Simple Mother's Day Gift, Printable and Children's Books

My husband helped my kids decorate hot pads for myself and their grandmas for Mother’s Day last year.  If you’re looking for a quick and easy Mother’s Day gift idea, this craft is perfect. I love functional keepsakes. I use these hot pads almost every day and love to see them hanging in my kitchen.

They traced their hands on one side. Make sure to add their age or the date.  Then he let the kids draw whatever they wanted on the other side. Notice my toddler’s perfect scribbles.

My son also decorated an oven mitt to match the set. 

They got all of these at the dollar store. The hot pads were 2 for $1.00. The mitt was $1.00.  These are such a simple and inexpensive gift I decided to help all the kids at church make these for their moms for Mother’s Day this year.  I searched for a poem to make a tag to go along with the gift.  I found an anonymous poem and made a free printable tag for you. You can save this, print it and use it for non-commercial use (personal use only).

We are helping 80 kids make these for their moms. Some moms will get more than one if they have multiple children. We bought plain red, country blue, sage green and beige. See the Dollar Tree store products if you plan to order in bulk. I have no affiliation with them, though it is the best place I’ve found to get them.

My Favorite Mother’s Day Children’s Books
(*Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate and you may purchase these books through clicking the links or the picture of the book. I make a small percentage from the sales. I encourage you to try the books at your library first.)
Mother, Mother, I Want Another, by Maria Polushkin Robbins, is one of our favorites throughout the year. My husband introduced me to it when we had kids because he remembered his mom reading it to him.  It is a darling story about a mouse who likes to stall by asking for another drink, another toy and so on. Then at the end he asks for another hug.

Another favorite that I’ve have had for the past two years is My Mommy is a Blogger, by Sommer Poquette. I met Sommer at Evo’ (a conference for women in social media) a few years ago and was thrilled she had written a book that helps explain what I do for my kids.  My kids love the part that calls mommy a ‘booger.’ The story is silly yet still gets the point across. 

Here are a few other classic books about mothers that we love: (click the pics for more details)
 

Are you making any crafts or reading special books for Mother’s Day? I’d love to hear about your favorites in the comments below.

I am also a Google Affiliate: If you click or buy the links below, I recieve a small percentage.

1 Fish 2 Fish Printable Matching Game

This week we are pulling out the printable fishing game I created to go along with Dr. Seuss’ book, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, for co-op preschool at our house. We’ve used it for three years now with all of our kids and it has been a great tool to help with letter, number, shape and color recognition.


Printable Fish:
The fish printable has lower and upper case alphabet letters and a set of numbers 1-10. The last sheet has 10 blank fish.  You should print out two sets of the cards.  I printed them on different colored card stock. Then I cut one set into rectangle cards as my drawing pile. The other fish I cut out around the fish outline and added a paper clip.
You can make your own fishing rod from a popsicle stick, yarn and a round kitchen magnet. I just grabbed a cheap fishing toy set from the dollar store to get the rod.
The kids like to set a hula hoop out as their fish pond.  You could also use a laundry basket or an area rug.  They set all the fish face up in the pond.

HOW TO PLAY:
Children take turns drawing a card from the draw pile then finding a matching fish in the pond to fish out. Try only putting the lower case letters in the draw pile and have the capital letters in the fishing pond. You don’t have to have a draw pile.  I often just call out what I want them to find, like playing I Spy. I spy a 'red fish' or a 'blue fish'.





CUSTOMIZABLE: I left a few fish blank so when you print them you can add your own writing on them. We added shapes to some and the kids’ names to some. Try sight-words, rhyming words, shapes, family or class names.  Whatever you need to focus on most can be tailored to this game.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PDF DOWNLOAD
Try here for another PDF version hosted on Wordpress with all my Dr. Seuss Free Printables.

The Free Printable has a title page with instructions. This printable is FREE for non-commercial use only.  If you share this image on your website please link back to this specific post. Full download may not be reposted without permission.

Make sure you read the Dr. Seuss book along with playing the game!
Disclosure: As an Amazon affiliate, I do receive a small portion of the sales of these items. Thanks for looking if you’re interested.

Looking for another fun game to go with this book? See my review of the Dr. Seuss One Fish Two Fish Search Game by Wonder Forge.

The Lorax Movie, Free App and Book Ideas

Great News: The Lorax has been made into a computer animated film coming to theaters March 2012. With voices from Danny DeVito, Zac Efron and Betty White, I’m curious to see how it will turn out.
Here are some additional ways to explore the story of The Lorax:



We love reading The Lorax book by Dr. Seuss at our house.  I made this felt board for the kids to play with while I read to them. I cut out different colors of felt, glued on googley eyes, put an 8x10 piece of felt in a fun frame for the background and let them play.


I came across the Free App for the Lorax movie this past week.  My 5 year old son has been loving it.  You hold up your Apple device sideways and talk then the mouth and mustache move as you talk. It is pretty silly and makes my son laugh. The movement is pretty jumpy, even after we adjusted the microphone sensitivity, but my son doesn’t care (and hey, it’s FREE!). This is fun to use while reading the book, or just to talk to each other and pretend you’re the Lorax.



This video is only 5 seconds. See how it works. Get The Lorax Free App here.

“I am the Lorax, I Speak for the Trees.”

Check out The Lorax Garden, game app for kids created by Oceanhouse Media. This game is only 99 cents and is another great one to play while you explore the story.


I’ve always loved the original cartoon of The Lorax. You can find it on the Seuss Celebration DVD that has a great compilation of Dr. Seuss cartoons on it.



Do any of you remember what special word the Onceler said was most important? I’ll give you a clue, it starts with an ‘U’.

Leave your comment below and share your ideas of how you like to explore this story.

Thanks for visiting,

Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road Sequence Game

"We're off to see the Wizard."

Grandma invited our kids to go see the Wizard of Oz theater production this past month. I've tried to get my 7-year-old to watch the movie several times but the first time she tried watching it a few years ago she got too scared of the witch, never finished watching, and subsequently refuses to watch it anytime I offer.  At first she did not want to go to the theater with Grandma either thinking it would be too scary. 

I decided to pull out some books to explain the story so she would be familiar with it before hand.
We bought this 3-D book before we even had children. We pulled it out and did an overview of the story as the kids searched for the characters and put on a play on the little pop-out stage. You turn the pages for different backdrops.

My son loved it and my daughter finally understood the story and was relieved to find out the witch melted at the end.

Reading and playing with this book helped her overcome her fear of the Wizard of Oz.

We also pulled up some stage productions of the show on YouTube that let her get a feel for what to expect at the theatre. I'm happy to report that both our kids went to the show, enjoyed it (daughter admitted closing her eyes several times which I told her was totally fine) and they have been whistling and humming the songs ever since.

The Wizard of Oz story is by L. Frank Baum. This 3-D Playset is illustrated by Phil Wilson.

Try this Sequencing Activity to create your own Yellow Brick Road:

1. Get a few pieces of yellow construction paper.
2. Find some pictures of the characters from the Wizard of Oz. I found some great coloring pages from the movie on the Educational Coloring Pages site. And some simple line drawings with a witch and tornado on DLTK's site. Nick-Magic has some great story pictures. I like this pic of the Emerald City and rainbow. Some great pics of the witch and munchkins.

3. Print and color the pics you like, then glue onto a 1/2 sheet or full sheet of construction paper.

4. Have your child place them in a row (in sequential order) across the room or down the hallway, creating a path (or yellow brick road).  Then let your child step on each one and tell you a little bit about the story as they remember it.

Our kids also like this book with sound buttons from the Play-a-sound series. I have to admit the witch and wizard sounds freaked me out everyonce in a while when the kids have left it on the floor and something sets it off accidentally. 

Here is a fabulous pop-up version illustrated by Robert Sabuda.

I found an amazing compilation and review on more pop-up books over at Squidoo this week. I love the Alice and Wonderland and Star Wars versions.
Linking to:

Have any of you ever use books to help children reduce their fear of something?