Books of the Month: A classic, an owl, and a monster

It’s getting harder and harder to pick just one favorite book of the month.  J really loves books, and he usually has 2 or three that he has to read over and over again.  So, this month I’m picking his top three choices!

Goodnight Moon
Ok, so why in the world did I not buy this book earlier?!  I never really liked this book as a child and as an adult, I just didn’t see the greatness of it.  Recently,I found it on sale and picked it up for $5.  It might have been the best $5 I spent last month.  J already has this book memorized and can pretty much read it without help from us. 


Little Hoot
My aunt gave J this book for his first Christmas.  The women in my family are huge owl collectors and we often gift each other anything and everything that has to do with owls.  Well, this book is about a little owl who’s parents make him stay up late…late…late, but he just want’s to go to bed.  It’s a great twist to the typical bedtime woes.  J has had my husband read this book to him at bedtime every night this month!



Go Away Big Green Monster
I remember reading this book to my 2 year old class when I taught preschool.  They loved it!  So, when I saw it at a bookstore recently, I knew I had to have it.  It’s a die-cut book that allows a child to watch a monster grow piece by piece and then they get to tell the monster to go away piece by piece.  It’s a great interactive book that is wonderful for any age!



What are your children’s favorite books this month?

Keeping Cool at the Weekly Kid’s Co-op!

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Need some ideas on how to stay cool this summer?  Check out these fabulous ideas I found last week on The Weekly Kid’s Co-op!

Duplo Zoo: Small World Play

One evening my husband was playing with J an ended up making him the best toy ever!  He made a Zoo out of Duplos.   It was one of those simple ideas that turned into something so much bigger.  J played with this zoo for 3 weeks before he finally took it apart!  Three weeks people!!  I don’t know about you, but nothing built out of blocks ever lasts that long around here!

Painting with Sand

I mentioned this last week, but J is still really into shaking out spices these days.  “Shake shake Mamma?”  is heard any time I get close to the kitchen.  So, again, I’m tapping into that want by setting up a fun activity for him.

Return to the Kid’s Co-op

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I haven’t posted the Weekly Kid’s Co-op in almost a month!  How horrible is that?  I wasn’t really able to do it over the move, and just haven’t gotten back into the routine of doing it.  I debated whether  or not to return to it.  Really, it doesn’t bring all that much traffic to the blog, but I really enjoy finding new blogs and ideas through the linky.  So, the Weekly Kid’s Co-op is back on here at Dirt and Boogers!

Spices Collage

J asks me all day long to “shake shake shake”.  No, he’s not asking me to show off my best dance moves (which there are none!), he’s asking me to let him shake spices.  You see, he really likes to help me cook.  His favorite part is helping me with the seasonings by shaking spices.

The other day, I remembered that I had a mixture of spices left over from our spice paintings.  So, I decided that we should do another activity with the spices.

J has also been quite the collector on our walks lately, so I have all these random leaves and flowers in the garage.

So, I took the leaves, flowers, and spices, and make a natural spice collage with J!

Get Organized: Kid’s Art Supplies

I think that one of the hardest things to organize are kid’s art supplies.  Anyone else agree?  So, I’m sharing with you how I organize my stuff.  I also have an awesome round up of ideas at the end too!

Ocean Play Dough

Three great blogs, Nurturestore, The Imagination Tree, and Sun Hats and Wellie Boots, have challenged their readers to play with play dough this week.  They are each posting some wonderful ideas and information all about play dough.  I have taken the Play Dough Pledge and I came up with a really fun play dough experience for J.

So, I made….

Watercolor Pencil Drawings

My artist Mom was in town last week.   I love having her creative soul in my house.  She is always leaves such beauty in her wake.  On this trip, she brought her watercolor pencils and made a few drawings.



She also let J have some fun with them!

Jello and Cars…{almost} a project fail

This is one of those activities that I planned on way, but ended up no where close to what I expected.
I started off by mixing up some jello and placing a few cars inside.  I already knew at this point that it was not going to work out the way I wanted it to.  I only had one package of jello and really needed much much more….like at least 4 packages.   I was only able to make a tiny mold and couldn’t fit as many cars as I wanted to.

A week in review

Does anyone else take a crazy amount of pictures every week, or is that just me?  I love going through all my pics and seeing all the fun stuff we’ve been up to.  Some are pretty random, but others are of great memories I don’t want to forget. 

I’ve decided to let you into my life a bit by posting some of my favorite pics of the week, so you can see what all I’ve been up to.  I hope you like it and get to know my little family a bit a long the way.

• We started off the week at a local strawberry festival where I had my very first deep fried strawberry….interesting is all I can say.
• I made this cute vinyl sticker for J’s room…and LOVE it!
• We gave J a camera to take pictures…more on that later.
• J  reading a book at my favorite store ever, Half Priced Books.
• A little afternoon painting
• Geese crossing the road…that randomly happens a lot around here.

• My Mom came in town!  Here she is helping J snap green beans for dinner.
• The hubs bought me tickets to Wicked for my birthday.  I took my musical loving Mom and we had the best time!  Seriously, one of the best b-day presents ever!
• Finally found an outdoor table…and so we had dinner outside that night.
• A little J and Grandma time!

I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit into my life this week.  What have you been up to?

Frog Sensory Tray

This is one of those last minute, throw it together, sensory boxes.  I’m sad to say that I have a lot of those these days.  Fortunately, this one turned out to be awesome!

Small Hands Creating Hope: Butterfly Sun Catcher

Welcome to the Small Hands Creating Hope project! I am so excited to be a part of this exciting fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, together with an incredibly talented group of bloggers who focus on fun, creative, and education activities for kids!

Big Dot Painting

One of our favorite ways of painting is dot painting.  These dot markers are wonderful and J absolutely loves them!