A Pocketful of Cricket--Literature Unit

 I found a wonderful literature unit perfect for summer: A Pocketful of Cricket from Homeschool Share.   If you haven't used Homeschool Share you are in for a big treat.  There are FREE literature units on books on every subject  you could ever want to introduce to your early elementary student. The units incorporate art, grammar, science, social studies and much more.

 We learned a cricket could jump about 2 feet.  So we set up tape on the floor and marked out one foot intervals...Kimberly could jump the farthest-5 feet, everyone else was around 4 feet, including myself, although my landing wasn't picture perfect as I ended up on my back, on the floor, wondering what bones I had broken.

 Dirty summer feet

 The kids then headed out to catch some of our own crickets.  They found about 10, but they are the tiniest little things.  I think we were too early in the season for cricket catching.  I'm afraid these are so small we won't be hearing then chirp in the night.

 We have successfully kept crickets for months in the past, so hopefully these will grow and start singing.

All you need for a cricket habitat is soil, a bottle cap with water, and food.  They seem to love Cheerios and lettuce. 

There is enough in this unit to keep us busy for about a week.

I'll let you know what else we are doing for this book later in the week.



Kids in the Kitchen--Cinnamon Sugarplums

 It's that time of the week.  The time to enjoy a good book and then make a yummy treat.

This week's book is The Cookie-Store Cat. It's the story of a cat that lives in a bakery and enjoys the easy lifestyle that comes from being loved by the bakers and neighborhood children.

There are quite a few recipes in the back of the book.

We made Cinnamon Sugarplums, and they were absolutely delicious...light and fluffy and gobbled up quickly in this house.  This recipe is going into our regular rotation of cookie recipes. 

 2/3 cup butter, soft

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 egg

4 tsp. milk

1 and 1/2 cup flour

1 and 1/2 tsp. baking POWDER

1/4 tsp. salt

cinnamon sugar

 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla

 Add the egg and beat until fluffy.

Luke cracked his first egg and he did a perfect job.

 He wasn't so happy about the egg on his fingers after his great success.

Stir is milk.

 Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Kim is using a whisk to sift our ingredients. (That's how we sift around here)

Drop by a teaspoon scoop onto your cookie sheet.

 Sprinkle the cookie dough with cinnamon and sugar.

 Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes.

These cookies are delicious...light and fluffy and with the cinnamon and sugar they remind me of snickerdoodles but are  much more soft.

This recipe will need to be doubled the next time we make them, because everyone was home and they were all gone within an hour of baking!

Cay is hosting a Picture Perfect Potluck...sharing picture books and cooking in the kitchen.

Head on over and join the fun.

Yarn Along...

From Ginny, the founder of "Yarn Along"~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a single photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~

Busy, busy, busy....that's what's happening here around here. All the busyness leaves little time for knitting, but I did manage a bit of needlework this last week.

I finished two parts of a kitchen set (since I took this photo I have finished one more potholder leaving only the hanging dish towel to finish). The kitchen set is for a Christmas gift, but I am under no pressure to get it done....it will be given when it is done.

I started knitting up a scarf with a beautiful brown alpaca yarn. I am not happy with the pattern so this has since been taken apart and is now awaiting time for a search for a new pattern. This is by far the softest yarn I have ever knit with, so I can't wait to see what it becomes. It is also special because it came from a wonderful, inspirational friend that I have found "online".

I still don't have a book for myself....boo hoo....but I am enjoying the books I am reading aloud to the kids. In the past few days a couple of our favorites have been: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and The Gift of the Magi. I make sure we don't miss these during the busy Advent and Christmas season.

stART--On Noah's Ark

This week we enjoyed On Noah's Ark by Jan Brett as our kindergarten Bible story of the week.
"Jan Brett presents the biblical story from the perspective of Noah's granddaughter. The child watches the construction of the ark and the arrival of its passengers. Once they are on board and the rain falls, she untangles the crowded beasts so that they can all sleep peacefully. When the storm ends, Grandpa Noah releases her pet dove to search for land. After the creatures disembark, she helps him plant a seed to start life anew. This familiar story serves as a vehicle for Brett's watercolor-and-gouache panoramas of animals, birds, and insects from all corners of the Earth."School Library Journal

I found this very cute cut and glue craft at A Kid's Heart.
Luke is getter very good at cutting things out.

After making the "ark" with room for riders, we put our animals, two by two, on popscicle sticks.

The animals ride on the ark, but also can come out to play.

I also discovered this very fun Noah's Ark game at DLTK crafts.
I used blocks and watered down white glue to make the dice.

After lightly placing the animal on the glued block, I "painted" over the blocks to make the animals permantly affixed to the dice.

When you roll a pair of animals, you get to put that animal in your ark.

The pattern provided little pictures, matching the dice, to use as game pieces, but I looked through our animal bucket and found matching animals.

Now when the kids roll a pair, they put the toy animal in the ark.
Check a lot more great stART activities at A Mommy's Adventure.

Westward Expansion Book List: Part 1

We have been enjoying our journey into the west with our study of westward expansion.

We have been on our trip now for 2 weeks and we are all learning so much!

We have used alot of Elizabeth's unit which can be found at Serendipity.

I wanted to list the picture books we have enjoyed in these first 2 weeks before I forget about them in our excitement to join the California gold rush!

If you click on the picture of the book's cover, you will be taken to the Amazon link.

We used If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon as our "textbook".

Of course, the family read-aloud was Little House on the Prairie.

I am very happy to say that even Luke and Kimberly enjoyed it, sitting quietly for up to an hour while I read.

The great series of books, My First Little House Books, added a lot to the past two weeks. They were perfect for the littlest kids, but the big kids also enjoyed them because the pictures are awesome. The picture books followed the chapter book so nicely, things were decribed word for word, and the pictures helped with "technical" terms, such as nose feed bags and fording a river.

You Wouldn't Want to be an American Pioneer was just the book to keep Mark's interest. Of course, he is a 10 year old boy, and what could be better than the gross, yucky stuff of the pioneers life.

These two picture books are very fun. We all enjoyed them.

These last two books are the books that Gracie, 8, used for her reading books these past 2 weeks. They were easy for her, but we all enjoyed having her read to us!

Stay tuned next week for our California gold rush books.

Some of our other fun of the past weeks was, learning to spit (Mr. Edwards style),we made prairie sunbonnets, and homemade butter and cornbread.

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.