Book Reviews

Hello, It's been a while, but we are here and doing well. We had a great Thanksgiving at my parents and are now gearing up to go to the in-laws for Christmas. I will put up Holiday pictures after Christmas.

I have been very busy quilting, but we'll save that for another day as well. Right now I'd like to go over a few of the books Tiny and I have been reading.

Of course with winter here, we hit the ever popular The Mitten and Trouble with Trolls by Jan Brett. These are great for sequencing and Trouble with Trolls has a great, clever girl as the main character, but I'd like to point out some lesser known books, at least they were lesser known to me.


Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett is a fun book in general, but being a knitter, I really enjoyed it. There is a girl, Annabelle, who lives in a small town where everything is either white from the snow or black from chimney smoke and soot. She finds a box of yarn one day and discovers that it is magic and will never run out of yarn. Of course the box contains rainbow yarn, and she proceeds to knit sweaters for the entire town, including the animals, trees, and houses. When a greedy Archduke finds out about her box, he offers to buy it. Annabelle rejects his offer, so he steals the box. When he returns to his castle, he opens the box and finds it empty. He throws the box out the window, where it lands on a piece of ice, and floats across the sea, back to Annabelle.

Again, a good strong female character for my daughter to mix in with the Cinderella's, but also a look at what other people do with knitting, how we can be kind and generous with our talents, and how things don't tend to work out for you when you are greedy.

Pirate Princess by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen and Jill McElmurry is another fun books for girls. Princess Bea decides she doesn't want to be a princess, so she runs away and joins a pirate crew. She tries one job after another, but fails pretty badly, and is forced to walk the plank. Then, at the last minute, she smells the treasure. The pirate crew follows her directions and finds more gold and jewels than ever before. She gets to stay and becomes a valued member of the crew. 

This is a good book that shows that what you imagine might not always work out. Things might not be as easy as you think. But, being a children's book, it still ends happily.

Ok, now for some seasonal books. 

The Adventures of Snowwoman by Katya Arnold is fun for Christmas. Snowwoman is made so that she can deliver a letter to Santa because none of the children in town have a Christmas tree. A little dog is supposed to be her guide, but when the dog runs off after a fox, Snowwoman gets lost and the wind tears her apart. All the forest animals help to put her back together once the dog explains their journey, and they get the letter to Santa just in time. 

Another fun story was The Snowflake Sisters by J. Patrick Lewis. Two snowflakes travel through the country through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even end up in Time Square for New Year's. From their they join a snowman in Central Park and stay until winter is over.

This one sparked a few crafts for Tiny. We made coffee filter snowflakes for days after this book. She loved it. 

We are also going to be doing some salt painting soon. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Happy Reading!

We're Going Places

Finishing my quilt for Quilts for Kids this week put me in the sewing mood, so I finished a project that I have had for a while, made a Christmas present sample test, and sewed a simple tote bag.

 Here is the Tiny in her new World Quilt. Before you get too excited, the actual map is a print, and I just quilted it through the longitude and latitude lines onto some fleece. Tiny has been trying to snuggle this blanket for weeks, and now she finally can. Last night as we were going through bedtime stories, we talked about how each color is a different place, and then spent a couple minutes with her pointing to countries while I told her the names.

 Here's the Christmas present test. I need to make a pencil roll for my niece and a car carrier for my nephew. Pencil rolls are pretty simple, but the car carrier needed a bit more thought, so I tried one for the Tiny. These are special smaller cars from one of the quiet books that comes with toys. Now, I just have to get sizing for some matchbox cars, but I think I have the concept down. I even got to try some new techniques, such as novelty stitches for quilting and button holes, though I sewed the buttons on my hand, and I won't be putting buttons on my nephew's. 

So here is a list of my projects, both sewing and knitting, that I have to make by Christmas, or have already started.

Sewing

• Colored Pencil Roll- Christmas
• Car/Toy Carrier- Christmas
• Desk Organizer- Christmas
• Twin sized quilt for the Tiny- Still in the cutting process
• Queen sized quilt- I've had this fabric for years, but now I shared the layout plan with the Hubby and he nixed it as too busy, so now I'm on the lookout for some background fabric.

Knitting

• Sock Pattern
• Pi scarf- Yes, a scarf with the digits of pi. I've actually started two of these...
• Free Form Sweater- I'm working on a sweater without a pattern. I tried this with a sweater for Tiny, and it worked out alright until I got to the hood.
• Long Sleeve Bolero Sweater- I've been working on this one for about two years. I got halfway through the first time and realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish. The yarn had been discontinued so I had to unravel it to the cuff and tweak the pattern, now I'm almost done with the first sleeve and am still on my first ball of yarn.
• Short Sleeve Bolero Sweater- This is a lace pattern, but some of my yarn is back in New York...
• Blanket- Working on a modern log cabin type style, but still in the very early stages
• Requested Tiny Mittens

So, I've got alot of work to do.

Leaf Unit

 

Tiny and I read this book today. It has great information and goes through all sorts of trees and how the leaves look different. In the back there is even a page about where leaf color comes from, it even uses the chemical names like anthocyanin, so be prepared for that if you plan to read it.

We also read The Little Yellow Leaf. It is a story about a little leaf who is too afraid to fall off the tree. It nicely goes through several "milestones" of fall before the Yellow Leaf finds a Scarlet Leaf on the same tree and they decide to drop off the tree together.

 

To go along with these great books we did some crafts. I cut out a tree shape a glued it to a background page, and then Tiny put yellow leaves on.

 Here she is working on the second "Mommy Tree" after having completed the original "Daddy Tree" below.

For this project and others I have been letting her use the Creatology Glue Pens- she is holding one in the picture of her working. I love them. They contain liquid glue- which allows the glue to stay wet for long enough to work with, but have a sponge cap at the end- which limits the amount of glue that can be used. The sponge tip can be unscrewed for when larger amounts of glue are needed, like in a Calm Down Jar (which is why I originally bought these, sooo glad I couldn't find and regular clear glue that day).

Previously we have worked with glue sticks, but she can never finish her project before the glue she has put down dries. We've also used regular glue, but we had the usual problems of too much glue causing problems and making a mess. An additional bonus is that it is a cylinder which allows her to practice proper gripping skills. We are going to be getting these for a LONG time. They come in a pack of three pens, and I got them for less than $2 at Michaels!

Previously, we had gone out and collected an assortment of leaves and a couple days ago, we decided to sort and count them. See, Daddy is an engineer and is not fond of pictographs, being a former math teacher, and currently working on my master's in education, I don't see any reason in making things simpler than they need to be because adults think kids can't understand. Tiny had a great time sorting our selection of leaves by color and counting them. I then drew the bars, and you can see that she colored them. We even talked afterwards about how big rectangles mean lots of leaves and she told me that there were the most yellow leaves!  It's not something I expect her to do on her own, but it seems as good of an introduction to graphs as many others.--Daddy was very pleased with it when he got home too.

  Here is a shot from the first day of our Leaf Unit with a few of our books spread out and some light-weight foam oak leaf shapes. We sorted them by color (Tiny loves to sort and arrange things, I blame Daddy and his side of the family :p, though it only becomes a problem when she starts to rearrange displays at the store), and then worked on some patterns for the first time. She did pretty well with the concept of an ABAB pattern, and we tried and ABCABC pattern, but that was a bit too much. Then we used the colored leaves to make "picture patterns." 

We've got more days of leaves ahead!

Photo Fest

So, I've always been bad at the daily aspect of a  journal/diary. Here are a few photos that I will put stories with...soon I hope.

Ok, so I am having a Fall Mary Kay Party next weekend and am working on some recipes to see how they work. Here is the first recipe I tried.
http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-pumpkin-2-159672

I rolled them into balls to make them look like pumpkins, but then as my hands were covered with pumpkin/marshmallow goo, I remembered this party is for adults, and adults don't usually care what their food is shaped like. We'll see how well they stay together in "pumpkin" form before final shape decisions are made.

I guess she is big now...

So, the day has come...Tiny can use a mouse. I'm not sure if this is good or not. It happened on Wednesday at the library, she was playing a Dora game and could do one thing, but today...she was navigating a whole website.

I guess it was inevitable considering that laptop is older than she is. I guess that is just where we are in American society. Kids on computers before they can read. It's nice that the site is to easy that she doesn't need to read, it's nice that she can amuse herself in another way, it's nice that I don't have to stop what I am doing to help her, but what is her life going to be like when it revolves around screens. We'll just have to work on getting outside more often I guess.

Milk and Soap

In addition to Brown Bear, we have also been doing other color projects. We tried this milk, food coloring, and soap project found on Pinterest. Tiny LOVED it and asks to do it all the time. Here is a shot from the first time we did it.

Brown Bear

We are starting school with Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. I wanted something that would be academically easy for Tiny as she got used to the routine of school. Especially since we don't have those natural bookends of actually going somewhere else. We are focusing on the color and the animal. We've gotten through Green Frog and Tiny already has the book memorized. She knows exactly what comes next and will yell at you if you say the animals out of order, but I think she is getting ready to move on as she is starting to say the wrong colors as a joke. Only a few more days.

Everyday, we color the animal from the book. She already knows her colors, so I am not picky about what color crayon she uses, but this is more an exercise for fine motor skills, and when she wants to she can color quite well and even stay within the lines at times, although it is hard to get her to stop coloring once the animal has been filled and she often scribbles over what she has done so nicely. She is much more interested in coloring these days. The first day of school, Sept. 17th, she spent about 5 minutes coloring the brown bear, and two nights ago, she spent three hours coloring pictures of My Little Ponies after we got done with Blue Horse. We're making progress. 

Introductions

Hi. It's me. I used to be a teacher, but then we moved and now I am staying home with, and homeschooling, my three year old daughter, Tiny, I have a Mary Kay business, I am working through a master's degree, I am trying to make my family healthier, and I finally have time to do some of the things I love like knit, quilt, and read.

I have found that it is easier to stay busy then I once imagined, and now that I am back on track after a bizarre issue with my back, I wanted to keep track of all the things that are going on.