Pilgrim Hats

Scary decorations? Check.  Trick or treat candy bought, eaten, and rebought three times over? Check.  Kids wrestled into costumes and given too many treats?  Check and check.  Thanksgiving, here we come.  I looooove Thanksgiving.  What's better than a holiday celebrating food, family, and thankfulness?  Especially when I don't host it.  (Thanks, Donna!) So let's start with a joke:  Why did the pilgrim's pants keep falling down?  Because his buckle was on his hat!  Bwaaa haaa haaa. 

We made some pilgrim's hats.  Similar to our witch hats, this was so easy, my three year old made his own.  Keebler cookies, a mini peanut butter cup from the trick or treat bag, and some frosting to glue it all together.  We got the idea from here.

To go along with our snacks, we read The Littlest Pilgrim.  My three year old really liked this one.  It's about Mini, who is the smallest pilgrim in her village.  She wants to help, but everybody tells her she's too small.  I think it's easy for preschoolers to identify with the main character.  At the end of the book, she discovers that she's not too little to make a friend.  It's a really sweet story.

Also, a big thank you to Andie over at Crayon Freckles for featuring my Halloween Word Sort at her Tip-Toe Thru Tuesday link party!

Linking to Today's Creative Blog, Nap Time Creations, The Inspiration Board, Crayon Freckles, Reasons to Skip the Housework, Not So Tough Tuesday, Life in the Motherhood, Sugar & Spice, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees, A Creative Princess, Mom on Time Out, Bear Rabbit Bear, DIY Thrifty Thursday, Gluesticks, 733, Happy Hour Projects, Home Savvy A to Z, Sun Scholars, Delicate Construction, Bacon Time, Quilted Euphoria, Ladybird Ln, One Artsy Mama, The Crafty Nest, Tatertots & Jello, Family Ever After, A Well-Seasoned Life, I {Heart} Nap Time, Vanilla Bean Girls, Scraps of Life, The Sunday Showcase, Between U & Me

Happy Halloween!

Halloween 2010

Today the plan is to read Fly, Ghost, Fly! This is a fun book with movable parts. 

Then we're going to make Mom of 4's ghost bananas!  The muffins look cute too but I doubt we'll get those done!

Hope you get lots of treats and no tricks!

Books for Talking to Kids about Cancer

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It was tough to put this list together because I kept thinking of the kids and families these books are written for.  I wish nobody needed a list like this.  I hope that someday nobody will.  In the meantime, a book can help when talking about something difficult, or it can just let someone know that others have gone through the same thing.  So here is a list of books that could help with talking to kids about cancer.  I have not read any of these books so I've included the description from Amazon.


For younger readers:
Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy  Told through the eyes of it's title character, this book uses candor and comic reality to dispel stereotypes and acknowledge some moody truths faced by families LIVING with cancer. "Mommy's wig was still attached to her head, but she didn’t look so good. The wig-hair stuck out like snarled rat-tails in all directions. There was a crooked horizontal line right where her smile should be. Worst of all she was in no mood to play Tickles Tabitha." A poignant and humorous account of a Mommy’s moodiness, caused in part by the medicine she must take to cure her cancer. It's about a family that loves one another, minus the sap. Instead it reads like it could be your family; not the family you think you ought to be. Expect young readers to ask to be tickled until their faces turn pink!



Where's Mom's Hair? (A Family's Journey Through Cancer)
Narrated by the son of a cancer patient, this tells how his family prepared for his mother's postsurgery chemotherapy treatment. At a hair-cutting party, family and friends had their locks shorn in sympathy and solidarity. Although the focus of the text is on hair loss, the narration does provide a simple, direct explanation of chemotherapy with snapshots of his mother's treatment and subsequent hair loss. Once the treatment ended and her hair returned, it appears his mother made a successful recovery. The black-and-white photographs are arranged in scrapbook fashion, accompanied by explanatory text that rings true to a child's voice and perceptions. The candid photos show kids and adults in happy, pensive, playful, and worried moments. Warm and upbeat, this photo album will provide a good springboard for discussions of chemotherapy.

Our Mom Has Cancer
A humorous, honest, and hopeful account of the year that Abigail and Adrienne's mother underwent treatment for breast cancer.

Butterfly Kisses and Wishes on Wings: When someone you love has cancer...a hopeful, helpful book for kids
This is a listen-to or read-aloud book for children. It is a resource that can be used to educate and support any child who is facing the cancer of a loved one. The story, as told through the eyes of a child, lends itself to a simple and clear understanding of cancer. It also teaches children to realize the power they have to be an active and integral part of a loved one's cancer journey.

Our Mom Is Getting Better
Written for children whose parents are cancer survivors, this thoughtful and engaging book address important survivorship issues to help families move on after treatment ends. Containing a message of hope and healing, the topics include the possibility of recurrence, continued fatigue, pain, and other symptoms, exercise and diet, proper rest and sleep, and returning to work and social life.  (They also have one for Dads.)

For preteens and teens:
Our Family Has Cancer Too
Providing comfort through the knowledge that "you are not alone," Our Family Has Cancer, Too! Is an ideal gift for children ages 7-12 whose families have been touched to cancer. A special "Questions to Ask" section invites kids to write down their questions for parents, doctors, teachers, and others. Additional worksheets inspire family members to draw and record their feelings for later discussion. Powerful "Stop and Discuss" suggestions throughout the book encourage dialogue between parents and children. The book also contains a glossary of the most common words kids might hear when someone in their family has cancer.



Ida B: . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World
As an only child, Ida B has had plenty of time to indulge her creative bent. She makes miniature rafts, to which she attaches notes with questions such as, "What is life like in Canada?" Acres of apple trees are her friends, and she enjoys long conversations with Beulah, Pastel, Henry VIII, and other trees. She lives life to the fullest, firmly believing there is never enough time for fun. When her mother develops cancer, her parents sell part of the orchard and send Ida B to public school rather than homeschooling her. The changes leave her feeling fiercely angry and betrayed. With the help of a wise and caring fourth-grade teacher and the enduring love of Mama and Daddy, the girl slowly begins to heal.



Both Sides Now (Readers Circle)
Fifteen-year-old Liza is the antithesis of the stereotypical teenager. Buttoned-down and straight-laced, Liza thinks carefully before she speaks, jogs regularly, and doesn't waste her valuable time on tantrums or tears. "If you don't plan, you'll get taken by surprise, and I don't want that to happen to me. I want to plan for everything so that I can have a good, successful life." But the one thing that Liza could never have planned on was her mother Rebecca getting breast cancer. With her mom's diagnosis, Liza is abruptly launched into a world without rules or meaning. Her characteristic sense of responsibility shot, Liza flunks driver's ed, forgets to fact check an important school newspaper article, and gets drunk for the first time. Suddenly, she begins to understand how her mother must feel, having to take life as it comes, and not being able to control every outcome. "Maybe I never understood anything.... Everything I knew--about Mom and Dad, about myself... has been wrong. It makes me feel stupid for the first time in my life. I'm not as smart as I thought I was. That's clear."


You can donate to breast cancer research here. If we all give a little, we could make a big difference.

Noah's Ark Rainbow

Cotton ball clouds??  Soooo 1980.  :)  I got this idea from my super creative sister over at Mom of 4.  She's a Sunday school teacher and did this with her class. 

We started by reading our Noah's Ark book.  There are tons of great versions out there but we have Noah and the Ark: A Bible Spin-Me-Around Book.  I like it because it's a little interactive.  You can turn the middle part of the page around and Noah and his family are doing different things.  It's also a sturdy board book and short and simple enough for my preschoolers to understand and enjoy.



After we read the story, we talked about the meaning of rainbows and then I explained how to put the rainbows together.  They are just made of half circles piled on top of each other. 

I was completely ignored.  It's a struggle for me not to help the kids too much with their art projects because A) I want something cute to show off on my walls and on my blog and B) Drew always asks for help if he doesn't feel he can do it perfectly.  But I know it's far better for them to be their own artist with their own final product so I sat on my hands, closed my mouth, and just let them go.
The clouds are half shaving cream and half glue mixed together.  I put the mixture in an old squeeze bottle.

Our final products don't look quite like I imagined but I still love them.

Lainey's

Drew's

Linking to Fun for Kids Friday, Living Life Intentionally, Crafty Moms Share, The Sunday Showcase, Vanilla Bean Girls, The DIY Home Sweet Home Project, What's in the Gunny Sack?, Monday Madness, Made by Little Hands, Show & Tell, Red Ted Art, Sugar & Spice, Rainbow Connection
Rainbow Activities at Outlaw Mom

Healthy Monster Snacks

We made a super simple snack to go with our book today.  It was inspired by our Hungry Harry Frogs, but this one is even easier.  I halved an apple and cut a wedge for the mouth.  The eyes are grapes stuck in with toothpicks.  Then I used cream cheese to stick a raisin onto each grape.  I'm sure you could add lots of fun stuff to this monster like teeth (nuts maybe?), hair, antennas, etc.

We read Silly Monsters ABC.  This is full of fun alliterations.  The monster's names are silly nonsense words and the kids love it.  "B is for the buzzlesnout who buzzes like a bee."  There are also words incorporated into the illustrations like a "befuddled bear."  A fun book for preschoolers and young readers.

Linking to Homemaker on a Dime, Creative Me Monday

5 Little Pumpkins

One of our Halloween favorites is Five Little Pumpkins.  This is the classic chant that everybody knows.  It's short and sweet and easy for a preschooler to memorize.  "Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate, the first one says 'Oh my, it's getting late'..." All five pumpkins say something and then they roll out of sight.

We made our own five little pumpkins out of paper lunch bags.  We painted them and drew on faces, stuffed newspaper in and tied it with a pipe cleaner. 

Then we lined up the pumpkins on our "gate" and knocked them over one by one with a ball.  This was a huge hit.  They played for a long time, eventually throwing the pumpkins at each other, but they were having fun.

Lainey is like her mama.  She didn't think it was logical to stand so far back so she just got right up there and used the ball to knock over the pumpkins.

Linking to Made by Little Hands, Tip Junkie, ABC &123 Learning, Crayon Freckles, One Tough Mother, The DIY Home Sweet Home Project, Red Ted Art, Mom on Time Out, Things I've Done Thursday, It's Playtime!, What are Little Boys Made Of?, Living Life Intentionally, For the Kids Friday, Mama Pea Pod