Stuck in the Mud

Amazon description: Early in the morning, down on the farm, a new day was dawning, peaceful and calm . . . until Hen discovers that one of her chicks is stuck in the mud!
How many animals will it take to pull Chick out of the mud?
A fun-packed farmyard romp with a surprise foldout ending!

Stuck in the Mud by Jane Clarke has been a favorite in our house for a few weeks now. The book was recommended to us by my sister, the amazing librarian, and we are so very grateful. I was very excited when Shannon asked little ol' me for a book recommendation and we were thrilled to participate in the reading challenge featuring this book.

A few months ago, I read about clean mud and added it to my list of things to do with C and R. This seemed like a great opportunity to try it out.

First, we grated a bar of soap. I did most of the grating, but I did let R and C try it themselves VERY carefully, holding the very end of the bar of soap.

Second, we ripped up three rolls of toilet paper and piled it on top of the soap. We bought this toilet paper at the dollar store. I read somewhere that cheaper toilet paper works better for this project.

Last, we added one quart of water and mixed it all together with our hands. I should say that I mixed it with my hands because C and R would not touch it. Neither one of them likes to get their hands dirty which is why I opted for clean mud, but at this point I was wondering if they would even get to enjoy this great sensory experience.

They happily placed some of our farm animals in the "mud" very cautiously, without touching the "mud".

Lots of animals stuck in the mud and still no hands in the "mud".

I even provided a basin of water and a towel so they could rinse and dry their hands as often as they wanted.

I finally convinced R to put her feet in the "mud" and she LOVED squishing it between her toes!

R, C, and I even sculpted a snowman!

It really is a neat sensory experience. I was amazed at how sculptable it became. I was happy that C and R finally came around and touched the "mud" but I did a lot more squishing than they did. I had to keep stopping to wipe my hands on the towel so that I could take pictures. Also, just in case you were wondering, we did this on our living room rug but only because R and C are both sick with fevers. They did a good job keeping the "mud" in the pan.


I wanted to make something that looked a little more like real mud so we headed to the kitchen and made chocolate pudding. I had all of the ingredients for this recipe.

Poor R has a bad cold and a fever and it always shows in her eyes. She still had fun making pudding.

And even more fun eating pudding, or mud as we called it. C tried it too but he didn't like the flavor; he is a Jello pudding fan and I guess the homemade variety is not sweet enough for his taste. The rest of us thought the mud was delicious!

Mouse Count

We are working on counting this week and we love the little mice in Ellen Stoll Walsh's books. To retell Mouse Count, we needed ten mice, a snake, and a jar. I drew the mice myself and they are pretty pathetic but they served their purpose. C and R helped make the snake. I drew the outline on blue construction paper, and cut out stripes from yellow and green construction paper. C and R glued the stripes onto the snake before I cut it out - it was easier to do it this way because the stripes were long and I didn't have to cut them down to the perfect size. I just cut out the snake after the stripes were all in place. We followed the pattern of stripes from the book - blue, green, blue, yellow. This was a great opportunity to talk about patterns. C drew the eye on the snake. I gave C and R five mice each and they took turns with the snake.

In the book, the hungry snake finds mice and puts them in the jar with the intention of eating them once he has enough. C and R took turns putting the mice in the jar. We counted the mice as they added them to the jar.

The clever little mice trick the snake and, without giving away the ending, we had an opportunity to count backwards from ten.

We love this book and had a lot of fun practicing counting with the mice. I only wish I had laminated the snake (I was too anxious to get started and I haven't figured out how to use my laminating machineyet) because he didn't survive past our third retelling of Mouse Count. Oh well, we will make another snake and revisit that pattern.

I Spy

C and R love I Spy. I have wanted to make I Spy bottles for them since I first heard about them. So, why did it take me so long? At first I wanted to have a theme, but I had so many ideas that I just couldn't decide what to do. Then I wanted to color the rice and just kept forgetting. Finally, I just grabbed a bunch of tiny toys and other little things around the house. I placed them on the copier and made copies of the contents for C and R. I did color some of the rice, but I would have liked to color more. Are they perfect? Who cares! C and R had a lot of fun with them.
Do you see that big wet spot on C's shirt? He chews on his shirt constantly and nothing I have tried will make him stop. By the end of the day his shirt is completely disgusting.

This is not the best picture of R. I was trying to prepare lunch while they played and I only took a few photos.

They played with the I Spy bottles for a long time today. I'm so happy that I finally made them.

Tot school

We spent a lot of time reviewing shapes this week. R is doing really well and is now comfortable with everything from a triangle to a hexagon. We read Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh and worked on several shape projects.





R enjoyed making circles with paint and plastic eggs.

She had a lot of fun transferring plastic eggs with her bunny tongs, but she does need to use two hands for this right now. I imagine using one hand is just a matter of dexterity because my four year old can do this with one hand easily.

We made homemade tub paint. R painted a lot of "T"s in the tub because she is currently very proud of the fact that she can make the letter "T".

R and C worked on our pond project as seen on Totally Tots.

We have been reading the following pond books this week: Turtle Splash Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell, What's in the Pond by Anne Hunter, and In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming. We also went back to the zoo because they have a special area devoted to pond life. We saw tadpoles and were lucky enough to catch a presentation by a zoo employee about the life cycle of a frog.


We also did these projects with chalk. This is R putting the final touches on her chalk picture. I traced around her and she filled in the details.

This texture collage was a lot of fun. R loves contact paper.

We are looking forward to spending more time on our pond next week, as well as working on counting. Have a great week; thanks for visiting.

A face only a mother could love

R drew this face yesterday and I love it so much that I had to post it. She said it is a picture of Grandma Susan. I love the hair.

Easter crafts

We have been busy decorating the house for Easter.

T, C, and R worked together to assemble this foam bunny cottage that Papa and Grandma M bought for them.


C dipped plastic eggs in paint and made a page of circles.

R loved making this tissue paper egg. We now have plenty of carrots for the Easter Bunny thanks to No Time for Flashcards.

C dyed eggs and covered them with superhero stickers.

R's beautiful eggs are covered with princesses.

Today we are heading to the zoo for milk and cookies with the Easter Bunny. C and R are so excited!

Mouse Shapes

C and R love the little mice featured in Mouse Shapes, Mouse Paint, and Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh. We have been reviewing shapes this week so Mouse Shapes came off the book shelf. The three little mice are running from the cat when they bump into a pile of shapes and realize they can make many different pictures out of shapes. They have a lot of fun with this and even manage to scare the cat away with their shape pictures.

After reading the book, I gave C and R some shape foam stickers that I found at the dollar store. There were no circles in the package so I also gave them each a sheet of color coding labels in assorted colors (3/4 inch circle stickers from Staples). They each made their own creations with shapes and we talked about the different colors and shapes while they worked. I expected R to name each shape correctly and expected C to explain the differences and similarities between the shapes and also be able to describe or define each shape.

This is R's shape creation. When I asked her what it was she said, "Shapes!" Silly mommy.

This is C's shape creation. He said it is a battlefield that he is going to visit with Dad someday.

We also had a shape scavenger hunt. I called out a shape and they would look around the house for objects of that shape. We took our scavenger hunt out on the town and used these awesome traffic sign scavenger hunt sheets from flipflops and applesauce. The traffic sign scavenger hunt was a great addition to our house scavenger hunt because there were a few shapes that we had trouble finding in our house.

C and R enjoyed making shape cupcakes. I have no idea why C looks so upset in this photo.

C's cupcake looks more like a pizza, but that's ok. He didn't want to decorate the wrapper.

We have been working on shapes everywhere - even in the driveway.

As soon as I publish this post, we are going to have more fun with shapes while playing Cranium Hullabaloo.

Thanks for reading!