Toddler Talk: Where Do the Animals Live?

Toddlers are visual folks. And enjoy the repetition...repetition (see what I did there). And are amazing little learners.

We had a curriculum focus a few weeks back all about where animals live. We read books about the topic and also had a handful of visual aids. By the end of the week, a bunch of them were able to tell me that the lion lives 'on the savannah with the giraffe' and seals 'like the cold ocean'...all thanks to this fun matching activity we put together:

A lovely selection of animal friends paired up with the habitat where they can be found hanging out! Some color copies of clip art from the internets, a laminator (have I mentioned how much I love to laminate stuff...it brings me great joy), and some sticky backed Velcro is all that was needed to make this gem come to life!

I stuck the soft side of the Velcro pair onto the habitat and the grippy side onto the animal so they would be friends....also a 2nd grippy side to the back of the habitat. This allowed me to place the animal homes on a felt board for display as we talked thru each one (the grippy side was just grippy enough to stick them to the board)!

The Tods loved sharing their knowledge by telling me where to put each animal (and also found me quite amusing when I suggested some 'wrong' locations...clearly fish do not live in trees, silly teacher person!)

Easy and quick project to recreate for the eager little learner in your life...and the delightful part is that you can make laminated velcro match cards for a myriad of subjects:

Clothing and the Body

Community Helpers and their Work Sites

What do Animals Eat?

Fruits and Colors

Create a Face

Number Match

The 4 Seasons (what do we do in each?)

Loud & Quiet

Fast & Slow

Make a few, organize in individual zip lock baggies, stick in a bucket and you have a  wonderful little activity library for a rainy day...or any day!

From the kitchen: Kale, Baby!

My new obsession....kale chips. 'Gross', you say to yourself.....'You couldn't pay me enough to even consider that plant-y green stuff to be a snack...to like, eat on purpose.' Right?

Wrong! You might find a new favorite if you just give it a chance! Afterall, I always tell my toddlers at school that they have to at least try something before they can tell me they don't like it. 

And so, I offer you a great, flavorful, spicy, scrumptious recipe that takes about 30 minutes from start to yum to help you discover the amazingness!

I found it on a website after doing a search (ohsheglows.com) and it seemed like the best one. She talked about her failures and successes in reaching the goal of a perfect chip and I liked that it added a lot of spices for flavor. 

Since just reading a recipe is super boring, i took the liberty of snapping pics of each step for your viewing pleasure. Are you as excited as I am? Let's go:

Happy Kale chip eating....tell all your friends!!

Mosie, Mosie, Mosie

It's been a little while since I have shared a montage of cute Mosby pictures here on the blog. It's about that time:

Sheesh! Why is he so cute? Have a happy Wednesday:)

A Grand Celebration: Baby S ❤️

Tonight, we gathered together to celebrate the (soon to be) arrival of Baby S! Mama and Daddy will be wonderful parents...what a lucky kid to be born into this loving family:)

We had a great time with delightful people and tasty food:

The baby stats guess board:

Decorations:

Some games: The guys had to face each other in an epic battle of diapering. It was delightful to watch.....fastest diaper-er moved into the next round:

The final round:

The winner, Mr. Seth:

And of course, a shot of the Daddy-to-be and his mad skillz:

The ladies did a 'Guess Mama's tummy size' by choosing the amount of ribbon they thought would fit around mama's belly (just by looking...no touching or measuring!). Lizzie was the closest and had an impressive perfect guess:

Mama's cute little belly:

There were gifts:

And a collection of children's books in lieu of cards to get their home library started:

So much fun! And a few more cute pics to top off the evening:

Congrats guys! We ❤️ you and can't wait for your sweet baby cakes to arrive!