Greening Sam and Avery

travel day one - a book to get me ready

I am on VACATION!  WOOHOO!  Which means I wrote this post several days ago and scheduled it to go up so that I could take a break from the computer and make memories with me kids! Sure they are just riding in the car memories at this point but still we are on VACATION!

The car is loaded down with all our camping and backpacking gear plus all the clothes and extra things that we need just for a great visit at Uncle Craig's house in Denver. The girls could not be more thrilled about this trip and excited about all the things that we have told them we will be doing. They have NO idea just how many hours they are about to spend in the car...I decided it was better to surprise them with that fun! HA!  

This is a much needed break. A much needed recharge for our family and our first big camping trip as a family of four. Chris and I have both camped all of our lives and we have both backpacked before we were together and as a couple. SO I am so excited to do all of this with the girls and get to experience all of this as a family. With hopefully many more of these in the future.   

But, before any of this could happen I needed to get ready. Which for me meant reaching out to all of you for advice! Go here to see all the great posts that were linked up and be sure to add your own if you have one! Thanks so much to Creekside Learning, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Curly Bug,  Adventure Tykes and No I Will Not Carry That Rock for linking up and giving me so much great advice! 

Getting ready also meant I needed to find a good book. And I found a great one!

The Down and Dirty Guide to Camping With Kids by Helen Olsson. I got lots of great advice for what to pack, what to expect and advice on how to handle different situations from this book. The most seasoned camper or backpacker may not need the gear section but if they are taking along their kids for the first time they may really need the "Five Ways to Curb Whining" section. And an early childhood educator may have no problem keeping their kids entertained at the camp site but may really struggle with knowing what kind of trip to plan and how long to plan it for. There are literally sections in this book for everyone!

Well organized, well written and a quick read make this a great resource for anybody that plans on taking kids out into the wild for a camping, hiking or backpacking trip!

Okay, I will be popping on here occassionally over the next 10 days but my posts will be brief. If you want to hear more about what we are doing and see photos you should follow me on Facebook! I am going to try and get stuff up there a bit more often. But again, I am on VACATION and plan to be unplugged making memories with my family as much as I can!

a few preschool books to start your week

Got a few new-to-us books for you all to check out this week.

Flying Eagle, Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen

This book has great pictures! The story is all about one eagle's struggle to find a meal for his family. The girls loved seeing all the animals that the eagle was flying over. And it is a neat way to portray just how hard it is for some animals to get the food that they need.  The writing is very poetic and the pictures are very artistic.

Dolpins on the Sand, Jim Arnosky

So many great books from Arnoksy! This one deals with the natural occurrance of dolphins getting caught on dryland. People show up to help the dolphins and eventually get them safely back to the water. It is a great story about how humans can really help animals and make a positive difference in nature.  Love the message that this one sends to young kids!

White Owl, Barn Owl, Nicola Davies

When you finish reading a book with your child and their reaction is to ask to take immediate action just like what happened in the book, that is an awesome thing! This story is about a young girl and her grandpa that build an owl box to be able to observe an owl more closely. And what they get in the end is a great experience with an amazing bird! Of course Sam now wants to build owl boxes to put in our backyard. I see a project in our future.

So, head to your library and check out a new book or two! And if you have read these I would love to know what your little ones think of them.

 

possibly the best track and scat preschool book

Is it really Wednesday already? Where have the days gone?  I cannot believe that I haven't posted since Friday! The long weekend was amazing. We partied with friends, had great family adventures, got garden work done, spent half a day at the outdoor pool and just had a ton of fun! Three days with Chris home is always a treat. 

Sam is still in school which seems much later than most other people but that is okay with me! She loves school so much and I know she will miss her teachers and friends when the year ends. Plus I will my structure hungry child at home with me everyday just begging for projects, learning and a schedule (all things that just sound like work to me right now!). 

Anyway, I have an awesome book to share with you all tonight. If you ever do any lessons with animal tracks or scat (animal poop) I would STRONGLY encourage you to check out this book. 

Track that Scat, by Lisa Morlock

A rhyming book about scat, what is not to love? This little girl has a new pair of boots and head out to explore the woods near her house. As she explores she keeps finding and somehow managing to step in all different kinds of scat. The story, in a fun and entertaining way, gives information about animal tracks, what animals eat, what the scat looks like and where the animals live. The information is incredible but presented in such a fun way that the kids don't even realize how much they are learning. Plus there are big sections of additional information for each animal that adults could read to grow their knowledge or older kids could have read to them. 

This could be my new favorite book. And it has proven to be a new favorite of the girls too. They even asked their dad to read it the other night (which lead to all kinds of mocking and questioning of my abilities to pick out books for our children! "a book about poop? seriously?" HA!) and had a great time watching his face as he read about all the different animal poop. 

This would be a great book to read before you go for a hike. You could also bring it along with you on the hike and make a stop at some point to read it along the way. 

It just really makes looking for signs of animal life sound way more exciting and interesting to little minds! 

Hope everyone else is having a great week! 

theme week - ponds - getting started

We got all our books from the library. I just love when I go with a list and can actually get all the books that I wanted. So awesome.

The girls picked out Box Turtle at Long Pond by William George and Lindsay George and In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming for our first pond books to read.

Box Turtle at Long Pond

This one is not so much a book about ponds as it is a book about the box turtle. The story talks about a day in the life of a box turtle. Some of the things that the turtle does are pretty interesting and can lead to great questions and conversations with your little ones. The story is cute and scientifically accurate.

In the Small, Small Pond

We have read this one before so to hear more about it you can go here.

 

Along with our reading today we made our first trip to a pond. I am taking a real pond (small kid's pool filled with pond water and lots of pond critters) to Sam's school tomorrow so I wanted to head to our local pond to make sure that there were lots of critters there for me to catch. The girls and some friends helped me catch lots of great critters in the pond. This wasn't a long critter catching trip because I just wanted to make sure that there were things there for me to catch tomorrow morning. But the kids loved checking out the critters and seeing what we caught each time we put the net in the water.

 

Finally, we started our big pond craft project. I asked Sam what she thought the first thing was that we needed in order to create a pond. She said we needed water.

We added some green grass around the edge and then called it quits for today. We will continue to add to this pond with all kinds of different materials and types of art!

Come back tomorrow to see what else is new. And don't forget to scroll down and check out the Pond Posts link up. There are already several great posts up there!

preschool butterfly books

I was all about my butterfly program last week. Which of course in this house meant a trip to the library! 

So, this week the girls are really enjoying reading and having me read to them all about butterflies. 

From Caterpillar to Butterfly, Deborah Heiligman

This is a great little story about a class of kids that get the chance to raise butterflies. It presents great information about butterflies but also shares the story of the kids in the classroom and what the process was like for them. The pictures are cute and there are some simple  butterfly images in the back that can help with identification. 

Animal Lives: Butterflies, Sally Morgan

This is not a story book so it may not hold the attention of many preschoolers but it is a great resource to have on hand for those random questions that preschoolers love to ask that you may not know the answer to. There is tons of information about the natural history of many different kinds of butterflies and beautiful pictures!

A Monarch Butterfly's Life, John Himmelman

This is a perfect first butterfly book for little ones. It keeps the story very simple and the images are greatly enlarged so that young ones can really see the the body parts of details of the caterpillars and butterflies. The one sentence per page is just enough information to be informative but also hold a young child's interest!

Are You a Buttefly?, Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries

This butterfly book is kind of a silly approach to an informational kid's book. The author treats the reader as if you are trying to figure out if you are a butterfly! The text is informational, but also light-hearted and a good read. 

And lastly, I wanted to share a "big kid" book. Sam and I found this one in the Early Reader section of our library, which is where she has been finding a lot of great books lately. 

Butterfly Fever, Lori Haskins

This is a early reader paperback book. It focuses on how monarchs migrate. The story is about a little girl and her class at school that track the monarch butterflies as they move across the country. Then the town that they are living in has a big festival when the butterflies arrive. The story is informational but also really fun and a great read! 

 

Lots of great butterfly books to check out! Enjoy. 

turn over a rock

My kids have been very into looking for bugs lately. So, we have been turning over rocks, stepping stones, big logs, flower pots and pretty much everything else that they think might have a bug underneath it. 

To go along with all of our bug hunting I checked out a few bug books. 

Bug Dictionary; An A to Z of Insects and Creepy Crawlies is a bit advanced for preschool age but has neat pictures and includes insects from lots of places so it would work in many areas of the country. The book includes great illustrations and good size comparisons of the insects. For a slightly older child creating your own alphabetic list of insects that you find in your own backyard or neighborhood would be a great activity to go along with this book! You could keep the list on a big chart that is visible to them, let them add insects all throughout a whole season or even draw pictures on the list! 

Insect Detective by Steve Voake is a great way to present insect information to little kids. Some of the information is a little advanced for preschoolers but the story is written in a way that still holds their attention. Like many books that I really enjoy this one has additional information on certain pages, in smaller text, that could be read just to older children that want more information. Illustrations are adorable! 

So turn over a rock and then get to reading! For even more bug books check out the list here. 

earth day celebrations - read an earthy book

Just a reminder that the Earth Day Celebrations Blog Hop is going on! Be sure to scroll down and check out some of the great ideas that are being shared. 

Here are a few of my favorites that have been shared so far!

Eat Your Dandelions - from Laura Grace Weldon

Upcycle Egg Cartons to Building Blocks - from Kindergarten & Preschool for Parents & Teachers

Toddler Bird Book - from Growing Together

Teaching Children about Earth Day - from Inspiration Laboraties

Check these out, leave them a comment to let them know Greening Sam and Avery sent you, and then come back and link up a post of your own!

So, now onto another great way you could celebrate Earth Day! 

It isn't tree planting time yet in our area, still too many days of frost and no leaves on the trees. But we are gearing up for planting season with some tree planting books. 

 

Sid the Science Kid is a great science based show that my kids love and last year after Earth Day I found this book. There is a ton of great information about dirt in there, presented in a way that little ones can understand. Plus the activities that the kids do in school, in the book, are really neat and ones that I would like to try when the girls are a bit older! 

The Mangrove Tree by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore is a style of book that I just love! They have bigger text at the top of each page that is rhyming, tells the story and presents the story in a way that is appropriate for young kids. But then along the sides of the pages there is more information about the trees, the people and the real story. I love that a parent could get this book and read have it work for both a younger child and an older child! 

If you need more ideas for nature related books to read on Earth Day head over to Must See Children's Books for LOTS of great ideas. 

best earthworm book

If digging for worms is an everyday occurrence at your house too then you have to find this book. An Earthworm's Life by John Himmelman.

The girls and I have been doing a lot of yard work gardening which almost always leads to finding worms, creating worm homes in our buckets and watching lots of worms wiggle in our hands. My girls LOVE worms. So when I was looking through the nonfiction section at the library and found this book I was pretty excited. I didn't know that much about worms so it was a good book for me too!

We like the book because the text is simple and can hold the girl's attention much like a fiction book but has a ton of great information about worms. We learned all about what they do during the winter, what they eat, who they are scared of and how they have babies. Now the girls have a lot more knowledge about these great little treasures that are all over our backyard! 

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The Nitty Gritty!

If you are looking for even more worm fun you can check out our worm learning activities here and our worm game here.    

some great resources

I am putting together an auction item basket for a silent auction at my church and just had to share two resources that I am putting in the basket. I found them at a local birding store and I may just have to bid on my own basket because I really want these books to stay at my house!

The first one is Backyard Birding for Kids by Fran Lee. This is a great kid friendly resource for learning about birds. Tons of information, activities for homemade houses and feeders and even tips of bird journaling. But the point of the book is the field guide sections. And they made it great kids! The birds are not categorized like you would find them in an adult field guide, they are broken down by where you would find them! So there is a "city birds", "country birds", "wetland birds", etc. sections to the book. The pictures are simple but also perfectly accurate and the information that is provided is stuff that kids (and me!) would actually find interesting! Great resource if you have an elementary school aged child that has an interest in birds. 

The second resource is the Kids' Easy-To-Create Wildlife Habitats by Emily Stetson.  I haven't gotten the chance to read this book cover to cover but the skimming that I have done makes it a book that I really want to read more from! First of all I have never before seen so many ideas for homemade, simple bird feeders! I was blown away by all the options. There is just so many different ideas in here for how to include food, water and shelter in your backyard for not only birds but insects, animals and amphibians.  They even make putting a pond in your backyard seem easy! The whole book is just very eye catching. I could see sitting down with an upper elementary aged child and looking through this book for ideas and then having them work on several projects in their own backyard. This would be a great resource if you are interested in doing the Backyard Habitat Program!

 

 

Found any good green resources lately that you would like to share? 

a few books for you (children's nature themed books)

Just a few new ones (new to us that is!) for you to check out. 

Meet the Howlers, April Pulley Sayre

Sam actually picked this one out off the shelf. And it is super cute. A rhyming educational book about monkeys, what could be better? And I love books that add a little extra text in that gives more information for older kids. This one has lots of great facts about Howler monkeys that you can either read or leave out depending on the age of your child. 

Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out!, April Pulley Sayre

This one I really like! It tells the birth story of sea turtles in a way that has humans involved, both in good ways and in bad ways. I love the way it shows how humans affect animals in so many ways. It also really hammered home to Sam why we pick up trash at the park and along our walks/hikes. If you have a trash pick up walk planned for the future you should pick up this book to read before or after the activity!

The Frightened Little Owl, Mark Ezra

This is the story of a little baby owl that is terrified to fly. I love the moral that you can read into this story and how the momma owl handles the situation in the end. This may have been a better read for me than the girls but I really liked it! Worth checking out. 

Welcome to the Ice House, Jane Yolen

So, I got this one a while back because I was sure I was going to need more inspiration for keeping the girls intersted in snow and ice. But spring has come! We are still enjoying this beautiful tale about animals that live in the far North. There are a few neat camouflage pictures that the girls really like and Avery loves hearing about the bears. If you are still surrounded by snow and ice pick this one up! 

Enjoy some reading time with your kids!