One, Two, Three!

My baby turned three yesterday. Here are my three fave things about the bday boy:

1.  His love for soccer. I personally do not have a love for the game (or rather didn't have one) but my guy is just totally crazy about it. He wakes up thinking about it, eager to put on his soccer clothes and asks to practice at least once, usually more often, every day. I love how intensely he loves the sport because I love that he loves this way. I hope that he always loves whatever he does his intensely and this passionately. Unless of course it's drugs, and then I take that back. 

2.  His voice. I love it. I love listening to the things he has to say and how he says them. I love when he shares his thoughts with me. I love that he has so much to say and wants to share it with me.  I hope that he always finds his voice and always shares his thoughts with me. (Again, there are some disclaimers to this one, too.)

3.  His sense of humor. I've got one silly guy. In our family, we always say you know you are funny if you make Papa laugh. Papa is just not a laugh-out-loud type of guy. Z-man gets him cracking up almost every day. I love how he knows things are funny (like wearing pants on your head or pretending to be asleep and I'm even gaining an appreciation for potty humor (Toots! Bahaha!). I hope he always sees the humor in life and brings smiles to people's faces. 

These have been the most challenging, most rewarding, and most joyful three years of my life.

 I can't wait to see what's next for us!

Making Compost Stew

In April, my class learns about the environment and we spend a week talking about each of the three Rs, reducing our use, reusing what we've used in new ways, and recycling everything we can.  Today, it seemed fitting to make a special Earth day snack for us, and for our class pets. 

For snack, my kids made chocolate pudding "MUD!", complete with worms. They ate them out of planters I found at the dollar store.  My kids loved pretending that it was real mud!

For snack for our worms,  the kids cut up banana peels, apple and pear cores, and grape fruit and orange rinds. We added water and pulsed them into tiny pieces in the Magic Bullet.

Layer by layer, we added dried leaves and newspaper, dirt, and our food waste to an old hermit crab container to make our Compost Stew. We put our worms in the container, made sure it was a little damp, and set the container outside for the sun to do its magic.  We plan on watching our compost over the next month or so to see what changes take place inside our compost bin.

We also played a fun composting game with the pretend food from our kitchen.  We went through the bin placing items that can be composted in one pile and items that should not be included in another. It was good practice for starting our compost bin and super fun to say that meat would make it STINKY!

The book that inspired this lesson? Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mark McKenna Siddal and Ashley Wolf.   We repeated the sing-song rhyme from this book as mixed our stew: "Put in all in a pot... and let it rot... into COMPOST STEW!"

Happy Earth Day!

Canvases on the Cheap

This summer, I'm running four weeks of full day elementary camp.  For twenty nine hour days for forty campers, there is a lot of preparation to make a fantastic camp. I've already started prepping. 

One of the activities I have planned is painting inspiration canvases with Dr. Seuss quotes. (Camp has a Book Wars theme.)
When I looked up the prices online, it just felt like a waste of camp resources to spent over a hundred dollars on canvases for this one activity. After some Pinteresting, I found this tutorial for making miniature doll house canvases. So I super-sized it!
Using white poster board, diaper boxes, muslin, a hot glue gun, an iron, and Gesso canvas primer, I made 40 canvases in a hour for a whopping total of $22.  I cut the poster board and diaper box to the size I wanted and then hot glued them together.  After stretching muslin around the cut box, I hot glued the fabric tightly to it.  I ironed the front of the makeshift canvas and then painted on the primer.  TADA!

They aren't quite on par with the ones you buy at the store but summer camp quality? Totally. 

Extending More Than Just the Track

As my kids entered the classroom, I gave them this problem: extend the train track that I had started on our table as much as they could. Several kids were interested when the track easily stayed on the table. As it got longer and longer, they had to work harder, trying to balance it on the edge or placing the track carefully on the backs of chairs. Then, one student saw some uncommon building materials in our classroom and used them to support the track. Challenges like this really stretch their cooperation, creativity, and thinking!

My Adventures with Woolly Bear

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Gazpacho for My Muchacho

I'm always on the look out for books that use both English and Spanish. As a non-Spanish speaker, books  written in English with sporadic Spanish words  are a great, natural, non-intimidating way to introduce new words into our (Z-man and my) vocabulary. Some of our favorites are Fire! Fuego! Brave Bomberos, Rubia and the Three Osos, and, now, Gazpacho for Nacho.

Gazpacho for Nacho is a  book about a boy who only eats gazpacho. Frustrated by Nacho's limited palate, his Mami takes him shopping to buy the legumbres needed and then teaches Nacho how to make the soup. 

First, Z-man and I read the book several times over a week or so. Actually, first I pre-read the book by myself. I've noticed that if I struggle through pronunciation, Z often looses interest in the book. 

After he knew the book well, we decided to act it out. Z-man picked a costume (but didn't want to wear it) and then pretended to buy the pepino and other veggies. He made food out of play dough and we practiced following the recipe. While doing these activities, I was very intentional about using the Spanish words in the book as a way to reinforce their meaning. 

Then, we headed to the grocery store to buy tomates, one pepino, one pimiento. I called him "Nacho" and he called me "Mami" as we did this. So fun!

At home, we gathered the rest of the ingredients, put on our aprons and chef hats and began el trabajo. He cut and measured and poured and stirred. We put it in the fridge to chill. 

I'm not sure my guy will be demanding "Mas gazpacho!" like Nacho does, but he did ask for pepinos instead of cucumbers and that makes this a success for me and my muchacho!

Tracing as We Travel

As a transition activity in my classroom, I provide maps and markers to my kids, asking them to trace different paths you can take. Metro maps work really well with the different colored lines and clear paths. Fine motor skills and geography all at once!

I can hardly wait for my next train trip and NYC subway journey with Z-man so we can try this together!