Little one got left home on Sunday. Her sisters went to a friends house and she was not happy. I told her that we could make something, so she picked Chocolate Chip Cookies.

She said, “I want to pour everything in and I want to start the mixer.”

I took a deep breath, put her apron on her and really let her help in the kitchen.

She loves using the mixer.

And sneaking dough. . .

Do you let your kids help in the kitchen? What are you favorite recipes to make with your kids?

Thursday we continued to celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ Birthday with a Poetry Party.

We started by reading a few classic nursery rhymes. Then I read the girls Eugene Field’s Wynken Blynken and Nod Poem from my American Poems book. This book belonged to my Great Grandmother. The publish date is 1905. The girls thought that was really cool.

Of course we had to move on to two of my favorites, Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein. After we had read a variety of poems we were ready to create our own. Each of the girls had a pencil in hand and a new notebook.

We started with Shape Poems. It took the girls a little thinking before they decided what shapes they were going to use. Taylor decided to write about Roller Coasters. She wrote her poetry in the shape of a roller coaster. Here is her poem:

Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Go Up, go down, around, upside down. Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Something you cannot beat! Make sure you don’t go on them right after you eat!

We moved on the Name Poems. This is always fun. Even Nadia joined in the fun.
Nice

Angel

Diva

Ice Cream Eater

Adorable

The girls finished their fun with Rhyming Poems. It was interesting to see what words that they came up with in their rhymes. For some reason Peru ended up in almost all of their poems.

Our snack today was Dr. Seuss Hats.

We started out melting White Chocolate Chips in a double broiler.

The only other ingredients were Oreos, Big Marshmallows and Frosting. Cover each oreo with melted white chocolate and place a marshmallow on top.

Place in freezer for a few minutes to set the chocolate. Pipe on red frosting lines for the hat.

Another day of Dr. Seuss fun is done. Today we finish off our week with Illustration Stations.

Our Seuss-filled week continued on Wednesday with the topic of writing. My girls love to write. I have never seen kids get so excited about empty notebooks and new pencils.

We started our activities with letter writing. We talked about how people email and text and they don’t send handwritten letters very much anymore. I gave each of them a notebook and envelopes to encourage them to write letters. I was thinking they would write to a grandparent or cousin. When I asked my daughter and her friend Calico who they were writing to, they said each other. . .

I wondered how Nadia would do today since the only thing she really knows how to write is her name. She still had fun. She drew a picture to put in her envelope.

Our second activity was decorating Composition books. I gave them each a new comp book and they went crazy with my scrapbook paper.

I didn’t think I would ever get the spray adhesive off of my fingers, but they really turned out cute. This would be a great gift for some of their friends, their very own Personalized Journals.

Today is our Poetry Party. We will be looking at different types of poetry and creating our own. This has been a great week for all of us. The best part. . .the tv hasn’t been on. Next week we talked about working on a play.

Yesterday we celebrated Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. After the girls got home from school they ate Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes.

After school we read There’s A Wocket In My Pocket” by Dr. Seuss. We talked about the bright colors and fanciful characters that are found throughout Dr. Seuss’ books. Each of the girls started to brainstorm their own Seussical Character. They drew their pictures on paper first.

Then they drew them on canvas and painted their creations.

We have Floom-A-Zoon by Madi (age 7):

We have the Smilies by Nadia (age 4):

We have Wikabeem by Taylor (age 9):

We have  Fleeket by Calico (age 9):

This project was a lot of fun. The girls were so creative with their characters.

Today we are celebrating Writing Wednesday. We are decorating journals. Check back tomorrow to see the activities I used to spark their imaginations.

For our first day of celebrating Read Across America we decorated canvas bags. Summer is right around the corner (we hope) and that means we will be taking a lot of trips to the library. We love to ride our bikes to the library and these bags will be perfect to hold our books.

I wanted to do keep this project simple so that all of the girls could participate and I don’t really sew. . .

I headed to Hobby Lobby last weekend to find my supplies.

• Canvas Bags
• Iron-On Printer Paper
• Heat Bond
• Ribbon
• Fabric Markers
• Fabric

We got really creative with our circle templates. Glasses, ribbon containers, even a applesauce jar were used to cut out different sizes of circles.

We printed out everyone’s initial for the front of their bag onto Iron On Transfer paper. The girls set all of the pieces in place and then I did all of the ironing.

Here is the finished product. This was a lot of fun for all of us. Now the snow just needs to go away.

Today we celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. I was going to serve the girls Green Eggs and Ham for Breakfast, but they thought that was pushing it. The girls celebrate at school today and then we will continue the celebration at home.

Happy Read Across America Day!

Do you celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday on March 2nd?

Books are a big deal in our house, and an opportunity to celebrate reading, well that is a given.

March 2nd is on Tuesday this year so we are going to celebrate the entire week.

I am headed to Barnes & Noble on Saturday to find some books to add to our library on this special week. I am still making all the plans but here are a few of the ideas so far. . .

Canvas Book Bags – I am always worried about getting our Library books mixed up with our regular books (I just found one of stuffed into one of the bookshelves this week). Summer is right around the corner, we hope, so we will be making a lot of trips to the library. We are going to design some Book Bags that we can use on our trips to the library.

Birthday Party for Dr. Seuss - Tuesday will be our day to party. We will celebrate all things Seuss.

Wordy Wednesday – We will be celebrating words on Wednesday. Instead of reading, we will be writing. My oldest daughter loves to write. She is the only kid I know that gets super excited about a blank notebook or loose leaf paper. I am going to purchase journals and supplies to pretty them up.

Poetry Party – I love all things that rhyme: Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Dr. Seuss. We are going to read some poetry, write some poetry and have a little poetry party. I will share more when I find all my poetry books and I finalize the details.

Illustration Stations – You can’t celebrate reading without taking some time to celebrate the pictures that help you jump into the story. We will be celebrate with some awesome picture books. One of my favorite Illustrators is Mark Ludy. I love his book The Flower Man. I hope to find my girls When I Was A Girl. . .I Dreamed. I am going to set up art stations with Watercolors, charcoal, pencils and color. We will be making our own picture books on Friday.

I would love to know how you are going to celebrate Read Across America. I can’t wait to share our pictures, stories and parties with you.

I spend a lot of time playing games with my 4 year-old. She really likes to win. When it is just her and myself, I give her a little slack and most of the time I let her win. I am realizing that maybe that isn’t the greatest strategy.

Tonight the three girls and I had some family game time. The first game we played was Guess What I Am.

We all love this game. It is fun to stick our faces through the holes and make guesses like, “Am I an animal? Do I have feathers? Am I a girl or boy?”

This game went pretty well. No tears. Little one kind of did her own thing.

Then we played the new Connect 4X4. Nadia did not want to be blocked. She did not want to wait her turn, She wanted to win. Her sisters are not quite so easy on her as I am. They wanted to win, too.

This almost turned into a game of war. This is usually when the tears come. Luckily tonight we all laughed.

I will never forget when we had some friends over for a night of games. Their then 4 year old lost a game and said, “I hate myself”. We laughed back then and couldn’t believe that our kids would ever act like that when they lost. . . Fast forward 5 years and I am the one that isn’t laughing at my 4 year olds behavior.

So how do you do it? How do you get a 4 year old to participate and not always think they have to win?