Postcrossing Map January 2011

 

Sent to:

St. Petersburg, Russia

Taipei, Taiwan

Netherlands

Brest, Belarus

Japeri, Brazil

Bananagrams and IHOP

Yesterday we got a special treat, we got to go out to breakfast, and we got to play a game while we waited. 
For Christmas, I got the game Bananagrams, and I love it!  (Thanks Jason, Sara, and kids!)  While the girls are still a little young for it, we still have fun making words that they know with the tiles.  This is a really fun way to spend 10 minutes or more :)

Mommy and Me Geography: First Batch of Postcards

For our first batch of postcards we had the following locations (followed by what we learned/know about the places)

Sankt-Peterburg, Russia;  the Church of the Savior on Blood, is the building that we most associate with St. Petersburg, it is a beautiful building that is used as a museum of mosaic now

Netherlands; My favorite artist, Vincent Van Gogh was from the Netherlands, windmills are something that we see and think of The Netherlands, and we also think of tulips and flowers

Taipei, Taiwan (ROC);  We learned that Taipei is the largest city on the island of Taiwan, and that there is some very interesting architecture, including the beautiful Taipei 101 building

Brest, Belarus;  The city of Brest is along the River Bug, there is a wildlife refuge called the Belavezhskaya Pushcha National Park, it is home to the rare wisent (similar to our American Buffalo)

Japeri, Brazil;  Japeri is very near to Rio de Janeiro the home to the 2016 Summer Olympics!

Mommy and Me Geography: Why Geography? Postcrossing

I just learned about postcrossing this last week.  It sounds really neat!  What you do is send a postcard to a provided address (randomly selected postcrosser from around the world), and then you get added to the list, and you get postcards from other postcrossers.  We went to the store last night and bought some post cards to get our first batch mailed out.  We are putting 5 in the mailbox today, and can't wait to get some back!!!
We are going to use postcrossing to learn about other countries and their cultures.  We are going to get a large world map, and mark each place we've sent a postcard to, and where we receive them from. 
http://www.postcrossing.com/

Dollar Tree and Sight Words

I love the dollar store, more specifically, I love the Dollar Tree dollar store!  When the girls are good, they can have a dollar and pick something out, sometimes it's coloring books, sometimes a holiday thing, today it was an Easter basket for Selena and Princess frisbee's for Gabriella.  They started with headbands, traded them for baskets, then Abby decided she wanted the frisbee pack more.  They love it, and I love it!
Also today, as I was browsing the educational area for a map (see related postcrossing entry), I found packs of sight words, pre-k, k, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, as well as k-3rd adjectives, verbs, nouns, adverbs and classroom labels.  Love, love, love these!  I was just getting ready to buy a more expensive sight words game and make my own labels for around the house.  Perfect!

Alligators

This week's theme for story time was alligators.  There are so many stories that are fun for the kids to listen to.  This time we talked about all the teeth alligators have, and having an alligator stuck to your head! 

The kids got into the, Five little monkeys sitting in the tree, teasing Mr. Crocodile, can't catch me!  They really like that song/story.  After the sit down part, the girls reenacted the Five Little Monkeys on the felt board, it was really cute. 

For activities, they chose the shape sorting boxes, and bead sequencing sticks.
We are so thankful to have our library and all of the activities that they offer to kids.

"I read a book, all by myself!"

This past weekend, the girls stayed the night at Grandma's house, and while Abby was napping, Selena had some really good one-on-one time with grandma.  Grandma helped her to read a book, and worked on sounding out the words.  Selena is so proud of herself that she can read the book now.  She is getting good at sounding out the words (cap, flap, rat, rap, tap, bat, cat, nap, flat, splat), she even wrote out the words.