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The first book is, Dotty, by Erica S. Perl.  It is about a gal who brings “Dotty” her invisible horned friend with her to school.  My daughter has imaginary friends (and actually an imaginary house where she claims to live part-time) so she can really relate with Ida, the girl in the story.  I love how this book talks about reality and imagination, encourages children to apologize for wrong actions, and celebrates creativity and active imaginations.  This book is great for those pre-school jitters, I love how warm Ida’s teacher, Ms. Raymond, is in this story!

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My son loves the second book we got to review today!  He loves facts and vivid pictures (and could do without story plot most of the time).   The book, The Exceptionally, Extraordinarily Ordinary First Day of School, by Albert Lorenz, is hilarious – it definitely speaks to little boys.  It features wild creatures that welcome, John (the main character), to the school bus where they drive to the “castle” (aka school), he carries a lizard and steps on frogs in science class, gets to meet several historical characters, eats insects for lunch in the cafeteria, and more.  Quirky Kiddo Z loved all the detail (and trying to find the kid hiding on each page picking his nose).  I loved the facts in the sidebar.  This book was one of the more educational and yet incredibly silly stories we have read in some time!

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The final book we got to review was about Sam, a mouse who lives in a library.  The book, Library Mouse: A World to Explore, by Daniel Kirk, is really cute.  My hubby used to be a librarian (sexy, I know!) and we love our local library and the trove of information you can find browsing books.  Sam and his friend Sarah share their love of books with the readers, and explain how they research with books to learn new things, like how to fly airplanes or to pretend they were Egyptian pharaohs.  They get to “see the world” through the books they are reading.

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Want one of these books?  Leave a comment telling me what items are on your school shopping list and become a follower of QM!  Winner will be chosen randomly next Monday.

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New Toys: Keep your preschoolers entertained in those early baby days.

I’d like to say I thought of this one myself, but I didn’t.  The kind souls at B.You Toys were super generous and sent us a big box of Stackadoos bristle blocks.  To say that I can not thank them enough is an understatement.  Really, my preschoolers are bored with the toys they already have and receiving something new and wondrous to play with means that I can sit and breastfeed in peace!  I love these blocks (and the kids do too!)  Once life calms down a bit more I’m sure we’ll incorporate them into learning activities.

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Moby Wrap (or any hands-free carrier).

I prefer the moby baby styled carrier as it feels so snug, almost like I am giving my baby a big hug!  And they are super easy to make!  I have about a dozen of them (post coming with instructions on how to make one yourself sometime next week).   If you have a preschooler you are trying to chase and take care of, having a hands-free carrier is a must so you can still get “baby-cuddles”.  I use mine while cooking dinner, playing with blocks on the floor, and/or watching the kids and mediating play outside.

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Feed your Freezer!

We can only eat macaroni and cheese and frozen pizzas so many times in a row.  I am so thankful that I spent a few weekends before Baby K arrived making meals so all I have to do is pull it out of the freezer in the morning and stick it into the microwave in the evening.  We do have several friends who have brought us meals, and I am grateful for them, but I am also thankful that I planned ahead of time with kid-friendly foods.  The last thing I want to do is fight with my preschooler about eating his dinner while trying juggle my fork and infant.

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Snack Bags: Feed the kids and entertain them in the process.

I love giving the kids a chance to be independent.  We use snack bags for road-trips, but they are also really great if you want to lengthen a snack time, to make it into more of an event.  I made the bags in advance, then put them in reach of the kids.  When baby K is getting a mommy snack, the older kiddos can go grab their snack bags.  They enjoy the variety and digging out their favorites first.  The snacks that go into the bags vary each time we make them.

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Cayenne Pepper (TMI warning!)

Pepper?!?  I know you are probably wondering why this is a must have, but for a recuperating momma with preschoolers it is requirement!  Lifting older siblings is unavoidable.  It seems that I have to rescue someone who climbed onto the top of the dollhouse, or who can’t get out of the crib, or separate two tasseling kiddos, you get the idea.   All of these are big no-nos for recuperating postpartum moms!  And yet, we can not not intervene!  Cayenne Pepper has been used in WWI and WWII as a clotting agent on battlefields.  It really helps speed up the recovery process.  I have used it with two of my four pregnancies and have had a much quicker recovery the two times I took Cayenne pepper (in spite of lifting heavy objects/children after delivery).  Take it in pill form daily and you will heal in record time.

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Have you brought an infant home to a household of preschoolers?  Feel free to share your recovery and survival tips in the comments and I’ll be sure to link up to you!

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We made borax snowflakes, it was really easy and fun. We made 4 of them and gave them to grandparents when they visited. Our biggest challenge was finding a jar with a wide enough mouth. I copied the directions from about.com

How to make Borax Snow Crystals:

1.Cut a pipe cleaner into three equal sections and twist the sections together at their centers to form a six-sided snowflake shape. Don’t worry if an end isn’t even, just trim to get the desired shape. The snowflake should fit inside the jar.
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2.Tie the string to the end of one of the snowflake arms. Tie the other end of the string to the pencil. You want the length to be such that the pencil hangs the snowflake into the jar.

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3.Fill the widemouth pint jar with boiling water and add borax one tablespoon at a time to the boiling water, stirring to dissolve after each addition. The amount used is 3 tablespoons borax per cup of water. It is okay if some undissolved borax settles to the bottom of the jar.  If you want tint, now is the time to add it.  We used food coloring

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4.Hang the pipe cleaner snowflake into the jar so that the pencil rests on top of the jar and the snowflake is completely covered with liquid and hangs freely (not touching the bottom of the jar).  Allow the jar to sit in an undisturbed location overnight.
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5.  Wake up to the sight of the pretty crystals!!! You can hang your snowflake as a decoration or in a window to catch the sunlight

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Thanks again Pam and Troop Petrie kiddos for sharing your science experiment with us!

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Items needed for the preschool germ experiment:

• Bread
• Kids tongues
• Pocket Purifier
• Ziplock baggies

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Preschool Germ Experiment:

We cut a homemade pita into four pieces and then each of the kids and I licked a piece.  We talked about how there are germs in out mouths, in our saliva, and how they can make us sick and how we need to be careful not to drink/eat after each other and wash our hands before we eat, after we go to the bathroom, etc.  We also talked about the consequences of sharing germs (rotavirus is rampant at the time in our house, so we talked about who was sick and how they need to be careful not to spread the virus).    After licking the bread we sprayed each piece with some water then, two pieces were ziplocked and bagged (to be our control group) and the other two pieces got “light treatment”.  The Pocket Purifier UV light from Purely Products is really handy to use.  My four year old was responsible for making sure the bread pieces were lit for 15 seconds each (roughly, her counting is not exact).  Then we bagged those pieces too and set them on the counter to watch the germs grow!

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Gross!  Gross!

All of the pieces were moldy a week later, but you can see the obvious differences between the pieces that received the light treatment and those that hadn’t!  It worked!  And, after using the light on our stuffed animals, legos, and other porous toys that were hard to adequately wipe off with antibacterial wipes, the virus did not spread further in our house.  We had two people with Rotavirus before this light came in!  And no one else got it!!!  Our baby got to be born into a healthy home!  Thank you Purely Products!

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Do you want your very own germ-killing nifty light?  Tell me how gross your kids can be in our Mom Loop Community!

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This activity was included in the Blog Hop at Abc123, they have a great show and tell school time.  Check it out!

This week we read Good Morning, Pond, by Alyssa Satin Capucilli. This book starts off with a frog leaping into the pond and waking up all the animals that live in and around the pond and ends with three children coming to see all the animals in the pond. Emily loved acting out the different sounds and motions of the various animals in this story, of course the frog was her very favorite. I liked that it was written in a semi cumulative story form. It made if a lot of fun to read and easy for Emily to follow along.

I picked this book out because Emily loves frogs at the moment and I thought that she would enjoy reading a book with a frog in it and then making a frog project to go with it. I love projects made out of paper plates so I thought it would be fun to make a frog out of one. To go along with this book.

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How to make your own paper plate frog

First, Emily painted the front and back of a paper plate green.  While the paper plate was drying Emily colored in black circles on the top of two green bottle tops. (We had these in our huge bottle top collection.)  I drew and cut out frog arms and legs on green construction paper. Emily received Do-a-Dot markers for Easter (She was so excited!!) so she wanted to color in the frogs arms and legs a little more with them.

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After all the pieces were dry, Emily folded the paper plate in half and I made a small slit in the middle of the fold to slide the tongue which I cut out of craft foam through. Then Emily glued on the arms, legs….

… and bottle cap eyes.  Isn’t the finished product so much fun!  Thanks again to Mommy’s Adventures for sharing their story+art or “stART” project with us! Do you have a project you’d love to share with the QM readers? Feel free to email it to me! admin@quirkymomma.com

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Capes

These are so easy to create and make terrific gifts!  Basically, take a rectangle of fabric, finish off its edges, then gather the top and sew a band around the top.  Viola!  You have a cape!  I’ve even made them with no-sew stripping.  The kids have used these capes as well, capes, but also as aprons, a puppet stage to hide behind and covers to the entrance of their “caves”.

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Hats/wigs/crowns

Having something silly on their head is just addictive for them!  We have gone through phases with cowboy hats, whimsically decorated hats, ball caps, fussy wigs, princess crowns, even putting all the ribbons and bows we own in their hair at one time (we got several comments grocery shopping that day).  My youngest is the one most enthralled with hats right now, she’s even put pants on her head as a makeshift hat.  I think she loves how the pant legs bobble on her back.  One of the favorites is an easy to make “braid hat”.  This was made before I began blogging, but you can easily replicate it with yarn.  Make braids or stringy hair and glue it to a hat.  Lots of fun!

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Vests

We have several different types of vests in our collection, a few handed down from ring-bearers of weddings past, a few itchy ones, but by far the kids favorite vests are a pair of old swimming lifejackets.  They have been consistently favorite items for nearly two years of pretend play!  They have worn them in the bathtub (filled and empty) pretending they are “at the lake”.  They have used them in reenacting “westerns” and horse-back riding.  Currently, the life-jackets are coveted as props for playing “Diego and Alyssa” animal rescuers.

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Flouncy dresses

If you have girls these are a staple!  My girls will wear their flouncy dresses/skirts 24/7 if I let them!

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Shoes

We have a big box of old shoes (waiting to be handed down to the next Quirky Kid) it also includes a few bigger sizes that are hand-me-downs from their cousins and some old high heels, Daddy’s old boots, etc.  The kids absolutely love playing with this big box.  They wear the shoes, but have also used them to create a “shoe road” and used them as a stand and homes for their animals/dolls.  We’ve even used them to create letters and of course to practice matching!  Interesting shoes are so much fun!

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Sheet or boxes

A sheet is great for pretend play.  It can become a tent, a turban, a dress, a swimming pool, the dog kennel, my youngest especially enjoys using it to play hide-n-seek and hiding wherever, just under the sheet.

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For my youngest, while she does color with crayons, today she was more interested in banging them so I helped her color in her page. She’d hand me a new color every few seconds and I’d tell her the name of the color, have her repeat it back to me and then scribble like mad till she picked out the next crayon. She loved it and thought I was “so silly.”  It is the highest compliment my toddler gives someone. After we colored them we got on our art shirts and mixed up our shaving cream paint. As I am trying to encourage my youngest to not finger paint, there is a time for finger painting but also a time for more orderly – aka clean – fun, we got some old makeup sponges out and used those to help spread our paint.

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I love how the paint makes the crayon jump out at you! The finished product of our painted crayon works of art are beautiful! 

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What you need to make Jello Popsicles:

• Box of Jello – we have used cherry, lime and strawberry.  I bet all the flavors would taste great!  Note: the red colors do stain clothes!  We learned that the hard way.
• Orange Juice – 1 Cup. Love that the new Minute Maid bottle is so easy to pour!  This also adds to the health benefit – these could be great during the flu season, hydrating the kids and giving them vitamin C and other vitamins!
• Fruit – we’ve mashed bananas, added pureed peaches, strawberries, blueberries, etc.  Be creative! ETA: I was asked quantities, and it varied each time we made them. Probably a cup or two.
• Hot water – 1 Cup

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While I boiled a cup of water, Z mashed the fruit.  Then I gave him the hot water and he dumped the jello in it stirring for a little while.  Add the Minute Maid and fruit.  Then fill the popsicle cups (we filled mini-dixie cups with the leftovers) and freeze for a few hours until frozen.  So simple!

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Thanks to Minuet Maid for participating in this post and to Jen at Whole Foods, check out her giveaway of a popsicle maker!

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Grab 4 bottles of bubbles and food coloring. I was fortunate enough to satisfy my obsessive nature by matching my dye to the bottles. You don’t have to be so picky!

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Open the bubbles and squirt half a bottle of coloring into each bubble container. I didn’t take this task outside. It’s messy, so you should go outside before you squirt food coloring all over your dining room table!

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Speaking of messy: do you have an art easel taking up too much room inside? If you want to make your deck the coolest place on the block, move it outside for the Summer! It’s so much easier to clean up paints and chalk dust, and we end up doing tons more artwork if I know we aren’t going to make the house a disaster. We have these: No-Spill Paint Cups With Lids and I use half of them for paint, and the other half hold our chalk. The lid keeps out any moisture, and I don’t have to bring our supplies back and forth.

Back to the bubble paint: take out the wands and change the kiddies into old clothes. The goal is to blow bubbles aimed at the paper, and when the bubble pops it leaves a great design. My kids thought it would be better to take the Jackson Pollock route.

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Looks like they had a blast!  Thanks again, Lawrence Girls and Daddy Too for a fun craft idea!

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Sorry guys, we cheated in these photos.  The originals I took on the actual trip and they were incredibly out of focus… hope you don’t mind our “recreation” of the bucket system, from the comfort of our driveway.  We are glad to be home!