Germs Are Not for Sharing! by Elizabeth Verdick

Eryn chose today's book, Germs Are Not for Sharing! by Elizabeth Verdick. As we read the book we paused to rehearse sneezing on our sleeve and other helpful practices the book described.

In follow up we did a sort of germ transfer experiment, based on the idea described at twigglemagazine.com. Outside I had the girls pretend to cough or sneeze on their hands, then I sprayed their hands with cooking spray. Next came the germs in the form of glitter. I thought that Eryn and Eva would want to wipe their hands off right away, but instead they asked for more! I then sent them on their way to ride their bikes and play outside as usual. We watched as glitter was left on the surfaces they touched. After about twenty minutes the girls wanted to wash their hands, which was good practice in hand washing.

Freight Train by Donald Crews

Today our book was chosen by Eva, and it is one of my favorites in our family library: Freight Train by Donald Crews. I think I originally bought this book when Ember was our only child, and I chose it because of Alex working with freight trains. I love it for its simplicity in text and illustrations. As we read the book Eva focused on telling us the colors of each car (good practice!).

For our activity we built train cars from cardboard boxes, an idea I know I've seen before (one search result includes the idea written up in www.childfun.com). I don't know that Eva and Eryn were excited about making their own train car, but they were all over the acrylic paints that I busted out for this project, since we usually use only watercolors. This was an outdoors activity for sure. Hopefully no vegetation will die due to the over-glittering that occurred.

Elmo's ABC Book published by Dalmation Press

Yesterday our book was chosen by Eryn. In Elmo's ABC Book, "Elmo is trying to decide what Elmo's favorite letter is." It seems that everything he sees reminds him of why the letter that object begins with may be his favorite. It's not the best book for children just learning their abc's as it doesn't give a straightforward rendition of the abc's. But it did easily lend to a follow up activity.

I had previously seen on Pinterest a pin on doing an indoor scavenger hunt. This came to mind when I reviewed this book. Just as Elmo found objects that brought to mind what may be his favorite letter, we looked for objects to begin with each letter of the alphabet, in order. Initially I printed a handwriting practice page (from www.handwritingworksheets.com) for Eryn, Eva and Ellisyn, with the thought that I would use Ellisyn's to write the word for each letter/object, and later Eryn and maybe Eva could copy Ellisyn's paper to try writing on their own. I soon found myself writing the word on all three copies. But by letter K Eva lost interest, so I wrote on only Eryn's from then on. Eryn never was interested in writing on her own, but she did review the words for the objects that we found.