The letter S

We've been going to a preschool rotation thing once a week. Each week they focus on a letter and this week it was our turn so here is what I did.

First I read the "S the snake" story from our flip book here.

Then I used these flannel board cut outs from DLTK to tell the story of Stone Soup. I laminated the food and passed them out to the kids then when we came to the food that they had I would have them put it in a pot. It worked really well.

For our activity thing we made these snakes. I cut out the tongues and the ovals ahead of time. I wrote and S on most of the ovals but then I put a few different letters on some of them. Then I laid them out on a cookie sheet and the kids had to find ovals that had S' on them to make their snake out of and then they glued them on the paper.
For our snack I made bread stick snails. You can find the recipe here at parents.com. It's very simple. I forgot pesto though so I just brushed them with butter and rosemary.

A Minnie Mouse Party!

We had a Minnie Mouse party for May on Saturday though and I thought it turned out pretty good. I got a lot of my ideas from At Second Street but I changed a lot of them because she is way more creative and talented than I am.



Here is her cute Minnie outfit. She is wearing this for Halloween too. I made the skirt (the tutorial is in the link At Second Street) and the headband and then just bought her a pink shirt. And of course she is wearing her sparkly pink shoes-can't leave home without them





Here are the invitations. The inside was basically the beginning lines to Mickey Mouse Clubhousebut we changed it to come to my party and "Maylie Mouse" instead of Mickey Mouse. If I had a bigger budget I would've got pink M&Ms but regular ones just had to do.




I made the cake. For Minnie's face I used a 10" round and her ears are 2 6" inch rounds. I used 2 cans of chocolate, a can of vanilla, and a can of cherry frosting. I sized a picture of Minnie so that her face was 10" then I cut out the black parts of the picture. I would post where I found the picture but I'm not sure if it's copy righted or not. I just googled Minnie Mouse though and it came up. I frosted the 10" with white and then laid the picture on the top and filled in the detail areas. The ears are just frosted with chocolate and then the pink cake is just another 6" to add some color and some cake. We had about 25 people and we only had a few pieces left over so it worked out well.

I made a fabric banner. I cannot find the original tutorial I used for the life of me but here is another one that looks great.

Aren't the poofs adorable? So easy and pretty cheap. They are just made out of tissue paper and I love love love them. The tutorial is At Second Street but she takes you to the Martha Stewart website.

This is our pinata. The kids were such good sports about going in the rain to hit it. We don't have any pictures because cameras don't mix well with rain. We made the kids wear Mickey Mouse gloves ( you know the big squishy ones you get from Disneyland) so that it was hard to grasp the bat. I made the older kids wear a blind fold too. Funny story. Morning of the party and I'm looking everywhere for the table clothes I bought and suddenly I realize that I probably glued them into the pinata. Way to go. Everyone was a little confused about them when they came out.

Zach shaped the pinata but I think he did the hard way. Check out At Second Street for the easy way. She also tells you how to decorate it this easy peasy way with crepe paper. The bow I sewed from material leftover from May's outfit.

We gave everyone a "toodles" bag that had mouskatools in them that we used throughout the party. For example-stickers and markers to decorate hats, blindfolds and tape for pin the bow on Minnie, candles for the cake etc. When we needed a mouskatool we'd call for toodles! This will probably make no sense to you unless you've seen Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so go watch it and realize what cute idea it was. :)

Here is everyone in their mouse ears hats. I found plain hats at the dollar store as well as a pack of foam. I drew the circles on the foam and then had them decorate their hat and cut their ears out. Then they brought them to me to hot glue the ears on the side. I love our family. Everyone decorated and wore a hat. What good sports.

We played pin the bow on Minnie. I used the same picture of Minnie for this as I did for the cake and then cut out bows from pink paper. This is May's 94 year old great great grandma pinning the bow on Minnie. What a sweetheart huh.

We went pretty simple for food. We bought Mickey Mouse Chicken nuggets from Costco and then just got some fruit and veggies with dip for both. It turned out great we had fun!

What's Your Name?

I would love for May to be able to respond to the question of, "What's your name?" Partly because I hate when people ask her and wait for her to answer-they look like fools (yes I said fools!!). And partly because if she ever got lost it might be nice if she knew her name (our names our next on the list followed by our phone number).

So we played a game with her stuffed animals. We set up all the ones that she has a definite name for, like Minnie Mouse, Snow White, Lemur, Puppy, Baby, etc. up at different places on the couch. Then I would walk up to them and ask them their name. Then make them respond. May caught on quickly and would ask "syur name" funny. Then I would ask her, "What's your name?" and if she didn't answer I would say, "May May!" I think she knows the answer now but she doesn't always say it so we'll have to keep practicing.

E is for...

E is for egg...

We did an egg hunt for these puzzle eggs. We found the pieces throughout the house and then put them together at her table.
We did this egg shell craft. I've been dreading doing this but it actually was really great. This was the first time May has actually understood that glue makes things stick if you leave them there long enough. I just rinsed out some egg shells and then dyed them with food coloring. May mixed them up in the bag and glued them on the E paper.
E is for elephant...

We did some stuff from Confessions of a Home schooler although not very vigilantly. We also did just some regular coloring pages that we had in our coloring book that had elephants on it.

Our flip book animal was an elephant. May had a really hard time making the "eh" sound and she didn't really recognize it when we came back to it later so we'll have to revisit this one soon.

E is for envelope...

I have some bright colored envelopes that I put the numbers 1-10 in and put them around the house. I taped different numbers and envelopes up on the wall. When may found the envelope then she would take the number inside and match it to the number on the wall and then match the envelope to the other one on the wall.

Z is for...

It was hard to think of things to do for the letter Z! Here are the few things that we did.

We made a Zebra puppet found here.

We played Zebra dominoes and did some coloring pages from Confessions of a Home schooler found here. She has a cute little game that is similar to the cootie game which I think would be fun to try.

We practiced zipping up the zippers on our jackets.

Our crowning event was going to the Zoo. Can I just say our Zoo is terrible. I got half price because we have an aviary membership and M* is free- would never pay full price to go to our zoo. There are hardly any animals!