Shutterfly Holiday Cards (Give Away!)

Update: this give-away is now closed; the winners have been notified by email.

I love sending Christmas cards, but last year's card was my favorite card ever.  We used one of Shutterfly's Christmas cards designs to create a combination Christmas card/birth announcement.  The inside was personalized with text about the birth, as well as a few more photos of our newest arrival).   It still makes me smile. 

I've been perusing the holiday cards this week to choose our 2011 card.  My favorite are the folded 5 x 7 cards.  I know the flat cards are popular, and easy to send directly, but I'm kind of a stickler about writing at least SOMETHING in my cards.  So I love that Shutterfly has such a large assortment of affordable folded cards.  Here are a couple of my favorites this year:

As you probably know, Shutterfly also has a large assortment of photo books and other gifts.  I ordered photo mugs as gifts last year, and the recipients loved them.  I am tempted by the idea of photo calendars this year.  

Give-Away

Shutterfly has offered to give 25 free photo cards to THREE of my readers!  To win, just comment on this post by midnight on October 27.  I will randomly select three winners and notify you by email.  (Note: shipping is not included.)

Disclosure: We are being given 50 free holiday cards in exchange for writing this post. 

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This Week's "Row": One Tiny Turtle

One of the children in our weekly "Five in a Row" coop requested that we study sea turtles, so we jumped off of the FIAR curriculum this week and focused on One Tiny Turtle, by Nicola Davies.  We did some activities at home, but we kept it light, since it was a four-day week.

What we did:

•  Books we used: One Tiny Turtle, Sea Turtles, and Owen and Mzee.

• Did some turtle computer programming. 
• Made a quick paper turtle (IB's request).
• Put toy turtles onto a world map by where they might live (just learning about coastal versus landlocked places and appropriate climates).
• A few connect the dot turtles.
• Visited the aquarium to see a sea turtle in person.
• At our weekly coop, made an ocean in a bottle.

• Learned the ASL sign for turtle.
• Printed and colored these paper turtles, with the intention of racing them (didn't happen).
• Made these paper bag turtle puppets.
• Used the turtle number printable sheets at Confessions of a Homeschooler for a multiplication/addition/subtraction game (I called a problem out and he hopped onto the right answer).

We also did a lot of book reading outside of the weekly theme.  Next week we are doing a book off of the Before Five in a Row curriculum: Caps for Sale.

Apparently I didn't take many photos this week, except for many at the State Fair that have nothing to do with sea turtles.

I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Disclosure: If you click on any of the links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Review and Give-Away: Bailey

When we were offered the opportunity to review Bailey, I hesitated, because the Infant Bibliophile is homeschooled, and allergic to dogs.  A book about a dog's first day of school didn't necessarily seem like the best fit for our family.  I'm glad I gave it a try, because on the day that we received it, we read it five times, and acted the whole thing out about 10 times!  So I can only imagine how a dog-loving child who has just started school would feel about Bailey.

From the publisher:

"Meet Bailey, a dog who surprises and charms his fellow human classmates with his irrepressible antics.

Follow Bailey the dog as he gets ready and goes to school. Should he wear the red or blue collar? Both are so fashionable! Will he be late? That squirrel is a distraction! And what about Bailey's homework? Would you believe he ate it? That is what dogs do, after all.

In this funny new book from the best-selling children's illustrator Harry Bliss, school proves to be an unexpected place for Bailey to do all sorts of things he loves: reading, fetching, painting, digging, singing — and making friends!"

Author Harry Bliss is a cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker magazine, and it shows; the illustrations in Bailey are playful and engaging.

Bibliophile's reaction: He loved it.  He especially liked when Bailey fell asleep reading a book.  It is a fun book to act out, as Bailey engages in funny dancing, howling while trying to sing, etc.  Every reading (there were many) brought laughter. 

Want to see more?  Check out the book trailer here.

Give Away!  Three Winners!

Thanks to the generosity of Scholastic:

One winner will receive a Bailey lunchbox AND a copy of Bailey.
Two additional winners will also receive a copy of Bailey.
  
To enter:
1) Leave a comment
2) Follow Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile and leave a comment letting me know.
3) Tweet, Blog, Facebook, or otherwise publicize this give away and leave a comment letting me know.

Three possible entries per person.  Deadline is midnight on September 17th.  Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.  Please include your email address in your comment if it is not in your profile, so that I have a way to contact the winner.

This give away is now closed.  The winners have been notified by email.

Disclosure: We received a publisher copy of Bailey at no cost in order to write this review.  If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we will earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Five in a Row Week 2: Lentil

Some of you have noticed that we are "rowing" the Five in a Row Volume 1 books in order.  We did start out that way, but plan to start mixing things up after this week.

This week's book was Lentil, a cute tale about a little boy who, unable to sing, takes up the harmonica instead.  When one of the town's grumpy citizens threatens to derail a prominent benefactor's homecoming with his pucker-inducing lemon consumption, Lentil saves the day.  Best (and last) line of the book: "You never can tell what will happen when you learn to play the harmonica."

These wrap up posts are taking me ages to write, so I'm going to experiment a little this week with just a bullet point list and some fun photo editing, courtesy of Picnik.


Generally, we focused on:
- the 5 senses (especially taste and hearing)
- harmonicas / music generally
- Ohio (just a little)
- making ice cream (the Bibliophile's request)
- learning North / South / East / West

Specifically, we:

• Tasted a lemon.  Practiced our silly sour faces.

• Made lemonade.  Both fresh and Del's frozen lemonade (it's a Rhode Island thing).
• Read a couple of lemonade books: Lemonade for Sale (MathStart) and Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink.
  
• Played a game with plastic Easter eggs, in which I filled them with various objects - pennies, rice, paper, toy car - and he had to figure out which was which.  (Relevance: sense of sound).
  
• Played a toy harmonica.  Practiced singing the blues, like his grandpa.  (Best line: "Mama won't give me no more skittles" *harmonica riff*).
• Talked about sound waves, and why Lentil liked to play the harmonica in the bathroom.  Tried it out.
• Did our USA jigsaw puzzle.
• Talked about North, South, East, West.  Tried to make up silly songs to remember the directions.  In the meantime, realized he had learned them.
• Did an Ohio workbook page from a Target dollar section book.
• Made homemade chocolate soymilk ice cream, using a Highlights magazine recipe, which required just chocolate soymilk, sugar, ice, salt, and a plastic bag.  We did this at least twice.  (In Lentil, the town celebrates with ice cream at the end).

• Decorated a paper doll to be Lentil (Bibliophile's idea).
• Acted out the book.  I was the grumpy lemon-eater.  The Bibliphile was Lentil (of course).  And his baby sister was Colonal Carter.
• No new sensory bin this week, but I did give him a bowl of raw rice one night while I cooked dinner.  In it, I had hid the letters of harmonica, so he fished them all out and unscrambled it.
• Cutting strips.  I printed some simple strips of repeating lemons.  He wasn't really into it, but did one strip.
• Talked about what an architect does, and what a floor plan is.  Drew a floor plan of our house, then used FloorPlanner to create floorplans for pretend houses.  Printed the floor plans and arranged cardboard boxes to lay out rooms like his floorplans (which, incidentally, involved slides into playrooms).  (The Five in a Row curriculum has a tie-in to architecture in the Lentil study, but the books I found looked too advanced, so we just simplified to something I knew he'd find fun, even if there was no clear Lentil connection.)
• Built a pretend town like in Lentil out of blocks, making sure to include each building mentioned in the book.  If we have more time in the next few days, we might do a paper bag town (from lunch bags).
• Sang many verses of She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain (which Lentil plays at the end of the book).
• Did some printables from Homeschool Share, including some math problems and an Ohio directions sheet.
• Did instrument matching worksheets from this site.
• Editing to add our coop plan, so I have the link if I need it.  We will be making musical instruments - some kind of shakers for the youngest kids and this harmonica-like instrument (which works great!) for the older ones.

It was a fun week, and we both really enjoyed Lentil, but I am ready to move on.  (Our coop meeting isn't for two days, and I'm already writing the summary blog post.)  Next up: we are jumping outside of the FIAR curriculum to do One Tiny Turtle.

If I remember, I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Comment!  Have you read Lentil?  Do you play any musical instruments?

Disclosure: If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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Introducing Factor Trees

We spotted You Can Count on Monsters at the library this week, and snatched it up because the Infant Bibliophile has been interested in both monsters and multiplication lately.  If you are looking for a fun way to introduce the idea of a factor tree and prime numbers, hunt this down!  (I don't recommend for the Bibliophile's age, although he has been enjoying leafing through it, but for older kids).  I'm not feeling very articulate tonight, but you can click through to Amazon for the full book description and other reviews. 



I'm linking this post up with Math Monday.

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Our Coop Hostess...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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Five in a Row Week 1: The Story of Ping

This week's Five in a Row (FIAR) "row" was The Story of Ping.  I know it is a classic, but I don't care much for the book's spanking references and its overall message about accepting punishment.  We still had fun with the activities, however, and I found a few great companion books.  All in all, we are enjoying Five in a Row very much.

We focused, generally, on ducks, China, and buoyancy.  Here is what we did throughout the week, in no particular order:

 Ducks --

We read a nonfiction duck book.  We fed the ducks (some corn) at a nearby pond.  Well, in actuality, we fed the geese, but I did see at least one brave duck sneak in and get some.  (We also talked a bit about the science behind the reflections on the water - a suggestion from FIAR.)  We played a fun little birds boardgame from Homeschool Share.  And we visited the local aviary.

At the Bibliophile's request, we made a quick duck out of small paper plates.

China -- 

We located the Yangtze river on our world map, and did our Asia Geopuzzle.

We built a Great Wall of China out of duplo blocks.

We tried to draw a few Chinese characters (he didn't take to this - just scribbled).

We watched this China field trip video.  And this Chinese language video (which he loved.  He doesn't like movies/television generally, but loves language dvd's).

We skimmed this China (True Books).

And we ate rice with chop sticks.


We also read these books:


 Tikki Tikki Tembo -- This was a childhood favorite of mine.  I have heard it criticized now as culturally inaccurate, and as the Bibliophile says, "that Mama is kind of mean," but we enjoyed it for just the silly name factor.

The Runaway Rice Cake -- a fun book about a runaway rice cake (ala Gingerbread Man), with a beautiful message.  A family that only has enough money to make one "nián-gão"  (rice cake) for their holiday dinner shares it with someone needier than they.  Their generosity is rewarded when their neighbors (and presumably the Gods) fill their table.

The Empty Pot -- We loved this book, which had a nice message and a clever twist.  The emperor is searching for a successor, and designs a contest whereby children are given seeds.  Whoever grows the best flower after 1 year will be the next emperor.  Ping, who has always had a green thumb, can't seem to get the seed to grow.  After 1 year, he only has an empty pot to show for his labors.  His father tells him "your best is good enough to present to the Emperor."  So, that is what Ping does (amongst all of the impressive plants that others present), only to learn that the emperor had given out trick seeds which were incapable of sprouting.  Of course, Ping's honesty is rewarded.  We took an empty plant container and acted out this story about 25 times after we read the book.  It is a lovely story with compound messages about honesty and perfectionism. 


At the Bibliophile's suggestion, we also read Kai-Lan's Great Trip to China (he requested this from the librarian in person.  He loves to chat up the librarians).  His favorite part is that the story incorporates a handful of Chinese words and includes a list at the back of the book.

We also created a river rock sort of sensory bin.  This was mostly because I wanted to get rid of our rice bin, which was ridiculously messy and kind of old.  The rocks aren't as nice from a sensory perspective, but I find it a challenge to come up with fun sensory bins that are not a choking hazard for our crawling baby.  I tried to pick rocks big enough that she couldn't choke on them, and within 5 seconds of setting it up, she grabbed one and had it in her mouth!  So we haven't really used the bin all that much.

Buoyancy and Other Stuff -- 

We did a sink/float activity from Homeschool Share.  This, and the Ping coloring sheet on the right (also from Homeschool Share), will be the focus of our FIAR coop group this week.  We also played a bit with drawing and using lines to indicate water and movement (from the FIAR manual).

And, as we drove around in the car this week, we retold the story as we thought it should be told -- minus the spanking.  This was a suggestion from the Five in a Row forums, in reference to a discussion as to what to do when a child doesn't enjoy a book.  Today, I asked the Bibliophile what he thought should happen to the last duck to board the boat (who, in the book, gets a spank).  He was quiet a minute, then said, "I think the last duck should be able to go over the bridge any way he wants -- he can roll over the bridge, he can do a silly walk, anything!" 

We still had plenty of time for twice daily outings, free play, and 100 "NOW what should we do, Mama?" questions each day.  And much of our best learning was student-led, as always.  He has been very interested in multiplication and division lately, and in trying to tell time, so we dabbled a bit in those things.

Next up: Lentil!

I will be linking this post up with Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool Corner.

Comment: Have you read The Story of Ping?  Do you have a FIAR blog?  Please share in the comments!

Disclosure: If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.

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