What makes me smile? Making homemade play dough and admiring my daughter’s very first pigtails. As the mother of a very bald baby, I have been waiting for this day for a long time. =)

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It’s that time again . . . that is, it’s time to eat soy turkey (just a little vegetarian humor=)) and create turkey and pilgrim hat window clingers. To be make these window clingers, Annabelle and I traced cookie cutters shaped like turkeys and hats and cut them out together. For those of you who are homeschooling or are implementing the Montessori approach in your homes, tracing cookie cutters and other shapes are wonderful pre-writing activities that help children to build their fine motor skills, concentration and a sense of order for how writing is done.

Meanwhile, Annabelle’s inner artist is flourishing. Since we’ve made her art supplies more accessible for her, she spends much of her free time drawing, painting, and felting. Right now she prefers to paint; for now, I introduce one color to her per paint session and am hoping to introduce how to mix colors in the coming months. Again, creative play like painting, beading, lacing cards, and paper clipping are pre-writing activities that help children develop fine motor skills.

Below is one of Annabelle’s paintings that she created during 2 creative play sessions; she used brushes, a foam brush, and her hands as stamps.

To learn more about creative play and other pre-writing activities, visit:

How To Use Montessori Sandpaper Letters

How to Develop Your Child’s Pre-Writing Skills Through Creative Play

Preschool Tracing Activities

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Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Courage! Look out, beyond, and see
The far horizon’s beckoning span!
Faith in your God-known destiny!
We are a part of some great plan.

~James Weldon Johnson

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be. ~Langston Hughes

O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet — ~Langston Hughes

We must take back our land again,
America! ~Langston Hughes

Or do you think those precious drops
From Lincoln’s heart were shed in vain? ~James Weldon Johnson

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . ~Abraham Lincoln

that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth. ~Abraham Lincoln

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Sunday, my family had the great fortune to witness the Congratulatory Wall for President Elect Obama, set up by Avaaz, an organization of global citizens committed to taking action for important issues in today’s world. While there I had the opportunity to photograph the many visitors who were signing the wall as well as one man who I noticed kneeling down next to the inscription at the top of the steps on the Lincoln Memorial. Again, I am so grateful to have been among these many visitors and that my daughter and husband were there to share these moments with me.

To learn more about tolerance education and to teach tolerance at home to your children, visit tolerance.org.

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Listen, Listen written by Phillis Gershator and illustrated by Alison Jay

Listen, Listen is a lyrical children’s book packed full of sound imagery that is perfect for young children and early readers. From the first line of the book, “Listen, listen . . . what’s that sound?” readers and audiences begin a poetic journey of onomatopoeia that takes us through the seasons. Whether you’re riding in the car or snuggling up for an afternoon of reading books, Listen, Listen will engage your toddler, preschooler, and older child with its vivid language and memorable illustrations.

Illustrated by Allison Jay, Listen, Listen draws our attention to the many sources of seasonal sounds.  Using oil paintings with a crackled finish, Jay’s artwork creates the effect of timeless illustrations for a timeless tale.

Listen, Listen will occupy a small toddler with its language, imagery and illustrations, and it is a great learning tool for pre-schoolers and early readers.  Included in the last pages of Listen, Listen are vocabulary concept pages, which further draw the child into the story as he or she notices the more detailed elements of the book.

Children will learn about animals, plants, precipitation, and activities associated with each season, which makes this a wonderful learning tool for elementary aged children.

Listen, Listen is a publication printed by Barefoot Books, which is aligned with several organizations that promote global conservation and educate children about the importance of preserving and respecting our environment.

To win your own copy of Listen, Listen, leave a comment on this post. A winner will be announced one week from today on November 20. Happy Reading!

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Now that Election day has come and gone and history was made, I found myself wandering through my own sleepy world with a small smile on my face. I feel so pleased with our election’s results, as many of you may well know. I do offer my apologies to readers who enjoy my blog but who may not like to hear my politics. I promise to get back to talking about the small stuff, the green stuff, the homeschooling and parenting stuff that bring many of you over here. So, let’s get to it.

Today, with autumn as our backdrop, our Montessori group planned to head outside to spend a day raking, jumping, and playing in leaves. Not only is raking leaves a practical living skill for our preschoolers to learn, but being outside collecting leaves and playing with them inspires a love and connection with nature that is invaluable.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me share a bit about how our lesson went. The mom/guides enthusiastically guided our children outdoors with rakes in hand. Once outside, our children noticed this or that and the raking of leaves was all but forgotten. Still, we reminded our children that there was fun to be hand and leaves to raked, so we (the moms) began to rake.

Minutes later our little ones noticed that their stomachs were rumbling. It was snack time. Indoors we went. Once inside, the children set the table with place mats, bowls, and plates. We then served them apples and carrots to fuel their energy for another round of raking. Here are pictures of the hungry ones:

Once snack time ended, our children headed back outdoors although this time with a little more gusto for leaf raking. Another mom and I carried our rakes to large leafy patch of the yard and began to rake and rake and rake. Eventually, the older children took notice and wandered over. Then, the younger ones joined us to observe the work that is raking leaves. A 3 year old in our group told me, “This is hard. I don’t think that I like raking leaves.” So the other mother and I reminded him about the best part of raking leaves, “You can jump in them, dear.”

And so we raked some more. Below are a few more pictures from our lovely morning with the leaves:

Annabelle uses her head to rake . Max is amused.

Max shows the younger children how to rake.

Sabrina is enthusiastic, at last, to be among the leaves.

I have to confess that when I was growing up in a leafy, leafy neighborhood in Connecticut, I detested raking leaves. What I remember though are funny and sometimes odd conversations had with my parents, neighbors, and my grandfather. Raking leaves was simply a matter of having patience, hanging in there, and feeling a little bit of relief when the yard was clear. As an adult though, I am learning to like it (although our yard is much, much smaller than when I was a kid) and am hopeful that Annabelle may enjoy it too.

Below I’ve included resources for fun, enthusiastic leaf raking with your children:

Mommy Lounge

Whole Family

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With all the excitement of the holidays and Election 2008, I’ve found myself playing with my daughter and crafting with her in our art room as much as possible. I guess you could say that I “need” to create in order to relax and feel centered. Added bonuses, too, are spending time with my little girl and watching her draw from within herself to create something of her own.

For a while now I have been wanting to build a felt board in the art room (I was inspired by this post that I read a few months ago on the Artful Parent) and to make better use of our chalk board and easel. Meanwhile, I also have a magnetic white board that has been lying around from my teaching days, and I wanted to somehow bring that into our art space too. Here’s what we did:

Felt Board

To create our felt board, I covered a large piece of foam core with felt measured and cut to fit. Together Annabelle and I glued the felt onto the board. We then used panel nails to hammer the felt board into the wall. Together we cut out felt shapes and other felt objects, like a leafy tree. Our friends Sabrina and Dinah spent an afternoon with us showing us how to use felt characters and objects to tell stories and sing nursery rhyme songs. I am excited to learn more about using the felt board for story time.

Below are pictures of Annabelle with the felt board before we hung it up.

Easel and Chalkboard

To make better use of our easel and chalkboard, I simply needed to rearrange our furniture and reorganize crafting supplies. I repositioned a table to make space for Annabelle to move around her easel, getting to her drawing supplies, chalk, and paint brushes (paint is something she asks me to take out).

Last week, we spent one evening painting spooky Halloween images playing with both tempera paint and water colors. Annabelle is also having great fun with drawing balloons (large circles) over and over again. This coming week I am hoping to experiment with our new no-voc acrylics.

Magnetic White Board

Since we have 2 magnetic white boards, I am planning to cover the second one with fabric (as I did with the first one) and place magnetic shapes, numbers, and letters on the board. Right now the other magnetic board features Annabelle’s artwork, so I think we’ll just have fun using the second board for imaginative play (similar to how we’ll use the felt board for story time).

I am looking for more ideas on ways to be creative with all of our “boards.” I’d love to hear your ideas for how you and your child(ren) or students have fun learning and playing with these kinds of materials. If you’d like, e-mail me at greenmamma@greenmamma.org to share your ideas.

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With 2 weeks of October remaining and coincidentally, 2 weeks until Halloween, I thought I might extend my bloggy Oktoberfest and share a few more ideas for having fun in the month of October. While most days, October weather in D.C. is probably at its best, now and again, we’ll have a rainy day (or more likely, we’ll have a sick day or tired day or just not moving too much day). On those days, I love to curl up with a bunch of books and have a reading day. A few of our favorite October reads are:

This is Not a Pumpkin by Bob Staake

Sweater by Kit Allen

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur

Apples, Apples by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

What are your favorite October and fall reads? Are there any books that your little ones pull off the shelf and insist you read over and over again?

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‘Some men kids see pumpkins as they are and ask why, I dream of pumpkins that never were and ask “Why not”?’ ~U.S. President John F. Kennedy dreaming about a 1500 pounder in the oval office one January.

The above quote attributed to the famous J.F.K. is actually one of many pumpkin quotes available over at the Pumpkin Nook, a site that brings us all up to date on the world of pumpkins. While I laughed at many of the Pumpkin Nook’s humorous quotes regarding and including pumpkins (in ways I’d never have imagined), I thought this one from J.F.K. was especially appropriate considering that the children in our Montessori group approached the painting of their pumpkins with the latter question in mind, that being, “Why not?”

Equipped with paint, pumpkins, their hands, their fingers, and a few sturdy paint brushes, our young Picassos (or perhaps, Pollacks) got to know their subjects (and canvases, er, well, they were pumpkins) and created masterpieces that begged the question, “Hey, why not?”

After the serious business of painting was complete, our artists ran, at top speed, over to the swings and slides. Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon?

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As part of my bloggy Oktoberfest week, I thought I’d share a recipe for yummy sugar cookies (that your little ones may beg to help bake and decorate). Since I was (wrongly) under the impression that one of the kiddos in our homeschool playgroup had a gluten allergy, I followed the following gluten free sugar cookie recipe at celiac.com. As it turned out, he has a dairy, egg, and nut allergy, so his mom decided he would sit this one out (sorry!). Now I’m on the lookout for a baking day that includes all of our kids.

To set up for this fun cookie baking and decorating activity, I actually prepared the dough before everyone arrived so that it could cool for a few minutes. I also covered our kitchen table with easy to wipe table cloths because baking, when done well, gets messy. When everyone arrived and was ready to get baking, I sprinkled a bit of the leftover gluten-free flour in front of each child and myself. Then, I distributed a small dough and either a roller or a Mason can (which makes a fine roller in a pinch) to each child. I showed our children how to spread the flour (describing the sensory aspects of feeling the flour), flatten the dough, and roll the dough with their rollers. The other parents assisted their children and modeled how to use cookie cutters to create shapes and fall themed cookies.

We also whipped up our own frosting using powdered sugar (3 cups), melted gluten free butter (1/4 cup), and lemon juice (3 tbsp.). Some of the kids chose to experiment with food coloring, others chose to eat the frosting straight out of the bowl, and everyone else focused on eating their sugar cookies.

Later that day, I used the leftover dough to bake my own sugar cookies and decorate them (hey, I’m a kid at heart). My cookies are pictured in this post. For more photos from our cookie baking with the kids, go here. Scroll down to the boy with the drum; the cookie baking photos begin there.

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Decorating our home for Halloween is one of my favorite ways to kick off the holidays. Since Annabelle has been having a great time exploring her artistic talents (making window clingers and other art projects are fun and meaningful ways that our family spends an afternoon or evening together), I thought we might try several fall decorating projects. To get started, I checked out ideas for fall window scenes and decided that we would use pumpkins, leaves, and bats. I found this great page full of templates on MarthaStewart.com, and selected the bat template. Basically I traced the bats and Annabelle helped to cut them out. For the pumpkins, I freehanded the shape and turned them over to Annabelle for her choice coloring skills.

To create our leaf window clingers, we played around a bit. For starters, we collected leaves, pressed them for 2 weeks in large and heavy books, and then got busy with our art. Using non-toxic tempera paints, Annabelle used her fingers and paint brushes to paint the leaves. Later, I pressed these painted leaves as well as a few au-natural leaves between wax paper. The other paper leaves are those created by tracing or pressing down on “real” leaves by positioning paper over the leaf or leaves.

Creating our very own fall decorations is wonderful for a couple of reasons; first, making our art inspires genuine creativity in us and our children, and second, homemade decorations take less of a toll on Mamma Earth. On a similar note, it looks like Mama Bird at Surely You Nest is on the same wavelength. She just posted her solutions to preparing for the holidays in “The Sweet Cha-Ching of the Holidays.”

Ooh, and I almost forgot! This post is my response to Inspire Me Thursday’s Paper Cut theme.

What a fun way to cut, play with color, and connect with the family! Happy fall decorating!

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