A couple of Maine Lobsters

We are currently learning about the state of Maine. L is for Lobster by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds has been a great resource for us. We learned that Maine is the largest lobster-producing state in the nation so of course we just had to make lobsters. How cute are these little guys?

C named his lobster Lucky.
R named hers Mudda.
If you would like to make your own egg carton lobster, click here for complete directions.

Open ended art - tissue paper

We are really enjoying the weekly open ended art projects hosted by Teaching My Little Bookworm. This week, the medium is tissue paper and it is perfect because our tissue paper drawer is overflowing with paper begging to be used. In case you didn't know, open ended art is art that is created without any direction or expected result. I supplied tissue paper, glue, and posterboard and let C and R do whatever they felt like doing.

C decided to cut his tissue paper and glue it onto the posterboard. Here is his finished product:

R worked on developing those hand muscles by tearing and crumpling the tissue paper and gluing it onto the posterboard. Here is her finished product:

C also decided to crumple up some tissue paper, place it in a glass jar, and add a flower made by him. He did this on his own and I was tickled pink when he presented it as a gift to me! I have no idea why he has a heavy winter sweatshirt on, it's eighty degrees!
To see the other tissue paper art projects visit Teaching My Little Bookworm by clicking here.

You love me, you really love me!

I am so grateful for the friends I have met through this blog. I never expected to befriend people this way, and I truly feel blessed to be able to share ideas and learn from other bloggers. Two of my blogging friends have honored me with blogging awards and I am finally passing them along!

Ticia from Adventures in Mommydom gave me the Super Comments Award. If you are not familiar with her blog, check it out. She writes about everday life with her twin boys and daughter. I am passing the Super Comments award along to Valerie at the Frugal Family Fun Blog. She has the greatest ideas, and her comments are always so genuine. I am also passing this award along to Susana at Our Homeschool Fun. Susana comments with great regularity and is so nice. Also, if you are looking for giveaways or need a place to publicize your giveaway, she is the host of Friday's Gracious Giveaways!

The blogger buddie award was given to me by my friend Kristi from the Orange Juice blog. She tells it like it is and I love that! Kristi is funny too, and she emails me. She also sent my children postcards from CA for our fifty states project; how nice is that? If she wasn't on the other side of the country, I'm sure we would actually hang out!

I am happily passing this award along to my friend The Dairy Queen. We worked together to create the Super Summer Swap, and she is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. The Dairy Queen also sent my children postcards from her home state and from another state where she was vacationing with her family! Go visit her blog because you will love her, and while you are there congratulate her - she is pregnant with her third child!

Thank you for reading my blog, passing awards along to me, and befriending me!

Meet R

R was featured on the Totally Tots blog!!!!!!!!! Run on over there right now and read the post.

Replying to Comments

I LOVE comments! What blogger doesn't? It keeps us going; it makes us realize that there are people out there who actually care about what we have to say! Anyway, occasionally people ask questions in the comments section and I try to reply as soon as possible. A while ago, I read this post by Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and realized that commenting and responding is much easier if you set your Blogger profile to show your email address. Why is it easier? When you leave a comment for someone, they can respond right from the comment without having to go to your blog and leave a comment in a post.

If you are not Blogger savvy (I am soooo not) and need directions, go over to the Homeschool Creations blog and read this post. It really is easy to do. If I can do it, you definitely can.

If you are concerned about linking your email address to your Blogger profile, consider setting up a gmail account. I did this and all of my email from that account is filtered into my personal email account. Simple!

Please consider doing this so that you can get quick answers to any questions you may have, and so that we can all communicate a little easier!

REI's Passport to Adventure Program

You are probably familiar with REI, but did you know about the Passport to Adventure Program? Visit rei.com/passport and use an interactive map to find family friendly hiking or biking trails in your area. Then you can download an Adventure Journal for your child to document his or her observations. Your child can then mail the pages to REI to get a certificate of completion and a prize!

Dragon Day

We were riding in the car listening to Do the Dragon by Laurie Berkner when C proposed that we have a Dragon Day at home. Perfect! The letter "D" is one of only four letters that we had not completed for our alphabet book, and I remembered this awesome "Dragon D" from No Time For Flashcards. This would be fun!

We happen to own, and LOVE, the book Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton (with gorgeous paintings by Eric Puybaret). The first thing we did on dragon day was to listen to the song by Peter, Paul, and Mary and sing along with the book. We also sang and danced to Do the Dragon by Laurie Berkner.

Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight by Ogden Nash also came off the bookshelf on Dragon Day. This book is a sequel to The Tale of Custard the Dragon, and the story is about a cowardly dragon that has to rescue his friend from a wicked knight. We don't own the first book, and it wasn't available from the library so we just read the sequel. It's a good read!

We also read Peter Meets a Dragon from the collection of stories titled Bedtime Stories for Boys.


On the Dragon Day menu were sandwiches cut to look like dragon feet.

Here are the Dragon D's that C and R made:

I hope to have more theme days like this. We all had a great time!