Celebrating Japan!

this week at the library we took a look at Japan....

in the spirit of Japanese arts, I watercolored with the grade school kids...Some selected images from books and some simply used the paints.

a finished Mt. Fuji!

with my preschoolers, we made Japanese fans.  

from card stock, i cut a traditional fan shape and glued popsicle sticks on the back...

some colored their fans with markers....

and some collaged with origami paper!

emmett wanted to make his all blue and asked if he could paint his..

we used sticks & leaves (a trick we learned from our days at art & school preschool!)

the completed fan has traveled well in our HOT summer!

Caterpillars & Butterflies

butterflies on the mind...

to celebrate mexico at the library, we learned about the monarch's migration from the north all the way to mexico by fall....(in time for day of the dead)

that was a little complicated for the average toddler so we started by simply creating caterpillars with old paper egg crates....

another day...i cut old pieces of felt into circles for our clothes pin caterpillars.  

emmett loves to practice with his scissors!

and loves to use glue too!

our caterpillars came out great & now it was time to grow our wings....

inspired by this post...we colored coffee filters with washable marker...

and sprayed them with a water bottle...(perfect for a HOT day!)

the marker spreads and then dries super fast on a laundry line in the sun....

i love the tie dye effect!

don't have clothes pins?

pipe cleaners work just as easy!

we hung them up to fly...

i came across this template and decided to make sequence cards for emmett for the book, the very hungry caterpillar by eric carle.  this was one of his all time favorite board books as a baby.

i never tried any kind of flash cards with him or even anything that felt "intentionally" educational but this seemed like fun and he enjoyed helping me make the cards!

putting the cards in order according to the order of the book...

i then decided we needed a party...a very hungry caterpillar party!!

Inspired by this post, i began planning...

first we made the bean bags.  i cut everything the very hungry caterpillars eats in the book out of felt, sewed them & then stuffed them with mung beans.  

this turned more into a sensorial experience for emmett!

our bean bags...(my sewing is far from perfect...i challenged myself to let it go & get the game made!)

throw the bean bag!

i brought the party to the preschoolers at my library story time!  after we read books, played the game, made a coffee filter butterfly...we enjoyed a special snack!

my older kids at the library made these beautiful butterfly ornaments using origami paper.

for the full tutorial click here.  paper crafts are very popular fiesta ornaments too!

Russia

to celebrate russia in my preschool story time, 

we learned about nesting dolls or matryoshka dolls.  

we then made ornaments....

i downloaded this template & printed it out on card stock.

we layered them on top of one another, put beads & a colored ribbon.

Africa

 I work part time as the Program Coordinator for a little library in the Hudson Valley (one that is under 1000 square feet).  Our Summer Reading Program, One World, Many Stories, is a theme we use to promote literacy through books, programs and community events.  

Below are crafts that were inspired by our Africa week....

We learned that the Asante of Ghana make Adinkra cloth.  Beautiful fabric patterns are made from symbols that are stamped on the cloth in squares of pattern.  Four Adinkra symbols are love (the heart), strength (the paddle), rhythm (the drum), and patience (the moon).  We cut these shapes as well as random shapes out of regular house hold sponges.

I also gave them stencils of Egypt and African masks

I was impressed with the results!

Even at 3 years old, Emmett really took to the stencils.

  I simply taped the card and paper down for him to avoid frustration. (yikes!)

Next we covered old coffee cans with white paper to make our very own African drum!  We scored a slew of coffee cans from Freecycle!

Beautiful and super simple!  You can put rice or even just one rock inside to make a unique sound.

Bees & Community

do bees live in a city? he asks

yes, i guess they kinda do.

like the city daddy goes to?

yes, actually JUST like the city daddy goes to....

we start the morning off with a honey smoothie with yogurt & fruit.

emmett chooses pineapple & mango because bees like yellow.

we play a game where we go out and look for bees in our garden. 

for every bee he finds, he gets a wood chip.  

he then trades in the chips in for something special....

(i lead him over to the catmint because that is popular bee hangout)

though he tries to swipe more, emmett finds 5 bees.

he trades his chips in for "sun chips" a.k.a the health food version of m&m's.

i had to hide the bag so he wouldn't see where they came from...

(we ended up playing this game twice!)

emmett wants to color bees "with happy faces"

we framed emmett's drawings above our nature table.  

(he calls it the gallery)

typically on Sundays, we do things (or at least try to)...and that is bake and go into the "community".

luckily, we live in a place where we can walk lots of places ~ bookstore, health food store and emmett's favorite - the bakery. 

we got a flower cookie in honor of our theme :)

we made a honey cake ~ ~

this is a good cake for kids because it has lots of strong spices to smell...cloves, cinnamon & nutmeg.  

the house smelled strong and homey. 

when i picked out honey cake to bake, i hadn't realized it was a traditional cake in lots of cultures....poland, greece and a popular one on rosh hashanah.  

so we got out our globe to check out some of these far away places.....