My Comments Rock!

I just love, love, LOVE awards!  Who doesn't, right? I am a new blogger and I am still learning about blogging and the whole bloggosphere.  I have a couple of awards and I value them a lot. They remind me that sometimes I get it right. LOL.
This award is very personal to me.  And the way Blue Cotton Mom from Blue Cotton Candy put it "... making friends is hard work. It means risking rejection by extending friendliness. We do that with our comments. We can either give cruise-through comments or really sit down and have a dialogue".  I do read a lot of posts and I do try to comment a lot as well.  Reading other people's blogs is getting to know those people and their personalities.  I've made "blogger" friends that I keep an eye on and check on once in a while( by following their blogs) to see what they are up to. 
Good commenting is taking time and reading a post, getting into the topic of it and speaking up your mind.  It is not just plain "great", "i like it", etc.  Every time you see a good comment (you know the one I am talking about) you really, really appreciate it.  And yes, you want to go back to that blogger and get to know him/her better.
Here are the people who take pride in their comments and they need to be rewarded:
Tammy @One Pink Fish
Linda @My Trendy Tykes
Nicole @Tired, Need Sleep
Georgine @Life on James Street
Christine @Propeller Head Mom - A Geeky Mommy Blogger
parentingBYdummies @parenting BY dummies
And if I could I would give this award back to the person who granted me with it.  Silly... But Blue Cotton Mom practices what she preaches.
These are the rules of getting/giving the reward:
1) Put the logo on your blog/post.
2) Nominate bloggers who take pride in commenting.
3) Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4) Let them know that they have been nominated by commenting on their blog.
5) Remember to link to the person from whom you received your award.
Done.
Thank you all for the wonderful impact you leave in the blogosphere.  Keep it up!

Reading Comprehension For Beginning Readers

When it comes to beginning readers, the most important thing is to not discourage them.  You want to raise a lifelong reader not somebody who is able to read if he/she has to.  Children should fall in love with books from the early years when he/she is being read to.
What do little ones enjoy in early books?  Plenty of colorful illustrations, a captivating but rather simple story line filled with situations they can easily relate to and kiddie humor. Children also like patterns and repetitions.

The requirements for early readers are almost the same: illustrations, a simple story line, repetitions and in addition, large font.

Children usually have their favorite book characters and it would be so great and helpful to have the same characters in the books they are about to read all by themselves to make the transition easier, wouldn't it?  Guess what?  Not only they make beginning readers with those beloved characters but also practice books and activity books.

Pumpkin and I have been using a wonderful reading workbook from SPECTRUM series Reading Grade1 where children can learn to comprehend very simple texts and do exercises with their favorite chracters created by Mercer Mayer.

  Who doesn't like Little Critter?  And speaking about illustrations, there is no shortage of them.  They accompany the little passages of text to help your child understand the plot better.

The workbook is for 1st graders but it depends on the level of reading your child has reached.  If he/she can read level 2 readers, knows the phonics - it is good to go.  This is how it looks inside.  The texts get more challenging as you go further which is exactly what you want.

I think, I got it at Barnes & Noble.  It was a great purchase.  The book saved me a lot of time looking for readers with exercises on the back.

You might want to give it a try. ;)

Pollock-Inspired Salad Spinner Art

A couple of weeks ago Pumpkin started taking seasonal arts and crafts classes.  Now, she wants to do art all the time. We are running out of tempera paint!
  I felt like doing something abstract with her and thought about Jackson Pollock.  He was a "human spinner" holding buckets of paint in his hands and spinning around on the canvas creating his works of art that way(you can give it a shot on a summer day on your back yard). Yesterday we did some less messy Pollock-inspired art using a salad spinner. It's fast and a lot of fun.
All you need is:

• a salad spinner
• non-toxic, washable tempera paint
• paper circles, cut to fit the bottom of your salad spinner( or paper plates if they fit)

What you do:
Open your spinner and put the paper on the bottom. Splatter/pour/drip any kinds of paint of any color in any pattern or non pattern at all(how cool is that!).  Then, put the top back on and spin it!  Open it up - ta-da!  Your art is ready.  All it needs now is some time to dry.
And do you know the best thing about it?  It never gets old because it comes out in a different way every time!
Here are some things that came out of our salad spinner.  We did a couple of them using "fall" colors. 

 

Here are some Jackson Pollock links you might find interesting:

http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/pollockhome.shtm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/pollock_jackson.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/468051/Jackson-Pollock
 http://www.manetas.com/pollock/ (Pollock interactive: create your own Pollock with a couple of mouse clicks)  
http://www.jacksonpollock.com/email.shtml  (very interesting about if there is a  structure in his art)

 

I hope all of you will have a lot of fun with it.  Unleash your inner Pollocks!

Testing

Pumpkin has a thing for testing me lately.  Yesterday she wrote down a number of math equations for me.  It was my "homework".  And I want to admit that she doubted my knowledge of basic math when the answer to her 2-20 was -18.
Today I had a different test...

She came up to me and gave me a paper explaining that I needed to choose the correct answer.  Here is the paper(please, don't mind the poor quality, one of these days I'll invest in a good camera).

I had two choices: "I love you" and "I don't love you". LOL.

I chose the "I love you" one and looked at Pumpkin. She had that look that teachers have when their students do well on the test.

She also told me: "Mommy, I need to teach you".  LOL.  I guess, I'm past due for some "upgrading".

stART: Blueberries for Sal

I came across stART a couple of weeks ago and liked the idea of reading and art combination right away.  Our public library has a similar program every Saturday where children have a story hour first and then they do craft related to the story.  My daughter enjoys it very much.  This week I decided to participate in stART carnival created by A Mommy's Adventures. This week she has a fun craft, by the way.
Yesterday we read a classic children's book Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.

The story has a great plot that children can relate themselves to. Two little ones - little girl Sal and Little Bear - get lost for a little while while picking blueberries which resulted in swapping moms and creating a comical situation enjoyable for young listeners.
We liked this story so much that we decided to make our own Blueberry Hill and the main characters so we could role play it.  I made the characters by drawing them with colored pencils and glueing them to cardboard.   Pumpkin and I made Blueberry Hill together.  Cardboard, colored paper, hole puncher and glue is all you will need.

This is our Blueberry Hill with two moms and two little ones.

Destination: Modern Art

I always admired Baby Einstein  for introducing little ones to the world of classical music and works of art.  I don't particularly agree with watching DVDs since "0" or 3 months like they advise, though.  But I love the idea of incorporating those two things in every day lives of children.  How cool is that when your toddler recognizes the paintings that most adults don't!  And you do know that all kinds of studies proved that classical music is just plain GOOD for all of us, I am sure.  It is relaxing and calming. Expecting women are recommended to listen to it because it benefits the healthy development of the fetus.  Also it has been proven that students who were listening to Mozart during their test did better than the ones who didn't.  It raises I.Q.  You just cannot go wrong with it!

Art is wonderful in any form - bottom line!
So on that note...
The other day Pumpkin and I were exploring the interactive MoMA site for kids. We both loved it!  An alien from a different planet lands in the heart of Manhattan and goes to the museum.  By clicking on the photos of the actual exhibits you not only learn facts about them and their creators but also play games, do activities and print out pages you can use later on!  After the tour around MoMA you go to P.S.1 art center which used to be a public school at one time and check out the art inside there.  The interactive tour is not too long but there is enough stuff at each exhibit that will keep you busy. Enjoy!

Johnny Appleseed and Apples

The end of September officially marks the fall's beginning and the celebration of harvest time. I mentioned in the previous post that last year we took part in Johnny Appleseed's birthday part at our public library. This year I decided to catch the opportunity by the tail and introduce my daughter to legendary Johnny Appleseed whose real name by the way is John Chapman and different types of apples. This topic is so versatile! There are so many links and resources that it'll be enough for years and years ahead without it getting boring.
What we did:
1. Read about Johnny Appleseed here and here(they have a vocabulary list at this one which saved my time).
2. Watched this wonderful story about Johnny.




3. Watched Disney version of it.







4.We did a browning apple experiment. For this we cut an apple in quarters. 1st quarter we put on a plate and left it on the table; 2nd quarter we put in the refrigerator; 3rd quarter we sprayed with lemon juice and left out on the table; 4th quarter we sprayed with lemon juice and put it in the refrigerator. Every minute or so we would check on all of them writing down our observations: which one got brown first/last, how long it took it. Then, we discussed oxidation and how lemon juice helped preserving the apple halves better.
5.We played an apple memory game here simultaneously learning about different types of apples.


6. We made a cool paper apple that my Pumpkin noticed could be a notebook as well.

For this project you will need:
red/orange/green/yellow construction paper
paper glue
scissors
hole puncher
pipe cleaner (to make an apple stem)
a drinking glass/soup can (to trace circles)
Take your colored construction paper and trace 16 circles. Cut them out and fold them in half. Squeeze some glue on that semi-circle, take another circle folded in half and put one half of a circle on top of the other. Now it should look like a full circle with a divider in the middle. This is the pattern you should follow till you use all of the folded circles. Then, take the first piece and the last and glue them together. Let your "apple" dry for a couple of hours. When it's dry take a hole puncher and make two holes in the first and the eights fold. Take your pipe cleaner and pull it through the holes pull the middle part and twist it making a loop that is going to be the future leaf. Twist the loose ends together as well - this is the stem. Cut out two identical leaf forms out of green construction paper. Glue them over the loop: one part on top, the other on the bottom.
Your apple is ready!
7. We did some word math problems that were apple related.
8. We snacked on apples and had apple cider for lunch. On September 26th we are planning on baking an apple pie for our Johnny Appleseed party.


There are other good resources that I would recommend to check out:
Teachers' Resources for K-Gr6(download files of activities, projects and coloring sheets)
Apple activities (book lists, songs, poems, games, worksheets)
Apple unit(lesson plan)

And some good apple recipes:
Betty Crocker
Easy Recipes for Kids
Healthy Apple Recipes
Everything from apples