looking at her own shape on the wall. At one point, she finally laid the flashlight down on the floor, and the shape of the toolbox appeared on the wall. She was fascinated. So then, she started setting the light on the floor to discover what else would show up on the wall. It was a really fun activity, and kept her occupied for a good 10 minutes – with zero prep time on my part! Gotta love that!

EXTENSION IDEA: After you do the initial shadow play, you could easily create a basket of items to look at taking the book and finding some of the items he talks about to put in the basket. This would easily create a shadow sensory station! Just set it up in a darker area of your home so your child could do shadow play with the items when they need or want an alone-time activity. If you have a “quiet place” for your child to go when they need to escape, this would be a fabulous activity to have there.