5 Minute Cat in the Hat Bow Ties

Is your school celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday this week? We have so much fun on Dr. Seuss day. We have a read-a-thon and do activities relating to his books. 

If your child is encouraged to dress up on March 2nd, here's an easy, 5 minute Cat in the Hat bow tie.

What You Need:

1 felt square

washi or painters tape

yarn

What You Do:

1. Fold the felt like a paper fan. Accordion style along the long side and pinch the middle

2, While it's pinched, lay some yarn across the top.

3. Tape it around the middle.

4. Tie the yarn to the desired length. Voila!

Now add some whiskers, a real or paper Cat in the Hat hat and you're on your way!

Want more activity ideas? Try out these links:

Hop on Pop Hopscotch

One Fish, Two Fish Math

Lorax plant holders

10 Apples Up on Top Headbands

Grassheads!

Is anyone else bummed about the groundhog's six more weeks of winter? Here in Utah, the weather is just teasing us. Yesterday it was sunny and 65 degrees. This morning we woke up to snow. Being a California girl at heart, I was not very excited. I tried to convince my husband that I wasn't getting up until it stopped snowing, but he didn't think that would go down with the kids very well. 

If you are missing the beautiful green of spring and summer like me, I have just the solution for you!

We had a lot of fun growing grass this year and creating some fun characters with some funky hair. (Sorry about the bad pictures, I had to snap a few before these guys went home the next day.) We like to use clear cups so the kids can observe the roots and grass as it starts to sprout.

We found this fast growing grass seed at home depot and they weren't kidding. It did grow really fast.

I printed some cartoon eyes and mouths on sticker paper. I used the kind that you find in the address labels section that is a full sheet. I also printed each child's name so they could watch their grass head grow.

We filled the cup half way with dirt

Push seeds into the dirt.

Filled the rest of the cup and put it in the window to get sunlight. I watered it every other day and pretty soon we had some long haired grass heads.

Brandon thought it would be fun to cut his hair into a mohawk.

Sink or Float Center

Here's a great activity that's as simple as it comes. Do the items sink or float? Before the kids were allowed to touch water, we made predictions and sorted the items between what they thought would sink or float. 

After testing everything, we discussed our predictions. 

To create a little bit of flare we added a writing component to the activity. The kids drew pictures or wrote letters or words to represent the items that sunk and floated. Do you see that cute little "roc?" I was so proud of the kids for trying letters and sounds to create words. And that adorable little two legged dog is pretty fun too. 

Click here for a free printable of our sink/float chart to use with your little ones. 

When you click on the link, there are a lot of ads on the page. You want to click the small grey download button right beneath the box that says view document. You will need to sign in to download the paper. You can sign up for a free 4shared account or use your social media outlet to download. Please leave a message below if you have any problems or questions. 

E is for Emotions

When you work with children you aren't just teaching them academics. You are helping them learn how to be a human being that is part of a community. For my kids, our community is our classroom and hopefully the things they are learning in class will go with them out into the world.

     Talking about emotions is kind of a big deal with 3, 4, and 5 year olds. It's pretty obvious that controlling emotions isn't necessarily their strong suit and that's where we come in. When talking to little ones about emotions there are some important truths to help them understand.

1. Feeling emotions is totally normal. Everyone feels sad sometimes, everyone feels angry sometimes, it is normal.

2. Recognizing how you are feeling is a huge deal. As adults, we can teach our kids empathy when we help them see that we recognize how they are feeling and help them through it. My son Brandon was crying during carpet time. So we stopped to talk about it as a class. Why are you crying? "We put away his blocks when it was time to clean up and he wasn't done." Did you know we would clean up even if he wasn't done? "Yes" I asked the other kids, what are things you do when you are feeling sad to cheer yourself up? Madden sang a cute song about taking 4 deep breaths. Jaxon said he goes to his room to cry and then comes out to play when he's done. I said I like to get hugs or sometimes listen to music. Then we asked Brandon if he has a favorite song we could sing to cheer him up. So we rocked out to Dr. Jean's "Bear Hunt" and he felt better.

2. What we do when we are feeling those emotions is important. Yes we feel angry, but is hitting someone okay? Nope. Is there something you can do to help you calm down? Take deep breaths, run around outside, kick a soccer ball outside, talk to a friend . . . This is our job, to give them tools to keep in their tool belt that they can pull out when they are struggling.

      One of my kids especially struggles with keeping her emotions in check. So we have worked on putting tools her tool belt.  When she is upset I can use key words to talk to her about choosing a strategy to help her through those hard times. Here's what we talk about - balloon breaths (breath in deep, puff out your cheeks and blow the air out slowly like you are blowing up a balloon), belly breaths (breathing deeply and slowly so your belly goes in and out - in the nose and out the mouth), get a hug (it's usually a pretty long hug), lay in bed and snuggle your favorite stuffed animal, put on headphones and listen to music (we have a kid friendly mp3 player with a playlist on it of their favorite, appropriate songs. This one is HUGE for kids who can get out of control. On a side note, this also helps get them going on doing their chores too), are we being flexible, are we trusting mom that everything will be okay, or read a book. It's not perfect and we have been working on it for years, adding new strategies to fit her age, but it has helped improve the melt downs and stress.

  We spent some time in class talking about emotions. We discussed what emotions are. We listed different kinds of emotions. We read Today I Feel Silly by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Then we used my new favorite activity to explore emotions more deeply. I found this amazing make a face toy at Mr.Printables.com. We took turns making our face show different emotions. First I made a few faces and the kids talked about what emotion they are seeing. Then, we had two friends come up. One friend made a face and the other friend changed the paper face to match. It was really fun and a really great way to explore our emotions.

He couldn't quite do mad without smiling. 

You should definitely give it a try. It might just be so much fun that you find a single tear of joy rolling down your face. Have a great afternoon!