December Roundup

It's only December 4 and I feel eerily behind, though I'm not sure on what.   

My (sorry-excuse-for-a) Christmas cards are mostly sent.  

Presents mostly bought, or at least planned out.  There will be another post about that one.  For sure.

Advent activities planned (mostly.)  Speaking of, I'm listing them on a page here (or see tab at the top) in case you're curious, but also so I can remember for next year.  We're trying a few new things this year, so I hope they go well. 

 

Same with our Christmas books.  I bought a few new ones this year, and ordered a few others from the library, but at this point we have way more than twenty-five, so I just put the ones that didn't get wrapped in a bin in the girls' room, and we read those, too.  There are some really lovely Christmas stories out there.  I especially likes ones with a new angle or twist, but still with a good message.  

  

Stockings and wreath are up.  We'll get our tree this weekend, then I guess I can start wrapping presents and putting them under the tree.  I like the idea of putting them all out Christmas Eve, but in the meantime, where to keep them?  Last year the wrapping all got kind of messed up, stacked in a closet.  When do you put your presents out?  And in the meantime, where do you keep them?  Wrapped or unwrapped?  I seem to need a whole room for this situation.

Tangent: what does it say about me, that my favorite catalog we've gotten this year is PBTeen?  Hello, this and this (for starters.)  Am I pretending to be younger, or that my kids are older?  Or just find the in-between exciting?

So I guess things are in order.  I am once again hooked on Lifetime (and similar) TV Christmas movies - predictable, low-budget, feel-good cheese, oh how they warm the heart and ease me to sleep like a mug of warm milk & honey.  Sometimes Poppy comes down after her sisters have fallen asleep, and asks if she can watch TV with me.  She's so snuggly in her footie pajamas I can hardly say no.

The weather has been mild the last few days; here's what we did on Sunday:
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm so happy it's December again.  What awesomeness are you doing this month? 

PeeWees: Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas

[I looove that Lisa picked Fancy Nancy for our first Christmas book in PeeWees.  It is visual, fun, and a favorite at our house.  It takes the focus off store bought things, and puts it on family and the creative process, one of my favorite topics.  Plus it teaches cool fancy words!  And when I walked in to drop off Poppy, I erupted into uncontrollable giggles when I saw Lisa.  I had to take an iPhone pic on the spot.  You can see why.  I could die.]

Fancy Nancy: Splendierous Christmas by Jane O'Connor

She has a bunch of Fancy Nancy books in the series. They all use bigger words, like “heirloom,” and then explain that it’s just a fancy word for old and valuable. It’s a clever way to teach a larger vocabulary.

I wanted to focus on the visuals of Christmas – the decorations, trees, etc. – thinking that would help the PeeWees better relate to all of the activity occurring around them right now. This book walks through the decorating for Christmas, wrapping of presents, making cookies, buying a Christmas tree, etc.

Open Play – Toss cloth snowballs into different-sized buckets. They really loved this and would yell, “I did it!” when they got one in the bucket. I was pleasantly surprised how long this activity kept their attention.

Circle Time – They each wore a “fancy” Christmas headband as we sang the stand up song. Then we counted 12 stuffed ornaments – each of them had to walk over to the tree, get an ornament, bring it back to the group and we’d count to that number. We marched and did the alphabet then read the book. They immediately got that I was dressed as “Fancy Nancy.” As I mentioned to Julia, Henry was clearly the most disturbed by the ridiculousness of my hair – it was pretty funny.

On a side note – Bodie has mentioned no less than a dozen times over the past two weeks to various friends and family that “Mommy was the farmer and we were the turkeys,” referring to the Run Turkey Run book activity in the yard. Acting out the book clearly connected with him. This gave me the idea to “be” Fancy Nancy today, hoping the visual will increase their learning.

Snack -  The healthy snack was banana and raisin snowmen. The unhealthy snack was Christmas cookies and milk. In the book, she decorates cookies. So the PeeWees frosted their own cookies and then ate them.

Activity 1 – Christmas caroling. They sing Christmas carols in the book, so we all got bells and learned Jingle Bells.

I LOVED when mid-jingle bell song, Bodie stops singing,looks at Poppy and says, "You have to sing." And she clearly and calmly replies, "I will sing once you guys teach me the words." Then smiles and they all continue on. Classic. Love the Popster!

Craft – Tree topper. Fancy Nancy accidentally breaks her most valued tree topper. She’s sad and her grandfather says, “Let’s improvise!”…a fancy word for use whatever we have. And they make a new tree topper out of a paper plate, pom poms, pipe cleaners, and paint. They really got into the details and “stuff” for their tree toppers.

Closing – We re-capped what we’d done and re-read the book. I tried to point out the more common Christmas decorations in the books – Christmas stockings, candy canes, ornaments, angels, etc. These are definitely very new to them and the repetition was good for them to try and grasp what they are.

Activity 2 – We went out to the yard for the last five minutes to smell the “aroma,” (that’s fancy for smell) of the trees.

Good day. Lots of positive sharing between the kids (bells, ornaments, snowballs, etc) and TONS of conversation. All four of them are really verbal now which is great.

PeeWees: Run, Turkey, Run!

PeeWee mom Lisa's two weeks were split around Thanksgiving, so she did a Thanksgiving book the week before, and an unbelievably fun Christmas book after.  Run, Turkey, Run! was a huge hit with Poppy, and I'm pretty sure all the kids - two weeks later, she is still telling me to be the farmer and chase her saying, "Run, turkey, run!"

The book was Run, Turkey, Run! Definitely not a best seller, but I wanted to get the PeeWees familiar with one aspect of Thanksgiving. This book has tons of repetition – “Run Turkey, Run” – and had tons of potential for activities, so for those reasons, it was a good pick.

 

The book is about how Thanksgiving is coming and the turkey needs to escape or he’ll be Thanksgiving dinner. The farmer chases after the turkey. He hides in a duck pond, is found, “Run Turkey, Run!” He hides in a horse bar, is found, “Run Turkey, Run!” He hides in a pig pen, is found, “Run Turkey, Run!” etc. Then he hides in the trees and the farmer can’t find him. So the farmer and his family eat grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. After Thanksgiving they head out to chop down their Christmas tree and when they chop down their tree, there is the tukey, AHHHH, “Run Turkey, Run!”

 

Play time – They colored on a 10’ long “run” of paper.

Circle time – We talked about Thanksgiving coming up and that we eat turkeys on thanksgiving. As we sang the welcome song, each pee wee wore the turkey hat when it was their turn (VERY funny). 

We counted turkeys and yelled out the number each time, “ONE turkey!” “TWO turkeys!” etc., and read the book. 

 As we read, every time it said, “Run turkey, run” the pee wees had to stand up and run in place on their carpet square. I will definitely incorporate them acting something out in every future book. It kept their attention and made the book more alive to them.

 

Snack time – We ate grilled cheese sandwiches in turkey shapes, apples in turkey shapes, and a turkey and an ax cookie.  [Not everyone would own an ax cookie cutter, but leave it to Lisa!]

 

Craft – pinecone turkeys. Two things to note. NO ONE liked getting glue on their fingers and feathers weren’t terribly popular. Live and learn!

 

Pin the hat on the turkey – VERY funny. We did it one time where they just had to stick the hat on the turkey and a second time where I put a blindfold on them and repeated the activity. It was a good way to introduce the blindfold concept and they all gave it a try. Surprisingly, everyone hit the turkey with their hat with the blindfold on.

 

Activity part I – Run turkey, run! Game. We made our turkey heads – they LOVED the water colors and probably would have been content doing water colors for a while – good to note for future crafts.

 

Activity part 2 – we put our coats, shoes, and turkey heads on and headed out to the yard for the last 10 minutes. I dressed in bad plaid as the farmer. They ran to a pretend duck pond, would hide, I would arrive and find them and they would take off running again yelling, “run turkey, run!” Then the pig pen, etc.

What made me laugh most was after all of this repetition, I would say, “what’s this?” and point to something with a turkey on it and the responses would be “a chicken” “a rooster” “a duck” – oh well! At least I think they had fun!

PeeWees: Grumpy Bird (week 2)

Poppy anxiously awaiting her classmates' arrival

 For our second week of Grumpy Bird, we did some of the same things, and some different, shifting the focus from birds to feelings.  Although.  The gummy worms were such a hit last week that we managed to work them into a lot of the activities. 

Arrival - Magnetic letters again - they really loved this!  And it has inspired Poppy to learn her letters, which she has done a lot in the intervening week.  Now she finds "P for Poppy" and a few others everywhere we go.

 

Circle Time - After welcome, alphabet, and counting birds & worms again, we reviewed "In the Leafy Treetops" and also sang "If You're Happy and You Know It", alternating verses of "If you're happy..." and "If you're grumpy..."  This crowd definitely prefers to be happy!  We also sang "Smiles".  We read Grumpy Bird and paid attention to Bird's expression on each page to catch when he starts changing from grumpy to having fun.

Snack - Halloween pretzels (jack-o-lanterns and bats), strawberries, and gummy worms.  We talked a lot about if the jack-o-lantern pretzels were grumpy or happy.  We practiced grumpy and happy faces. 

Art - Feelings Faces.  Everyone chose their background papers, eye pieces, and feathers.  I put glue down for everyone on all their pieces and then they used the marker to draw mouths.  I talked about how mouths and eyebrows really show the feelings on the face - they all drew happy mouths.

My sample

Activity 1 -  We repeated the color matching game from last week, then I tried letter matching - matching the animal with the letter it starts with.  I figured, this group is so advanced, let's try it.  It was ambitious, and I lost all their attention before we got far, but we pushed through and then did some running.

Activity 2 - We looked through a book called The Way I Feel and talked about the feelings on each page (didn't take the time to read it), and tried to mimic the expressions.

Then we played a picture Feelings Bingo game I made a few years ago when Ginger was in Peewees.  It was fun - and funny - teaching them to play bingo with cards and chips.  Definitely a learning curve but they liked it!  At the end I broke out the magnetic wands with which to pick up the bingo chips and that was amaaaazing to them.

Activity 3 - Everyone chose an animal to be in the story, and we acted out Grumpy Bird.  They liked it so much, we switched animals and did it twice.

Closing - We reviewed all the songs we have learned over the two weeks, sang our goodbye song, and did some running with instruments to my birdie songs listed in the last post.  Another day in PeeWee paradise!

PeeWees: Grumpy Bird (week 1)

For my second teaching round, I chose Grumpy Bird, mostly because I just love that book.  And I can relate, personally, and as a mom, to Bird.  Grumpy is a frequent state of mind for some of us.  And distraction is the best medicine.


Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard


Concepts: animals - bird/rabbit/sheep/raccoon/fox, morning/evening, wake up, birds, bird nest/animal homes, what animals eat, friends, follow the leader, grumpy/cheer up, feelings, walking/jumping/flying, greetings, exercise, stand on one leg, farm, forest, "Fun", sun & stars

Related/Support Books: Boo Hoo Bird by Jeremy Tankard, The Way I Feel by Janan Cain

Arrival - Magnetic letters and metal cookie sheets to play with.  I was curious if the kids would like playing with letters, since they all know some letters.  They stayed interested for a long time, shouting out letter names when they found one they knew.

Hazel and Ginger were home because their school had no power from Hurricane Sandy.

Circle Time - We did our alphabet singing from a complete magnetic alphabet I had Hazel and Ginger make for us while we were singing the welcome song.  For counting, I had a selection of 12 stuffed birds that we looked at, passed around, named, and eventually counted.  

 Then I laid out gummy worms on a cookie sheet and we counted those, too, then had the birds pretend to eat them, then gave some to the kids to eat.  Gummy worms were definitely the hit of the day.  I taught the song "In the Leafy Treetops" with hand motions and we sung it several times.  Then we read Grumpy Bird, mostly talking about the story and the animals.  

Snack - "Dirty Worms" - classic!  Pudding, crumbs, gummy worms.  Plus some chocolate mushrooms from World Market.  Because we can.  Everyone had chocolate beards after.

Art - Painting birdhouses.  They each chose their color, and their bird.  I loved the concentration they devoted to this project.  The birdhouses were $1/each at JoAnn.

My sample

Right before leaving, when the birdhouses were mostly dry, I hot glued a bird on each.  These birds were not easy to find this time of year; I had to order them on Etsy.

Activity 1 - Color matching.  I had colored papers taped to the wall, and photocopies of the animals from the book.  The kids took turns choosing an animal and trying to remember what color it was in the book, and sticking it to that color paper.  Multi-step memory/cognitive task.  They got most of them wrong, but we went back through the book and corrected them.

Activity 2 - Freeze Dance.  I played some "bird songs" and paused while they all played freeze dance.  [Bird songs: "Rockin' Robin", "Two Little Blackbirds" (from Music Together), "The Bird & The Worm" (Owl City), "Three Little Birds" (Bob Marley), "Blackbird" (The Beatles)]

Closing - Read the book again, focusing on what "grumpy" means and how the bird cheered up.  After the "So Long" song we practiced "In the Leafy Treetops" a few more times and played a few rounds of Follow the Leader, like the animals follow the bird and do what he does.