Sight Word Heart Flowers

My daughter is in full blown sight word mode at school.  Recently, I came across a fantastic and fun way to learn sight words from Growing book by Book.

My daughter had a great time finding the hearts, reading them and delivering them to their appropriate envelopes.  To get all the details of the game visit Growing Book by Book and read about the Valentine Sight Word Activity.

Once we finished, I had the idea of turning our sight word hearts into sight word flowers!  I simply took the sight words, and glued everything to a popsicle stick.  It turned into a sight word activity AND craft!

All you need to make sight word flowers is:

Construction paper 

Popsicle sticks

Glue

Cut hearts from construction paper, write on your sight words and glue your hearts to the popsicle stick!

A fun way to learn sight words with a Valentine/flower

theme!

Mitten Craft

Finally the cold weather has hit us!  A couple of months ago I picked up a package of foam mittens in the dollar section of Target and now seemed like the appropriate time to craft with them.

We are expecting some significant snow this upcoming weekend which will be our first snow storm of the season and the kids are beyond excited.  This craft was the perfect way to kick off the upcoming snow event!!

Here's what you'll need:
Foam mittens (or cut some out from paper)
Construction paper
Glue stick
Buttons, stickers or anything else to decorate your mittens
Glitter
Cotton

My 5 year old started off by gluing the mittens onto construction paper.  She used cotton and stars to decorate the mittens. Next, added more glue and poured on the glitter!  Voila, mitten craft complete!

You could hang it on the fridge, or like we did, use a suction cup and hang it on the back door!

Here are 2 other mitten crafts to try.....Bird Seed Mitten Tree paired with The Mitten Tree book.
And a lacing activity with mittens paired with the book, "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.

Car Name Game - Name Identification

I have been helping out in my daughter's kindergarten class with a little boy who is about 2 years behind the others.  Right now we are working on identifying his name.  In an effort to try and make learning fun I thought we would use cars because what boy doesn't love cars!  It really was a hit and now every time I go in to work with him he asks to play with the cars!

This is a simple set up and reaps the rewards when it comes to identifying a child's name.

Here's what you'll need:

• Large black poster board
• White crayon
• Post it notes or plain paper
• Cars

Across the top of your poster board write the letters of the child's name with white crayon. Then with your crayon simply draw lines that look like street lines.  Finally, write the letter of the child's name on the post it note or plain paper and stick to the top of the cars. I used post it notes because they are already sticky.  If you use plain paper you will have to use tape to adhere the letters to the cars.

Here's the fun part! Ask your child to drive or park the car in the correct parking spaces across the top. This will help your child recognize each letter in their name and they will have so much fun zooming their cars to find the correct letters!

This is a simple activity for the adult to prepare and fun for the child to learn and play!!

Valentine's Day Float

This is a cute and fun drink to share with the kids on Valentine's Day.  Super easy to make and really yummy!

All you need is:

Cranberry Ginger Ale
Vanilla ice-cream (or sherbert)
Decorative straw

That's it, folks!  Grab a glass, add these 2 ingredients, a fun straw and may you enjoy a Valentine Float!

Choo-Choo Train Candies for Polar Express Party

My daughter's Girl Scout Daisy troop is having a Polar Express themed Christmas party this year.  As I was searching on Pinterest for some ideas I came across these adorable choo-choo train candies from We're Calling Shenanigans.  They show a nice step by step tutorial on how to make these.  I switched our trains up a bit by using different items to build our candy trains but I think they turned out cute and I hope the girls will think so too!

Here's the candies we used:

Using a hot glue gun here's how to build your choo-choo candy train:

The Kit Kat bars were the base of the train

The Breath Savers went on top of the Kit Kat bars

The Reeses Pieces were the wheels and glued around the Kit Kat bar

The Hershy Kiss was the steam part of the train and glued to the front tip of the Breath Savers

Finally the 3 bars on the end were the stack for the train, glued on to other end of the Breath Savers

So simple to make and here's how ours turned out:

I filled up a shoe box of these choo-choo train candies which will be pulling up at the Girl Scout Daisy station in just a few days!

25 Dinner Table Questions for Kids

About a week or so ago my son came home from school with a list of 25 ways to ask your kids how their day at school was.  Rather than just "how was school today?" The questions were more fun, and thought provoking.

Sadly, our dinner table conversation is not much of a conversation at all but more of "sit down" or "pull in your chair" or "eat over your plate."  So, one night after dinner I took out the list and gave it a try asking both my 10 year old and 5 year old some of the questions.  It was such a hit that they asked for more....yay!

If your family could use some fresh conversation at the dinner table here is the list of 25 questions the school sent home:  HAVE FUN! (note: I loved number 12 and asked that one first!)

1. What was the best thing that happened at school today?

(What was the worst thing that happened at school today?)

2. Tell me something that made you laugh today.

3. If you could choose, who would you like to sit by in class? Why?

(Who would you NOT want to sit by in class? Why?

4. Where is the coolest place at the school?

5. Tell me a weird word that you heard today. (Or something weird that someone said)

6. If I called your teacher tonight, what would he/she tell me about you?

7. How did you help somebody today?

8. How did somebody help you today?

9. Tell me one thing that you learned today?

10. When were you the happiest today?

11. When were you bored today?

12. If an alien spaceship came to your class and beamed someone up, who would you want them to take?

13. Who would you like to play with at recess that you've never played with before?

14. Tell me something good that happened today.

15. What word did your teacher say most today?

16. What do you think you should do/learn more of at school?

17. What do you think you should do/learn less of at school?

18. Who in your class do you think you could be nicer to?

19. Where do you play the most at recess?

20. Who is the funniest person in your class? Why is he/she so funny?

21. What was your favorite part of lunch?

22. If you got to be the teacher tomorrow, what would you do?

23. Is there anyone in your class who needs a time-out?

24. If you could switch seats with anyone in the class, who would you trade with? Why?

25. Tell me about three different times you used your pencil today at school.

Hershey's Snowman Chocolate Milk Bottles

My son LOVES Hershey's Chocolate milk.  The one grocery store that sold them stopped and we couldn't find them anywhere.  I happened to be at a store I do not normally shop at and low and behold, Hershey's chocolate milk!

Our Elf on the Shelf has arrived and one morning the kids woke up to a traditional North Pole breakfast!  Including our snowmen chocolate milk bottles.

My intent was to make reindeer milk bottles but when I peeled off the Hershey's label and noticed it was all white I quickly changed my mind to snowmen!

Here's what you'll need to make these adorable snowman chocolate milk bottles:

Hershey's chocolate milk

Hot glue gun

Black pipe cleaner

Orange pipe cleaner

Black pom-poms

Googly eyes

Ribbon

Once the label is peeled off (which is SUPER easy to peel off) 

• glue on your googly eyes 
• glue on snowman's nose with a tiny piece of orange pipe cleaner
• wrap ribbon around the neck of the bottle for the snowman's scarf
• glue on pom-pom's for snowman's buttons
• glue on black pipe cleaner for snowman's arms

There you have it!  A fun way to serve up chocolate milk!  OR you could even choose to recycle the milk container and do this after the chocolate milk has been enjoyed!