Hello Summer! Good-Bye School...

Sooo, my daughter informed me that she would like for me to make a school for her next snack.  Out the window again went my snack plans because I cater to the whims of my children (not really - but in this case, I thought about it and decided I could make it work with an "End of the School Year" snack theme).  Now, I know you must be thinking - end of the year?!  That was weeks ago!!  Well my friends, not for us.  We have had a full year of expected and unexpected delays in school (medical, travel, etc.) so we are just finishing up now.  One reason I love homeschooling - very flexible!!!  :)
Okay, enough about our lives and more details on the snack itself:
SNACK:
School - apple, graham cracker door and roof, cheese bell.
Muffin cup #1 - blue jello stars - because of her star work and effort this year :)
Muffin cup #2 - blueberry yogurt with another "jello star sticker".
Garnishes:  chocolate letters, cheese suns, fruit roll-up and pretzel trees.

SUPPLIES:
I bought the muffin cup liners on Amazon (see link below).  The circle cutters you can probably find at any hobby or craft store that sells cake/cookie decorating items or buy online (see link below).  The spoon was part of a set I purchased at Hobby Lobby so I am not sure where else you could find one.  I tried to find something similar online and found myself drawn into the world of amazing baby and toddler spoons (who knew there were so many cool kinds out there?  I had to stop myself from looking before my links were longer than my post!) so I posted some links below to some neat ones I found as well.  :)

HEADS UP:  Tomorrow, I will try to post a cute craft my daughter and I made for hanging in her room!  Come back and take a look!!  :)

Turn That Frown Upside Down - Smile!!!

My daughter was not feeling that well today and needed some cheering up.  Thus, my original snack idea went out the window, and I started afresh with a new theme - "Turn That Frown Upside Down - Smile!"  The idea was to give her a bunch of different "smiles" with which to replace the frown on the little girl's face.
You gotta love those snacks with a double purpose - cheer the heart and strengthen the body with lots of vitamins.  I hope it does the trick and kicks this cold/allergy/or whatever it is, good-bye!!!
Details:
Face - peanut butter and banana sandwich with strawberry frown, banana and chocolate chip eyes, fruit roll-up hair and bow.
Cup of smiles #1:  mandarin oranges
Cup of smiles #2:  kiwi slices
Cup of smiles #3:  nectarine (hmm, or maybe it was a peach) slices
Garnishes:  chocolate words and avocado "smiles"

For more snack inspiration, check out the muffin tin mom website or Jill Dubien's blog under Fun Food Friday.  :)

HOMESCHOOL - Alphabet Book

Around the beginning of this year, we began making an alphabet book in school. Each page (front and back) is dedicated to a letter, and every activity or idea on the page relates to that letter. This is a great activity for a hands-on approach to learning the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes. First,the child learns while making the page AND THEN has something tangible which can be brought out for a fun review later on!
Some of the items were activities or ideas I came up with, others were a blessing of inspiration from other sites. One of the main sites I used for finding little books, poems, activities for each letter is this one:
www.homeschoolshare.com (Under "lapbooking" and then under "Alphabet Lap-n-Note".)
To make a book - just three hole punch pieces of cardstock and draw a letter on each.  Insert these into a three ring binder (you can find these at Walmart or office stores or see the links below) and you have your very own Alphabet book - then comes the fun part of filling it!  :)
If you have a child entering Pre-K or Kinder this coming school year - this might also be a fun activity to complete with them over the summer!! :)

HOMESCHOOL - Alphabet Snack

This week we are finishing up an alphabet book we began around the beginning of this school year.  It is a pretty neat book and I hope to post one or two pictures of it later this week.  Thus, to go along with that "theme", I made my daughter an alphabet snack/lunch!  Here are the details:
ABC apple - apple with the appropriate parts carved out.
Letters around plate edges - melted chocolate piped out of a decorating bag.
Muffin cup #1 - graham cracker letters (carved these carefully with a knife - not too hard actually).
Muffin cup#2 - yogurt with remaining chocolate letters on top.
Muffin cup #3 - peanut butter for dipping.
Exclamation mark garnishes - fruit roll-ups.

For more inspiration, check out the muffin tin mom website or Jill Dubian's blog www.meetthedubiens.com.  (I believe I have these links posted under Homeschool - helpful links and sites).

HOMESCHOOLING - Hatching Words/Stories Jar

You may have seen my post from earlier this week in which my daughter and I built a bird's nest. Although rather lovely, it is also a bit large to be sitting on my desk or the mantel or wherever else my daughter might have chosen for its new home at the moment. Enter brilliant solution: the Hatching Words Jar! Here's a picture of what we used:

We recreated the nest, only much smaller, inside an empty baby food jar.  To add to the understanding of how long it takes a bird to build a nest, I had my daughter use tweezers (pretending it was a bird beak)  to pick up pine needles, sticks, etc., placing them in the jar.  She seemed to get a kick out of the process - not tiring as quickly as I thought she might!  We formed some eggs from white playdough and she colored them with markers, adding them to the cozy nest as well.  HOWEVER, this time we did not end the project there.  Brainstorming words connected to the bird theme (a great review of words we had heard, used, or learned of), we came up with a list which I typed up and then cut out.  As a very gentle introduction into the world of verbs and nouns, I drew two circles on a piece of paper and labeled them "nests" - one being action and the other being things.

We sorted the words together into the appropriate nests, discussing why a certain word might fit better in one spot versus another.  Finally, I helped her glue all the thing/noun words to the jar itself and all the action/verb words to the lid.  So now she has, not only a great reminder of the theme for this week, but also a jar covered in bird-related words which she can use as story starters, science review (explaining to people how a word relates to the bird theme), or spelling help when writing about birds in her story journal!  :)

P.S.  For slightly older students, you might discuss the value of the noun and verb relationship.  You might point out how a lid without a jar or a jar without a lid would not be be as helpful as the two combined together.  So, a noun without a verb or vice versa just doesn't have as much use as when they work together to create a sentence.

A Lunch Fit for the Birds!!

This was a lunch I made for my daughter in honor of our bird theme this week and utilizing silicone muffin cups!  :)  Want more inspiration for future lunches?  Take a look at the submissions on the Muffin Tin Mom website (http://www.michellesjournalcorner.blogspot.com).  AND/OR here's a mom that does an awesome job of serving up snacks/lunches with a HUGE dose of creativity:  http://www.meetthedubiens.com/ (click on the Fun Food Friday link and prepare to be amazed!).  I hope to come up with further fun lunches and snacks of our own to go along with themes throughout the year so keep checking in to see what we whip up in our kitchen!  :)  Lunch details below.

Lunch Fit for the Birds:
Bird head - peanut butter and jelly sandwich with fruit roll up eyes (and berry in the middle) and a cheese slice beak.
caterpillars - fruit roll up and details added with a food marker.
Ant - grape
Food to feed our baby bird (and tot) - blackberries, cut up carrots, and grapes
Garnish - cheerios

HOMESCHOOL - Bird Theme - Build Your Own Bird's Nest

When I asked my daughter if there was anything she would like to learn about before we wrap up our year of school - she surprised me by saying she wanted to learn about birds.  Naturally, when one thinks of the fascination of children with birds - one eventually ends up thinking of nests and eggs.  Sooooo, after learning about some specific birds that my daughter was interested in and the different ways they each built nests, we decided to build one of our own to jumpstart this week's theme.  :)  We went outside and gathered items that a bird would use to make a nest (twigs, pine needles, grass) and turned this:

into this:



The eggs are made of blue playdough and speckled with brown marker.  The white stuff is toilet paper - in our learning about birds making nests, it was noted that some use trash in their nests - and we wouldn't want our nest to stand out from a real bird's nest because of such an omission, thus trash was added.  I guess in this case we could definitely say that "one man's trash is another man's - uh..er, bird's - treasure".  :)

May you be inspired to go out and build a nest of your own now - complete with trash.  :)