PeeWees: Harry the Dirty Dog (week 1)

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

Synopsis:  Harry is a white dog with black spots who likes everything except getting a bath.  When he hears the water running, he buries the scrubbing brush in the back yard and runs away from home.  He plays in a variety of places, always getting dirty, and dirtier at each.  He becomes so dirty he is a black dog with white spots.  When he becomes tired and hungry, and goes home, his family doesn't recognize him.  He tries his old tricks but they don't think it can be him.  Then he remembers the scrubbing brush, digs it out, runs to the bathtub, and they give him a bath, realizing of course that he is, indeed, Harry.

Concepts: black/white, dirty/clean, baths, dogs, dog tricks, road construction, railroads & trains, pets, family, doghouse, home, bubbles, running, soap, tired/hungry, washing

Arrival:  We played with our wooden train track set (Harry visits a railroad as one place he gets dirty).  I've noticed Poppy and Bodie like to play with this when it's just them, so I hoped all the PeeWees would like it, and they did, though there was a little bickering about the train cars - there's never enough things like that to go around, but eventually they cooperated. 

Circle Time:  "Stand Up" song, ABC's, then counting.  I had a bucket of plastic dogs that we lined up and counted several times - first, to 20, then we each took two, and lined them up several times, counting up to 10 each time.  I could tell they wanted to play more with those dogs so that will probably be our arrival activity next week. 

Book:  Harry has been Poppy's favorite book for many months now.  One time a few months ago I was at Unique and I saw a white dog with black spots stuffed animal, so I picked it up on a whim, washed it, and when Poppy saw it, she cried, "It's Harry!"  Just like in the book.  She loves that dog sooo much.

So the next few times I went to Unique I kept my eyes peeled and picked up more Harry dogs (and washed them thoroughly) for the PeeWees.  Which led me to putting together prop bags for the book.

Every PeeWee got a prop bag before we read the book, and I told them they could open them, look through them, pull stuff out, etc.  It was like Christmas!  They were so excited!  After they'd looked through everything, I had them put it all back in the bag, except for their Harry dogs, and we started the book. 

For every page, there was either a prop for them to pull out, or an action for them to do.  (The lying down picture is them playing dead.)  It took a long time to get through the book that way, but they were hanging on my every word, waiting for the next thing to do, so that was fun.  In each bag was a Harry dog, a brush (for the scrubbing brush), a hard hat, a toy train, another dog, a shovel (for the coal chute page), and a toy fence.  We are definitely doing the bags next week, probably more than once.

"He played where they were fixing the street, and got very dirty."

"He rolled over, and played dead."

 Snack:  Julia and Henry brought cupcakes for H's birthday on Friday, so we put 3 candles in his cupcake, and sang "Happy Birthday" and he blew them out with a very strong "fffffffff!"  I was impressed.  Bodie wanted candles, too, but I explained only the birthday boy gets candles.  I felt a little bad because he gave me a look, like, "c'mon, it's just candles."  But I moved us on by giving water and grapes and unwrapping their cupcakes.

After snack, I could tell they were wiggly, so I ran them around the house to "Who Let the Dogs Out", which they still remember perfectly from Lisa's first lesson.  Running to music remains their favorite activity of all time at my house.  Which of course is the one activity that requires no work or planning on my part.  One of these days I'm going to start with music and running, and just see how long they will go with it before getting tired.  I've never reached their limit yet.  They also spontaneously added dog-piling in the living room to the rotation every time they came around, which gave me a chuckle because of the unintentional thematic tie-in.  I noticed they were pretty careful with each other, though, while they did it, so I didn't intervene.

 

Art: "Dirty Harry" painting -  I explained that Harry was on the white paper, but he was so clean and white we couldn't see him - we had to get the whole paper dirty with paint before he would show up.  (I had previously drawn Harry in thick white crayon.)  They caught on quickly, especially once they started to see part of him.  Poppy yelled, "I got him dirty, and I see him!"  My one regret, I wish I had done this on watercolor paper - it was very watery painting, and watercolor paper could have handled it better, but live and learn.  I think they liked the painting, and we kept saying, "Yeah, get him dirty!"

Activity:  Cookies - Poppy and I had fun hunting down a dog cutter in the bins at Sur La Table.  It was a pretty straightforward activity with white frosting and mini chocolate chips for black spots.  I thought about also having chocolate frosting and white chocolate chips for the negative effect, but this was enough.  Frosting is kind of hard with plastic knives.  I had the thought, I wish I had a small offset spatula for each of them, I think that would be easier.  Piling all the chocolate chips in a huge pile in the middle was pretty popular.

 

The cupcake eating and cookie frosting took longer than I expected, but I just let them go as long as they wanted because they were having a good time.  So we didn't do my third activity nor my backup activity, but there's always next week.  I was going to do Trashy Town next week, but there is still so much we can do with Harry, we are sticking with him.  

They asked to do music again, no surprise, so I made them sit through one more quick reading of the book, then music, instruments and running until the moms came. 

After everyone left I told Poppy it was time for lunch.  "No," she said, "I need some time to play with my dogs."  So she did this for about 15 minutes.  Then she was ready for lunch.

Please notice her "Harry the Dirty Dog" shirt she wore just for the occasion.  I also wore a black-with-white-spots bow in my hair.

PeeWees: The Dot

[From PeeWee mom Shaunel...]

I had all plans to do The Snowy Day but it never really came together, and last night I couldn't find the book (as it was hiding under the couch). So, I bagged that idea and went with The Dot by Peter Reynolds. I easily could have done The Dot for 2 weeks, but live and learn.

Synopsis: Vashti hates art because she can't do it. So, her teacher challenges her to just make a mark on her paper and see where it takes her. She grudgingly makes a dot, and signs her name. The next week in art class, her dot is framed on the wall. She says she can do a better dot than that, so she goes on to make every kind of dot one could imagine and they end up at the school's art show.

I decided to focus on dots and circles. I was terrible at picture taking, but there's a video.

Open Play: We built a marble track and sent our marble dots down the track. The kids, of course, adored this. We did it for a good 30 min trying different routes and experimenting with various pieces.


Circle Time: The kids are all singing the stand-up song so well. Jackson even sang it randomly during our vacation! We counted dots and noticed how three circles made a snowman. We sang our ABC's and read the book. I was surprised that everyone was interested in the story to the end. Jackson was the only one who got a bit distracted. We ended circle time with "Frosty the Snowman." Bodie sang every word and then explained how his Dad doesn't know the words.

Snack Time: We used the apple corer, peeler and slicer to make our apples into beautiful circles. What a fun kitchen tool that thing is. We also enjoyed some cheerios and ritz crackers. Poppy and Henry braved the kiwi slices, but Bodie and Jackson were not such fans.

Dance break to Frosty

Art: I showed them how we were making dots with markers, paint and crayons. As soon as paint was mentioned, they all waited patiently for the paint and refused to use the markers and crayons. Hilarious. Poppy and Henry kept saying "dot, dot, dot" as they painted. Jackson and Bodie talked more about tractors and whales. All of them did a fabulous job at staying focused. As soon as they started to finish, they held my hand as we signed their papers like Vashti in the book.

Activity: We went outside to sing circle games (ring around the rosey, and motorboat), and then sorted a basket of clutter from around the house into circles and not circles. They all did amazingly at this. Henry was definitely the most vocal "Is this a circle?" "YEES!" or "NOOO ;)" It was fabulous. We ended with the parachute.

End: Read the book, and had a little extra time so we did some play dough dots, and sang King Kong.

Great day!

PeeWees: The Gift From Saint Nicholas (week 2)

[Again, from Julia...]

So, we did a lot of the same things we did last week and it was so fun to see what the kids remembered and what they didn't.

 

Gathering activity: Puzzles. The kids did really well with these. I had a couple puzzles that were above their level (without pictures underneath and pieces that actually fit together). But after I put in most of the pieces they were able to fit in the last few pretty well. Poppy was not as interested in trying to figure this out as the boys were. Jackson is especially interested in puzzles!

 

Circle time: We sang our song and counted snowmen circles (the foam circles on their snowmen they took home). We went to 20 again. I made them repeat after me on 13-20 because each one of them was sort of doing his/her own thing above 12. I think that is a good tactic to take on these "teens" until they get it down. They liked shouting out the numbers all together!

 

We then re-read the book. I asked them a few questions to see if they remembered. Poppy remembered "Nicholas!" and Bodie remembered "teapot" and they all remembered "hot chocolate!" THEN, we acted out the book. I had the back-half of my kitchen full of wadded up newspapers that, miraculously, they had not yet discovered. So we pretended that this was the snow that was covering everything. They loved pretending. I was St. Nicholas and brought the gift. As they "dug paths" through the snow they stuffed two garbage bags full of newspapers-- they were good cleaner-uppers today. Then we unwrapped the present, which I'd put in more/bigger boxes this time. They were still excited to see what was inside the final box and nearly broke the teapot. Thank goodness for my "soft" linoleum floors that absorbed that impact as it tumbled out of the box they overturned. :)

 

Snack: We washed all the newspaper print off our hands and had nuts and hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. Jackson was not a fan of them, but everyone else was! Then we decorated Christmas cookies, during which much frosting was consumed and smeared around.

 

Art: They assembled their own snowmen/women while I helped each one make their ornament. They really liked seeing the pictures of each other. Then we had a song break with a rousing rendition of "Jingle Bells."

 

When everyone was finished we went outside to jump, re-read the story and do our good-bye chant for the last 10 minutes. What a super-fun day! They are so cute. I hope that Poppy and Bodie's heads are okay from their crash at the end.

PeeWees: The Gift from Saint Nicholas (week 1)

[Thanks to PeeWee mom Julia, for introducing Poppy, and our family, to this beautiful new Christmas book - I have since added it to our collection!  Here's the PeeWee recap, in Julia's words.]

The Gift from Saint Nicholas is about a town that is snowed in until Christmas Eve. No one can leave their houses and they are all getting lonely and needing things from each other but can't get them.  Two children make a Christmas Eve wish that "St. Nicholas will blow a path through the snow." The next morning there is a package from St. Nicholas in the middle of the town square, which requires all the people to shovel toward the middle, where they meet for the first time in over a week. They all open the present, which has many layers of boxes and ribbon and finally there's just a small package left, which they open to find a teapot.

Incredulous, they all gather together and brew some tea. Everyone brings something to share: apples, nuts, cookies, bread, etc. and they end up having a great St. Nicholas day after all.

So this is how the day went:

Gathering activity: building blocks

Circle time: counting "snowballs" -- cotton balls. We went up to 20 this time. We definitely have our challenges in the teens! Bodie seems to have the loudest voice and goes from 13-18 but they all have ones they skip. However, everyone seems to know 19-20, which is a HUGE step in my opinion.

Then we got into the book. I actually had the inspiration to introduce "St. Nicholas" by reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas" first.  Lizzie brought it home from school and so I had it on hand, miraculously. They all knew who Santa was (sort-of: at least the recogized the name and the costume) but none knew who St. Nicholas was. So we read an illustrated version of "Twas the Night..." and they got the idea.

Then we delved into the book, which they liked. I had to start summarizing at the end because the descriptions of the villagers opening the layers and their comments meant that I was losing 2-year-old attentions! I think this book would be fine as-is if read one-on-one. But in a group they started to get a little antsy. So with summarizing, we got through it. None of them knew what a teapot was but when we talked about making hot chocolate they were EXCITED!

So then we had a HUGE present to unwrap with several boxes and layers of wrapping paper that they all helped tear apart. They knew exactly what to do and they all wanted to be involved.

 It was a glass decorative teapot (thanks, Lisa!). I told them that maybe we could make hot chocolate too.

Snack: After a bathroom/handwashing break we gathered around the table. I had warmed some hot chocolate in the microwave and put it in the decorative teapot to serve. Then I put a REAL tea kettle (thanks, Kari!) on the stove and told them to listen carefully to something that the tea kettle was going to tell us while we had snack. Our snack went along with the book: nuts, hot chocolate, apples, and bread. Everyone had something to eat that he/she liked but no one liked everything. Finally the tea kettle started whistling and they LOVED it! They wanted me to make it whistle again and again. We will do this again for sure.

Art: St. Nicholas faces

Then we had a "snowball fight" with newspaper snowballs. They loved this and I'm so bummed I didn't get a photo.

After cleaning up we bundled up and got shoes on to go jump on the trampoline for the last few minutes. Then we read the book one last time on the trampoline and said goodbye. It was a great day! They are
just so fun.

Stocking Stuffers 2012

I know!  Christmas is over, let's move on already.  But I can't quite yet.  I have some housekeeping to do.  First, what I filled the girls' stockings with, plus Ed's, and whatever else I feel like writing to help myself out for next year. 

For the girls:

A few months ago I took them to the American Girl Doll store at Tyson's Corner.  They'd just started new earning charts for AGDs, and since we conveniently have a store close, I took them to oogle at all the dolls, accessories, beauty salon, etc., and also the price tags for those things.  While we were there, though, I noticed the DVD's were on sale for $5, by far the cheapest thing in the store, so without knowing much about them, I picked up these three.

 What a hit!  They have watched all three, some more than once already, since Christmas.  They seem to be really well-done movies with good messages, or at least not bad ones.  Each has a different historical setting, and my older two girls have really incorporated these into their imaginative play, and asked me many questions about things like hobo camps during the Great Depression and orphanages in the early 1900's.  Good stuff.  Great deal.

Stripey leggings for Hazel and Ginger, cutie shirt for Poppy

Lots of food stuff: Pop Rocks, Animal Crackers, M&M guy, and a hot chocolate snowman went in each stocking.  The older two also got those candy cane Pop Drops with Tootsie Roll centers.  The Nutkao snacks didn't fit, so I will save those for Easter baskets, just 3 months away!

Everyone got a new Pony, and a cutie finger puppet, which I stuck on the end of...

Smencils!  Watermelon for Ginger, Orange for Poppy, Root Beer for Hazel.  And these slap bracelets I picked up on our beach trip.

A plethora of hair things, to replace all the lost/broken clips and headbands from the past year.

Socks for Poppy, since I'm still squeezing her into 6-12 month size ones.  Everyone deserves to have socks that fit.  

Keychains and floss

That about does it for the girls.  In Ed's stocking I gave:

• a bag of his favorite granola
• movie passes
• a new SmarTrip card (enough with scrounging for change in the morning)
• prepaid carwash card
• toothpaste
• a bottle of his favorite hair stuff
• dental floss
• cinnamon Smencil
• M&M's
• a photo mousepad of the girls
• a balloon animal kit 
• toothpaste tube squeezer 

I guess that's all I feel like writing about for now.  I need to write at least one more Christmas follow-up post, but that's good for tonight.

What's for Christmas 2012

I have finally, FINALLY, finished Christmas shopping.  I don't know why it's so grueling, but somehow it is.  I just hate to spend money on anything that might not get good use, so I agonize, maybe too much over some things, wondering if this or that will be just right.  But what's done is done and I truly hope I am not only done shopping, but also done returning.  That has also been part of this journey.

So.  Each kid gets roughly something to wear, something to read, something to play with.  And this year something to eat, too, for fun.  Hazel needs clothes more than the other girls, so she is getting more clothes.  For a "big" gift, we were going to get everyone proper bikes.  But then our neighbor gave us two really nice gently used bikes, in Hazel's and Ginger's sizes.  So only Poppy is getting a bike.  The other two can just live with the other stuff they're getting.

Poppy (2 1/2)
To wear:

To read:

To play with: 
The guitar is really the "play with" gift.  She calls it a "bitar" and wants one so badly like Hazel's.  This one is a toy from World Market and it's very small, just Poppy's size.  I tuned up the strings a bit so it does actually play, but I don't know if it really holds a tune.  I don't think it matters to her.

The stroller I picked up at a consignment sale for $2, so she's getting that, too.  She ALWAYS has at least one, but more like 4-5 baby dolls or stuffed animals in her arms at all times, and takes a rotating set of them everywhere she goes.  I thought she might like a new way to get them around.

Ginger (5yrs 11mos)
To wear:
It's cruel that with her slender frame she's the most fun to dress, but as the middle child, has the fewest new clothes needs.  I love the excuse at Christmas to get her something new.

 

To read:

I got both the puzzle book and a set of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books at the afore-mentioned consignment sale.  You can never have too many books.  Especially when they're 25 cents each.

To play with:

To eat:

Hazel (7 3/4)
To wear:
This kid needs everything.  She doesn't even have a week's worth of pants because she has outgrown at least three pairs I got her for fall.  And she's hard on clothes.  What does fit, she's going through fast with stains and holes.  So I'm just trying to keep up.

To read:

Another great way I get free or cheap books for Christmas, and other occasions, is on Paperback Swap.  Love that site.

To play with:

I know, I'm late to the game with Legos, but they've never been interested.  Then at a recent playdate, Hazel liked them.  So we'll give them a try.

To eat:

Naturally, I can't divulge what Ed is getting because sometimes he checks in here.  I will say, at first I struggled, like most years.  But then I've had a few good ideas, and I'm running with them. 

Last Saturday my Mom and I took the girls shopping for gifts they could get each other and us parents.  In past years we've done this at CVS and Hollin Hall Variety Store, both good options.  The best place is small but not too small - you don't want too many choices or too much walking.  Also there needs to be a nice variety of small price items.  This year we went to Big Lots.  The big girls each had $35, some of which was their own money; Poppy had $20.  We walked around first, to get the lay of the land, and to give the girls some general ideas and suggestions.  Then we split up - Hazel went with me, and Mom took the little girls, then took Hazel again to get my present.  Hazel did pretty good with her math, and staying in budget, though she did have to make some tough choices and swap on over-price gift for Poppy out for a better gift for Ginger.  I felt her pain; these are the difficult choices a Christmas shopper has to make!

After shopping, we went out for subs for lunch.  When we got home, I helped each girl wrap.  Despite best efforts to hide in bags, I saw everything the girls got me (an earring holder, bath poof, chip clips) - very cute.  But I have pretended not to know, and Ed will help them wrap them.

How's your Christmas shopping going?