It’s The Little Things

It’s The Little Things

Belinda @ Kids Matter

When we are young we look at life in a completely different manner than when we get older. During those impressionable youth years we impatiently await the ‘grand events’ in our lives. A preschooler thinks kindergarten is the greatest thing since sliced cheese while the kindergartner thinks the first grader rocks and the ‘big kid’ on the bus is merely a fifth grader idolizing a middle schooler. As our children grow and leave the nest, we parents tend to remember the small things, the little things that light us from within.

One Mother’s Day, many years ago, I came home from work exhausted. The kids seemed super energetic that day, for some unknown reason, but isn’t that always the case when the parent is exhausted? They were flittering around the living room anxiously describing that day’s events to me. One of my sons was having a really hard time waiting for his turn because he had something so special to give me. It was something he had made at school for me in honor of Mother’s Day. He clasped the construction paper firmly against himself as he jumped up and down with excitement. “I made this for you, Mommy,” he smiled as he turned the card around. It was a beautiful card with butterflies all over it. All the children turned at once to read the oversized card. Suddenly, everyone burst out laughing except the son who made the card. He stood with the look of confusion on his face. The kids turned to look at my reaction and there I sat with big eyes and an open mouth. The sound of laughter filled the house. My son wanted to know why everyone was laughing.  He didn’t understand at all. He shouted, “It’s not funny! I made this for Mommy!” I then asked him what it said and he told me. Unfortunately what he thought he had written in his little second grade hand writing was not at all what he wrote. The pretty card covered in butterflies simply read, “I love you Mommy! You’re as beautiful as a butt fly!”

That is a moment I have cherished for so many years. The sound of laughter in my home filled my heart. It was the smiles on my children’s faces and the unity of family that settled deep within my memory for me to recall years later as my children went their own ways. There were many smiles and many memories created through a house full of children. Life wasn’t always grand and, as children do, there was lots of bickering but we can choose how we reflect on our life. We can seek out the positive and remember the smiles and laughter, or we can forget that happiness ever crossed our path and focus solely on the sadness. The reality of family life is that there are good times and there are bad times. Choosing to acknowledge the good times and forgiving the bad times can only improve your quality of life, for a happy heart inspires a peaceful soul.

Tuesday Teachings - Life Cycles

We recently ordered the best books about Life Cycles. They are by David M Schwartz and one of my favorite things about them is that they contain real photos of the animals and plants instead of illustrations. The photographer for the books is Dwight Kuhn. Below is a picture of the Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle book and the link to purchase.

They have a large variety of books including: Bean, Wood Frog, Horse, Ladybug, Sunflower, Fighting Fish, Chicken, Hummingbird, Maple Tree and Jumping Spider.

Prior to receiving these books my child had zero interest in life cycle activities. I had tried numerous times to get him interested but to no avail. Once we got the books everything changed. In the last week I have read each of these books to him numerous times, I can almost recite these books!

I immediately thought back to an activity that I saw online a month or so ago on The Crafty Classroom. I marked it in my "Inspiration" folder and I am now inspired. I made Life Cycle stamps for my son to play with. It was easy and he loves them.

Supplies:
Craft Foam
Pencil
Wood Block
Glue
Scissors
Stamp Pads

I used an old book that we got at a yard sale last year for my inspiration photos and then I sketched the designs lightly on the craft foam. Once I was happy with the design, I went back over the pictures pressing hard to make the design stay indented enough to use as a stamp.

Once the pictures are completed, cut them out leaving a small border around the pictures and glue them on to left over wood blocks. We used alphabet blocks that we had duplicates of, you could also use just one block and put one picture on each of four sides. Once the glue is dry, start stamping!

I am also planning on going back and making life cycle stamps for other animals and plants. Next up will be the frog.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I am lucky that my son still enjoys one of my favorite books, "The Hungry Caterpillar". We read it again this week and then we decided to make some butterflies of our own.

Supplies:
Coffee filters
washable markers
water
pipe cleaners/chenille stems
Blow dryer - if you are as impatient as we are

Use the markers to color your coffee filters. There is no need to color it entirely, unless you want to. Once you are done coloring, spray water on the filter just until it flattens out, do not saturate the filter. This will allow the color from the markers to bleed and mix.

If you are impatient, use the blow dryer to dry the filters.

Once dry, smoosh the center of the filter and wrap the pipe cleaner around it, bending the ends to resemble antennae.

See our other book and craft ideas below:
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
The Grouchy Ladybug

Enjoy!

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter B

Moving onto the next letter now. For the letter B there are a variety of foods and crafts that you can do.


For our B template, you can click on the print button and follow the directions.
B

Our first activity will be Butterflies. I put together a page of butterfly clip art that you can print out. I was going to cut out the butterflies and have my son glue them onto the letter B but I found some cute butterfly spangles in our craft supplies so we used those instead.

Butterflies

 If you use the clip art you do not have to cut out the antennas for the butterflies because you can just draw them on easily once the child glues them on.

Next we glued Buttons on to the B page. Before we did any actual gluing, we sorted buttons by color and size first. I figured I might as well get some extra lessons in while I had the buttons out.

Next we glued Beans on to the B page. These beans are from our bean activity box. My son loves to scoop and pour out the beans. We also have a bunch of the beans that I wrote out the alphabet  and numbers on for us to use in practicing letters and numbers.

This last activity that we did with the B page is my favorite. We made a Bee! I let him paint the B yellow and I cut out some black wings and black antennas. Once the yellow paint was dried, I let him paint on some black stripes and we waited for that to dry. Once the paint was completely dried we glued on the wings and the antennas. I think he turned out really cute.

Some other ideas to reinforce the letter B:

Food suggestions:
Bananas, bagels, bread, beans, broccoli, blueberries, basil, butter, brownies, blackberries, bundt cake and burritos. There are plenty more foods that start with B but I do not want to overload you.

Our food activity included making butter! I was excited to try this experiment to see how long it really took.
To do this you will need the following ingredients:

Glass jar with lid (I used a baby food jar)

Heavy Cream

Pour the heavy cream into the glass jar, no more than 1/2 to 2/3 full. The more cream in the jar the longer you must shake it to make the butter. I shook it for 10 minutes and had quite a bit of butter in the jar. Once you can feel the weight of the jar change and hear the butter you can stop. I poured mine into a strainer to let the buttermilk drain away as I did not actually need it. I then used some paper towels to dry the butter a bit, put it in a container and sprinkled it with a little salt, covered it and put it in the fridge to harden a little bit. The butter is quite soft when you make it. My son is only three so he did not help much with making the butter but he did shake it a little while before he lost interest.

You can print out the letter B and put it in a clear sheet protector/report cover or laminate it and give the child a dry erase marker to practice writing the letter B.

You can write the letter B on a chalkboard and give the kid a small amount of water with a paint brush. They can dip the brush in the water and use it to erase/trace your letter.

Find the letter B. Give a child a marker and an old magazine or newspaper. Ask them to go through a few pages and circle the letter B.

Lacing Cards - Print out the letter B and laminate it. Punch a hole every inch or so and let the child lace yarn or a shoestring.

Paint Bag - Squirt some tempura paint of shaving cream in a zipper style bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible. For safety and cleanliness sake, tape the bag closed also. Now put the bag on the desk and allow the child to trace the B.

All images that are easy to save, please hold onto those and put them all in a Alphabet Binder for the child.  To make the binders I will put the pictures in sheet protectors and then put them in a 3 ring binder.

Monday Meanderings - Craft Time!

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying their three day week-end. Memorial Day is a great day to spend a little relaxing time with the family.

These are some great things I came across and hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Do you remember Tin Can Telephones? I had forgotten how much fun they could be. Maybe it is time to teach the kids how much fun low-tech can be.  Joel of Made by Joel brought back these fond memories for me.

The next link is a great resource. I have yet to meet a child that does not love regular sized bubbles but when they are giant bubbles they will be "bubbling" over with excitement. Please take the time to check out Suna's blog. She has some great ideas at Monkey Lobster.

This next project is not only fun but beneficial. I have a hard time keeping mind of which hat is my son's since some of his friends will have the same hat. This clears up that problem for me though. Thanks to The Amazing Mess for such a great idea.

Well, once again I hope you are taking some time to enjoy the family on this extended weekend holiday. Have some fun!

Tuesday Teachings - Butterfly Body Parts

Here is a lesson plan that you can do with your kids to give them some understanding of the parts of a butterfly. I have attached a form that can be filled in by the child as you go over each part of the butterfly's body.

Butterfly Anatomy Picture

Butterfly Bodies

The three body parts of a butterfly are the Head, Thorax & Abdomen.

Body:
1)Forewings: Forewings are the two upper wings of the butterfly that are attached to the thorax.
2)Hindwings: Hindwings are the two lower wings of the butterfly that are attached to the thorax.

Both sets of wings have veins running through them for support and nourishment. Somewhat like a fish, a butterfly’s wings are made up of thousands of tiny scales. When a butterfly hatches from the chrysalis, it’s wings are wet and crumpled, they will move into a warm sunny spot and the blood pumping through the veins will help to dry the wings and prepare them for flight.

3)Abdomen: The abdomen is the tail end of the butterfly’s body
4)Thorax: The thorax is the chest of the butterfly’s body and is between the head and the abdomen with the wings attached to it.
5)Legs: Butterflies, like all insects have six legs. Their feet is how they taste their foods. Some butterflies keep their front legs tucked up under their body and are therefore hard to see.

Head:
6)Tongue/Proboscis: The proboscis is coiled tube like straw just below the head of the butterfly and is used to drink nectar from plants or to eat rotting fruits.
7)Eyes: Adult butterflies have two compound eyes. Compound eyes give butterflies excellent perception of color and motion in a wide range; butterflies can see up, down, forward, backward, and to the sides at the same time. On the other hand, they are not very good at judging distance or perceiving patterns, and the images are not united into one continuous picture. Butterflies apparently see the world as a series of still photos rather than a movie.
8)Antennae: The head of a butterfly has two antennae which are long and skinny with small knobs on the ends. The antennas are used to sense smells and to help the butterfly maintain their balance.

In order to protect a butterfly, their skeleton is on the outside of their body. A butterfly from egg to adult will increase in size by approximately 27,000 times.

Butterfly Life Cycle

Egg: The females of different species of butterflies will lay tiny eggs on the plant their hatched caterpillars will eat. They are selective in their plants as the caterpillars do not move far from where they are born and the mother wants to be sure her babies are well nourished.

Larva: This is the caterpillar stage. The tiny caterpillars hatch from the eggs and proceed to eat the egg casings and the plant they were laid on by the mother butterfly. Due to the tiny size of the caterpillars at birth they can only munch on little bits of leaves. Even though they can only eat tiny little pieces of leaves, they eat all day long for weeks and weeks and grow bigger and bigger. As the caterpillar grows, his skin gets tighter and tighter until it becomes too tight and splits open.

Pupa: This is the chrysalis stage. Once the caterpillar reaches its full size, it prepares to turn into a chrysalis. It will attach itself to a leave or twig and the final shedding of the skin will surround it creating a hard shell called the chrysalis. This stage can last from a few days to a few months. Some butterflies overwinter in the chrysalis. The outer stays hard and inactive but on the inside, there are big changes going on. The larva is changing its body shape from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

Adult: The chrysalis finally splits open and the adult butterfly crawls out into the world. Their body, legs and wings spread out, dry and harden up and they are ready to find food and a mate and begin the process over with their own eggs.