A hint of a giveaway

Stay tuned...I have a great giveaway that will begin tomorrow morning.  You want a hint?  I already gave you one.  Any guesses?  hint, hint!  I am cracking myself up right now!  I can't wait to see if anyone guesses correctly!  Just a hint, I mentioned the product five times already in this post!

A Simple Shamrock Craft

We happen to have quite the collection of little plastic cups.  I like to keep them in our arts and crafts cabinet because every once in a while, I actually think of something fun to do with them.  This week, we turned three of them into a shamrock.

R and I used glue dots to stick the plastic cups to a piece of green construction paper.  Then she painted them with green glitter paint and drew a green stem.  Simple enough!  R loved it!

Rainbow Collage Sun Catcher

I sound like a broken record, but we are hoping to lure some little leprechauns into our house, and rainbows have been known to catch their eye.  You already know how much I love sun catchers (we made the store bought variety, and butterflies, and hearts, and shamrocks), and now after going back and looking at all of those posts it seems that I cannot decide if they should be called "suncatchers" or "sun catchers".

Anyway, I always love an excuse for fine motor work and tearing tissue paper gets those fingers moving.  I had R tear tissue paper in all of the colors of the rainbow.  Then I cut a rainbow shape out of clear contact paper and helped her stick the pieces on in the right order.  We read What Makes a Rainbow by Betty Ann Schwartz while we worked on this to help R remember the correct order of colors in the rainbow.

When she finished, I placed another piece of contact paper over her rainbow to seal the pieces inside.

 I cut out the rainbow and then we used double sided tape to stick a few cotton ball clouds on the bottom.

Another sun catcher, another cloudy day.  What's the deal with that?  Maybe I'm subconsciously hoping our sun catchers will bring the sun out from behind the clouds!

To Catch a Leprechaun

You must have shiny things, shamrocks, and rainbows to catch a leprechaun!  We have completed two traps so far.  This is C's trap:

He designed it himself.  I only helped him fold the cardboard for his rainbow stairs. There is a slide to lure the leprechauns inside the trap.  Who can resist a slide?

R and I made this one together.  We covered a box with shiny aluminum foil and then put shiny green shamrock stickers all over the box.  I folded the cardboard to create stairs, and she colored them.  We put a shiny shamrock slide inside the trap.

We are thinking of making one more leprechaun trap together as a family because we have a great box that might guarantee success!  Now, how should we spend that pot of gold?

(C and R were featured on Natasha's News, the blog written by Natasha Wing, author of The Night Before St. Patrick's Day.  Click here to see them over there!)

We Have a Winner!

The winner of my YoBaby giveaway is Michelle!  Congratulations, Michelle! 

Manatees

We are currently learning about Florida for our Fifty States Project.  I always try to read a few books about an animal that is native to the state we are studying.  We read about alligators and manatees for the state of Florida.  You can read about the alligators by clicking here.  To learn more about manatees, we read:

• Florida Manatee by Louise and Richard Spilsbury- we skimmed through this book and just read a few facts.  It is really meant for older children, but the pictures are great and we learned a few things too.

• Diego's Manatee Rescue by Sheila Sweeny Higginson- the Diego rescue books are very informative while also being just right for young children.  The text is the perfect length and the books provide a few facts about the animals.

• I'm a Manatee by John Lithgow - we happen to own this book and enjoy reading it often.  A young boy dreams that he is a manatee.  It's a funny book.  

We also watched some video of manatees on You Tube.  This was very enjoyable for all of us.  They are such graceful animals, but you would never guess that if you didn't watch them in the water.

GIVEAWAY - Hurry up and enter to win!

Don't forget to enter my YoBaby organic yogurt giveaway!  Time is running out.  You must enter by tomorrow at 9:00 AM!  Click here for details!