Rubber Duckies Rock!!

    We are camping with the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp again this week!

    We took last week off from the Book Club Summer Camp because of the 4th of July holiday and we had family in town. The first half of our week was filled with last minute family fun and we said goodbye to our family this morning. 

    So with the house empty (with hubby at work and my teen son in Chicago until Sunday), the little munchkin and I went camping again!

    This week's theme has been Water Play.

    One of the recommended books for this week is "10 Little Rubber Ducks" by Eric Carle.  Again, me being me and wanting to do so many things at once, I looked for a way to combine learning activities. 

   And since the next letter we are going to learn about is Letter Dd, a Duck themed book/activity was perfect!! Ah, some times I love the way I think!!

   Anyhow, here is the math (and water play) activity that I created for the little munchkin.

       

      I had originally wanted to use her water table, but with all the rain we have had, there was too much wet sand in it (and you know wet sand weighs a ton) for me to clean it out all by myself! 

    After reading the book, she searched each duck for the numbers to match the Number Line.

       

                 

And here is alternative version that was a little more challenging.

       

          

          

    Then the REAL water play fun started when she added in some dish soap and I gathered random toys & objects for her to use.

                     

   

  Discovering that some of the rubber duckies blew bubbles was the best part!

                     

      

    After about an hour of playing, she was pretty wet from all the little splashing and splashing and she wanted to come inside to change. I'm sure if it was warmer outside, she would have continued to play.

    Once she got settled inside, we did a quick spelling activity using letter stamps. She spelled the word DUCK, not one time, not two times, but THREE times!!

                 

So that was the awesome Ducky Water Play fun we had today! 

Virtual Book Club Summer Camp Fun!

   The 1^st week of my summer vacation has been sweet!! I have already read THREE novels and I added at least 8 more to my Summer Reading List! 

What can I say?

   When I am not cuddled up with my Nook, I am playing and learning with my little munchkin. Along with our Sweet Snack unit, the little munchkin and I joined the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp for some fun themed activities.

   This week was week #1 and it was Bug Week!

   All week long, I was able to squeeze in some activities revolving about Bugs.  This was quite easy, since we have been learning about the letter Ii. Instead of using the word “bug”, we used the word “insect” and talked a little bit about what makes a bug an insect.

   We began our mini unit of Insects by reading the book, “In the Tall, Tall Grass” by Denise Fleming. She learned the names of different insects and what they do.

   I wanted to give her some fine motor practice, so I had her cut slits on a folded green paper so that when she was done, it looked like grass. Then I gave her insect stickers that were left over from my classroom unit on Insects.  She took off each sticker and placed the insect stickers all over the grass paper; some were flying on top of the grass and some were hidden in the grass.

   In total, she counted 20 insects in the tall, tall grass!

   To encourage more counting practice, I created this Insect Counting activity. Click here or on the picture to pick up your own copy!

   One of the recommended activities for the week was an Alphabet Bug Spray activity!

   I simply drew some bugs (yes, my drawing are horrible) with chalk and using some water sprayers I found at the Dollar Tree, she squirted the bugs away! 

 After we got rid of all the bugs, she got a little carried away and decided that mommy’s car needed a car wash! And then came after me as I ran inside!!

   We did another outdoor activity this week… Fly Swatter painting.

    I glued some pictures of insects onto a large sheet of paper and had her use black paint and a fly swatter to SWAT away all the insects!

   Now, let it be noted, she is NOT a fan of anything creepy and crawly, so I think these two activities could have been therapeutic for her! Hahaha!!  Look at that smile of victory!

   I think every day this week, she engaged in Insect Play. Unfortunately, it has been so rainy for the last part of the week,  and she hasn’t had much play time outdoors since Tuesday…so there was no fun insect playing in the sand table this week. But that didn’t matter to her! Today I believe she engaged in insect play for almost 40 minutes…until she got hungry for a snack! Here she is showing off her insect collection (fake of course)

  And one other activity we did was about sight words. I created 2 mini sight word books in an Insect Theme for her to work on the sight words: “The, I, See”.  I showed her the sight word "see" and after reading the book, I had her go back and circle the word "see" on every page.

(I will be putting these mini books in my TPT store this weekend—they need a few tweaks.)

   Anyway, as you can see, we had lots of learning fun going on this week as we joined in on the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp.

  Next week’s theme is a Gardening Theme. The little munchkin and I have exhausted this theme already! So I probably won’t do too much with this theme in the coming week. PLUS my aunt, uncle and cousins will be arriving here on Sunday, with my mom to follow on Wednesday, so I know I will be too busy to squeeze in more than I already have planned for my little munchkin!

Joining the Virtual Book Club for Kids in saluting Dr. Seuss!!

  The Dr. Seuss fun is underway and I am VERY excited to be linking up with the Virtual Book Club for Kids, hosted by The Educator’s Spin On It !

   In my household, the buzz is ALL about Birthdays!! My son’s 14^th birthday  is tomorrow, my mom’s birthday is the 20^th, my little girl’s birthday is March 10^th and my husband’s birthday is March 13^th!

   So, there is LOTS of birthday talk going on these days. It made PERFECT sense to read Dr. Seuss ‘ book, “Happy Birthday To You!”

   I read it to my little one, my husband read it to her… and then SHE read it to the dog! (I wish I would have gotten that picture! It was sooo sweet)

   There were so many activities that we could do with a birthday theme. We started off by talking about when every family member had a birthday and then wrote the names down on the calendar. 
   We also earned the letters in the phrase “Happy Birthday”.

    I found this awesome Birthday theme pack from Over the Big Moon.  

And I purchased the Letter Bb pack (which included fun Birthday graphics) from Analia over at Ingles 360. She has awesome products in English & Spanish! And her blog is pretty awesome too! 

   Both were GREAT packs to get my little one all excited about Birthdays!

   One of the first things I did when we chose the book, was make a trip to Dollar Tree to buy some party items to create a Birthday Box. It included the party essentials (plate, cups, tablecloth, banner, etc and her everyday kitchen food.). Her cake by Melissa & Doug is one of her favorite toys and she uses it any chance she gets! And we took everything and decorated a corner of the den aka the ‘playroom’.

   I thought it would be AWESOME to make our very own 3 tier cake!! Using craft materials, of course! 
   Ha… I could never pull of a 3 tier cake!

  I purchased 3 different sized boxes at Michaels and found some cute ribbon on clearance for $1. I pulled out my Modge Podge, some foam stickers and punched out circles and hearts from scrapbook paper.

 And my little one and I went right to work!

 TA-DA!! Here is the end result!! How I wish we could really make a 3 tier cake that gorgeous!!

Then we made play-doh cupcakes with real candles and silicone cupcake wrappers!

  And OF COURSE we HAD to have a BIRTHDAY PARTY!!! (The playroom has been decorated for a few days, but yesterday was the day we actually had the party.)

   We got her American Girl Bitty Twins all dressed up and had a PARTY! It was complete with music and everything!

Look! Even our kitty joined in on the fun!

    It was the perfect way to end our Birthday fun!

    It has been so much fun doing all these birthday activities with her. She is now SUPER excited about her own birthday party…which is actually going to entail everything Dr. Seuss!