What we've been up to...

Quick photo-heavy catch-up post!

We have been all about dinosaurs lately.

And, of course, books.






We swapped 25 "Busy bags" with other local moms:


We've attempted simple sensory bins ("don't eat that! Not for eating!"):


And nature observing (looking for signs of spring):


And generally trying to promote sibling harmony.


Also, lots of Usborne-related shows and activities. I am halfway to winning an iPad, which I have coveted for AGES. Not that my 4 year old will ever let me use it.

What have YOU been up to?

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Sugar tray

Apparently 1 1/2 is a little young for writing letters in sugar (an activity requested by the 4 year old Infant Bibliophile). Left the room and found this when I returned... Sugar in ears, up nose, coating eyelashes... Bath time!

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"That's Not My..." Craft Activity

Have you read any of the "That's Not My ..." line of books?  We own That's Not My Dolly and That's Not My Puppy, and our one year-old really enjoys them.  This week, the Infant Bibliophile decided to create one of his own!

"That's Not My [baby sister's name]."  I blurred his cover to omit personal names, but you get the idea.  We used an old box of "extra" photos, but just used a bit of tape to hold them down, so they can be returned once we are ready to dispose of the craft.

Here are a few of my favorite pages:

"His ears are too big"

"That's not a person"

I realized with horror that I don't have ONE printed photo of his baby sister for the final page.  Everything is digital!  I better hit Shutterfly soon.  For now, we just printed a black and white on regular printer paper.

Easy and fun!  This is making me want to search the shelves for other baby books to inspire us.  Next, I think we'll make a local version of the "Goodnight, (city name)" books.  It would also be fun to use different materials to make a touchy feely book.  And we haven't made a flap book in awhile.

Comment: Do you make books with your kids? 

Disclosure: As an Usborne Books consultant, I will earn a commission if you click on any of the links above and purchase anything. 

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The Scoop on Getting Started with Usborne Books

This is the story of how (and why) I decided to become an Usborne Book Consultant this month, and how much fun we have been having with it.  First, a photo of my assistant:

My sidekick, before our first homeshow.

Next,  I want to share a secret with you.  Ok, it's not so secret.  But it's a fantastic deal.  Ready?  Come in close... During February only, you can sign up to be an Usborne Consultant for $29.  Why is that a great deal, you might ask?  Because, this is what $29 will get you:

Titles: Conspiracy 365 - January, Counting Rhymes, Everyone Poops, First Encyclopedia of Science, How Big is a Million, My Sister's a Pop Star, Sticker Dolly Dressing Costumes & Parties, and That's Not My Puppy.

That's $150 worth of books!  There were a lot of smiles in this house the day that the box arrived.  For us, I would have spent full money on The First Encyclopedia of Science, That's Not My Puppy, The Poop Book, How Big is a Million, and The Sticker Dolly Dressing Book, and those alone cost $53.  So I saved $24, and got an extra three books.  Yahoo!  I'm not much of a salesperson, but these books sell themselves. 

PLUS, I recieved all of the business stuff I needed to get started earning more (free) books - order forms, website and online ordering system, catalogs, brochures, invitation postcards, and a network of warm, fun consultants who love books as much as we do!  I debated whether to join Usborne for years (seriously, I'm like that.  You should have seen me trying to decide which sippie cup to purchase), and it has been a great decision.  But if it turned out not to be a good fit for me, I figured I would have just spent $29 on 8 books.  Not to mention the "pretend book party store" my 4 year old set up with my supplies.  A win-win purchase either way. :)  If money is not an option, or if you are certain that this will be a good fit for you, there is also a larger kit available with 25 books. 

If you are interested in learning more about becoming a consultant, leave me a comment or send me an email, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have honestly and quickly.  And if you'd like to know more about the books above, stay tuned to Mama Smiles, because she will be featuring a guest post from us this weekend with some reviews (and a give away!).

You can find the full catalog of Usborne books here.  We also have a new Usborne facebook page set up; "like" it to learn about specials and give aways.  The first give away will be happening shortly.

Disclosure: I will earn commissions on purchases made through our Usborne site, and possibly by helping other consultants get started. 

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Hello!

Pipe cleaners in a pasta strainer :)

Holy cow.  October 20th was our last post?!  My blog hiatus just somehow kept going and going.  My little baby has turned into a toddler, and my four year old is a bundle of little boy energy.  Ever in search of ways to make my life as a stay at home mom more entertaining, I've recently embarked on a new enterprise... I signed on an Usborne Books consultant.  I feel really strongly about the importance of books in young children's lives (well, duh.), and I love putting quality books into little hands.  Especially little hands that claim they don't like books... a challenge!  Bring it on!  As an Usborne consultant, I will earn some great books, a little spare change, and likely a few new friends.  I'm gearing up to share some of our favorite Usborne books here, and at the sites of some of our blog buddies, who have agreed to join in our fun by hosting some fun "e-shows," complete with door prizes and customer specials.  So stay tuned... I'll try not to make it four months again until my next post!

(If you have ever thought about becoming an Usborne book consultant, February's monthly special makes it a great time to do it.  Email me if you want any more info!).  

Disclosure: As an Usborne consultant, I'll earn a commission from sales placed through the Usborne site linked above.

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This Week's "Row": One Tiny Turtle

One of the children in our weekly "Five in a Row" coop requested that we study sea turtles, so we jumped off of the FIAR curriculum this week and focused on One Tiny Turtle, by Nicola Davies.  We did some activities at home, but we kept it light, since it was a four-day week.

What we did:

•  Books we used: One Tiny Turtle, Sea Turtles, and Owen and Mzee.

• Did some turtle computer programming. 
• Made a quick paper turtle (IB's request).
• Put toy turtles onto a world map by where they might live (just learning about coastal versus landlocked places and appropriate climates).
• A few connect the dot turtles.
• Visited the aquarium to see a sea turtle in person.
• At our weekly coop, made an ocean in a bottle.

• Learned the ASL sign for turtle.
• Printed and colored these paper turtles, with the intention of racing them (didn't happen).
• Made these paper bag turtle puppets.
• Used the turtle number printable sheets at Confessions of a Homeschooler for a multiplication/addition/subtraction game (I called a problem out and he hopped onto the right answer).

We also did a lot of book reading outside of the weekly theme.  Next week we are doing a book off of the Before Five in a Row curriculum: Caps for Sale.

Apparently I didn't take many photos this week, except for many at the State Fair that have nothing to do with sea turtles.

I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Disclosure: If you click on any of the links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Review and Give-Away: Bailey

When we were offered the opportunity to review Bailey, I hesitated, because the Infant Bibliophile is homeschooled, and allergic to dogs.  A book about a dog's first day of school didn't necessarily seem like the best fit for our family.  I'm glad I gave it a try, because on the day that we received it, we read it five times, and acted the whole thing out about 10 times!  So I can only imagine how a dog-loving child who has just started school would feel about Bailey.

From the publisher:

"Meet Bailey, a dog who surprises and charms his fellow human classmates with his irrepressible antics.

Follow Bailey the dog as he gets ready and goes to school. Should he wear the red or blue collar? Both are so fashionable! Will he be late? That squirrel is a distraction! And what about Bailey's homework? Would you believe he ate it? That is what dogs do, after all.

In this funny new book from the best-selling children's illustrator Harry Bliss, school proves to be an unexpected place for Bailey to do all sorts of things he loves: reading, fetching, painting, digging, singing — and making friends!"

Author Harry Bliss is a cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker magazine, and it shows; the illustrations in Bailey are playful and engaging.

Bibliophile's reaction: He loved it.  He especially liked when Bailey fell asleep reading a book.  It is a fun book to act out, as Bailey engages in funny dancing, howling while trying to sing, etc.  Every reading (there were many) brought laughter. 

Want to see more?  Check out the book trailer here.

Give Away!  Three Winners!

Thanks to the generosity of Scholastic:

One winner will receive a Bailey lunchbox AND a copy of Bailey.
Two additional winners will also receive a copy of Bailey.
  
To enter:
1) Leave a comment
2) Follow Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile and leave a comment letting me know.
3) Tweet, Blog, Facebook, or otherwise publicize this give away and leave a comment letting me know.

Three possible entries per person.  Deadline is midnight on September 17th.  Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.  Please include your email address in your comment if it is not in your profile, so that I have a way to contact the winner.

This give away is now closed.  The winners have been notified by email.

Disclosure: We received a publisher copy of Bailey at no cost in order to write this review.  If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we will earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Five in a Row Week 2: Lentil

Some of you have noticed that we are "rowing" the Five in a Row Volume 1 books in order.  We did start out that way, but plan to start mixing things up after this week.

This week's book was Lentil, a cute tale about a little boy who, unable to sing, takes up the harmonica instead.  When one of the town's grumpy citizens threatens to derail a prominent benefactor's homecoming with his pucker-inducing lemon consumption, Lentil saves the day.  Best (and last) line of the book: "You never can tell what will happen when you learn to play the harmonica."

These wrap up posts are taking me ages to write, so I'm going to experiment a little this week with just a bullet point list and some fun photo editing, courtesy of Picnik.


Generally, we focused on:
- the 5 senses (especially taste and hearing)
- harmonicas / music generally
- Ohio (just a little)
- making ice cream (the Bibliophile's request)
- learning North / South / East / West

Specifically, we:

• Tasted a lemon.  Practiced our silly sour faces.

• Made lemonade.  Both fresh and Del's frozen lemonade (it's a Rhode Island thing).
• Read a couple of lemonade books: Lemonade for Sale (MathStart) and Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink.
  
• Played a game with plastic Easter eggs, in which I filled them with various objects - pennies, rice, paper, toy car - and he had to figure out which was which.  (Relevance: sense of sound).
  
• Played a toy harmonica.  Practiced singing the blues, like his grandpa.  (Best line: "Mama won't give me no more skittles" *harmonica riff*).
• Talked about sound waves, and why Lentil liked to play the harmonica in the bathroom.  Tried it out.
• Did our USA jigsaw puzzle.
• Talked about North, South, East, West.  Tried to make up silly songs to remember the directions.  In the meantime, realized he had learned them.
• Did an Ohio workbook page from a Target dollar section book.
• Made homemade chocolate soymilk ice cream, using a Highlights magazine recipe, which required just chocolate soymilk, sugar, ice, salt, and a plastic bag.  We did this at least twice.  (In Lentil, the town celebrates with ice cream at the end).

• Decorated a paper doll to be Lentil (Bibliophile's idea).
• Acted out the book.  I was the grumpy lemon-eater.  The Bibliphile was Lentil (of course).  And his baby sister was Colonal Carter.
• No new sensory bin this week, but I did give him a bowl of raw rice one night while I cooked dinner.  In it, I had hid the letters of harmonica, so he fished them all out and unscrambled it.
• Cutting strips.  I printed some simple strips of repeating lemons.  He wasn't really into it, but did one strip.
• Talked about what an architect does, and what a floor plan is.  Drew a floor plan of our house, then used FloorPlanner to create floorplans for pretend houses.  Printed the floor plans and arranged cardboard boxes to lay out rooms like his floorplans (which, incidentally, involved slides into playrooms).  (The Five in a Row curriculum has a tie-in to architecture in the Lentil study, but the books I found looked too advanced, so we just simplified to something I knew he'd find fun, even if there was no clear Lentil connection.)
• Built a pretend town like in Lentil out of blocks, making sure to include each building mentioned in the book.  If we have more time in the next few days, we might do a paper bag town (from lunch bags).
• Sang many verses of She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain (which Lentil plays at the end of the book).
• Did some printables from Homeschool Share, including some math problems and an Ohio directions sheet.
• Did instrument matching worksheets from this site.
• Editing to add our coop plan, so I have the link if I need it.  We will be making musical instruments - some kind of shakers for the youngest kids and this harmonica-like instrument (which works great!) for the older ones.

It was a fun week, and we both really enjoyed Lentil, but I am ready to move on.  (Our coop meeting isn't for two days, and I'm already writing the summary blog post.)  Next up: we are jumping outside of the FIAR curriculum to do One Tiny Turtle.

If I remember, I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Comment!  Have you read Lentil?  Do you play any musical instruments?

Disclosure: If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Introducing Factor Trees

We spotted You Can Count on Monsters at the library this week, and snatched it up because the Infant Bibliophile has been interested in both monsters and multiplication lately.  If you are looking for a fun way to introduce the idea of a factor tree and prime numbers, hunt this down!  (I don't recommend for the Bibliophile's age, although he has been enjoying leafing through it, but for older kids).  I'm not feeling very articulate tonight, but you can click through to Amazon for the full book description and other reviews. 



I'm linking this post up with Math Monday.

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Our Coop Hostess...

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Five in a Row Week 1: The Story of Ping

This week's Five in a Row (FIAR) "row" was The Story of Ping.  I know it is a classic, but I don't care much for the book's spanking references and its overall message about accepting punishment.  We still had fun with the activities, however, and I found a few great companion books.  All in all, we are enjoying Five in a Row very much.

We focused, generally, on ducks, China, and buoyancy.  Here is what we did throughout the week, in no particular order:

 Ducks --

We read a nonfiction duck book.  We fed the ducks (some corn) at a nearby pond.  Well, in actuality, we fed the geese, but I did see at least one brave duck sneak in and get some.  (We also talked a bit about the science behind the reflections on the water - a suggestion from FIAR.)  We played a fun little birds boardgame from Homeschool Share.  And we visited the local aviary.

At the Bibliophile's request, we made a quick duck out of small paper plates.

China -- 

We located the Yangtze river on our world map, and did our Asia Geopuzzle.

We built a Great Wall of China out of duplo blocks.

We tried to draw a few Chinese characters (he didn't take to this - just scribbled).

We watched this China field trip video.  And this Chinese language video (which he loved.  He doesn't like movies/television generally, but loves language dvd's).

We skimmed this China (True Books).

And we ate rice with chop sticks.


We also read these books:


 Tikki Tikki Tembo -- This was a childhood favorite of mine.  I have heard it criticized now as culturally inaccurate, and as the Bibliophile says, "that Mama is kind of mean," but we enjoyed it for just the silly name factor.

The Runaway Rice Cake -- a fun book about a runaway rice cake (ala Gingerbread Man), with a beautiful message.  A family that only has enough money to make one "nián-gão"  (rice cake) for their holiday dinner shares it with someone needier than they.  Their generosity is rewarded when their neighbors (and presumably the Gods) fill their table.

The Empty Pot -- We loved this book, which had a nice message and a clever twist.  The emperor is searching for a successor, and designs a contest whereby children are given seeds.  Whoever grows the best flower after 1 year will be the next emperor.  Ping, who has always had a green thumb, can't seem to get the seed to grow.  After 1 year, he only has an empty pot to show for his labors.  His father tells him "your best is good enough to present to the Emperor."  So, that is what Ping does (amongst all of the impressive plants that others present), only to learn that the emperor had given out trick seeds which were incapable of sprouting.  Of course, Ping's honesty is rewarded.  We took an empty plant container and acted out this story about 25 times after we read the book.  It is a lovely story with compound messages about honesty and perfectionism. 


At the Bibliophile's suggestion, we also read Kai-Lan's Great Trip to China (he requested this from the librarian in person.  He loves to chat up the librarians).  His favorite part is that the story incorporates a handful of Chinese words and includes a list at the back of the book.

We also created a river rock sort of sensory bin.  This was mostly because I wanted to get rid of our rice bin, which was ridiculously messy and kind of old.  The rocks aren't as nice from a sensory perspective, but I find it a challenge to come up with fun sensory bins that are not a choking hazard for our crawling baby.  I tried to pick rocks big enough that she couldn't choke on them, and within 5 seconds of setting it up, she grabbed one and had it in her mouth!  So we haven't really used the bin all that much.

Buoyancy and Other Stuff -- 

We did a sink/float activity from Homeschool Share.  This, and the Ping coloring sheet on the right (also from Homeschool Share), will be the focus of our FIAR coop group this week.  We also played a bit with drawing and using lines to indicate water and movement (from the FIAR manual).

And, as we drove around in the car this week, we retold the story as we thought it should be told -- minus the spanking.  This was a suggestion from the Five in a Row forums, in reference to a discussion as to what to do when a child doesn't enjoy a book.  Today, I asked the Bibliophile what he thought should happen to the last duck to board the boat (who, in the book, gets a spank).  He was quiet a minute, then said, "I think the last duck should be able to go over the bridge any way he wants -- he can roll over the bridge, he can do a silly walk, anything!" 

We still had plenty of time for twice daily outings, free play, and 100 "NOW what should we do, Mama?" questions each day.  And much of our best learning was student-led, as always.  He has been very interested in multiplication and division lately, and in trying to tell time, so we dabbled a bit in those things.

Next up: Lentil!

I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Comment: Have you read The Story of Ping?  Do you have a FIAR blog?  Please share in the comments!

Disclosure: If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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