The Very Hungry Caterpillar Story Stones

We had such a great time with the Brown Bear story stones I made that when I saw these Very Hungry Caterpillar stones at Thrive 360 Living I knew they had to be my next project.

I made a small version for a birthday boy who was turning two.  They were such a success and LJ was so interested in them that I made a larger version for him.

I bought a wooden box from the Dollar store to keep them in.  At first I was going to paint a caterpillar on the outside of the box but then I realized I'm too cheap and would rather recycle the box for something else once we're done with these!

We love the Very Hungry Caterpillar book by Eric Carle so LJ was really into reenacting the story.

The front of the stones make up the green caterpillar and if you put them in order you can turn each one over as you tell the story to see what he eats.  Sooo much fun!

Brown Bear Brown Bear-Toddler Story Stones

"Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?"

We love this book by Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle

 

I thought it would be fun to make up some story stones for LJ and L to play with.  It's been years since I made these Enormous Turnip story stones for L.

This was one of those projects that sounded fantastic at the time but after about the fourth animal I was seriously wondering what was going through my head.  Anyhow I pushed through and now we have these cute story stones to go alone with the book.

 

 

For those of you who are interested in making your own story stones I just used regular acrylic craft paint and then covered them with a layer of Modge Podge.

Making a fairy house in the fairy woods

One of the things on L's summer to do list was to build a fairy house with mommy.  We started collecting items for the house at the beginning of the summer and we planned a day when Granny could look after LJ for the morning.

 

We had a beautiful morning so we packed up our snacks and some fairy house materials.  Once we got to the fairy woods we had to find just the perfect spot.  Not too close to the path but close enough that hikers with sharp eyes could spot something magical.

Here is our fairy house nestled against a tree.

 Some easy chairs with a little coffee table on the first floor along with a table for entertaining outside.

 A lovely shell bed with soft moss and a leaf blanket to keep warm.  A little ladder to climb up, of course they could just fly!

 L putting in the final touches.  She was very concerned with making them a dancing ring off to the left as well as a bathroom which is on the far right in the next picture.

 It's hard to see but if you look closely to the left of the ladder there is even a little swing for them to enjoy.

It's been several weeks since we made this fairy house and we only returned to see how it was doing a few days ago with some friends.  To our delight it looks as if someone had been playing with it.  Of course it could have been the fairies!!

Mini terrariums for teachers gifts

Trying to think of a year end gift for L's teachers is always tricky.  I want L to be able to make the gifts so they are more personal.  This year we decided to make mini terrariums.

 

I found these wonderful glass hanging candle holders that were perfect.

 

 First L added some colored stones left over from the fish bowl for drainage.

 

She then put in a layer of potting soil.

 

Next a bit of moss from the garden as well as some small succulents.

 

She also added tiny ladybugs in each one which are super cute!

 

Super easy yet beautiful!  I wish I'd got another container for us!

 

 

 



Beach Sensory Bottles

The weather has been gorgeous lately so we've been taking advantage and heading down to the beach in the mornings.  Baby J has his nap while Sweetpea has her snack and then we play on the beach for a bit.  Luckily Sweetpea doesn't put things in her mouth any more so it's a really fun experience.

I brought down our sensory bottles to fill up with beachy things. 

Here Sweetpea is putting small stones into the bottle.  She loved to put several in and then pour them back out again.

 Once Baby J woke up he joined in on the fun.  This is the first time that he has sat on the sand and played.  He loves to put things in his mouth so I had to really keep an eye on him but he so enjoyed the sensory experience of playing with the sand, shells and pebbles.

I love this picture they look like two little mushrooms!

 Here are the bottles we made up.  Sand, shells and driftwood.

Once we got home I made up a treasure basket with the bottles, two large shells and a cool piece of drift wood.  It's wonderful to have a piece of the beach to explore even when we aren't at the beach.  The best part is when we are done with them we can just return them to the beach!

Our little beach?

We live up the hill from the coast.  On Sunday we were coming back from town and decided to drive down along the beach.  We got to the bottom of the hill and were shocked by what we saw.  Our usually quiet, peaceful beach was crowded with hundreds of fishing boats, sea lions, bald eagles and thousands of seagulls.  It was quite the spectacle!

The herring run happens here every March but this year it must have been spectacular because I've never seen so many boats.  The whole town was out taking pictures!

We quickly hurried home and got the camera and had a wonderful photo shoot in the beautiful spring weather.

 

 

It once again reminded me how lucky we are to live in such an amazing, beautiful place!

Habitat Game

 

We recently borrowed a video on habitats from the library.  It was really well made, upbeat and engaging and there were even little quizzes after each segment which L enjoyed.  It gave me the idea to make this habitat game.

Such a simple concept but really effective in learning about and discussing different habitats.  I used five different coloured pieces of card stock to make the habitats and then put labels on them.  I printed out different animals from Google images for each habitat onto card stock.

 

I made up a bunch of different cards which say things like:

 

Place an animal in the tundra habitat

Place an animal in its habitat

Which is the only continent that doesn't have a grassland habitat?

What are two types of water habitat?

 

It's a fun way to learn and talk about different characteristics of habitats and their inhabitants.

 



Patterns in Nature

We recently borrowed the wonderful book Patterns In Nature by Jennifer Rozines Roy from the library.  It explains all about different types of patterns and how they are all around us.  It also shows how we can make our own patterns from things outdoors and in our backyard. 

 

After reading the book together L was all set to go.  She grabbed her journal and a pencil and we headed out to the back yard.

Here she is copying down her big, little apple pattern into her journal.

 While L was busy with her journal I made this pattern on the clothesline then asked her if she could continue it which she did no problem.  She had a bit of a harder time copying it into her journal as she needed help with the spaces between the clothes pegs.



 We then moved out of the backyard and went on a nature walk around the neighbourhood finding patterns in ferns and other things as well as making our own.

Reading this book and talking about patterns opened up a whole new world to L and she is loving discovering patterns wherever we go now!



Can you see me now?

 I saw this super fun camouflage activity over at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational and just couldn't wait to try it out with L.  First we had to order the book   Where Else in the Wild? More Camouflaged Creatures Concealed … and Revealed by David M.
Schwartz from the library.  This book has great pictures of different animals totally camouflaged in their environmet.  It has a game-like feel as it gives the reader clues in a poem to help to detect the animal.  On the inside flap of the page it shows the outline of the creatures plus
gives a ton of info about the actual animal.  L loved this book and some of them were so tricky it took her a while to find them.  She was so eager to turn the page and find out if she guessed correctly.

 After reading the book together I asked L to get all of her animals.  She was super excited when I told her to hide them "camouflage style" while I closed my eyes (and nursed the baby, oh ya multi tasking!) Once she had hidden a ton of animals it was my turn to try and find them. 

This little preying mantis was my favourite find sneakily hiding on the actual book!  Once we both had a few turns being the camouflager I have to say I petered out(she could have kept playing all day)and told her to hide some for when Daddy came home. 
She even packed a bunch of animals in her backpack this past week for a trip to her Aunty's in Vancouver to play the game with her!

Hunting for Fossils

A few weeks ago we had a wonderful family day searching for fossils.  Vancouver Island has many places which are perfect for amature fossil hunters.  We equipped ourselves with hammers, picks, buckets and of course a lovely picnic lunch.

 The weather was gorgeous.

 These two fossil hunters took their work very seriously.

 In the end we were successful and found what we think are two trilobites!!

A wonderful day was had by all.  Even when L fell into one of the pools and had to wear Daddy's top as a dress while her clothes dried!

After our finds we have gotten the fossil hunters bug and hope to go out hunting again soon.



Blackberry picking and Birthday gifts

There are two reasons why I haven't been posting much lately.  The first is that we are really just laying back and enjoying the last days of summer.  The second is that my husband has become slightly addicted to playing poker on Facebook and has been hogging the laptop!

Anyhoo, last week our longtime family friend Uncle P came to visit us from England.  L really enjoyed playing with him since he is up for almost anything.

Here they are picking blackberries.  L amazes me with her dedication when blackberry picking.  She will stay out there for hours hunting down all of the 'low' blackberries.  She was the same last year.  It also surprises me that she doesn't eat them all! 

 After we pick them we wash them and freeze them on cookie sheets.  Once they are frozen I put them into Ziploc bags.  Perfect for smoothies etc.  I love free food!!!

 L is invited to a birthday party on Saturday.  My philosophy on gifts is that the person giving them has to be directly involved in the whole gift process.  We decided to make a little memory game for L's friend using rocks we found at the beach.  We had a great time trying to find round flat rocks together.  I painted on the little beach themed pictures and L painted the two rocks at the top.  We then modge podged them and put them in this little basket.

We tested out the game a couple of times to make sure it worked and may just have to make one for ourselves!

Land and Water Forms at the Beach

It's finally been nice enough to go to the beach!  L did the land and water forms at school this year so she was excited when I suggested we do some at the beach.

strait

bay

This was first a lake and then we added an island.

We did some others but my hands were getting way to sandy to keep taking pictures.  This was super fun and L loved running to the ocean to get the water to fill them up.

Cloud Gazing

We've been learning about clouds.  I had this wonderful vision of L and I lying on our backs in a grassy field gazing at the clouds with the sun on our faces.

Hahaha.  So far we've had two days that didn't involve the oppressive blanket of stratus clouds!

We really are hoping that our summer will start soon!

For our cloud study we first used some classified cards on the four main types of clouds, Cumulus, Cirrus, Stratus and Nimbostratus.  I have to say a huge thank you to my bloggy friend Aude over at My Montessori Preschool.  She did a wonderful unit on clouds earlier in the year which you can read about here.  She was generous enough to send me the file for these great classified cards. (Also a huge thanks for the wonderful things she sent for my Europe continent box, gotta love the people you meet in the blogsphere!).

Here are the cards.  There are two pictures of every type of cloud.  On the one with no label I put the definition on the back.

L made up a cloud book using cotton balls.  I printed up the labels and she cut them out and stuck them on.  She had a blast making this book.

Rain cloud experiment.  We also got this from My Montessori Preschool.  The purpose is to slowly add drops of water to the cotton ball 'cloud' and see how much it will hold before it starts to rain.  L did this three times in a row.

 We also tried making a cloud in a bottle which we both agreed was a fail.  I found some instructions on the Internet but we weren't impressed with the results.

Although we know stratus clouds really well now I'm looking forward to the days when we can name the other clouds and predict the weather.  

Driftwood Xylophone

Wee Folk Art recently posted this video on their Facebook page on how to make a driftwood xylophone.

It was a nobrainer that we HAD to try this out.

A few weekends ago L, Daddy and I went to the beach and tested out pieces of driftwood to see if they were resonant.  We collected them and lay them across two large logs.  Once we played them we sorted them out according to pitch putting the lowest at one end and the highest at the other.

Here is L rockin' out on our driftwood xylophone!  It sounded just like the one in the video!

I collected a few more pieces and we did this for music class this afternoon and made a huge xylophone with rolled up beach towels to go along with our study of African music.