Books for Human Body Lessons

We've been doing a human body theme in our homeschool preschool right now and I wanted to make a list of some of our favorite human body books if others are looking for good ones to add to their homeschool libraries. 

On the first day of the theme I put all these books out on display.

• Usborne Understanding Your Body A good look inside your insides  we don't have the newest version of this book, but I provided the link to that. There's so much information in this book, and the book mentioned next. You can read these yourself and come up with lesson plans, read certain pages to the kids when you want to focus on a certain aspect of the human body, etc.
• Encyclopedia Britannica Humans, is part of a 6-Book Interactive Science Library . They are all great and worth buying as a set!
• Why I Cough, Sneeze, Shiver, Hiccup & Yawn by Melvin Berger . This book explains lots of reflexes in a way kids can really understand.
• I Can Move by Mandy Suhr. This book is really funny and cute and explains to kids how our bodies are able to move all around. 
• The Nervous System by Joelle Riley. This book and the next three are some of the best human body books I have seen for kids and I was so pleased when I found them at the book fair this year. They are packed with so many facts, big concepts and words that kids are capable of understanding when given the chance. They also ask questions to keep the kids engaged, like what they think about things. There's lots of great pictures in them too that illustrate a lot of the concepts very nicely.
• The Muscular System by Rebecca L. Johnson. 
• The Respiratory System by Judith Jango-Cohen
• The Skeletal System by Caroline Arnold. 

These books are so great for my daughter to learn about her body with. 

We read about baby brains at our outside classroom area and brought a baby doll with us for the fun of course. My daughter loves everything to do with babies so this was a particularly interesting lesson for her.

On the day we were going to be reading the Respiratory System book I wrote a morning message about how we have bronchioles in our lungs, I was so proud of how my daughter copied down her new big science vocabulary word. 

I hope you can have some similar great experiences with these books!

Cashew Butter Cookies

I love love love being in the kitchen with my little girl and baking with her is always a treat! In this post I'm going to share with you how we make Cashew Butter Cookies. I found a recipe I loved for them and I'll share it here, but I specified a few of the ingredients we use when we make them and gave steps for how you can make them with a child. 

This time we made Cashew Butter Cookies, they're very similar to peanut butter cookies but way yummier! These make a great dessert for any time and especially if you're going to be around someone who has a peanut allergy or if you or your kids do. These cookies will be gobbled up in no time no matter who you're serving them too, and I feel good about the healthy ingredients in them.

Cashew Butter Cookies Recipe:

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (Trader Joe's Unbleached All Purpose Flour is my personal favorite)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup Earth Balance Original Natural Buttery Spread, room temperature
- 1 cup of raw sugar (We like Sugar In The Raw)
- 1/2 cup creamy salted cashew butter (Trader Joe's brand  for us)
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

First preheat the oven to 350.

Step 1: Teach your little one how to measure out the dry ingredients and level them off. Then let them put the flour in a medium sized bowl and use a fork to remove any clumps.

Step 2: Have them add the baking powder, baking soda, and salt to the bowl with the flour and use the fork to mix them all together.

Step 3: Get out a bigger mixing bowl together and put the butter and sugar into it together. When we use the buttery spread I don't worry too much about it being room temperature since it's already pretty soft, but getting the amount you need out before doing the first two steps can be a good idea.

Step 4: Get out the mixer and cream the sugar and the butter together. When we do this I let my daughter hold on to the mixer and then I take my hand and place it on top of hers and control most of the movements, but this way she is learning how it's done and is still a part of the process.

Step 5: Now, add in the cashew butter, egg and vanilla extract. You're going to beat it in with the mixer until it is smooth. Again, I'd do this the way I mentioned in step 4.

Step 6: This next part can get a little tricky with kids if they're wanting to dump all the dry ingredients right into the mix, but you can explain how you're going to gradually add the dry ingredients to the large bowl and use the mixer on low speed to blend it into the cashew butter mixture you've made.

Step 7: Now you and your child can get your hands dirty and make little balls for the cookies, about 1 inch in size and put them on a baking sheet that has parchment paper on it. Explain to your child how you leave a little bit of space between the cookies so they don't bake together.

Step 8: This is my daughter's favorite part (in the picture above), once all the cookies are on the baking sheet get a fork a little bit wet and do a demonstration of rocking it back and forth on the cookie in a criss-cross fashion to make a pattern on it, then let them do all the rest of the cookies. They will definitely feel like they're putting their special touch on them.

Step 9: Bake for 11-13 minutes, until the edges are looking a little bit golden brown.

Reading To A Dog

The other day we agreed to the responsibility of watching a family members dog for them for a little while. I thought this was great in itself because my daughter is always eager to take on responsibilities and I love teaching her to be a responsible person. One of my greatest hopes for her is that she grows up to be an accountable person and I'll do my best to make that happen. She got really excited and told me about an episode of Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures she watched where she learned how to watch a dog. 

While we were watching the dog I remembered how the library had a program where kids could come read to dogs but the kids had to be ages 5 and up and my daughter was bummed that she couldn't participate, so I made sure she got her chance! We got out a book called 10 Tiny Puppies to read to the dog. I think they both enjoyed it!

This is a great activity to encourage kids to read because they will want to do something nice for their own pet or, if they're animal lovers like my daughter is, someone else's pet too. Many kids will find this to be a fun change up from how they might normally practice their emerging reading skills.

Jitter Glitter Card (for kids first day of school)

Lots of kids are going back to school this time of year, my nephew just did last week. I was wanting to send him something in the mail to let him know we were thinking of him and hoped he had a great first day. I'm sure lots of aunts and uncles or grandparents would love to do the same and are looking for similar things. I ended up finding a Jitter Glitter poem on Pinterest (I'm not sure what the original source was/who wrote it, there's lots of them on Pinterest) but I wrote almost all of the poem down on a card. The last bit was about the teacher seeing them on the first day too, so I left that out since I'm not his teacher. I liked writing it on a card myself instead of just printing it out because it feels more personal that way.

The night before school is exciting and fun
with so many things that just have to be done.

Your clothes are all ready your backpack is too.
And your classroom is waiting with fun things to do.

There are so many questions that go through your mind,
All types of thoughts, some of every kind.

The day before school we all get the jitters down deep,
Making it really hard for us to fall fast asleep.

So here is some jitter glitter, it's really quite cool,
It's something to help you be ready for school.

Just sprinkle this glitter under your pillow in the night,
Before school starts, when you lay down your head.

The glitter will help you to sleep through the night, 
Letting you wake up feeling fresh and bright!

Then I put some glitter in a tiny ziploc type of bag that you get for an extra button on a coat and signed it after taking a picture. Stuck the bag inside the card, put the card in the envelope, addressed it and mailed it!

Fruity Peach Smoothie

Every summer we get a big bushel of peaches and we love to eat them as they are, but it's also fun to make things with them! I decided to make my daughter a Fruity Peach Smoothie yesterday morning. I call it "fruity" because there's lots of other fruity ingredients in this smoothie! Doesn't it look tasty? 

Fruity Peach Smoothie Recipe:

Ingredients: 

- 1 peach, sliced with the pit removed of course. If your peach is particularly large you might want to save a bit of it and use it as garnish or just eat it right up while you make the smoothie!

- 1/2 cup of organic strawberries, hulled and halved

- 1 4oz container of mango yogurt, I meant to use peach but they come together from Trader Joe's and I didn't notice until afterwards I had grabbed the mango flavor, but it was definitely a good choice too. You could use vanilla, peach, banana, strawberry, etc. Whatever you'd like.

- 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup of Trader Joe's Organic Orange Strawberry Banana Juice (amount varies depending on how thick you want your smoothie to be, less liquid for thicker, more if you don't want it as thick). 

- A squeeze of organic amber agave nectar. I didn't measure it out, but I'd say it was about 1 and 1/2 TSP.

Put all the ingredients into a blender and blend them up to make the smoothie, pour in glass and garnish with peaches. strawberries, or bananas if you'd like. I just stuck a strawberry on the side.

Morning Message in Preschool

In the beginning of our preschool day I have added a morning message. I write a simple sentence on our big dry erase board and then my daughter reads it and copies it down. This has also been the start of us discussing end punctuation and her learning that, as well as the obvious honing her writing skills. Here's one we did the other day.

So I wrote "Yoda is cute" and then we read it and I told her I was going to put a period as my end punctuation and explained why, I also showed her what it would look like and what it would mean if I did a question mark or exclamation point. So then she copied it and decided to put an exclamation point at the end.

Here's a few other simple sentences we've done to give you ideas:
"I love you!"
"The fish swim."
"Baby likes to swing."

etc etc.

Friendship Day Aprons (a play date craft for kids)

Friendship day is on August 2nd every year, and as you can these aprons are from 2013, but we made them on friendship day that year and I had them posted on my old blog but hadn't gotten around to putting them on this one yet, so here they are. I realize friendship day has already passed this year, but these aprons are practical and a great craft to make with toddler/preschooler or older kids and their friends together at a play date! My daughter still wears hers when she helps in the kitchen.

You can purchase little cloth aprons like these at a craft store, as well as the iron ons, and fabric paint. You might also want to purchase a fabric marker to write the names/year or whatever you'd like on there but we just used a Sharpie.

I picked Minnie and Mickey hugging because both of the kids liked those characters and they're a boy and a girl hugging which represented my girl and the little boy we made them with! I ironed those on ahead of time and then when the kids were having their play date we painted their hands with the fabric paint and then did their hand prints on the aprons.

I wanted both sets of hands on my daughters so I did hers on the top under the iron on, then I wrote "Friendship Day 2013" then had my friend do her sons hand prints under that and then I wrote their names underneath at the bottom.

My friend wanted her sons apron differently, she wrote up above the iron on and then put one of each of their hand prints next to each others with their names underneath.

I think both of the aprons turned out totally cute and this is a great craft for kids and their friends!