Pp is for penguin---a yummy snack....

We started Pp week in our kindergarten and the animal of the week was by popular demand---penguin.
We love all the Tacky the Penguin books. And I found a perfect kindergarten level science book with The Penguin.

Following our stories we made a delicious
penguin treat.
All it takes is oreo cookies, a hershey kiss, candy corn and a little frosting to be used as glue.

Luke looks like he is getting a little inspiration from Kimberly.

Our stuffed penguin looked on as we made our treats.

Yummy!!! Yummy!!!

stART--The Very Hungry Caterpillar

For this weeks stART project, we enjoyed the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
This is the perfect springtime book. It celebrates the little caterpillar as it eats its way through the book, and then becomes a very beautiful butterfly.
I found these great story sequencing cards at DLTK crafts.

I just love these cards. Our book came with a cd, so I have tucked these cards right into the cd pocket in the book, so that they are always handy.

For a craft to accompany this book we made our own version of the handprint butterfly.

Each of the kids picked their own color of construction paper for the butterfly's body.

I traced the head and body shapes onto the construction paper so the littles could cut it out themselves.

Big google eyes and pipe cleaner antenna finish the head and body.

The next step was the messy step. Let the littles stamp 4 handprints onto cardstock.

Kimmy is an expert 3 year old cutter.

Kimmy's beautiful butterfly!

Let your handprints dry and then cut them out into wing shapes.

Glue the handprints onto the back of the butterfly's body.
You can be done with your butterflies at this point, but these are such special butterflies, I decided to have the kids embellish them

We used peel and stick foamie shapes to decorate our butterflies.

Our finished butterflies.

Check our more stART projects over at A Mommy's Adventures.

stART-If You Were A Penguin

Finally, the health status has improved around here enough to get some serious learning accomplished.

Today, was penguin day, and to celebrate we read If You Were a Penguin. Kim-3 and Luke-4 really enjoyed this picture book alot. The pictures are wonderful, and it contains some great facts in the back of the book for older kids.

"Breezy rhymes introduce each dazzling double-page scene of penguin life, from “flying” underwater to tobogganing over the arctic snow to feeding a pair of adorably fuzzy chicks. Wendell’s vibrant large-scale figures, set against bracing polar landscapes, have enough personality to captivate a crowd, but their breathtaking detail demands the closer inspection and shared exploration of a lap-sit session."Amazon Review

Of course, throughout the day, we were kept company with our stuffed penguin and our little penguins.
I found some great printables around the web:
the maze,
the dot-to-dot,
and My Itsy Bitsy Penguin Book.
Kimberly working hard on her dot-to-dot.
We also made this marvelous penguin craft from DLTK Crafts.
(I love the small poker players in the background of this picture.)
Kimberly's beautiful pinked eyed penguin.
Also, make sure you don't miss the book Penguin, Penguin. A read aloud book from Starfall.
The kids just loved this!

For more great stART project check out A Mommy's Adventure.

If You Give a Moose a Muffin--fun......

This Christmas, Auntie Kim, (Kimmy's Godmother) got her one of her favorite books If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff, and a stuffed moose to go with it. Auntie Kim got it through the Kohl's Cares for Kids program, but I see that the Laura Numeroff books are gone and they have moved on to Dr. Seuss books. Check them out--it is a great thing.
Since the temperature didn't get about 20 degrees today, I thought it was a perfect afternoon to have some "moose" fun!
So, of course, the first thing we had to do was to make muffins.

"Hey Kim, we are NOT cooking moosemuffins!"

Even sick kids rolled off the couch to help spinkle the crunchy topping on our muffins.

While our muffins we cooking I got out these sequencing cards to go along with the book.

I found a whole free unit at Homeschool Share to use with If You Give a Moose a Muffin.
There are so many activities for this book at Homeschool Share you could spend a whole week having "moose" fun!

The kids did a great job putting the cards in the correct order. Once they were in order, they told the story to me following the cards.

Kimmy coloring the neat little envelope provided by Homeschool Share for the cards.

MMMMMMmmmmm!!!

"Dig in Mr. Moose"

Kimmy didn't want to lose any crumbs on the muffin liner.

Yum!!

In the story, Moose makes sock puppets. I wasn't quite that energetic this afternoon, so I found these cute moose paperbag puppet at First-School.

All we needed to do was to print, cut out, and glue.

"Moose, meet Moose!"

And of course, if we make puppets, we need to enjoy a puppet show from behind the couch.

A little moose kissing---oh my!

I hope you all enjoyed sharing in our fun afternoon---

I know we enjoyed our afternoon!

Old MacDonald Had a Farm-activities

Today we had fun reenacting Old MacDonald Had a Farm with our farm animals.
I found these great printables at Kidsparkz. We made this a game by turning the cards over and as we sang "Old MacDonald" one of the kids would pick a card and then that is the animal sound we would sing.

We then put the card down on the "farm" and we found the matching toy animals and put these on the correct picture.

The kids all enjoyed this song-game. They wanted to play it over and over.

These cards also include baby animals to match to their mothers.
We laughed a lot as we read Cock A Doodle Moo!

Of course, we needed a craft to continue on our farm theme, so today we made paper plate cows.

We usually do all our crafting from "scratch", but this time, with so many farm crafts I want to make, I purchased this kit which contains everything we need to make three different animals--- and these were already cut out!!

I needed to help Kimmy with hers, she was a little under the weather today!

But, as Gracie made her cow, Kimmy pepped up and read Grace the directions.

I love how Mark made his cow's eyes.

Our "farm" wall is beginning to fill up!

You can find our first farm post here

and the second farm post here.