Stories we shared this week

Leo the Late Bloomer is a classic children book. The story is simple and comical.  Leo isn't reading, or writing, or drawing, or even speaking, and his father is concerned. But Leo's mother isn't. She knows her son will do all those things, and more, when he's ready. This story is  for 4-6 year old, but it worked quite well with our group. Evey time when I read  "then one day in his own good time LEO BLOOMED!", our children's faces glowed with happiness and excitement, they raised their arms and shout"Yeah" together. The illustrations of this book are large, bright, colorful and of course beautiful. A perfect book for young children, a self-esteem builder for all ages.

I read it more than 10 times (in Chinese) this week and our children seemed never get tired of it and kept asking for more.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Study after study shows that sweet potatoes are one of the healthiest foods on the planet. But Children may not like to eat them. In my experience, pancakes can be a good form to increase children's vegetable intake. We served hot sweet potato pancakes on two of our dinners this week, our children really enjoyed them.

sweet potato pancakes in a cast iron skillet

Paper Planes

Paper planes can remind many of us about our own childhood. This week, we made paper planes together with our children. My reference book shows there are 24 ways to make paper planes,some of them can be really fancy, unfortunately, I have no talents to fulfill them. We just made some simple styles and our children decorated them with stickers. Some of paper planes we made fly very well. It turned out to be a good indoor exercise when we were not able to play outside on a windy day this week.

Paper planes

the Theme of Ducks

The fresh yellow color of baby ducks always reminds us Spring is here. This week, our theme is DUCK.

Rubber ducks in the "pond".
To introduce the concepts of float and sink,we provided our children with rubber ducks, rocks and blocks and had them experiment those objects in water. Our children enjoyed this activity and they quickly found out the rubber ducks always floated, the rocks always sank and the blocks can be either way depending on if they were filled with water.

Rubber Ducks in a "Pond"

Duck Cookies
We baked some duck cookies this week and decorated them with yellow icing.

Duck cookies

Decorated with Yellow icing

Ready to bring home

Children craft this week: duck collage

We also listened to the music "Five little ducks", "Counting little ducks (Chinese)" this week.
We learned to waddle like little ducks and mimic duck sounds together.

Crafts: All about Bugs

Lady bugs, butterflies and Bees

We made some colorful crafts last week. They were all cute bugs.

Snail and Bumble Bee

Children love Spring because mother nature always has nice surprises for us. Last week, a cute bee landed on our base ball and a snail stick out his head after a rainy day.We watched them, discussed about their families, asked them about their names and said bye to them. They brought our children a lot of fun.

Say Hi to Baby Bumble Bee

A cute bumble bee

A snail stick out his head

grow Parsley and Basil in small pots

This was the first planting project we did for this spring. After talking about seeds and germination, we had children put 4-5 seeds of Parsley or Basil in the small pots filled with organic moss and soil. Then We helped children add water to keep the seeds warm and moist.

seeds planted in small pots

Caterpillars to Butterflies

Our live caterpillars finally mailed in this week. They came with their little home and food. We can't wait to see them change into beautiful butterflies. Our children adore those caterpillars. They pretended to feed the worms with all kinds of food, such as coffee, cakes, tomatoes, kiwis and breads. I am very excited too, feel like I were a kid again.

caterpillars

one week later - Grow bigger

flowers to celebrate spring

We made a flower craft this week. Children have great passion in creating beautiful things. I showed them a  sample I made.  Our children learned fast and completed their projects with very little help from us.Everyone had an individual taste on how to arrange their flowers, stems and leaves. I love this project because of the versatility. It can be beautiful in many ways.Good job, everyone.

craft: spring flowers

Insects Grow in Water

This is a fun idea I got from internet. Each child picked his/her favorite insect (made from sponge) and dropped it into this transparent container. I helped them add water and close the top. At the beginning, our children wanted to see a fast growth of their insects, but there was no much change at the same day.  They were a little disappointed until the next day, they found their insects became much bigger. They were so happy and eager to share their new findings with their parents at pick up time. So Cute!

This activity was meant to have children observe the detailed features of different kinds of insects. Now it is more like a lesson on patience for kids.:)

Day One (Dragonfly and Spider)

one week later

before and after

Theme of St. Patrick's Day

We baked some green mini cup cakes together on Tuesday (3/13). Children liked them so much and they ate all the cakes in a very short period of time. They were amused by the color of the cup cakes and kept saying "Horror Cake" in Chinese (恐怖蛋糕)

Shamrock is the symbol of St. Patrick's day. We cut out shamrock shapes from the paper plates and had the children paint them in green.

Shamrocks cut out from paper plates

children glued on sparkling mini shamrocks 

Good for St. Patrick day's Parade

add yellow and black to green.
This was a fun way to teach children how colors work together. They learned to use "light green" and "dark green" to describe different shades in green. Another way to help them expand their vocabulary in Chinese.

light green and dark green

To celebrate St. Patrick's day, we had corned beef dinner on Friday (3/16), most of children in our care loved this new adventure for their taste buds.

in a slow cooker

corned beef dinner

I forgot to buy cabbage though.:)

Breakfast : Home Made Corn Muffin

I love corn muffin for  the coarse texture and the real corn taste. Our children love them too. And every time when I serve those muffins at our breakfast, they start to sing "Do you know the muffin man", so funny.

I got the recipe from the foodnetwork, my favorite chef Ina Garten.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/corn-muffins-recipe/index.html
These corn muffins taste much better than those made from package mix. Trust me.

More Vegeables in our backyard

This year we have Chinese Cabbage, Tomato, Sweet pea, Garlic, Cilantro, and Scallion planted in our backyard. Our children love to explore the garden and ask me for the name of each vegetable, flower and plant. They enjoy watching snails, ants and birds together. This backyard garden is a live nature science for all of them.

Sweet pea, Garlic and Chinese Cabbage

3 kinds of tomatoes in Garden

Another weekend project is done. Planted three kinds of tomatoes and more garlic gloves. Hope our children would enjoy a harvest by the Summer.

                                                   Tomato Ace, Plum Sugar and Better Boy

Flannel Board for Teaching Chinese

My Mom helped bought those flash cards from China, but we can not find a way to put them on a board. After weeks of research and experimenting, I finally got this flannel board ready.

Looks good to me. Hope our children would like it. I can't wait to see they use their little fingers to put their favorite Chinese characters onto the board.