The Educators' Spin On It

February Wrap Up at The Educators' Spin On It

2012-02-29T11:51:00.002-05:00

It's been a big "LEAP" for us this Year into this blogging adventure we call The Educators' Spin On It. We want to extend a warm welcome to all of our newest Followers! We also want to extend our gratitude to our continued followers! We're so glad that you've joined us and love hearing from you. Thank you so much for sharing our site with friends and families and most importantly your children.

Here at The Educators' Spin On It we try our very best to Parent with Purpose. We enjoy sharing "Our Spin On" things that we post each week. As Educators and as Parents we're always looking for ways to make learning playful and playtime meaningful. February was filled with heartfelt fun and learning. Here's what we were up to!

"Our Spin On" February at The Educators' Spin On It

We know that you LOVE BOOKS

Our LOVE BOOKS and Activity Swap has come to an end. Thank you so much for all who participated! If you're interested in the Summer Book and Activity Swap just email us at theeducatorsspinonit@gmail.com. Until then please share your Book and Activity Idea on our LOVE BOOK tab at the top of our pages or by clicking here! There are already MANY Books and Activities listed for you to read and create with your child.

Additional Resources from February

This is our assortment of activities that we enjoy sharing each week with you.

Did you MISS January's Wrap Up?

Here is it! January Wrap Up at The Educators' Spin On It

Little Hands that Cook with Books and Dr. Seuss

2012-02-28T14:58:00.015-05:00

“Today you are You, that is truer than true.

There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

- Dr. Seuss

We're joining to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Birthday and NEA's Read Across America Day on Friday, March 2! Here are some of our favorite's from Dr. Suess that we'll be including in our Little Hands that Cook with Books and Dr. Seuss this week.

The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss are one of the first BIG books that your child will be able to read all by themselves as they become emergent readers. It's a special moment when they realize they've read it ALL by themselves. What a great way to celebrate than with a special Dr. Seuss inspired Snack.

Here are a few suggestions for Dr. Seuss Themed Snacks

Dr. Seuss Cupcakes: Make blue frosting and add cracker fish to the top

One Fish Two Fish Jello: Make Blue jello and add gummy fish to them
Make your Own Fish Crackers: Make fish crackers and create your own Seuss Inspired story

The Cat and the Hat Hat : Attach red lifesaver gummies with white frosting to a round cookie or a rice cake with strawberry slices and cucumber slices

Lorax Trees: Attach cheese to pretzels sticks

There are so many resources for finding ideas for Dr. Seuss activities for you child. I've done searching for you to find some excellent resources for your child. I've included Snack Ideas and Activity Ideas for your little ones. Hope you enjoy and inspire them to become great thinkers and doers!

Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Dr. Seuss Snack Ideas
Resource of Snack Ideas collected on My Delicious Ambiguity
Playdate Ideas with Snacks from Twin Dragonfly Designs
Make your Own Fish Crackers from Growing a Green Family or Food Doodles or Miss Anthropist's Kitchen
One Fish Two Fish Jello from Simple Girl
Dr. Seuss Bento Lunch Box from Bent On Better Lunches
The Cat in that Hat Snack from Strong Start

Dr. Seuss Activities and Resources
The Educators' Spin On It Pinterest Board
Printable Activities from an amazing site What the Teacher Wants
The Lorax Activities from 2 Teaching Mommies
Seussical Learning Pack Living Life Intentionally
Dr. Seuss Activities from Squish Preschool
One Fish Two Fish Graphing from Oopsy Daisy
Dr. Seuss Lesson Plans and Activities from Mrs. Wills
Ultimate Dr. Seuss Link Party hosted by several amazing sites
Read Across America Pledge
Seussville
The Lorax Project

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Print your Certificate of Participation
in Read Across America HERE!

Find More
Little Hands that Cook with Books
Recipes and Activities

Bilingual Babies - Finding Second Language Resources

2012-02-27T07:00:00.002-05:00

I was recently asked where I find my resources that I use to teach our children Russian. This is an excellent question and although I will tell you where to find resources to teach Russian as a second language, you can use these same ideas to find the language your family is learning!

1. In-laws and Friends - The first place I always start is by asking anyone who lives in Russia to send or bring us learning materials. The things I ask for are

Traditional books, (not an English book translated into Russian, but a true Russian written book).
Talking books or books with a battery component
ABC puzzles and blocks
Kids workbooks and educational primers
Learning Posters
CD's and DVD's Sesame Street (Улица Сезам) is produced in many countries around the world and is an organization I would recommend looking into. The show format is the same and they address age appropriate concepts, but videos do not just translate the USA version, rather are created specifically for that country. These DVD's are not readily available due to cost (around $20 each), but my in-laws are able to pre-order them from one specific media store in their city.

Here is a short video about how I organize my book shelf to include these Russian books.

2. Another way to get some of the above items are online stores such as Amazon. This gets tricky with languages like Russian, because materials are not as readily available, but some products do exist.

3. You Tube - there are many videos available in other languages, but I strongly urge you to PREVIEW without children present. Some of the content is not appropriate for children. I have several videos on our playlist and will let the children watch them once in a while. Here are some links to the Russian videos I may show my children.

We've even made our own You Tube videos, which brings me to the next way we get our learning resources!

4. Make your own. We often find ourselves making the majority of our own learning materials.

My husband translates books, magazines, and posters. He just writes the Russian translation into the book using a permanent marker next to the words in English. Here are some more ideas!

He will also write a sentence on a piece of paper and let the children illustrate it to create our own simple posters. We have been talking about spring this week and each child told him what they liked to do outside in the spring. It says, "I like to swing on the swing in spring," in Russian of course! We then put these pictures on our fridge and re-visit them daily to give the children multiple exposures to the vocabulary. I may ask her to point to a specific word, read it to me, or tell me something else she likes to do in the spring.

I also make worksheets and easy reading books for the kids
My most recent packet uses dot-markers to learn the Cyrillic Letters. It is available for purchase at Teachers Notebook.

Both Kim and I are trying to parent with purpose. We feel that early and continued exposure to another language is important for our children. On many Monday's we will continue to bring you helpful tips, advice, and stories on our adventures raising biligual children. Although I am teaching my children Russian and she is teaching her children Hindi, the tips, advice, and stories may inspire you to spend more time interacting with your children in the language your family chooses!

Click to view our Bilingual Babies Series

Afterschool Express: On the Hunt for Spring

2012-02-26T09:47:00.012-05:00

Grab your camera and off we go!

A new season is starting to sneak up on us... at least down here in the South.

Teaching our children to become observers is a vital lesson in life. We're going on a walk around our neighborhood to see if we can spot signs of Spring. Do you see it yet in your neighborhood?

Grass is turning green
Bushes are sprouting new leaves
Trees are blooming
Bushes are blooming
Tree are growing tiny leaves
Roses are growing red leaves
Seeds are starting to sprout in the garden.
Bird are making nest in the trees
Baby ducks are even arrived at the Duck Pond.

Take your child on a nature walk and see what they can discover with their own observation skills. Find a way to document this change with them over a time period. Using a kid friendly camera from their view is fun. We used this Hunt for Spring Checklist to write down what we saw. Here are some of our favorites from our walks this week afterschool.

This is what we saw on our walk to my sister in law's house... a Peach Tree

This is what we saw on our walk by the pond...ducklings

This is what we found in the back yard...a Strawberry Blossom

We transplanted some strawberry plants and by the end of the week they had a blossom! Time to make our Plant Labels for our Learning Garden. We even followed Amanda's post about planting Potatoes, my daughter's class planted them too at school. It will be fun to compare.

Create a Spring Journal
Later in the week we would come home and write in a Spring Journal what we observed. Observation is a a great skill to use. When creating your own Plant Journal, have them illustrate it first , it will be fresh on their mind and in the camera for reference. Then they can write about what they saw. Encourage them to include details. Go out a few days later and observe with them if things have changed.

Not quite ready to see outdoors changing yet?

Start an indoor garden! Don't forget Your Plant Journal!

Additional Resources for Spring
Julie from Just Playing Around has a Great Idea for Observing Spring with her children.

Linked this Post up to the All Year Round Carnival-Spring
Hosted by Mama Smiles, sunnydaytodaymama, Winding Circle,The Mahogany Way, Smiling like Sunshine, Home Baked

This week's party is hosted by Mama Smiles

The Afterschool Blog Hop is co-hosted by:

Just Playin’ Around

Little Wonders’ Days

Mama Smiles

Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

The Educators’ Spin On It

What Do We Do All Day?

Come Join the Fun and Grab our Button!

LOOKING FOR MORE AFTERSCHOOL ACTIVITIES?

Here are our WEEKLY AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES & ADVENTURES

The Learning Garden - Starting Seeds Indoors

2012-02-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

I have never been very successful at starting seeds inside. As a matter of fact, I have tried unsuccessfully for 3 years to start tomatoes and peppers inside. Each year, I start the seeds and for one reason or another, end up buying transplants at the local Feed and Seed store. This year, I have received a Southern Small Garden Seed Bucket from Baker Creek Seeds to review for all of you and I am determined to have some healthy transplants for my garden this spring! Please note that I have no special training in gardening, but that I enjoy teaching my children about the world, having them learn about food and where it comes from, and being able to pick fresh produce to feed our family.
While we were living in an apartment, we belonged to a local organic crop share (CSA) Each week we picked up a bag of in-season produce that was grown by our farmers. We learned to cook with foods that we had never even considered before and our kids learned to like greens like Kale and Escarole. This Small Garden Bucket reminded me of why we joined the CSA. There are more than 15 types of vegetables and 30 varieties. It was full of seeds to plant and many of them are not ones that I would have selected based on their catalog description, therefor encouraging me to "plant outside my comfort zone" as one reviewer stated. I also purchased several seed packets of my own as well. There were some Russian Heirloom Varieties that I just couldn't resist trying!!!

I asked the staff at Baker Creek for their seed starting suggestions, this is what Kathy wrote to me;
"As for backyard garden tips: pay attention to shade and/or lack thereof when planting, keep seeds moist when sprouting, and then keep the soil moist but not overly wet. Be sure to thin the radishes after they come up so they will have room to grow. Thinned plants can be used in salads. Take lots of photos and keep a journal throughout the process. You should find planting instructions on the back of each seed packet. We wish you successful gardening. "

So today, I am going to try and limit myself to writing about my indoor starts, mainly tomatoes and peppers. I wrote a post about using seeds vs transplants here. As you can see by the first picture, my seeds have sprouted - YIPEEE!!!! I planted them in re-used containers; ones from flats of flowers others in plastic strawberry containers. I know they recommend using the seed starting soil, but that stuff is expensive, so I put garden soil in half of each little pot and then used the seed starting soil on the top. As Kathy suggested, I kept the seeds moist. As the seed packet explained they needed to be "surface sown," meaning planted on top of the dirt with little or no dirt covering them. I thought this was unusual as I have always covered my seeds, but as I said before I have never been successful, so I was up for trying it!

I planted 2 seeds in each compartment and I will cut off the weaker looking plant. Out of the 9 tomato varieties I planted, 8 had 100 percent germination rate. Or so I thought. Can you tell by the above picture that this orange and green variety had no seeds germinate? I was SO disappointed. Then, I looked at the cells next to it...

Yes, this is what happens when you garden with a 2 and 5 year old! It will be a mystery of which it which!

Now that I figured out that I can start the seeds, my problem is going to be making sure that they plants don't get "leggy." I have them in the only Southern facing window in our house and they do get sun light. It would be really cool to have a grow light, but they just are not in a small gardeners budget. For the time being, my kids are having fun pretending to be the "wind" and blowing on the seedlings whenever they have the chance. I'm trying to keep them moist and crossing my fingers for some healthy transplants!

If you are considering starting a garden (or if you already have one) I strongly urge you to check out the amazing selection of organic, no GMO, heirloom seeds at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds! Their shipping is reasonably (a flat rate) and their seed packets average around $2.00 each. After placing my personal order, I had the seeds in my hands in 4 days, so they are fast too! You can't beat 100% germination either!

Tot School - toy organization at our house

2012-02-24T03:08:00.002-05:00

The Playroom

I, Amanda, like to think of my dining room, aka playroom, as our classroom. I think about the things that I want my tot to interact with and learn about during his day and make sure that he has the space to do these things. (Don't worry, we still have a table and eat meals together as a family in our tiny breakfast nook area!) Like Kim talked about here, using stations is a great way to stay organized. This month, I am focusing on reading, interacting with books, and pretend play. You can see that I have a kitchen station and a reading station set up in our playroom. The shelf my husband built for our books lets each book sit facing towards the room. It may not hold a lot of books, but the kids are more inclined to read them when they see the covers rather than the book's spine. For all the small kitchen related food and toys, I keep a basket near the kitchen. We tried putting them back in the kitchen, but it wasn't working. A basket to stuff the small items into is suiting our family much better.

Toy Rotation: The kitchen toys rotate every other month. Often, I will just add a new item. This month, we took out some of the plastic dishes and replaced them with a set of Russian Folk Art Khokloma or Hochlama for the kids to pretend with. By adding just this one set of dishes, I can talk to my kids about Russian culture and food while introducing them to a new toy. Because they knew about the dishes background, they used more Russian while pretending! (pretend play AND language learning!!!) We will keep these dishes out until their interest in them fades. Yesterday morning, little fox was served brunch!

The books on the shelf also change monthly. I did have Valentine's Day, Groundhogs' Day, Presidents' Day, and Chinese New Year books up, but just took them down this morning and set up a bunch of easy readers for the rest of the month. I was ready for a change! I usually try to theme my book sets and include a couple Russian books as well as mix fiction and non-fiction books too. I have 2 large Tupperware bins filled with book sets. I try to have one plastic bag of books for each month in these bins. Some months will focus on a holiday, others will focus on a theme - like the Farm. We do not have a television, so the kids spend at least 1 hour reading each day.

My two year old's bedroom

We do not have a lot of storage space in our house, so I try to be organized with toys and learning materials. In the ideal world, I would not have toys in the bedroom, but our house is small and there are not many other options. So I try to keep it not too busy in the bedrooms. (This does not always happen!) I try to have a couple toy stations available for him to play with. Using themed bins helps me (and him) to stay organized. For one toy stations, I have bins at the end of his bed.

Toy Rotation: In the bins this month, I have a set of home-made Handwriting Without Tears wooden lines and curves for building letters in the blue bin, balls in the red bin, and vehicles in the green bin. At the end of the month, I put these items into plastic bags and set out a different grouping of toys and educational materials. This limits the amount of toys available, improves interest, and encourages imagination during play. By keeping these items in bins, we can easily move the toy sets to different parts of the house and into the yard as well.

The set of containers below is also in my son's room. Many of you may have a very similar one. After years of teaching kindergarten, I have come to the realization that word and picture labels are the way to go with smaller items. I took a picture of the item and put it into a Microsoft Word labels document using the template size for the labels I had and added words to describe the toy set. Even if the kids choose to take out all the toys, they know exactly where to put them back! It really does work!!!

Toy Rotation: Unfortunately, these labels are permanent. I did label on bin a "This week's lesson" and rotate the toys in this bin. Right now there is a set of wooden blocks and string for beading activities. The kids will go in phases using these bins. I find that by rotating where I have the bins helps keep their interest high. Sometimes I will bring this set of bins out to the playroom and exchange it for the book shelf or kitchen. I also make sure to engage with the children during play and this can enhance and enrich how they play.

How and where do you store your tots toys? What ways do you encourage your children to play with the toys in new and different ways? I'd love to hear your ideas!!!

Baby Time: It's Not Just A Diaper Change

2012-02-23T16:01:00.005-05:00

Sometimes changing a diaper can mean a lot more to your baby than you think.

How many times do you change a diaper in your child's day? I know I've stopped counting by this point with my daughter. But here's a secret, don't tell my husband or else it's my job forever, but I enjoy the time it takes to change my children's diapers. I know it sounds funny but it's true and I hope you'll agree with me on why.

Diaper changing time are moments throughout our day where I get to stop everything I'm doing and spend quality one of one time with my baby.

Time to Change the Diaper!

It's time to pick her up
It's time to hug her as we go to the changing table.
It's time to smile at her.
It's time to give her eye contact.
It's time to talk to her.
It's time to listen to her.
It's time to help her learn about her body.
It's time to let her observe her environement.
It's time to sing with her.
It's time to be silly!

You may have never thought about it before in this way but Diaper Changing Time for a baby is quality bonding time for you and your child. It's a time for your baby to learn self awareness skills and social skills. It's a time for baby to have you all to themselves.

When my middle child was a baby one of her favorite places to lay was on the changing table. I don't know if it was the way the curved mat made her feel comfortable or the room or just the feeling it gave her to lay there. If she was crying and nothing was working I'd take her to the changing table and lay her day and she was calm... it was like magic. We'd spend time just hanging out there and smiling at each other and singing songs together for a bit and life was good again.

With my youngest child, she's a mover on the changing table. She giggles, laughs and loves to have songs song to her while I'm changing her. Her favorite is to have me sing "Clap Clap Clap your Hands" while she claps her hands. She loves it and I love it since it keeps her hands occupied while I'm changing her diaper. Here are some other Action Songs we like!

Recently one of the Moms Group I'm a part of posted a question on our message board. How do you keep your child still to change them once they become movers? I know we can't be the only Moms with this problem so I figured I share some of the tricks and tips I've learned over the years as a mom and a child care provider.

The Art of Distraction: Tips on How to Change an Active Baby's Diaper

Talk to your baby... change your voice patterns soft, slow, deep, fast

Giggle with your baby... play a little tickle game we count out our tickles1, 2, 3 tickle tickle tickle and then I ask do you want more before I start again

Sing to your baby...find some special songs they love. Some of our favorite are Clap Clap Clap your Hands, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, The Wheels on the Bus, & You are my Sunshine

Tell a finger rhyme... share a special finger rhyme with them. Some of our favorites are This Little Piggy, Round and Round the Garden, Peek a Boo

Have something for your baby to look at... art work on the wall, pictures of your family or other babies, or a mirror can be fun

Have something for your baby to hold... give them something they usually don't get to hold a photo book, a poster of babies, a special big kid toy, a spinning toothbrush, a plastic cup, a water bottle, a brush... the ideas are endless

Make it a routine...children need structure to understand expectations

Gentle Touch... always keeping a hand on the baby as your changing will help to keep them safe and feel comforted... remember to never leave your child unattended on a changing table

You know what works best for your child, some like the changing table others a special changing pad on the floor. Just make it your special time together. I hope that these tips can help your diaper changing time become a special bonding time with your baby.

~ CLICK FOR MORE BABY TIME IDEAS ~

Little Hands that Cook with Books: Heart Healthy Foods

2012-02-21T11:49:00.001-05:00

Let's talk about Eating Heart Healthy Food with Little Hands that Cook with Books! We love our children and want what is best for them and their health. I thought this would be the perfect time to teach our little ones about their heart and how to make it strong and healthy.

Heart Healthy Books
Here are some book we found to learn about our Heart.

Hear Your Heart (Let's-Read-And-Find-Out Science: Stage 1 by Paul Showers

The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen

American Heart Association Kids' Cookbook

My Heart Is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall

I just added this one for fun. We had fun creating Heart Animals inspired from this book.

Make your Heart Healthy Energy Bar
They're so easy to make at home, not to mention versatile (you can play around with the types of nuts and additional dried fruits you use) We decided it would be fun to make our own Larabar-type energy bars. All you need is a food processor, dried fruit (mostly dates), nuts, and spices. Here's a basic recipe (the amounts are approximate) Since you are using a food processor with child present please use extreme caution. Children can be great helpers but this is a perfect time to talk about kitchen safety and following directions at all times in the kitchen.

Heart Healthy Energy Bars

Ingredients
1 pound of dates
1 cup of nuts (almonds and cashews)
Handful of dried cranberries
Couple of dried apricots
Spoonful of unsweetened cocoa powder
Handful of coconut flakes

Directions
1. Put the dates and nuts into the food processor
2. Chop the dates and any other dried fruits that you are using in a food processor(Adult Job).
3. Scoop the resulting paste aside
4. Finely grind the nuts and spices. (Adult Job)
5. Mix the fruits and nuts together, kneading the mixture into a lightly greased pan (or one that is covered in wax paper).
6. Flatten the mixture down by covering it with plastic wrap and pressing down and shaping with the back of a spoon.
7. Then cool in the refrigerator overnight.
8. Cut the mixture into individual bars or use a COOKIE Cutter to create shapes, tightly wrapping each with plastic wrap and storing in the refrigerator

Other Great Sources for Energy Bar Recipes
Enlightened Cooking
One Sweet Vegan
Backpacking Light
Heart Healthy Recipes from the American Heart Association

Heart Healthy Activites for Kids
After reading our books about our heart we played a few activities.

Can you Feel It?
Exercise is so important for children and adults. We spent some time talking about ways that we can move to make our heart move and exercise and made a list. We also played a game called "Can You Feel it" to find out if we can feel our hearts beating. As we were doing the lesson I had them feel their hearts during idle moments and then I would have them do different activities to change their heart rates. We recorded our results on which activities made our hearts exercise and added some more suggestions.

Activities for Heart Healthy Game
Jumping Jacks
Listening to story
Push Ups
Coloring picture
Sit ups
Yoga Pose-Butterfly
Dancing
Mixing ingredients

Heart Healthy Food Sort
I created pictures of foods that are heart healthy and foods that are not so healthy. We played a game by sorting them into groups

Heart Healthy Facts Printable

Printables for Heart Healthy Activities from Nourish Interactive

The American Heart Association recommends this eating pattern for families:

Energy (calories) should be adequate to support growth and development and to reach or maintain desirable body weight.
Eat foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars.
Keep total fat intake between 30 to 35 percent of calories for children 2 to 3 years of age and between 25 to 35 percent of calories for children and adolescents 4 to 18 years of age, with most fats coming from sources of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, such as fish, nuts and vegetable oils.
Choose a variety of foods to get enough carbohydrates, protein and other nutrients.
Eat only enough calories to maintain a healthy weight for your height and build. Be physically active for at least 60 minutes a day.
Serve whole-grain/high-fiber breads and cereals rather than refined grain products. Look for “whole grain” as the first ingredient on the food label and make at least half your grain servings whole grain. Recommended grain intake ranges from 2 oz./day for a one-year-old to 7 oz./day for a 14–18-year-old boy.
Serve a variety of fruits and vegetables daily, while limiting juice intake. Each meal should contain at least 1 fruit or vegetable. Children’s recommended fruit intake ranges from 1 cup/day, between ages 1 and 3, to 2 cups for a 14–18-year-old boy. Recommended vegetable intake ranges from ¾ cup a day at age one to 3 cups for a 14–18-year-old boy.
Introduce and regularly serve fish as an entrée. Avoid commercially fried fish.
Serve fat-free and low-fat dairy foods. From ages 1–8, children need 2 cups of milk or its equivalent each day. Children ages 9–18 need 3 cups.
Don’t overfeed. Estimated calories needed by children range from 900/day for a 1-year-old to 1,800 for a 14–18-year-old girl and 2,200 for a 14–18-year-old boy.

This eating pattern supports a child's normal growth and development. It provides enough total energy and meets or exceeds the recommended daily allowances for all nutrients for children and adolescents, including iron and calcium.
Source: American Heart Association

We feel so lucky to be a part of this book the heart project. If you haven't donated $5 to get your own copy of the heart project please stop by and get yours ! It's 70+ bloggers have collaborated together to bring you a beautiful book of heart projects! The book includes 100+ projects in it that are heart-related and kid-related. Whether they're made by the kids, for the kids or about the kids. There's projects to create, cook, play with and display in your home! There's even a chance to Win a Printed Book that ends TODAY 2/21/21

Need more info? What is The Heart Project

Hope your little ones enjoy learning about their heart and how important it is to our health. If you are looking for more Healthy Eating Tips stop by our Food Groups Series called Balanced Eating Fun from Little Hands that Cooks with Books.

Fruit Group Books, Activities and Recipe
Vegetable Group Books, Activities and Recipe
Meat Group Books, Activities and Recipe
Dairy Group Books, Activitites and Recipes
Grains Group Books, Activities and Recipe

Wishing you Happy Healthy Hearts!

Bilingual Babies: Family Book

2012-02-20T14:53:00.003-05:00

Since it was Valentine's Day last week we worked on making cards for our Family members. To encourage my Bilingual Babies to use Hindi I had my daughter create her cards with the family members names in Hindi.

As a fun activity we created our own spin of a Family Book based off of Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle from Playing with Words 365 into a Hindi Book For them to read. You can create your own too with the language you're working on with your child.

I had my daughter assemble the book with me by finding simliar words and then glueing on the family member pictures. Then I had her write the name as well into the book with her own Hindi handwriting. We had to use this little cheat sheet I created, it goes at the end of our book to help us out if we ever need to look something up. I'll be posting a printable version for you to use on Teacher's Notebook next week along with our Brown Bear, Brown Bear version in Hindi.

Here's a printable you can use to Make your Own Family Book.

Daddy Daddy Who Do You See? from Playing with Words 365

We also created a Family Book for my littlest on using this inspiration from our Pinterest Board. All you do is add Family Pictures and Names onto a Board Book that maybe isnt' your favorite book or that you got from a restaurant.

Picture Book by Chef Messy

Here are our Family Hindi Words that we added to our Family Picture Book in Hindi.

Have fun learning family names in another language!

Afterschool Express: President's Day

2012-02-19T21:15:00.005-05:00

Welcome to our Afterschool Express! This week we spent some time learning about President's Day. Since both of us did different things with our children we figured we'd both share what we did.

Amanda's "Spin On" President's Day

President's Day Necklace
Every year, I make President's Day neclaces with my Kindergarten class and now with my kids. We would discuss the colors and symbols of the United States in addition to the Presidents. The neclace is made from 3 circles of varying sizes and a paper penny. A penny stamp, sticker, or color print of the coin would work as well. The kids hole punch and thread a yarn through. This neclace will help them to remember the symbols and the important things we have discussed that day!

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln

This year, my five year old also drew this portrait of Abraham Lincoln using white crayons on black paper. You could do this with several different presidents as you learn about them, making 5-6 pictures. When the pictures have been completed, you can staple them together to make a president's book!

Kim's "Spin On" President's Day

I always found it easy to learn about President's Day by learning about Money at the same time. Here are a few activities your child might enjoy and learn the Names of Presidents from and be able to identify money too.

Counting Pennies Book

Here's a fun way to work on Abraham Lincoln and Counting all at the same time. Have your child cut out the coins and numbers. Then have them glue them onto the pages of the book in numerical order. At the end you can have them glue the pictures of the President. We added President Obama too and George Washington.

Coin Rubbing

I love to to make activities that are hands on for my children. This is a simple but very hands on activity for your child to learn the coins and a bonus is that they learn the names of the President's and some American symbols. Grab a sheet of paper and some crayons and let them explore what happens when you rub the crayon on the paper over different coins. Then we talked about the different things we saw and labeled them with words.

Coin Patterning
Either using their Coin Rubbings or Printable Coins or Real Coins you can have your child make a pattern with coins. As they are creating their patterns you can talk about the name of the coin, the name of the presidents and the American Symbol on the back.

Here are a few more resources I plan to use with my daugther tomorrow when she's home from school and wanting to know the importance of celebrating President's Day.

Online Version of Arthur Meets the President By Marc Brown

If I Were President I Would Writing Prompt from Growing Kinders

Here's a Little Reader book to find out What Does a President Do? from Scholastic (free)

Here's my favorite site with lots of President's Day Ideas from Kinder-Pond

For more Ideas for President's Day Activities check out our Winter Board on Pinterest.

We'd love to see what activity your child liked the best from our blog or from our Pinterest Board. Send us an email at theeducatorsspinonit@gmail.com and we can feature it on our From our Readers Page! Hope you have fun doing these President's day Activities with your Afterschooler!

The Afterschool Blog Hop is hosted by:

Just Playin’ Around

Little Wonders’ Days

Mama Smiles

Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

The Educators’ Spin On It

What Do We Do All Day?

Kids in the Garden: The Indoor Garden

2012-02-18T09:24:00.001-05:00

Are you not quite ready for outdoor gardening to start? Still cold and snowing outside? Start indoors with Bulbs. Here's a great way to teach your children about gardening Indoors.

We had fun watching and journaling about our Paperwhite that has grown over the past month. Each day when my daughter would wake up she'd go over and look at her plant that was growing and talk about the changes. Teaching your child the skill of observation and patience is a skill they need in life.

Make a Plant Journal

We recorded our observations in a Plant Journal. As she was observing the changes she would draw a picture in the plant journal. To encourage writing she would also write about the changes she was observing. I encouraged her to look for differences and similarities from the last time she look at the plant. She's also working on memory skills too. Here's an example of some of the things that what she wrote

I put the bulbs in the dirt today.

My plant is growing green leaves.

My plant grew 2 inches.

My plant has a round bump at the top of the leaf.

The bump is getting bigger.

It's here! I see a white flower!

Now there are three white flowers!

We added this cute little heart to the pot as the plant start growing. It was a great way to see the physical growth of the Living plant in comparison to a Non Living Object. One of the benchmarks your child will work on learning in school is Living vs Non Living, here's a quick way to give them a living example of it.

We were incorporating our math skills too. We would use a ruler to measure how tall the bulbs had grown. I'd have her make a number sentence using the numbers that she had documented. We measured it once a week so we would have bigger numbers to work with. Here's an example of the number sentences we used. 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, 8+4=12.It was a lot of fun to see the numbers changing and seeing her try to figure out how to create a number sentence with that.

Hope you have fun creating your own Plant Journal with your child. Plant Journals will be fun to do with the plants in your Garden too! Amanda's going to post about how her seeds are doing indoors and transplating them with your children next. Can't wait to read about.

Need more ideas for having your Kids in the Garden? Check them out!
Starting Seeds Indoors
How to Grow Potatoes
Make Plant Labels to Teach Reading
Growing Peas
Seeds vs. Transplants
Learning to Love Vegetables
Living vs Non-Living Printable

Spring is coming. We're going on a Hunt for Spring today, I can't wait to share our discoveries with you this week.

Linking up to: All Year Round Blog Carnival: Spring

Baby Time: Ideas for Creating and Storing Toy Stations

2012-02-16T15:09:00.004-05:00

When I made the decision to stay home with my children it was a big step from teaching in the classroom with many children to just one. I couldn't help but think how am I going to keep my baby entertained and engaged during the day just by myself. I think one of the biggest tips I can give you as a Mom and as a teacher is to set up stations. It's really helpful to create toy stations around the house for your baby and toddler to explore during playtime

For our house we have a family room with a few areas that easily made toy stations or corners. What I did was create some zones around the room for her to discover as she played. We also did the same thing in her bedroom too so we would have two areas during the daytime to play with. I've always found if I can create something visual for her she tends to stay in that area a little bit longer and engage with the toys for a longer period of time. Sometimes I even set up rugs or a foam mat too, under the toy storage to encourage the length of time spent in an area and also visually it just seems more attractive. I like to set up a fine motor station, a gross motor station, a pretend play area and a book station .

As I set up the stations I try to keep a theme so that she will start to learn how to group things together that are similar. I don't put out everything we have for her to play with. We rotate toys frequently in our house. I keep the others stored in her closet and the toys by groups there too. I find that my children really enjoy discovering new things but it's not necessary to keep buying new ones, just rotate frequently. I usually keep a group of toys out for about 3 weeks and then it's time to switch. Even if it's too a new area of our house. One tip I learned very early on is to also share toys with our close friends. When friends come over for a play date and find a toy they love love love... we file it into the back of our heads and the next time it's time to switch we'll switch some favorites that our little ones are not playing with currently. It's worked out really well and is budget friendly, eco friendly, plus it builds responsibility and friendship with others.

There's a bonus to group things into containers too. Creating Themes also makes Cleanup time a lot easier when you know where they go. Especially for visitors on play dates and also for family members who are busy at work and school during the daytime. As my little one gets older I will also start to label the containers for environmental print to help her learn to read.

I love this post How to Rotate Toys from Kim Rowe at Little Stories who's site is about Early Speech and Language Development but truthfully I think it's a great blog for parenting and raising successful children. She suggests dividing toys into 3 categories. I'll have to say she read my mind because that's what we've been doing too at our house. The recommended categories are Thinking Toys, Moving Toys, Pretend Toys, and SCLAN...shapes, colors, letters and Numbers...told you you'd love her ideas. I know I'm learning things from her site that I look forward to using.

Ideas for Storage Containers for Toy Stations

There are so many containers out there to store toys. I thought I'd share with you some of the things that have been successful at our house. We really like using the fabric boxes to store things in. They are pretty sturdy but don't hurt when you run into them as a crawler or beginning walker. Plus they easily transition to bigger kids and even to college, mine just took a few of his boxes to his dorm room. We also like using baskets for toys and books. Whenever I'm at the Dollar Tree or Dollar Spot at Target I keep my eye out. Here's are some ways we use our baskets.

We use fabric boxes for Themed Stations

We use Plastic Baskets and Containers

We love our Fabric Bowl that Amanda made for my daughter.

We use Baskets, Plastic Baskets, Boxes and
even Handmade Bags for storing Toys and BOOKS!

Here are some great links that we pinned
for ideas for DIY storage containers

to create your own toy stations in your home.

Want to make your own?

Check below for links to their Tutorials.

DIY Fabric Bowl from The Crafty Gemini includes a tutorial video

DIY Lined Boxes Using Diaper Boxes and Fabric from Positively Splendid

DIY Storage Cube from Obsessively Stiching

DIY Structured Fabric Basket from Sew 4 Home
DIY Fabric Covered Boxes from Employment Status Homemaker
Fabric Covered Book Box from Rainy Day Mum

I can't wait to try some of these out the next time we need a storage container for a new station. I'm hoping to make the Structured Fabric Basket for our car soon. We're always needing a place to put our treasures while we're traveling.

Looking for Inspiration for your Toy Stations?

Here are a few Toy Stations we've shared on Baby Time at The Educators' Spin On It
Ball Activities , Blocks Activities and DIY, Snuggle with a Book , Handmade Toys & Gifts, First Scribbles, Let's Make Music, Hands On Valentines

Have a Toddler? Amanda just posted about how she Organizes Toys for Tot School.

Check them out and don't forget to look for more to be updated soon!

Hope your little one enjoys the stations you set up and they provide many hours of engaging playtime and development! And help you keep you keep organized! Children thrive on structure.

Here are a few storage options and toys that are similiar on Amazon.

Just click and it will take you there.

Top Ten Reasons I Love Sharing Valentine's Day with my Children

2012-02-15T11:50:00.001-05:00

As I look back I see that I got the best gifts for Valentine’s Day...

Friendship, knowledge, love, shelter, clothing, food, creativity, children, marriage, and family. What more could a Mom dream for.

Here's a snapshot into our Valentine's Day Fun this year.

Checkout our site for Valentine's Day Activities for more details and ideas!

I linked up to OhAmanda's Top 10 Tuesday

Little Hands that Cook with Books: Heart Themed Recipes

2012-02-14T06:04:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day! Making food for someone else is a way of expressing your love, especially when it's shaped like a heart! I know your kids will love a few of these recipes I've found for you in case you're still looking for inspiration! We've already created Heart Bread Sticks and Heart Pizzas and even Strawberry Heart Parfait here at The Educators' Spin On it.

Sometimes it's just the serving dish or the shape of food that makes it even more fun and meaningful for child and let's face it adults too. So find something red or heart shaped and it's now a Valentine Meal!

Muffin Tin Themed Lunch from Muffin Tin Mom
There is also a collection of Valentine Themed Lunches too

Valentines Muffin Tin Meal from Rockabye Butterfly

Just in case you're looking for more Valentine's Themed Recipes, here are a few fun things I found that you might enjoy making with your child for Valentine's Day!

Pinkalicious Porrige from Super Healthy Kids

My newest favorite site!!!

Broccoli & Carrot Biscuits from Super Healthy Kids

Heart Shaped Egg from Annathered

Heart Shaped Cinnamon Rolls from Pinch My Salt

Heart French Toast from Parenting.com

Heart Fruit Kababs from Parents.com

Heart Shaped Fruit Salad from Little Wonder Days

Cheese Heart Crackers from Strong Start

Heart Shaped Bread from Rhodes Bread

Heart Ravioli from Vegalicious

Heart Shaped Cake from About.com

Candy Coated Oreo from Muffin Tin Mom

101 Valentine Treat Ideas from Rhonda Rowley

Valentine Box Blog Hop from Bent On Better Lunches and 11 Others

If you're still trying to find something special, we have a Cooking with Kids Board on Pinterest too with more ideas. Hope you enjoy making something special with your child today for Valentine's Day.

For more Valentine Activities these are some great link ups

We know that you LOVE BOOKS

2012-02-13T07:09:00.000-05:00

We know that you love books! And since we are on the eve of a holiday that allows us to celebrate our love for our friends and family in our lives, why not share your love of books with the little people that live with you =) (Yes, your kids!)

The LOVE BOOKS activity swap through snail mail has completed. This awesome group of moms has designed, delivered, opened, and created with their children! Our kids have LOVED getting "real" mail and have played, learned, and explored in ways that we may not have before. Best of all - the kids are EXCITED about reading. YIPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We received this adorable explorer pack!

Critters and Crayons kids make Valentine Chameleon Plates! Such a fun little twist to combine the holiday with an adorable book!

And the dynamic duo of Robyn and Whitney at Pen Pals and Picture Books were busy making alphabet trees

and having lots of fun with poetry!

And Little Sprout Books gets Fishy!

This Valentine's Day, why not use these great book and activity packages as inspiration for something you can put together for your children. Grab a book from your shelf and assemble a cute package using craft supplies from your cupboards to leave for the kids to open on Valentine's day. Get a new-to-you book from a local thrift or consignment store and make a book and activity package for the kids to open when they get home from school. Want to make a teachers day? Make a package for them too!

No time to run to the store? Well, this amazing fundraiser may be just the inspiration you need for an e-book and activity package, LUCKY for you it is themed for the holiday with links to how to make most of the projects AND your donation goes to a fantastic organization - The American Heart Association. Here is a little preview of the book, in case you were interested!!!!

Still need some inspiration??? Stop by our linky to get even more ideas on how to combine books and activities. My kids are going to be SO excited when they wake up and find this book on the table and hearts hanging from the trees =) It has been a favorite of the kids this year and at the end, it talks about that it never rained hearts again, but that she found other ways to make her Valentines and has an illustration of hearts hanging from the trees. We have a tree right outside the window where we eat breakfast and I thought this would be a wonderful way to wake up on Valentine's Day morning!

A special thanks goes out to these bloggers for contributing a project to the heart book! If you feel like sharing the love with a blogger this week - stop by and leave a comment! I am sure they will appreciate it!!!

hands on : as we grow	♥	A Little Learning for Two	♥	Among Many Blessings
Angelique Felix	♥	At Home with Ali	♥	Broken Treasures
Busy at Home	♥	Busy Kids Happy Mom	♥	Carrie Saindon's Photo Journey
Child Central Station	♥	Classified: Mom	♥	Classroom Magic
Creative with Kids	♥	Creativity My Passion	♥	Critters and Crayons
De Tout et de Rien	♥	Dilly-Dali Art	♥	Dinosaurs & Octopuses
Excited 2 Learn	♥	Hand Over the Cookies	♥	Handprint & Footprint Art
Happy Hooligans	♥	Heart Journey	♥	Imagination Soup
Jamie's Jumble	♥	Kitchen Counter Chronicles	♥	Kreative Resources
Let Kids Create	♥	Little Illuminationss	♥	Living Montessori Now
Loudness of the Lambs	♥	Love and Lollipops	♥	Mama, hocemo nesto da pravimo
Mama Pea Pod	♥	Mama Smiles	♥	MemeTales
Messy Kids	♥	Mindful Meanderings	♥	Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Mommy Labs	♥	Mommy Perks	♥	Mum Paints Lives
Mummy Mummy Mum	♥	My Creative Family	♥	NurtureStore
One Artsy Mama	♥	Peace Love & Rainbows	♥	Play Dr Mom
Putti Prapancha	♥	Rainbows within Reach	♥	Reading Confetti
Ready. Set. Read!	♥	Red Ted Art	♥	Sense of Wonder
Share & Remember	♥	Stacy Molter	♥	Sun Hats & Wellie Boots
Teach Preschool	♥	The Artful Child	♥	The Chocolate Muffin Tree
The Craft Barn	♥	The Educators' Spin on It	♥	The Golden Gleam
The Imagination Tree	♥	The Iowa Farmer's Wife	♥	The Joy of My Life
The Kids Fun Review	♥	The Outlaw Mom Blog	♥	The Preschool Toolbox
The Seeds Network	♥	Toddler Approved

Afterschool Express: Colorful Heart Fun

2012-02-12T08:20:00.001-05:00

During the week we worked on our Paper Bag Book About Colors which inspired several Heart Activities for Valentine's Day. There are many activities that incorporate color which made it easy to sort the colors onto each page of the color book. Hope our activities can inspire you for your own Heart Fun with your child.

Want to make your own Paper Bag Book?

Bilingual Babies: Learning Colors through Valentines

We created and labeled sorting containers for our colors.

As she was sorting we would do half with English and Half with Hindi and if she couldn't remember she would use her Paper Bag Book to look it up. We also practiced writing the Color word into the book as we did each activity.

She traced color words and hearts

Then she matched the traced words to the color words

Then we matched up the hearts to the color words

After tracing, matching and sorting it was time to start Dot Painting Hearts using each color. As my daughter stamped she sung a little tune of the color she was using. The more learning methods you can use while learning make a bigger impression on the brain. Dot Painting provided my daughter with bodily kinesthetic, language, musical learning opportunities. For more information on Learning Modalities. In the article Howard Gardner refers to multiple intelligences as tools to use in teaching and learning.

We created heart letters so that we could spell out each color word in both Hindi and English. You can easily do this with any language and any concept!

Here are are a few more Valentine Projects we worked on this week.
Sponge Painting with Hearts
Heart Butterfly Valentine's
Handprint Valentine
Marshmallow Cake Pops for friends

Heart Activities planned for this upcoming week
Heart Stamping
We're going to stamp using a heart cookie cutters with many different colors. Once dry cut out the hearts and place them into the matching color word.
Resist Painting with Water ColorsWater color hearts with all the colors. First write the color words with a white crayon for some resist painting.
Patterning & Counting Hearts
We created heart patterns and counted with hearts in Hindi and English. Then we even created our own little heart chart with number words.

Now that we're working on color words I found a few great sites for more activities.

Colors of Love Sight Word Game

From Criss-Cross Applesauce

Here's another inspiration for a Paper Bag Color Book

from Share and Remember

Rainbow Sensory Tub from

No Time For Flash Cards (One of my Favorite Sites)

Need some ideas for Valentine's Day Check Out Our Pinterest Board

Here are some other Heart Inspired Posts for you from The Educators' Spin On It!

Stamping to 100 Heart Chain

Bird Seed Heart and Poem

Baby Time Make Your Own Valentine Blocks

Bilingual Babies: Learning Colors through Valentines

Heart Handprint Card
Decorating for Valentine's Day
Heart Breadsticks
Heart Pizza

Hope you have a very special Valentine's Day with your loved ones. And who knows maybe learn how to spell a new color word :)

The Afterschool Blog Hop is hosted by:

Just Playin’ Around

Little Wonders’ Days

Mama Smiles

Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

The Educators’ Spin On It

What Do We Do All Day?

The Learning Garden - How to Grow Potatoes

2012-02-11T15:15:00.001-05:00

As parents, we are trying to raise well rounded kids that are knowledgeable about the world around them, thoughtful and considerate of others, healthy, and happy children. We are trying to celebrate each and every day with our children, because they are true gifts. We are trying to parent with purpose. As we approach a holiday to celebrate our loved ones, I can't help but think of how much of a connection there is between material goods and sweets to demonstrate how much we love our kids, spouses, friends, and family. We have decided to fight against these societal trends and create our own healthy family traditions and this one starts with a potato.

A potato?

Yes, a potato. A seed potato in fact. Every Valentine's Day, we plant potatoes in our garden. They are not the most prolific crop for the space they take up, but oh so much fun for the kids to plant and harvest. They are also relatively easy to grow, making this a good pick for gardening with kids. Last week we stopped at our local Feed and Seed store to pick up our seed potatoes. I strongly recommend purchasing seed potatoes because they have not been treated with a growth retardant and are disease free. This weekend, we will quarter the large potatoes, making sure there is 1-2 eyes on each piece. Then, we will let them sit in a paper bag for a couple days so that their cuts heal over (We didn't do this last year, but I read that it reduces the chance of the potatoes rotting in the ground) Then, on Valentine's Day, we will plant them, cut side down, about a foot apart and 6 inches deep in our old blue play bin with a cracked bottom. Every week we will water them and mound the soil around the stems as they grow. And we will wait.

And wait.

80 days seems sooooo long!

But the wait is worth it! On harvest day we feel like treasure hunters mining for gold, only we are just a family out in the backyard digging for potatoes!!! I can remember our last years treasure hunt for potatoes as if it were yesterday; the kids cheers when they found one, Papa's exclamations that they actually grew, my toddler digging in the dirt in his jammies. Oh, the fun.

And I am not the only one who remembers the excitement. My 5 year old has a count down to potato planting day. I think that she may be even more excited than I am and it just warms my heart. There is no talk of chocolate. No purchasing of cheesy stuffed teddy bears, just a bag of seed potatoes and a ton of memories waiting to be made.

This IS exciting stuff (yeah, gardening floats our boats over here!) And really, this excitement can and should be capitalized upon. This is REAL life. This is REAL learning. So what is a mom and an educator to do? There really isn't a lot of curriculum for young children out there on growing potatoes. I have gathered a collection of videos, articles, and online games for kids to play at the bottom of this post, but I wanted to really connect reading and math to our gardening. As a result of this need, the potato packet has arrived! Made by yours truly for my kids =) It has a mini-book, math observation sheet, a graph, gardening bracelets and more!

Yes, you are all talented and can make this on your own too. But, if you are short on time, I'm making it available for you to purchase here ($1.50) for your classroom or home use. We have some other free and for sale items in our shop. Please feel free to stop by! By request, I have added pre-made garden reading card labels. They are a printable version of the ones I blogged about last month! Here is my 5 year old working on the data recording sheet!

To learn more about planting potatoes and see us in action, check out our newest YouTube video!

This is what authentic learning is all about.

Articles
A well rounded article about different varieties, growing, harvesting, fertilizing, and possible pests.
Another Teacher Blogger's post about growing potatoes with her students.
Another well rounded article about growing potatoes.
An E-how article on growing potatoes.
How to build and grow with a potato box
A general post about gardening with kids - potatoes made their top 10 list!
Spuds in Tubs - BC Agriculture in the classroom Foundation with some links related to gardening.

Videos
This is the best "how to" video I have found. I recommend starting here!
Soil mounding, growth and harvest.
Growing potatoes in a grow bag.

For the Kids
Potato Games and Information

And a way to incorporate a little crafting... you can't forget potato stamping!!!

Happy Gardening!!!

-Amanda

Baby Time: Valentine's Day Activities

2012-02-09T15:53:00.000-05:00

Hands On Activities for your Baby to enjoy and create for Valentine's Day!

It's hard to believe my littlest one is going to celebrate her second Valentine's Day. Last year we were taken sweet pictures of her the size of a chocolate box and this year we're playing with chocolate boxes. My oldest daughter was 6 months old for her first Valentine's Day. She was in love with the box of chocolates. Here's are some heartfelt activities that I know your little ones will enjoy!

Heart Exploration

Babies love to explore! Let them explore the new things around your home for Valentine's Day. The empty box of chocolate can be the newest toy that they love to open and shut and open and shut and hide their toys inside. The heart cookie cutter you found on clearance after Valentines' Day can become a manipulative toys that they love putting in and out of the metal bowl(our favorite toy at our house). Finding things around the house shaped like hearts and talking about them provides discovery and stimulation and vocabulary for your baby's development. I hope to make a few heart photo blocks this week too, inspired from our Make Your Own Baby Blocks

Felt Hearts

It's always fun to give your baby something new to explore. We're using Felt Hearts for playtime. I cut out some felt hearts in various sizes so that we could explore the hearts. I also gave her a container to keep them in. I made sure to make the hearts in both matching color and shapes so that she could find the same. Creating learning opportunities to sort objects and demonstrate new vocabulary is important at any age. We used words like big, small, same, different, red, pink and purple. They would make a cute Valentine gift for your child!

Felt Sweets and Fabric Bowel Amanda gave my daughter this adorable Handmade Gift for her 1st birthday that she loves. It's a great idea for a Valentine's Day too for your little ones!

Heart Scribbles Art

We just started making our First Scribbles (check out our post for more info). This time she had fun using the container to hold her crayons in. She was so engaged in putting the crayons in and out of the crayon holder. She would take the crayon out and put it onto the paper and scribble and then put it back in. I tried to make a big deal out of when she would put it on the paper so she would start to process what to do. She loved it!

I took her scribbles and cut out some Hearts in various sizes to decorate for Valentine's Day. Then we took the hearts and glued them onto a paper to create butterflies. We hung them up on our fridge but you can also make Valentine's Day card for Daddy or Grandparents with them. When we glued them I made sure not to put glue on the end so that their wings could lift up off the paper as though they are flying. Here's how our Butterfly Hearts from Scribbles turned out.

Heart Prints

We explored using a cookie cutter to make prints with washable paint. I added a few drops of soap into our already washable paint to make it a little bit easier at clean up time. Before we started using the cookie cutter I gave her some time the day before playing with it. It's important to let you child experience the art supply before expecting them to create something with it.

Love Bug Footprint T-Shirt

I couldn't resist using her foot on last time to make a little Valentine's Day T-Shirt to wear. I just dipped her foot into red paint and put it onto a Onsie. Then took a heart stamp and stamped the wings onto my Love Bug! Simple but turned out super cute for our little Love Bug. You could easily make this into a card too.

Valentine Butterfly
We're sent little Valentine's off to Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles. We made little Valentine Butterflies by tracing my daughter's foot. Then we attached heart doilies for the wings and eyes to the footprint. We attached this little Valentine phrase too. I love that both of my girls were able to do this craft together and send them off to family.

My First Valentine
Simple Valentine Idea just create a handprint on a heart doiley, great for siblings too!

Valentine Snack Time

We enjoyed our Heart Breadsticks from Little Hands That Cook with Books. If you haven't checked it out you might want to for a little special snack for family or friends. My daughter loved the heart bread stick and they were super simple!

Hope you enjoy this special time with your baby. Take the moment to really see your baby and loved ones. Validate them and express to them they are a person who's important to you. Taking the time to say I Love you with hugs and kisses and smiles. I promise you, your child will love you forever for those moments and grow up happy, confident and loved!

Looking for more Valentine Ideas... stop by This Valentine Blog Hop
We've linked up these activities to

The Educators' Spin On It Activities are suggestions to play with your child with together.

Please use at your own risk and provide adult supervision at all times.

You know what's best for your child and are your child's first and most important teacher.

Fancy Nancy Explorer Extraordinaire Book and Activity!

2012-02-08T08:12:00.000-05:00

My kids were over the moon excited to see this huge box in the mail waiting for them to open! As part of the "Love Books," activity and book swap, Critters and Crayons send an Explorer package for my 2 kiddos! WHAT FUN!

We couldn't wait to be explorers! What a great choice of books for us.

Fancy Nancy Explorer Extraordinaire is about exploring the world around you and we love to do that. Fancy Nancy and her best friend Bree create an explorer club with rules. They examine different things in the backyards like butterflies, trees, ants, and birds. Their younger siblings want to join, but don't seem to follow all the rules in the beginning. At the end, they find the best discovery (you'll have to read it to find out what it is) and are unanimously voted into the club. We talked about how different people bring different skills and talents to a group and even though little brothers and sisters may have trouble following all the big kid rules, they still are important, valued, and must be included.

My 5 year old really enjoys reading Fancy Nancy books because she likes learning and using big words for things. I liked this book because it combines illustrations and photographs, fiction and some non-fiction parts, making it a very well rounded book with an educational and entertainment component. After reading the book we were ready to start our activity - The Little Explorers Discovery Jug!

Before opening the jug, I asked the kids to think about what our activity was. My kids couldn't quite figure out what exactly was in this "Little Explorers Discovery Jar." Elly was soooo silly and said," I will use my 5 senses to figure this stuff out." She looked at it. She shook it and listened to it. And YES she smelled it. (That is her smelling the jug) She actually sniffed around the entire outside and couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary. <insert a ton of sniffing noises as you envision her doing this around the entire container.> "PLEASE can we just feel it?" she begged! Welll.............

I knew that this was cloud dough and remembered that it may be a tad on the messy side. In fact, on her blog she post about could dough Tricia writes"Keep this in mind, folks. Fun can be had all around with this stuff. And I mean, All Around. :)" I know my kiddos and took this as a warning to head outside. Besides, everything about this book and activity screams "OUTSIDE!"

We unscrewed the cap and dumped it right into our empty sand and water table on the deck. The kids started sifting their fingers in it and shouting, "I found a ____" (insert the name of really cool little shells and rocks that Tricia's kids filled the jug with) They were so into this activity, that I grabbed a book and snuggled up on the deck in the sunshine to read for pleasure!

Soon, Elly said, "I know what this is! It is flour..." and from there, the fun was had, all around! It was a full body sensory experience! The kids played with it for hours and then we saved what we could for another day of play!

The only thing I wished I had were 2 large magnifying glasses for us to take an explorer walk with. If anyone knows a good place to get sturdy, large, clear magnifying glasses - please let me know, I am on the search for some!

A special thanks to Tricia at Critters and Crayons for this awesome gift! Stay tuned to see what books and activities Robyn and Whitney from Pen Pals and Picture Books and Ann at Little Sprout Books received in this book and activity swap!

If you missed out on the swap, but love the idea, please don't feel bad...

1. We may do one again this summer if there is enough interest

2. You could make one for your kids (this would make an AWESOME Valentine's Day gift)

3. You could make this for another parent in your life that would appreciate it, maybe a single parent? someone who is working long hours? or just a friend who would benefit from your kindness?

If your stuck on what to make or how to connect an activity to a book, feel free to stop by our linky to get ideas. If you have a great blog post that connects one book and an activity (or activities) and want to share, please feel free to link yours up too! That is why WE blog, to share ideas and become better parents!

Little Hands That Cook with Books: Grains Group~Balanced Eating Fun Series

2012-02-07T23:56:00.001-05:00

We are learning about the Grains Group in our Little Hands that Cook with Books Balanced Eating Fun Series! It's getting close to Valentine's Day so I thought it would be to include a heart into the lesson so we're making heart shaped breadsticks.

My daughter was very excited to make her very own heart breadsticks so I decided to let her use the premade dough. The next time we do this we'll make it whole wheat breadstick recipe to add some more Grains into our diet. I want her to know the process of making bread from scratch. You could easily do heart shaped pretzels too! Here's what we used to make our heart shaped breadsticks.

Heart Shaped Breadsticks

Ingredients
Refrigerated Breadsticks from Pillsbury
butter
garlic salt (or desired herb)
Parmesan cheese

Directions
1. Separate dough into 12 strips
2. Take two strips and twist and join to create heart shape on baking sheet
3. Brush with melted butter
4. Sprinkle with herbs and parmesean cheese
5. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes
6. Enjoy with someone you LOVE!

Books About the Grains Group
The Grain Group by Mari C. Schuh

The Great Grains Group by Marcie Aboff

While our breadsticks were cooking we had a Lesson about the Grains Group. I had her find items in the pantry that she thought would belong into the Grains Group. We laid them out onto the counter and labeled them with the premade labels I made. They included words like bread, cereal, rice, pasta, popcorn, crackers. Once we found the items we played a quick game to decide if they belonged into the Whole Grains Group or Refined Grains Group. I pulled out some pictures I printed of the different whole grains, here's the site. Ideally I would like to have containers full of whole grains too for a more hands on approach. Then we tried to find items in our pantry that contained whole grains. Here's the list of Whole Grain Words to look for that we used that you can use with your little ones!

Whole Grains and Refined Grains Game

What is a Portion?
Now that my own child is 5 years old I felt it was time for her to learn about how to read the label on boxes and understand what a "Portion Size" is. We took some of our favorite snacks and read the label and served them into containers to truly understand what is in a serving. I think it was a great learning opportunity for her to visually comprehend how much she needs of some of her favorite snacks. And to understand that at least half of our grains each day should be from the Whole Grains group.

Grains Group Activities
Word Search from Nourish Interactive
Coloring Sheet of the Grains Group
Sort the Grains
Let's Make Bread
Whole Grain Picture and Word Sort

Here's an additional Little Hands that Cook with Books Lesson about the Grains Group!
Teddy Bear Biscuits
Teddy Bear Food Group Book with Printable Words

I love how proud she feels when she is able to cook all by herself!

We brought our Heart Breadsticks to a Valentine's Day Playdate. The kids loved them, even my baby girl1

Next time we're going to learn how is flour made and how bread is made? Who better to teach us than The Little Red Hen. Until then enjoy...

Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse by Laura Numeroff

UPCOMING: We're going on a Cooking Adventure next with Laura Numeroff's books

with our Little Hands that Cook with Books this Spring!

Hope you will join us!

Bilingual Babies: Paper Bag Color Book

2012-02-06T13:12:00.000-05:00

We're working on our Colors! We made a Color Book that using various learning opportunities to learn how to identify, spell and read Color Words in Hindi. We created Paper Bag Book using Hearts, English and Hindi Color Words. You can make your own Paper Bag Book too with ANY language!

We're always putting "Our Own Spin on Things" at our house and this was my inspiration, an adorable Valentine Paper Bag Book from Rosy Posy.

For our Hindi Paper Bag Color Book we grabbed our supplies
5 Paper Bags
Stapler
Glue
Scissors
Colored Hearts
Magazines

To create the book we cut off the bottom of the paper bags to create more openings and also to create our containers to sort our hearts into. Then we stapled the book together and covered with a Valentine Napkin that we had around the house.

Next step was to cut the Hindi words and glue them on to the book and attach the English Words onto the Hearts. We also glued the Hindi and English words onto the Paper Bag Containers for sorting colors.

We will also practice writing the color words over the next week on the Paper bags using Markers and Crayons to create more multi sensory learning. Add to this activity by cutting out pictures from recycled magazine that related to each color throughout the week and then place it into our color containers made from the bags.We also cut out the Hindi Letters so that we can spell out each color word in Hindi. We used these letters Printable Hindi Letters .You could very easily do this with just english letters to practice learning how to spell color words or other language. We will post how we use this more in our Afterschool Express this week.

We've linked it up to the Paper Bag Challenge at Tinker Labs and would love your like on Pinterest to help us WIN ! Here's our Pin http://pinterest.com/pin/111816003218190493/ . You can check out all the other projects and get inspired too!

Here are some Hindi Color Word Resources
One of my favorite Hindi Sites for Kids Hindi Gym
Here's a free Printable Hindi Color Book from Hindi Gym
They also have an online Powerpoint Presentation for Colors

From Other Resources
Online Color Flashcards
Hindi Alphabet Chart
Hindi Words
Printable Hindi Letters

Found this article about Color in India while searching for Hindi Colors and thought I'd share. I can't wait to celebrate Holi soon with our family and friends!

India is a land of colors. A multitude of colors can be seen in the terrain, the sky, the water, and the culture of the people. In fact, a full festival, the festival of Holi, dedicated to color, is celebrated in the month of March every year. Everyone is covered with color, irrespective of their age and status. A lot of meaning is attached to color in India. In fact even the days of the week have their preferred colors. White clothes are recommended for Monday, Orange for Tuesday, Green for Wednesday, Yellow for Thursday, Red for Friday and Black for Saturday. Red is the color of the bride and the state of being married. Married women can normally be seen with a red dot (bindi) on their forehead. White represents purity, Orange is the color of saints, Green is the color of prosperity. People in India love color. Color is used effectively to represent various moods and emotions.

Source: http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/22648.aspx

Hope you have fun creating your own Paper Bag Color Book. I think we might be creating this Paper Bag Book next from Imagination Soup who used her paper bag book to paint, write a story and learn how to draw mermaids and fairies.

We'd love to see what language you create with your Paper Bag Color Book with your Bilingual Babies!

Afterschool Express: Decorating for Valentine's Day

2012-02-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

This year, I am letting the kids do most of the decorating. We are trying to stay within a budget and be eco-friendly. This means, we are trying to use what we have to make what we want. I told my kindergartner she could design and make a themed entry way for our family. This is what she came up with!

We look at our Pinterest Boards together for inspiration, (they are not any fun unless you DO them!) close the computer up and GO! We looked at this project and remembered our felt stash! She cut and sewed the heart garland and then said, "I have an idea!" Using a similar method, she began making these sweet little multi colored hearts, only she stuffed them with felt rectangles so they would be like mini-rainbows! I just love how she is able to put her own "spin" on it!

She then saw these fabulous Queen of Heart paintings at Pre-K and Sharing and thought they would be neat hung up on either side of the mirror. We cut up a cardboard box (which happened to be the one Critters and Crayons sent us from the LOVE Books exchange - so thanks for helping out with another fun activity!) and got busy painting, cutting, gluing, and oil pasteling. When she was done, I hot glued ribbon on the back and hung them up! As the table was empty, she kindly requested to bring out our "egg tree." (The stick that was painted white for last year's Easter Egg tree.) Each day, she is adding new hearts. Some are sewn from felt, others are cut from paper, strung from beads... the list and possibilities are endless! I am sure as we get closer to Valentine's her display will grow and change! I am excited to see what she comes up with!!!

In between crafting, reading, and gardening, we try to sneak in a few hearts into our cooking! Pizza, pancakes, even fruit in the shape of hearts. See if you can sneak a few in this week and spread some love! Ohhhh, spread, I bet you could spread a peanut butter heart onto your kids whole wheat toast for a healthy breakfast!

Last, but not least, I make her little notes for her lunch box to let her know how much I love her. Sending cards is a simple way to let your children know you are thinking about them, but they do take time to make. If anyone wants their own copy, I have uploaded them to our Teacher Notebook account. They are free to download!

We'd love to hear what you have been doing? Do you let your children decorate for the holidays? Please share by linking up a post or leaving us a comment. We love to hear from you!!!

The Afterschool Blog Hop is hosted by:
Just Playin’ Around
Little Wonders’ Days
Mama Smiles
Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns
The Educators’ Spin On It
What Do We Do All Day?

Gardening with Kids- The Heirloom Life Gardener Review

2012-02-04T08:20:00.000-05:00

I am a mom who is trying to grow a garden in her small backyard because...

I want my children to know where food comes from.
I want them to eat healthier.
I want them to understand the value of hard work and the concept of patience.
I want to give them the gift of having a family garden, just like my parents have done for me.

Now, I want to grow more heirlooms.

I have to admit, I don't know a ton about gardening. My parents and their parents were gardeners. My in-laws in Russia have some of the most amazing gardens you have ever seen. I remember visits to the Dacha in the summer and eating the most delicious fruits and vegetables I have ever tasted. Their alpine strawberries are out of this world. But eating from others gardens only teaches you how delightfully tasty food can be, not when or how to plant it.

Here is a picture of my grandfather in-law and I in Russia, summer of 1999.

My parents garden in MN is beautiful. The have one short growing season and try to make the best of it! We often plan trips there specifically in August so we can help with the harvesting, eating, and canning of all the fruits and vegetables. They make home-made salsas and sauces, jams and freeze many vegetables. I can almost taste their tomatoes just thinking about it!

Here is a picture of my Dad and I in their garden, August 2010.

When my hubbie and I moved South, we lived in an apartment, I missed the garden and the fresh produce. We joined a local organic CSA (Crop Share) and were members for many year. Every week, we stopped by the Farmers Market to pick up our share of the crop. We got to know the farmers Michael and Mariana, how they cooked, their favorite veggies and more. It felt good feeding my family food that was grown locally, naturally, and with love. We got whatever the farmers had in their fields. I learned how to cook with Kale, Bok Choy, Mustard Greens and more. I also begin to get an idea about what the growing season is in the south.

So why Amanda are you telling us about your gardening background? Well, I was given the book, "The Heirloom Life Gardener, The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally," by the team at Baker Creek Heirloom seeds to review. I've read MANY gardening books, but this one is different.

Two weeks ago, I placed my first order with their company. I had been reading some serious gardening forums (very intimidating!) and several people had written about Baker Creek seeds. I checked them out and the next day a personal friend told me how she was getting close to 100% germination rates from their seeds. Then, I saw a post on Facebook where the company donated seeds to community gardens for refugees and I went on their site to order my first set of seeds. This is the type of company that I want to support.

Then this beautiful gardening book came for me to review. Gardening can be overwhelming and I am just a backyard mom gardener who if not afraid to throw some seeds in a container of soil, give it some water and hope it will grow. This family though has 176 acres and 6 enormous gardens. I honestly was a little afraid to start reading.

I shouldn't have been. I felt like turning the pages of this book was like having a conversation with Jere; I, the reader, was discovering who he is as a gardener. It is obvious that he is as passionate about seeds and gardening as I am about teaching children. You can tell that he has found what makes him happy in life and reading his story made me smile. It also gave me a connection to this amazing family that I just bought my seeds from. I feel like I know the man who found these seeds, grew the plants in his garden, harvested the seeds, packaged them, and sent them to my doorstep (with lots of help from his family, friends, and co-workers, I am sure!)

Not only does this book let you "get to know your farmer," it has a fantastic section on basic gardening and a growing guide for a vast list of vegetables. I will have to admit, I am very glad that I get to keep this copy and not give it away (Sorry, you have to go buy your own copy!) because I will be using this resource for many years to come. In addition to the basic information on how and where to plant the vegetables, it also tells you how to save their seeds. Which brings me back to why I was sharing my gardening history with you.

I read this book cover to cover in one day. It brought back all the memories I had of gardening and reminded me of why I garden. Gardening has been a part of my family for many years. My husband joked that he hauled dirt for his grandma's gardens, he hauled dirt for his mother's gardens and when he married an American woman, he thought he was done. Instead he is hauling dirt for his wife's garden. And my hope is that one day he will be hauling dirt for his daughter's garden and someday, his grandchildren's gardens too. Reading this book made me think about ways that I could incorporate a greater variety of vegetables into my gardens. I am inspired to grow and collect more of our own seeds, so that my children can someday start their gardens from our family seeds. Heirlooms are gifts from generation to generation and I would like to be able to give my children the gift of seeds with a history, seeds that are genetically diverse and have the power to grow into amazingly flavorful fruits and vegetables. I am inspired to connect history and geography into our gardening lessons. After reading this book...

I am inspired.

If you are looking for some gardening inspiration, I would encourage you to consider purchasing, "The Heirloom Life Gardener." It even comes with a year subscription to their magazine! I could even see this book wrapped up with some seeds for the garden lover in your life for a special occasion or birthday gift. (Valentine's Day is just around the corner!!!)

*** I received this book courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds to review on this blog, the thoughts and opinions about this book are my own.***

Tot school - Literacy Development

2012-02-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

Yes, my tot scribbles and I think it is wonderful!!! Yesterday, Kim wrote about exposing your babies to pre-writing activities by giving them opportunities to write. I am reading the book Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write--from Baby to Age 7 by Dr. J. Richard Gentry and both of our little ones would be considered in stage 0 of learning to read and write. Dr. Gentry emphasis the importance of this stage, "what you do in Phase 0 hugely impacts to timing of all the other phases of literacy." First scribbles are setting the foundation for literacy development. Phew... what we are doing with our babies and toddlers is SO important. He uses the acronym E.A.S.Y to explain how to teach babies and toddler in this stage.

E - Early start. Dr. Gentry emphasises an early start, talking to your babies, reading out loud, immersing your children in oral language. (He even encourages the use of a second language at this age too!) At our household, we use every day activities like making chocolate play dough and rolling lace onto it to "immerse" our children in language. We talk about the patterns and textures of the things we are working with, how things feel, look, taste. We talk together about the world and the things in it. I began reading to my baby the first day he came home from the hospital! Books have been a part of our life for his entire first 2 years.

A - Activities Interacting with board books and doing simple activities such as rhyming activities will help create a literacy rich environment. He writes "You will know you have been successful when by two years of age your baby is perfectly content to entertain herself happily flipping through a pile of books for 20 minutes while singing and chatting to herself." YEAH! This doesn't happen all day, but my tot is content to "read" to himself at least one 20 minute section of our day!!!

S - Stimulation. This part emphasis that talking about the book and the illustrations is helpful for children this age. If we read a book about buttons, like "Corduroy's Buttons," then I stimulate my tots fine motor skills by hiding buttons in our play dough (we have been on a home-made play dough kick this week!) and finding them. We also have been showing him that some pants and shirts have buttons and he is now identifying them on his own.

Mine decided to drop all the buttons on the floor after he found them (guess he wanted to stimulate his sense of sound and develop a greater understanding of gravity) So, I brought out a muffin tin and we sat together of the floor picking up the buttons and sorting them by color. I think this is what Dr. Gentry is talking about, connecting literature and real life through activities.

Y - You. "You start early, you provide literacy-rich activities, and you provide the hands-on-stimulation."

I love this quote! We recently attended a music class and the instructor was talking about percussion instruments. She had the kids make their own maracas. While they were making these maracas, one of the kids grabbed his mom's i-phone and pulled up a music app. He told the teacher he knew all about the instruments because he played them all and demonstrated how to tap his finger on the I-phone. His mom said it was much quieter than actually letting him have and play the instruments. I couldn't help but think that this child was missing out on what music really is. An application to tap does not replicate the actual beating of a drum or shaking of a tambourine. Similarly, putting your kid in front of an educational video isn't an engaging, literacy-rich activity. Setting your child on your lap to read a story, having him or her help choose the book, turn the pages and engaging him in a dialog is what engaging, hands-on literacy looks like. Doing art activities and making books with your babies and toddlers are some suggested activities. Beginning at 8-12 months, Dr. Gentry suggests introducing your babies and tots to blocks and letter tiles. For more ideas on how to read and interact with babies 0-2, the book "Baby Read-Aloud Basics," may be another good resource for you.

If you need ideas on some more literacy based activities for your kids, stop by and check out our yearly link-up of books and activities that relate to them. If you have a specific post that highlights one book and an interactive project or activity that goes with it, feel free to link it up too! There are some fantastic ideas linked up already!!! Let's stimulate our kids cognitive development!!!

Baby Time: My First Scribbles

2012-02-02T13:26:00.000-05:00

Children are naturally drawn towards activities that give them an instant response. Drawing can be one of those activities. It is an importance concept for their little brains to learn and helps them to understand cause and effect. It can help to develop eye hand coordination and fine motor skills in the process of having fun coloring. Experiencing the first time your little one draws can be such an adventure. The look on their eyes as they begin to move the crayon, marker or pen across the paper and watch it make marks is like magic! Don't be afraid to try it out!

We grabbed some extra wide crayons from the Dollar Spot at Target but you could easily make crayons from your older child's broken crayons too into shapes by melting them into molds to make it easier for them to hold. I pinned a few of those ideas here on our Pinterest Board. Crayola sells wide washable crayons that are great to tiny fingers and hold up well.

Based on my experiences, the time I would suggest trying it out is when your child become confident in eating finger foods. They've developed the skills necessary to try drawing out too. Now there are rules too... like keep out of your mouth and on a paper. It's a process and the sooner you start the sooner they learn. Whenever we're done we put everything away and out of reach so that we don't have any masterpieces on the wall, if you know what I mean. This activity is great for toddlers and preschoolers too!

Whenever starting an art project with something new always give your child time to explore the actual object. I gave her time to hold the crayons and see what they were like before I demonstrated for her what they do. Give it a few attempts before you will actually see them understanding the concept.

Here's how my 1 year old enjoyed her first experience and truthfully I should have started sooner. She LOVED it!

You can let them color and color to create all sorts of masterpieces. You can save these little treasures and make a masterpieces with them for your Wall or even mail to Grandparents. I loved this post from Squash Bottom Babies of creating a Picture from cut out pieces of all the First Scribbles picture from they get older they will start to express themselves and their surroundings using art. This post form Childhood 101 about How Children Use Art to Process Thoughts, Ideas and Emotions. really helps you to understand why art needs to be in every child's lives from the very start.

We decided to make a few Heart with our Scribbles for Valentine's Day! I'll keep you posted on how they turn out! You can check out Amanda's Tot School Post with a photo of his first scribbles heart and also learn about early literacy development.

January Wrap Up at The Educators' Spin On It

2012-02-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

Welcome new friends and glad to have you back good friends! Here at the Educators' Spin On It we blog about PARENTING WITH PURPOSE! We teach our children a second language (Monday), cook with books (Tuesday), play and learn with our babies (Thursday - Babytime, Friday - Tot-school, Sunday - Afterschool), and garden (Saturday), January was a fantastic learning and playing month. We have enjoyed learning and growing with our children and hope we were able to inspire you!

Little Hands That Cook with Books: Dairy Group~ Balanced Eating Fun Series

2012-02-01T13:57:00.001-05:00

We're working on learning about all the Food Groups in our Balanced Eating Fun Series with Little Hands that Cook with Books.

So far we've learned about the:
Fruit Group
Vegetable Group
Meat Group

This week we're focusing on the Dairy Group! If you have the opportunity I would take your Little Ones to a dairy farm. It's an unforgettable experiences and they will understand in a concrete way where milk products come from. I know that

The USDA states that ...

Consuming dairy products provides health benefits — especially improved bone health. Foods in the Dairy Group provide nutrients that are vital for health and maintenance of your body. These nutrients include calcium, potassium, vitamin D, and protein.

The amount we need varies check the USDA website for more info but here are their recommendations for children.

Daily recommendation for Dairy
Children	2-3 years old	2 cups
Children	4-8 years old	2 ½ cups

How much is a cup?

	Amount That Counts as a Cup in the Dairy Group	Common Portions and Cup Equivalents
Milk (choose fat-free or low-fat milk)	1 cup milk
	1 half-pint container milk
	½ cup evaporated milk
Yogurt (choose fat-free or low-fat yogurt)	1 regular container (8 fluid ounces)	1 small container (6 ounces) = ¾ cup
Yogurt (choose fat-free or low-fat yogurt)	1 cup yogurt	1 snack size container (4 ounces) = ½ cup
Cheese (choose reduced-fat or low-fat cheeses)	1 ½ ounces hard cheese (cheddar, mozzarella, Swiss, Parmesan)	1 slice of hard cheese is equivalent to ½ cup milk
	⅓ cup shredded cheese
	2 ounces processed cheese (American)	1 slice of processed cheese is equivalent to ⅓ cup milk
	½ cup ricotta cheese
	2 cups cottage cheese	½ cup cottage cheese is equivalent to ¼ cup milk
Milk-based desserts (choose fat-free or low-fat types)	1 cup pudding made with milk
	1 cup frozen yogurt
	1 ½ cups ice cream	1 scoop ice cream is equivalent to ⅓ cup milk
Soymilk (soy beverage)	1 cup calcium-fortified soymilk
Soymilk (soy beverage)	1 half-pint container calcium-fortified soymilk

Most Dairy Group choices should be fat-free or low-fat
Source: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/dairy-counts.html

There are a few more tips to include Calcium into your daily meals, check out this USDA Dairy Tips Link

Here are an Activity about The Dairy Group
Nurish Interactive Milk Group Printable

Books about The Dairy Group

The Milk Makers by Gail Gibbons. Gail Gibbons is probably my most favorite Non-Fiction Authors!

The Milk Group by Mari C. Schuh (Has many books about Food and Non-Fiction)

Yogurt and Cheese and Ice Cream that Pleases: What is in the Milk Group by Brian P. Cleary

We enjoy making things with yogurt to try to fit in more Healthy Dairy Foods into our day. We like to just use our favorite plain yogurt and then throw in whatever fruit we have in the kitchen. Some of our favorites to add are blueberries and strawberries, but you can add all sorts of things banana, pineapple, cherries, peaches, pears, apples, craisins, mango and many more! We also put in a little granola to add some protein to our Parfaits.

Here's an adorable idea for Strawberry Prints by Dot Painting by Dilly Dali Art that would make any strawberry playdate fun. My daughter had fun creating this snack. We've also enjoyed making parfaits with our friends when we go strawberry picking together. Making strawberry prints with paint is fun too!

Amanda just posted this week that her strawberries are starting to bloom and she made some special Plant Labels for her "The Learning Garden." We like to read The Little Mouse, The Big Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood when we make our strawberry parfaits.

Make your Own Yogurt Parfaits

Ingredients
Yogurt
Strawberries
Blueberries
Any in season fruit
Nuts or Granola

Directions
Rinse and Cut fruit. Then add yogurt, fruit, granola by layering it in container. Enjoy!

Big sister even made a special treat for my One Year old too! She also enjoyed coming up with the idea to create a heart out of the strawberries when you cut them in half. We just might be doing some prints with paint for Valentine's Day soon too. However I think we're going to be Finger Painting with a yogurt recipe I found on our Art with Children Pinterest Board this afternoon! Here's an adorable Valentine Bag Idea with yogurt paint too from Hands On: As We Grow. Check out our Baby Time posts for more info!

Interested in Making Your Own Yogurt?

I found this Make Your Own Yogurt site with downloadable instructions. It seems that everyone one their own way, I'm sure if you've found one that works for you. I encouraged you to at least try the process once and allow your child to observe and talk about the changes in property that happens in the process. When you involve children with cooking sometimes they are a lot more willing to try something new.

My inlaws are from India and they make their own Yogurt, curd or dahi, all the time in our home. They use it plain but also make Raita, which is a yogurt with cucumbers with salt and spices, there are all sorts of combinations to make your Raita unique. It helps to cool your palate while eating spicy Indian dishes. Many other Indian dishes include it from Lentils to Tandoori Chicken, my personal favorite! Homemade yogurt tastes different from our "store bought" yogurt but is an everyday item within many Indian homes. I would say that it is more similar to Greek Yogurt if you were to compare it.

There are all sorts of ways to incorporate Yogurt into your snacktime and Mealtime. We like to make smoothies for breakfast or snacktime and to encourage my family to eat more fruits and veggies we use yogurt based Dips to make them yummy and a little more healthy.

Fruit Smoothie

Ingredients
1/3 cup orange Juice
1 4oz container of yogurt, any flavor
3 -5 strawberries
approx 10 blueberries
or any in season fruit of your choice
1 cup of ice

Directions
Add ingredients and blend away and enjoy! Serves two!

Vegetable Yogurt Dip

Ingredients
2-1/2 cups Plain yogurt
1 Packet onion soup mix
1 tbsp Minced parsley
1/4 tsp Garlic salt
1 tsp Dill weed
Pinch black pepper
Vegetables of your choice - carrot sticks, celery sticks, green pepper rings, broccoli, zucchini sticks, radishes, etc...
Preparation
Mix ingredients. Best to make dip day before and refrigerate overnight so flavors will blend and dip will thicken slightly

Fruit Yogurt Dips from Yogurt Everyday

There are lots of recipes but a simple way is to just use flavored yogurt plain or whip in a little bit of Whipping cream or Cool Whip for an extra treat

Next week~ The Grains Group Updated. It's here NOW!

I'd love to hear other ways that you incorporate The Dairy Group onto your children's day. Just leave a comment below!

Bilingual Babies - Borscht and labeling your fridge!

2012-01-31T12:19:00.000-05:00

My father-in-law taught me how to cook Borscht. Borscht is the traditional Russian Beet Soup, well his version of it! It is well known that if you put a bunch of Russians in one room and asked them to make a certain dish, each dish would be completely different, but completely right. There are many, many versions of Borscht. The one I make is very similar to this recipe, but we use beef. There are vegetarian recipes too! Here is a link to a bunch of different recipes if you are in the mood to do some adventurous healthy cooking! My goal for the year was to cook at least one Russian dish every week for the year! So far, so good! My last Bilingual Babies post talked about Blini!

I really enjoy the flavor combinations of Borscht and can't help but thinking this is one of my favorite dishes to make for my hubbie on a cool winter day! Cooking a traditional meal is a great way to encourage talk about Russian traditions, family, and the language. When the meat begins to cook in the pot of water, I saute the onions and carrots and prepare the other vegetables. While I am cooking, we sing about adding vegetables in the soup using the Russian words for the vegetables. Unfortunately, Borscht is more of a grown up recipe as it cooks on the stove top for a long time AND the beets stain everything! I do let the kids add the vegetables into the pot, but do most of the cutting and cooking myself. For some reason, just the smell of Borscht makes me want to visit Russia. I find on Russian baking day we all miss our Russian family dearly and end up Skyping or calling them just to hear their voices!

Haven't cooked with beets yet? You don't know what you have missed! These are some of the most nutritious and delicious vegetables around! Adding them to the soup not only gives it the flavor, but also the bright red color! (and your hands) Don't worry - it washes =) Someday, I would love to die some white clothes with beets!

In addition to talking to the kids about the vegetables while I cook, I am also to label things! I am not super organized, but I like to have environmental print around the house, especially in the languages we are teaching our children. Something as simple as labeling the items in our fridge may remind me to ask them if they want this or that in Russian (our second language) and may prompt my kids to read that word while it is in my hands (developing literacy in that language). I'd like to make a poster of all the food groups in Russian to post on my cupboards. (someday...) For now, I'll just stick to simple labels!

As Kim has been blogging about eating healthy with balanced meals I am trying to be more aware of making sure to eat the right amount of all the food groups. I can't help but think that sometimes by exploring food from other cultures our children will be exposed to a greater variety of fruits and vegetables. Just this one soup has carrots, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and beets with a very limited amount of fats and a serving of protein. No matter what language you are speaking at home with your families, you can always try different recipes from around the world. Who knows, maybe you will find out your children LOVE beets!!!

For more information and ideas on things to make and do related to Russian Culture, please stop by our Pinterest Board! If you need an invite to join Pinterest, send us an e-mail at theeducatorsspinonit (at) gmail.com

Afterschool Express: 100th Day of School

2012-01-30T23:16:00.000-05:00

We're approaching the 100th Day of Kindergarten with our children, or as I like to say 100 Days Smarter! We did a few activities to learn about 100 and thought we'd share. I love these ideas because they teach multiple concepts in one. We enjoy providing learning opportunities and projects for our children afterschool and/or on the weekends with our 5 year olds. Because our time is limited, it's great when we can tie in multiple concepts into a project to help save on time and most importantly to make it more meaningful. Here are a few activities that we created that relate to our 100th day of school that we're celebrating this week but also ties in Valentine's Day, Random Acts of Kindness, plus teaching Math and Reading.

Bird Seed Heart

We found a special Valentine's Day Poem and thought it would be nice to give the birds their very own Valentine. We've been working on Random Acts of Kindness the past month. We printed out the poem for our wall to memorize and then created our Bird Seed Heart. Here's the Poem

Valentines

I gave a hundred Valentines.
A hundred, did I say?
I gave a thousand Valentines
one cold and wintry day.

I didn't put my name on them
or any other words,
because my Valentines were seeds
for February birds.

Aileen Fisher

Make your Own Bird Seed Heart

Supplies

Peanut Butter

Bird seeds

Black Sunflower Seeds

Heart cutout

String

Directions

Draw a heart onto cardboard and cut out. Create a hole at the top to attach the string from at the end of the process. Then generously spread peanut butter onto the cut out heart cardboard. To create our Bird Seed Heart we collected 100 Black Sunflower Seeds to line the outside and then sprinkled our"1000" seeds in the middle on the front. Make sure you press the seeds down so they done fall off when you pick them up. Then insert the string into the whole. Hang outside and observe.

100th Day of School Sign
Grab 10 Stamps and 10 Paper Strips and get stamping to 100!

You can use themed stamps to create many different crafts!
We'll be making Valentine Cards, Family Mailbox and Valentine Patterns with these too!

We worked on learning the concept of 100 by grouping things into groups of 10. I had my daughter choose 10 different stamps and then she stamped them on 10 strips of paper to make a paper chain. We practiced counting by ones and by tens to 100 as we created it and using the 100 Number Chart.

Here's our finished project, she couldn't wait to hang it up. On the back we have Happy Valentine's Day too!

Making 100 using Base Ten Blocks

Base ten blocks are cool to begin with and a great way to show numbers in a concrete way! At our house, we have been working on building numbers from 0-100! I've been trying to use our light box more and this was the perfect actvity. We found a set of transparent pink and blue base ten blocks at a garage sale last year and were able to see them very clearly with our light box. These are great because they connect together and form a 100 block, which we can stack on top of the pre-made hundred block to compare and then to count by 100's. Isn't math just exciting
We had to read a few stories too about the 100th Day of School. Here are some of our favorites.

More Ideas for the 100th Day of School

100th Day Printable Activities from Mrs. Plant

100th Day of School from A Teacher Obsession

The Learning Garden - Making Plant Labels to Teach Reading

2012-01-28T14:23:00.000-05:00

We went outside the other morning and saw that the first of our strawberries have begun blossoming!!! I just put these plants in the middle of our flower garden and they are doing well, but didn't have a place marker or label to say what they are. Although it is obvious to even a 2 year old, I am trying not to just garden, but to use the garden as a resource to make learning real and connected. My 2 year old is learning his letters, so I wanted to make these the focus of the label. My 5 year old has begun reading, so I wanted to include simple sentences that use sight words and words that can teach her a vocabulary word or connect to a different subject matter. I am sure that you can guess all the amazing things we can talk about in just this strawberry marker; geography, writing conventions (when to capitalize a word), and food groups.

I have tried many different types of labels; premade, Popsicle sticks, cut up milk jugs, painted on sticks, rocks and more, but these are the quickest, easiest way to add more letters and words to your garden. They will not last forever, but should do for a year or two! I use contact paper, but if you have a laminator, that would work too. Just remember to leave a big space around the card so that water doesn't leak in.

Materials Needed
3x5 note cards
Markers
Paper
Scissors
Contact paper
Chop stick / craft stick / any old stick

What to do:
1. Make your card. Cut the contact paper double the size of your card plus space for the wide edges.
2. Make sure to leave 1/2 inch or more all the way around the edges. Seal.
3. Tape the stick to the back
4. Let your kids place the marker near the plant it describes!
5. Read it often! Words are just words unless you interact with them.

Happy Gardening!

- Amanda

Tot School - Groundhog Day Ideas

2012-01-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

Ok - So I think this little rodents are absolutely adorable. In Russian, they are called, "sarok." This week we are getting ready for Groundhog's Day! This poem and hand print craft from Play With Me was soooo cute, that I typed it out and printed to sing with the kids. As a kindergarten teacher, we did something similar every year. Using a familiar melody, but changing the words is a fun way to begin reading! The children become familiar with the songs and are soon able to connect the written word to the words they are singing. I automatically find myself pointing to the words as we sing them! We also read this Freddy book about Groundhog Day and the kids really enjoy it. It is a simple story about a groundhog that lives under Freddy's porch.

I usually try to have at least one fun snack a week and this is my silly attempt at a groundhog! Although these bear buns were just adorable and could easily pass for a groundhog - I wasn't in the mood to bake the last couple days, so the standby ritz (and baby ritz) crackers, peanut butter, and raisins came out! My 5 year old said that it looks more like a bear, and I agree, but asked her to use her imagination and to just eat it!!! Do let me know if there are some other cute Groundhog day snack ideas!

We had a lot of shadow puppet play this week! It encourages creative thinking and is a great way to talk about shadows. We also played outside at different times during the day and talked about how our shadow changes depending on where the sun is. My 2 year old just stares at me and then will repeat a word like "shadow," so I don't really know exactly how much he does or does not understand! I just know that vocabulary is so important in life and learning to read. Maybe he doesn't get it this time, but I know that he is building these little vocabulary files in his head and that they will make connections when he is ready! More Groundhog Day crafts here.

And don't worry, I don't just do crafty/ cutesy projects all week. We have a LOT of outside free play, open ended art projects, dirt play, Legos and pretend play too. These are just as, if not more important for toddler development!!!! Remember - it really doesn't matter WHAT you do with your kids, just that you ARE doing it with your kids. YES, it is easier have them watch a television show, but if you take that time to snuggle up and read or play with them - you are making so much more of a connection with them. And I believe that parents are not told enough of what an amazing job they are doing. If you are reading this and you are playing with your kid this week - you rock! Give yourself a hug, a smile, or maybe a cup of hot-chocolate as a treat. You are amazing!!!!!

- Amanda

PS - Another cute Groundhog Day post with ideas here!

Baby Time: Let's Make Music

2012-01-26T12:56:00.000-05:00

Making your own instruments can be so much fun with your little ones. All you have to do is save your snack containers to make an instrument! Eco friendly and fun for everyone!

We found all sorts of containers over the past month to save for our musical instruments. Baby snack containers, soda bottle, oatmeal container, popcorn treats, chocolate milk you name it I saved it from our holiday parties and such. You need to use caution and make sure it's a container that will stand up to a little one exploring it and have adult supervision at all times with any homemade toy.

Grab your containers and let's get started!

I used beans and rice from our cupboard to fill inside to make the shakers . If you are doing several containers use a variety of materials inside. It's great practice in auditory discrimination to listen and try to see what's inside of the various containers.

I used some wrapping paper to decorate our Musical drums and shakers. I cut the paper to fit and then covered the entire container with packing tape, contact paper would work too. Just to make it more durable and kid friendly. I love how bright they turned out with very little effort. A great spot I find fun paper at is the Dollar Spot at Target! If I was having my Toddler, Preschooler or School Aged child making it, I would let them decorate it with stamps, stickers and coloring or painting them before I covered them with contact paper or packaging tape.

Fun Activities for Homemade Musical Instruments

Shake It
Varying the speed and also how you shake it
Roll It
Roll the containers between your hands or on the floor for a different sound
Drum Fun
Using their hands or an object like a wooden spoon or drumstick practice hitting it
Match my Sound
Fast or slow have your little one copy you with the sounds you do or copy them
Stack it
Using the containers have fun arranging them in various ways
Dance Time
Hold the shakers and dance with music

My daughter was so excited when she woke up from her nap to play with these today. She took lots of her time shaking them and hitting them but she also stacked them up and arranged them all over the room. So much FUN! Since we used containers they also become stacking toys, great for gross and fine motor skills and visual discrimination by learning about sizes.The best part is that we made these for almost no Money, they were all things I had laying around the house.

I can't wait until big sister comes home from school so that we can play our instruments with her during Family Jam Time! This musical instrument activity with the containers is great for any age. Here's some more ideas I found for homemade instruments with older children that we might try soon!

Hope you have fun with your little ones! Musical Fun should be a part of EVERYDAY!

~Check out more of our Baby Time Activitites here! ~