Mama Pajaros (Mommy Birds)

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This week in Spanish for Preschoolers we celebrated the warm weather with a lesson all about mommy and baby pajaros (birds).  To start off I had three momma birds of different colors on our white board.  I went through with the kids what color each momma was:

verde = green
azul = blue
rosada = pink

Then I let them know that the momma birds had lost their eggs (though several kids had already noticed the easter eggs "hidden" around the room).  The kids found all the eggs and together we matched up the eggs by color to their momma.  I would say, "La mama pajaro verde (pointing to the bird) tiene huevos verdes.  Cuales huevos son verdes?"  They would have to pick out the eggs that were the right color and I had them all repeat the color name with me.

After the eggs were sorted we counted how many eggs each momma bird had.  The pajaros verde had 1 huevo.  The pajaro azul had 2 huevos and the pajaros rosada had 3 huevos.  You could pick higher numbers for older children, I just didn't have tons of leftover easter eggs.  I've tried to do some counting each time to keep reinforcing numbers.

We played a quick round of freeze dance, with everyone dancing like birds.  Then we read Mama Pajaro, a mini book that can be downloaded for free at dltk-kids.com.  I always print the black and white version so it doubles as a coloring book.  I had the kids color after we read the book and as they got bored we started our final activity.

We made little pom-pom birdies to put inside the eggs.  To be able to do this craft the children had to tell me which color they wanted (good for review).  I gave them the same color egg and birdie since we'd been doing color matching but they don't have to match.  Everyone was able to make a few baby birds!

The Perfect Blogpost

The universe seems to be converging today on the topic on perfectionism.  I went to church today and a mother's spoke on the pressure to be the perfect mom and getting caught up on pinterest and blogs with what we "should" be doing.  We had a lesson on Christ's admonition to "be ye therefore perfect, even as I and your Father in Heaven are perfect".  I came home and on the news was a series about "The Perfect Problem", women in Utah, where I currently live, struggling with depression, deciding to get plastic surgery, falling into drugs, etc. to deal with the overwhelming pressure to be perfect.

Let me just say, I'm not perfect.

Since I started this blog and my journey to spend more meaningful time with my daughter (see my post "Why Blog") I've had women in my life say to me:

"You're such a good mom!"  

"I should be doing that stuff with my kids."  

"You're daughter is going to be so advanced, my child isn't learning X yet."  

It's hard for me to know how to respond.  I still struggle.  My husband and I disagree on parenting ideas.  My daughter has a strong personality.  I spend a lot of my time trying to get my daughter together with other children so I don't have to entertain her anymore.

I remembered after I'd been reading blogs for a little way getting that feeling.  I started worrying about decorating for holidays I'd never celebrated before.  I started quizzing Chiquita on vocabulary.  Then I noticed what I was doing, and for the most part I stopped.  I realized that I should do what works for me and my family and let other people do what works for them.  I also started seeing the real blog posts that are out there about when activities don't work out or their parenting ideals didn't end up being realistic.

As a yoga instructor I've always tried to teach my students to be both honest and nice with themselves.  For example, in a forward fold, if you can't reach your toes, don't bend your knees and curve your back to try and touch them.  Accept it, keep good posture and just stretch.

For me that's life.  We have to keep balance, still working and growing but being happy with where we are, because wherever we are it can be a good place to be.

M es de Montaña

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We haven't done any letter crafts for a while!  M has lots of possibilities but we live at the base of big mountains I thought they'd be a great subject.  When I cut out the big letra M I asked Chiquita "Que letra es?"  I was pretty happy when she answered W!  So close!

Then I had to figure out how to explain what montañas (mountains) are.  We went to the window and I pointed to them.  I'm sure all of you mom's have had this experience.  "Where?" as she stares at the window instead of through it.  I tried saying the "big things with snow on them", that got a blank look.  I reminded her about when we'd gone hiking and that we were climbing up the mountain, finally explain that it's the ground when it goes up towards the sky.  She seemed to get what I was saying then.

Chiquita glued down her gray letter M.  I cut out some snow for her to put on the peaks.  Then I let her decorate her mountains with little trees and boulders.  She really did that all by herself.  There you go, M if for Mountain!

Goodbye Say It Two Ways!

I have decided to put Say It Two Ways Thursdays to rest.  There are so many great linky parties out there that I just don't want to duplicate efforts.  That being said, I will begin co-hosting Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop with:

• Frances:  Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes
• Leanna:  All Done Monkey 
• Jody:  Mud Hut Mama

The third Sunday of every month we will bring you a link-up of fun activities for your culture-savvy kids.  I hope you'll join us!

Family Tree Mother's Day Craft

I'm unnecessarily excited about this craft!  I really am not artistic so to have anything I make turn out this beautiful just makes me very happy.  I have see so many of these hand cut-out crafts (like this one on Tres French Hens), I'm not sure where I saw it first.

I knew that tracing and cutting out would work so much better for us than paint because: 1. It's hard to get Papi, myself and Chiquis in a crafting state of mind at the same time. 2. We don't have to get a perfect print, a wobbly-traced hand can be fixed in cutting.  Paint is not forgiving.

Number 2 was especially true for Chiquita's hands.  Even though she stayed beautifully still while I traced her hand it was very wobbly, her little fingers are too easy to accidentally move.  I actually traced out hands onto scrap paper and then taped the paper to the back of scrapbook paper, then cut out.  Again, I wanted to be able to do more than one tracing if we needed to without messing up paper.

Everyone picked a different shade of green for our tree.  I cut out a little brown trunk and added a heart cut from an old greeting card.  Like I said, I was really happy with how it turned out!  The best part was I decided to color copy it since I liked it so much to keep a copy and give to my MIL.  The color copies came out as good or better than the original!  Yeah!

I just mailed off a framed one for my mom today so hopefully she won't read this blog post until it gets there!

Happy Mother's Day this weekend to all you wonderful mother's out there!  As a daughter I know that even when you do your absolute best you'll go through times when you get more lip than love. Remember that they will grow up!

Shaving Cream Painting

Here's another totally unoriginal post, but it was new for us!  I bought shaving cream months ago (Papi uses gel) intending to do some bath time painting, but today was the first day it actually happened!

I always save our yogurt cups (my husband thinks I'm crazy) and they were perfect paint containers.  A few squirts of shaving cream and a few drops of food coloring!  The first round made it obvious I hadn't worked with shaving cream or mousse in a while - the cream expanded way beyond the cup!

Chiquita helped mix the colors.  She took some time to build up steam painting, I think slowly coming to the realization that I really meant it when I said she could paint anywhere!  Well, almost.  Bathtime almost ended when she started painting her face.  Shaving cream is not meant to go in your eyes or mouth!

I had to drain the tub and fill it again because Chiquita wouldn't get out!!  We had three cups, so the first round we did blue, red and green.  The second tub of water got purple, sort of brown and yellow.  I was happy that Chiquita could name them all in Spanish!

red = rojo
blue = azul
yellow= amarillo
green = verde (we've been practicing this a lot with stop lights so it's the one she remembers the best)
brown = marron
purple = morado

It was almost as much fun to clean up as to paint with funnels and cups we tossed water on the walls and finally got a wash cloth to finish wiping it down.  We will definitely be doing this again!

Discovery Park - Pleasant Grove Utah

It's been a while since we've been to a new and different playground!  Discovery Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah is pretty unique!  It a huge play place made mostly of wood with lots of educational opportunities and customized to this community.

There was a space for children 5 to 12 with a volcano, space rocket, rumble bridge and lots of slides.  They had very cool sympathy swings - the two swings were attached to a bar that was then attached to the main swing structure.  The result is that when two people swing they will end up in unision.  There was a fun echo box that Chiquita really liked.

The tot area for kids 2 to 5 also had really unique fun things.  They had little beehives (Utah's state insect) with tiny chairs inside, one for the queen bee, one for the worker bees and one for the honeycomb.

There were lots of winding stairs through the playground leading kids to explore!  One area had little physics experiments like bending mirrors, sound discs and a color blending wheel.  There was a sort of a xylophone complete with instructions for playing well known songs like "Twinkle Twinkle".  Chiquita loved it!

Warnings:
This park has definitely seen some use, though everything seemed very safe and sturdy.  There is graffiti (thankfully we live in the kind of community where the worst I saw was "poop").
 You definitely want to use the bathroom before you go because the park bathroom was nasty.

Most importantly to me, you really need to monitor anyone younger than 5 because ALL of the slides, even in the tot area end a foot or more above the ground.  If I hadn't caught Chiquita she could have ended up very unhappy.