We’re going to be blogging lightly for the month of August, posting frequent photo postcards with a snippet of text. View the entire summer postcard series here.
Serving up a tasty snack of cuisinaire rods. Who says they can only be used for math lessons?
Our daughter may only eat cheese pizza in the real world, but she likes all kinds of creative toppings in the world of pretend.
Featured here is the often-played-with and much-loved wooden Melissa and Doug Pizza dressed with our felt, hand-sewn spinach, mixed-greens salad and mushrooms, topped with several slices of cheese.
Order’s up!
We’re finally feeling the heat here in Sonoma County and I can’t help but look towards fall for cooler weather, the typical season for leaf exploration.
But why wait until autumn to learn leaf shapes? The more we practice now, the better we’ll be prepared for identifying the plethora of fallen leaves this November. In true Spritzer-Leyba fashion, we feel the need to transform everyday activities into learning experiences.
We stumbled upon this fantastic, incredibly inexpensive book of leaf stencils
The book contains perforated pages, so you can remove the stencils from the book to trace them more easily. We decided to punch a hole in the top of each stencil and use a binder ring to keep them together.
I love watching our daughter learn without realizing it. She’s having fun, stenciling away, while learning the names of leaf shapes.
I watch, with a smile on my face, as she decides that we need to clearly label each leaf.
She’s our daughter for sure.
I can’t help but hope that she’ll grow up to be a scientist too.
When I first heard about Pinterest, a virtual display space that lets you organize and share images, I thought, “Just what I need: another site to check; another internet addiction.”
I’ve had a Pinterest account for less than a week yet I’m already hooked and can’t imagine my life without this nifty organizational tool.
I use Pinterest to save my favorite posts, inspirational photos, new recipes and projects to try. When I find a project or post that I love, I “pin” my favorite photo from the post, write a brief description and file it away into one of several themed boards that I’ve created. Later I can go to that particular board and see all of the posts I’ve linked to.
I’ve created pin boards for photos of future house inspiration, projects to try, organization love, everyday learning, garden inspiration, recipes to cook, special occasion party fun, and winter, spring, summer and fall holiday inspiration.
In the past when I found pictures I liked or projects to try, I shared them via my Google Feed Reader, where they’d then be lost amongst the thousands of other posts I had already shared. I could slowly go through post by post to see what I had marked (or do a search), but it was time consuming and not the best way to look for a quick craft project or a recipe for tonight’s dinner.
Pinterest has made my life so much easier.
Slowly I am going through several years and thousands of saved posts in my Google Feed Reader and pinning to the best articles that I shared previously. So, please follow my boards on Pinterest to see my favorite posts.
If you’d like an invitation to Pinterest, please shoot me an email with PINTEREST in the subject line and I’ll send you an invitation!
Still confused about how Pinterest works or want to learn more? Read this fantastic primer on Pinterest from Callaloo Soup. Francine clearly explains how to set up and use Pinterest, outlining several methods for pinning content to Pinterest.
After you set up a Pinterest account, be sure to click back here and then follow me on Pinterest! See you over there!
Our family tends to collect art appreciation books written for kids.
Our latest discovery is Alphab’art
This wonderful book presents a wide variety of art styles and subject matter with paintings by some of the masters of western art including Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh, Matisse, Giotto, Chagall, Mondrian, and Klee. Many of the paintings in the book came from French museums and private collections (the book was originally published in France) and were unfamiliar to me.
We found that looking for letters in the paintings jump started our conversation about the many other interesting things hidden away in the works of art.
Our daughter felt proud that she spotted three letter O’s in this painting by Henri Matisse. I love the idea that we can find shapes and letters all around us, in pictures, photos, bookshelves, toy bins, doorways, if we really look. We’re surrounded by beautiful, interesting and educational things.
The book has inspired us to go on an alphabet adventure! I feel a photography project coming on…
Curious about other art appreciation books for kids that we love?
Read all of our previous posts on the subject here.
