Spring Crafts, Activities, and Experiments

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The Adventures of Bear celebrated Spring will a fun study of birds.

They made edible birds' nests,

experiements with bird beaks,

a robin craft to accompany the book A Nest Full of Eggs,

and an art project based on the book Birds by Kevin Henkes.

Along the Way used spring as an opportunity to study the impact of water pollution. They suggest a couple useful books in the post explaining the experiment.

Our Crafts N Things put together some toddler friendly spring activities: a springcounting book, a spring tree, and a planting plan.

Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds made gorgeous butterflies out of paper towel and pipe cleaners.

We also love their rainbow felt flowers. Colorful creativity!

Mama to 3 Blessings made multisensory shaker eggs with her children.

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Show & Tell #8

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It's that time of the week again! Just like that eagerly anticipated day at school, it's time to show off what you've been doing! 22 great links were entered last week and we can't wait to see what you've got today!

Here are the three participants from last week's linky, chosen at random, to be our weekly featured participants:

The Philips Family shared how they turned a photo shoot into creative photo messages for their grandma's for Mother's Day. These would also be perfect for birthday presents or for Father's Day with a little tweeking of the cards held up by the kids.

At JDaniel's Mom they shared a recent trip to an art center, where they got to paint with and on all kinds of mediums. No your eyes aren't fooling you, that's a tree being painted on!Cheerios Underfoot shared a counting game, that's easy to make and customize for any theme or interest.

We hope you'll join us this week, so that you'll have a chance to be one of the three randomly selected participants featured next week! Don't forget about our Mother's Day Linky, it's still open for a few more days!

<a href="http://www.abcand123learning.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="abc button" src="http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt46/meyeringk/ABCGraphics-Page003.jpg" /></a>

Please remember these rules:

• Post an "Ah Ha Moment," favorite lesson, experiment, learning game, field trip, whatever you're currently working on, or your child's fridge worthy artwork, handmade gifts or anything holiday related.
• Direct link to your post, not your home page.
• Include a link back to us or our link button in your post.

If you come back and your link is missing, double check to make sure you've followed the directions!

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Teach Mama: Creating Word-Conscious Kids

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We shouldn't try to fill every second of our children's lives with learning and lessons; our kiddos really do need time for free play indoors or out in the fresh air every single day. However, it never hurts to sneak in a little-teeny lesson during read-alouds, especially since many of us read to our children several times a day.

Even before children are able to read texts on their own, they can develop vocabulary, oral language, comprehension strategies, phonological awareness, and print awareness just by participating in a read-aloud with an adult.

For this series, I'll highlight some ways to develop each of the above areas in super-simple--but very worthwhile--ways.

Here are just a few ways of developing Vocabulary during read-alouds:

• Vocabulary Development--Word Consciousness: Before, during, and after reading, we have a captive audience during read-alouds. Why not use this time to model how excited we are when we come across the use of rich and descriptive language?

By sharing our love of words and talking about new and exciting words, we are teaching our children to become Word Conscious. Word Consciousness is an integral component of language development and one of the early predictors of success in reading comprehension.

We can develop Word Consciousness by stopping during a read-aloud and commenting on a particularly awesome, unusual, or interesting word we encounter: Oh, I love that the farmer 'perseveres' after the fire ruined his farm. He doesn't give up. He keeps going, he re-plants his crops, and he moves forward. I love the word 'perseveres' because I like how it sounds when I say it, and it is a strong word. It means that someone doesn't give up and that they work very hard (re: The Farmer, by Mark Ludy).

Or when reading Steven Kellogg's Is Your Mama a Lama? you might say, The bat says he 'does not believe that's how llamas behave.' I sometimes like to use the word 'believe' instead of the word, 'think'. To me, 'believe' just sounds a little fancier. I 'believe' I prefer the word 'believe' instead of 'think'.

You can also develop Word Consciousness by:

• talking about the way a word sounds when you say it;
• discussing the meaning of a word;
  
• talking about the way a word looks on the page;
  
• trying different ways of using a particular word;
• challenging each other to use a 'new word' later that day;
• listening for 'new words' during other read-alouds and taking turns 'catching' them;
• sharing 'new words' as a family, at the end of the day or at dinnertime;
  
• keeping a family list of 'Cool, New Words' or becoming 'Word Wizards' and making a 'Word Wizard Wall' of words you love. . .

Word Consciousness can be started with our littlest readers and should continue into adulthood. (Okay, or at least until our kids can stand it!). It's easy, it's important, and it promotes a love of language and an awareness of language that will ultimately help strengthen reading comprehension down the road.

When children are word conscious, they "are motivated to learn new words and able to use them skillfully" (Lane & Allen, The Vocabulary Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth, in February 2010's The Reading Teacher.) So let's start noticing words--and keep talking about it!

Next up: Developing Oral Language During Read-Alouds

You can find more on this topic and others over at teachmama, where Amy shares the ways she sneaks a little bit of learning into her children's every day. . . or as often as she can with a 6, 4, and 3 year old. Or join her--and many other ABC & 123 friends--at we teach where they're chatting up a storm, sharing ideas, and learning a little themselves.

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DreamBox Winner!

Thanks to everyone for participating in our Dream Box give away!

And the winner is:

Kami: I sent you an email with details!

Congratulations and hope you have fun Playing to Learn!

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Alphabet: The Letter V

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Letter V can be one that stumps a lot of us, lucky for you our readers have submitted several ideas! Don't forget to click over and leave them some comment love♥

Our contributor Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler has put together a whole unit around V is for Valentine. Pocketful of Posies did several letter V lessons. In the V is for Vase and Violin post you can find a set of violin sorting cards and number vases, both available for download. We think these vases would also make fun mini counting boards. Kids could count out the correct number of mini flower shaped erasers. For V is for Violet and More they made these great tactile letter V's with strips of velvet.
On V is for Volcano (+ Winter Olympics Fun) she shared the kids V folders and the volcano project they worked on together. Each of the Pockful of Posies posts have more ideas than the ones we hightlighted. Be sure to check them out! Counting Coconuts made a V is for Violets letter craft and you should check out the same post to see their painted Venus. Another fun variation on that letter art is the V is for Vase, done by Our Alphabet Adventure.
Cindy at Along the Way sent us a link to a Vegetable Alphabet File Folder Game she created. This is also a great seasonal tie in activity as the planting and gardening season begins.To go along with their Vegetable File Folder game they also did a Vegetable Feely Bag. There are some picture cards you can download that go along with this activity, available in her post. Carrying on the V is for Vegetables theme, Mama Jenn shares these veggie seed packets. Aren't the kid drawn illustrations adorable? Inside are seeds they saved and dried. The link to the downloadable veggie packets she shows on her post is broken. Her source moved sites, but we searched for the new link for you, cause we're nice like that!

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Mother's Day Celebrations Link Up

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We're excited to see how you celebrated Mother's Day! Did you have everyone over? Or did you go out and let someone else do the cooking? What did the kids do to make mom feel special?
Katie from Katie's Nesting Spot had both her mother (above right) and mother-in-law (above left) over for a casual family BBQ. Her daughter ER gave both Grandma's a mini scrapbook that they worked hard on, it contains lots handwriting examples, a special dictated message, colored pictures, lots of stickers, and plenty of pictures.
The big centerpiece for the family gathering was this big edible floral bouquet of cupcakes. Yummy and directions from the new cookbook, What's New Cupcake?

Katie from A List Maker's Life enjoyed putting together the fun tiered planter as seen on Positvely Splendid and featured in our Mother's Day gift giving round up last week.It was a special gift for her mother, who really seemed to appreciate it!

From her own kindergartener she received a special beaded necklace that says, "I {heart} Mom." Precious.

Now it's your turn to share! Please link up your posts below!

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Tara from Raising Itty-Bitty Bookworms Joins Us!

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Today we are excited to welcome Tara Rison, the founder and owner of The Itty-Bitty Bookworm, a literature-based preschool curriculum, as our newest feature writer! Tara will be joining us with an exciting new bi-weekly post that will give you tips and ideas for ways to involve your kids in the kitchen.

Tara has three spirited children ages 4-9 and a sweet rescue pup named Darla. They all currently reside in the suburbs of Philadelphia where they enjoy walking and running local trails, going to the playground, reading lots of books, and cooking together. She can also be found blogging at Raising Itty-Bitty Bookworms, her personal blog, and at We Teach, where she is the group leader of The Bookworm's Bookbag. Here is a short introduction to Tara's new featured series, in her own words:

Jamie Oliver's Ted Talk got me thinking about a lot of things, but one thing in particular. American families and schools are no longer teaching children how to cook. I really hadn't thought about this, but it is so true. How can we expect our children to grow up and cook healthy meals for themselves (and/or their families) when we don't directly teach them how?

This truly resonates with me because I was never taught to cook. My mother died when I was nine years old and my father never remarried. Dad did the best he could, but with little time and money he turned to many convenience foods. This left me with little to no skill.

Without a lot of skills or “go to” recipes, I relied on a lot of frozen and boxed meals. However, a couple of years ago I made it my New Year’s Resolution to teach myself to cook. I began watching the Food Network, read cookbooks, and experimented. This was not the easiest way to learn. For this reason, I have decided to consciously teach my children how to cook.

Both of my girls are used to helping me in the kitchen and most of the time they really enjoy it. However, they usually only want to help when I am baking. Sure it is great to know how to bake cookies and quick breads, but they aren't meal recipes. Therefore, I have been having the kids help me to prepare one dinner a week. To make it fun, I connect the dinner with a children's book. We read the book as a family and then the kids and I cook the accompanying dinner. This is a fun and motivating way for them to learn how to prepare healthy, "real food" recipes.

I will be blogging all about our experiences and culinary creations in a bi-monthly post called “Little Cooks with Books” right here on ABC 123: A Learning Cooperative. I hope you will follow along. It should be interesting, and hopefully yummy.

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