WWII Honor Flight Welcome - How we preschool

For the 70th Anniversary of V-E Day we celebrated with WWII vets by welcoming them to Washington, D.C.

The Vets thoroughly enjoyed the boys...

....and the boys loved the Veterans

Garlic

I buy the big bag of garlic heads for a measly $3.49 from Costco. It lasts months and months on top of the fridge in the winter but it's getting warmer and I don't want to lose the last 3 heads. Rumor has it that you can freeze the peeled cloves in a ziploc and freeze it. The only thing is I hate peeling garlic.

I saw this trick somewhere on the internet. You break the cloves off the head and place them in a bowl.

Place another bowl over the top of the first, crank up the dance music, and shake, shake, shake. The more you shake the looser the skins become.

Shake it enough and all the skins fall off or... give it to the preschoolers to shake and learn all about the delicious and nutritious biology lesson.

 As a bonus you can turn it into a service project if you have an arthritic family member who didn't want their garlic to go bad.

O is for ostrich - ignore the sub par octopus - preschool craft

I am still loving the ostrich but the octopus could use some love. Ugh he's in rough shape. Here I was overly concerned with the ostrich and it shows.

c is for the very hungry caterpillar - preschool craft

Paired with a reading of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar this is an easy one to master.

M is for monkey - preschool craft

I searched and searched for a monkey I loved. I found inspiration from this adorable print by Jen Montgomery. 

k is for king and q is for queen - preschool letter craft

The k is for king is all over the internet but he was lonely with only a capital Q for queen. I paired the two as lowercase letter... though the king still wins curb appeal:

 

W is for whale & waterspout - preschool craft

I'm cleaning up my computer and finding all sorts of previously unposted blog updates... oops.

You've seen W is for Whale everywhere... but I loved tacking on a w is for waterspout. So there you go...

Product Review - Just Tasting by Libbey® - Montessori-ish Utensils

(This review is not sponsored by any company.)

The great "Montessori" utensil search left me crushed. So many gorgeous three piece sets for the low low price of $19.99 each. While gorgeous they were just too far beyond my price range to make the commitment (I knew it'd be a temptation to yell if they were ruined/lost). With the Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon:"$5 off any purchase $15 or more" (available on the back of most of their fliers) these come to just $10 for a set of either 12 spoons or 12 forks.
12 pack Libbey® "Just Tasting" Spoon
12 pack Libbey® "Just Tasting" Forks


Here are pictures with them next to my utensils. You can see the size difference makes sense. Note, these forks are as sharp as regular forks and are not Oyster Forks.

L to R: Espresso Spoon, Soup Spoon, Teaspoon, Just Tasting Spoon, Just Tasting Fork, Salad Fork, Dinner Fork

L to R: Soup Spoon, Dinner Fork, Teaspoon, Salad Fork, Just Tasting Spoon, Just Tasting Fork

These hold up extremely well in the dishwasher....but not scraped on the cement. C'est la vie. You win some you lose some! ;)

I can't wait to test out the rest of the Just Tasting series from Libbey®

P is for Penguin and P is for Peacock

V is for Vulture

To be fair, I got the layout idea from several places but this one is particularly inspired by this vulture.

We're running out of room...ignore the umbrella tangled in his wings. When I use white on my white walls I like to outline it with a black sharpie.

v is for vampire bat

My 3 year old is isn't familiar with "vases" and while he loves eating "vegetables" it just doesn't sound like a thrilling craft. So we came up with another fun one especially when paired with I'm the Scariest Thing in the Castle by Kevin Sherry

U is for underwear

My search for short sound letters is leading me down an unexpected path. My little boy loved this one!

i is for indian - Character Letter Craft

I scoured the web for a short i sound shaped like a lower case i. Too many variables led to too few search results... until Alligators All Around by Maurice Sendak inspired m:

Yes!! "i" is for indian..."ih" "ih" indian!
I freehand cut all my letters and post pictures for ideas NOT patterns. I'm sure the more creative individual could do something far more attractive with this idea but here goes:

I'm big into starting with the original letter shape.
You could save a lot of pasting if this is not one of your goals.

Keep in mind my 3 year old pastes the character letters with a glue stick so some of the aesthetic magic is lost:

In the end I got what I wanted. A character lower case i letter craft for the short sound "ih"

n is for ninja

 

Pre-school craft. All you need: Free-hand cut up construction paper. Fine tip markers. Glue stick. Favorite pre-schooler(s)