If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

It's ironic how this is the book we focused on this past week and somehow it seemed to be the theme of the week...wanting one thing after another! LOL.

I hope everyone had a great Forth of  July! We decided to take it easy and went to Vista Ridge Mall during the day for our festivities. It was an air conditioned event which is key in the middle of the summer in Texas. They had crafts and facepainting so Madison really enjoyed it! Later that evening we watched fireworks. It ended up being a late night, but that's ok once and awhile.

Madison enjoyed making her take home craft from the Lewisville Library

This week we enjoyed reading "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff. We have it as part of the Mouse Cookies and More Treasury.

It has activities and songs and a CD that is the audio version of each book and the songs too. Madison listened to them over and over. Then we did some activities. She drew a picture like the mouse did in the book, she made playdough cookies and molded a mouse out of molding clay.

Then we did some great If You Give a Mouse a Cookie activities I downloaded for free from ingles360 that have activities for preschoolers as well as grade school! For more activities to make books and reading fun visit my Book Lists and Activities Pinterest Board.

If you have a post that you would like to share with activity ideas to go with books please leave a comment below with your link!

Life of a Five Year Old...Weekend of Brave, Swimming, Science and Fun

This weekend was a busy and fun one! Every Saturday for the summer, Madison takes ballet and tap in the morning at Sacred Dance and loves it! Then Daddy takes her to Michaels for their Passport to Imagination craft. This past Saturday was Canada. She made a picture frame and a maple leaf pin to place on her lanyard with the rest of the pins she has been collecting from the different country crafts.  On Sunday morning DH and Madison worked on her Science Kit. You mix liquids to become crystals. She loves doing these types of Science experiments with her Daddy. :)

Then DH attempted to teach her to ride her bike, however she just isn't wanting to balance on it. I am going to try to have her ride her scooter more so that hopefully she will learn that you have to balance. :) It was only 92 degrees which is perfect here for the middle of summer in Texas so we went went to the pool for a bit. Madison loves to jump off the diving board and loves to swim.

My husband took Madison to go see the movie Brave. We have read the books (I got her an easy reader, a picture book and a chapter book) and so she has been anxiously awaiting the movie. She loved it, despite the scary bear scene. Yes, he thought it would be funny to line her up with the bow and arrow for the picture...

I am getting all prepped for next week. I decided that we are going to pick a couple of books a week to do extra learning activities with. The books for this week are 'If You Give A Mouse A Cookie' and 'Runaway Bunny.' I choose this one because my aunt gave Madison a treasury book that includes this story.  It has a CD with the author's narration and a couple of songs for each of the stories. At the end of each story it also includes some recipes and learning activities. I have also found some good resources on Pinterest and from my Story Stretchers Book. Each week I am going to give her options for morning free play. She can choose to do whichever options her heart desires. :) I do not let her watch much TV.  I am not found of it at all. Last week I let her watch one episode of SuperWhy. I also limit her iPad use to 20 minutes a week as well.  I have found that when I let her watch TV or play electronics that she looses all interest in learning and playing and is constantly begging as if she's addicted so now it's once a week and that's it.

 I am looking forward to a great week! We are going to be doing our regular weekly events:

• Preschool Time at the Lewisville Library
• Swimming Lessons at Aqua Kids
• Passport to Imagination Crafts at Michaels
• Kids Yoga at Yogi Kids
• Developmental Team gymnastics class at Best Gymnastics
• Clue Finders Program at the Lewsiville Library
• Kids Ballet and Tap at Sacred Ground Dance

 We are going to finish reading What Your Preschooler Should Know. It is a GREAT book that has stories, songs, history, science and more!

We also should finish up the BrainQuest cards for ages 4 -5 years.

And we are working on sight words. I found this great colorful set for free on Pinterest from education.com!

I was able to complete her room organization. I still have some laundry to put away before I post pics of the closet, but here are the hair bows and her new dress up area in her room:

Here is the before picture of all of her hair accessories

And the after..I put them in bead sorter boxes from Michaels. We ended up having a total of 4!

Here Madison is sorting her jewelry. She had it dumped together in several little conatiners.

Here it is sorted in little pockets. This organizer hangs up in the closet and is two sided.

I used to have her dress up clothes on the lower level of her closet, but I wanted the closet to just be for regular clothes so I had DH take out the shelves in her bookshelf and added a tension rod (hopefully it will stay). She has three bins to the side that hold dress up accessories. Now it's accessible and organized.

After her room is complete I will be moving on to the Toy Room. Ugh. First I think we are going to try to find a way to organize the doll area first.

And...Madison lost her 3rd tooth today!  The front left one. It is going to take some getting used to for both of us! LOL