(Family Gathering Activity Preview) Plastic containers from the dollar store, large colored buttons from JoAnn’s and a thrifted kitchen timer borrowed from the playroom stove. That’s it. These are easy for the little fingers of tiny people who no longer put buttons in their mouths. Six containers of six different colors …
( Family Gathering Activity Preview ) When I was a young mother, a fidget toy was anything you handed to your child to distract him and keep him quiet. In church it was a book or a piece of paper and a pencil. In the car it might have been something from your …
(Family Gathering Activity Preview) Some things can be overdone but I am here to say that I have “bought in” to the whole idea of sensory stuff. I have watched upset children calm down when their little fingers came in contact with something soft, squishy, bumpy, warm or textured. I was …
HOW WILL YOU EVER DECIDE ? This post contains the last group of puppets for our Summer Gathering. There are many puppets in this batch and they are medium to small in size. There is a Moose whose friend is a Walrus. and a Walrus with tusks just like …
( lady bug.alligator.wolf.turtle.iguana.dinosaur.meerkat.gibbon.fishies.pink snail ) The Little Turtle Vachel Lindsay There was a little turtle. He lived in a box. He swam in a puddle. He climbed on the rocks. He snapped at a mosquito. He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a minnow and he snapped at me. He …
Dear Grandchildren: Thinking twice is always a good thing when you are around big, red, alligators. This one has been very nice to me. She even let me dress her in a sweater and fix her funny, greenish hair into curls. She is as long as the playroom table and …
Hey, Grandchildren: Here is another “this-from-that” puppet for our summer gathering. This-from-that means that a person makes something useful out of something else. This animal is now a puppet and with your help he will be able to walk and talk and wiggle and flop. Wow ! Won’t he love you …
Hey, Grandchildren: I have had my “thinking cap” on for quite some time now. If I start early, I can usually come up with something fun for you to do at our Summer Gathering. I don’t think I will tell you everything I have been thinking about but I will …
One of my favorite children’s books is The Hundred Dresses. It was first published in 1944 by the author Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin. It is about a little girl who is very poor who tries to convince her friends that she has one hundred dresses in …
Rosie was smashed against the back of the shelf behind the trucks and castles. Her hair was tangled and had in it little sticks and pieces of grass That is how I knew that she had been playing outside. I wasn’t sure if all of the dirt would come off, …
