Review: Groove Kid Nation "Rhythm Bears"

Since receiving this CD, Groove Kid Nation "Rhythm Bears", in the mail to review, we have been rotating this kids CD with another new one from a band we saw in concert in my car. It is a delight to listen to and sing to. This CD is geared towards ages 3 and up (the other 2 CDs they have developed are for younger kids) which works nicely since I have a 3 year old. Of my two kids, the 3 year old liked it the best, but my 7 year old was ok with it too. Some of it was a little young for her, but she still enjoyed it. I liked hearing my 3 year old sing along to it. Up until recently he was never much of a sing-a-long kind of kid but now he seems to enjoy it, as long he doesn't think he is getting attention for it.

The CD also comes with a 10 page illustrated booklet, which my son especially liked to look at while we listen to the music. I thought they did a great job picking out the vocalists for these tracks, because it is how I imagine a bear would sing.

You can buy this CD and many others from the Groove Kid Nation website. Or you can purchase a digital box set that also includes all the a curriculum, audio clips of musical instruments, pdf files of images and mp3 files of the music and a CD with the vocals removed. This digital box set would be great for homeschoolers.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Try It Tuesday: Butterfly Life Cycle Hand Print Art

Time for another fun and easy project I did with my kids. We were on a butterfly theme which wouldn't be complete without a hand print butterfly. But we took it further and made finger print caterpillars and chrysalis's. I always like to do hand prints crafts because it can be a kind of keepsake, plus you can see which is done by my 7 year old and which is from the 3 year old based on the hand print size. My son had to make a pink and purple butterfly because right now pink is his favorite color (because it WAS sister's), which is why she chose to make her butterfly blue and green. LOL!

If you are looking for other butterfly life cycle crafts, then try out the Easy Paper Plate Butterfly Craft I shared last week or this Coffee Filter Butterfly Project. And don't forget to check out my Preschool at Home Theme of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is loaded with activities and art projects!

I started out having them paint the grass on the construction paper and then paint the tree. If you see my paint trays above, they are just styrofoam containers that held fruit that would have gone in the trash.

Next I had them make their finger print chrysalis followed by the fingerprint caterpillar. After I wiped their fingers clean, they switched colors (because who has ever saw a caterpillar that was the same color that it was when it turned in to a butterfly?) and painted the palms of their hands.

We glued in to place colored popsicle sticks for the butterfly bodies and used some glitter glue for antennas on the butterfly and caterpillar and of course we glued on some googly eyes on both the caterpillar and butterfly.

Make It Monday: Three Bean Salad Recipe

You are going to love this recipe for Three Bean Salad! It combines all your favorites, plus some new things and uses balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a good quality balsamic vinegar is. You could probably forego the honey because a REALLY good balsamic vinegar will have both a sweet and tang taste.


Three Bean Salad
1 can Kidney Beans
1 can Garbanzo Beans
1 can Green Beans
1/2 Red Onion, minced
1 med cucumber, seeded and chopped
1/4 C balsamic vinegar (a good quality one!!)
1 T honey
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried cilantro

Directions:

• Combine all beans, onion and cucumber in a large bowl.
• Stir to combine.
• In a shaker container, combine balsamic vinegar, honey, olive oil, garlic and cilantro and Shake.
• Pour over vegetables in bowl.
• Stir to cover.
• Let sit for at least 1/2 hour before serving.
• Enjoy!

Pottery Time: Mugs

 If you haven't noticed, I have been doing a lot more slab rolling and hand building and have not been on the wheel in a while. My first couple mugs I made were on the wheel and they are nice and are ones I kept for myself. But I have really grown to like hand building and slab rolling. I feel so much more in control of the clay, but I diverge, that is not telling you how or why I made these mugs.

I made all three of these mugs as gifts. When I was making them I was most nervous about how the handle was going to stay and hold it's shape and not crack. I started out with some jar molds (I used smallish glass pickle jars for my mold.) and shaped my slab rolled piece around each and attached a circular base.

The make the handles, I did make the slab rolled clay thicker to start out with, but I had to be careful to not have it be too thick or it would not shape as well and too thin and it would not hold it's shape. I cannot remember exactly what I set the thickness on the roller to, I think it was about 1/3, whereas the rest of the mug was rolled at 1/4. I used scratching and slip to adhere the edges of the handles to the mug.

I really like this mug design, so much that I kind of want to make one for myself, but this one was given to a friend for her birthday. I made it in blue (her favorite color) and brown. I had overlapped the rolled slab and made it looks like buttons holding it together. I hand painted the entire piece with under glaze in blue and brown. After the first firing I then drizzled a navy blue color glaze on it and glazed the whole piece in clear.

This one was made as a going away present for a coffee loving friend that I used to have coffee playdates with our youngest kids. I added texture to this clay by using a texture roller. Then I hand painted under glaze of yellow and purple before the first firing. It was actually pretty time consuming to paint each of the insides of the little squares. Then I applied a clear glaze over the entire piece before the final firing.

And finally, this one I added lace on top of the clay as I rolled it out. I did not use under glazes on this one because I wanted it to match the Tall Cylinder Vase I was also giving to this friend for her birthday. She just had her birthday, so I was finally able to share these projects that I had made.

Next week I will share one more project I have finished and then I better get my butt back in the studio and start creating because I don't have any more projects in the works to share. I did just create some coordinating jewelry pieces for a friend's birthday present and will share those soon and I do have some plans to work on some loom knitting projects and will share those with you later too.

Thrifty Thursday: Frozen Treat Deals at Burger King

Taking your family out for ice cream doesn't have to break the budget. Again this summer (I noticed they did this last summer too!), Burger King (at least at all the ones in MN that I have seen signs at) are selling vanilla soft serve cones for 50 cents and $1 for any size Icee. Our family of four spent $2.14 for cones for each of us, pretty good considering we would pay that same price for only two ice cream cones at another big fast food place (in which case then I choose to support the local ice cream shoppes that charge that price for a small cone.)

Wordless Wednesday: Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Campground

This was where we stayed for Camp MOM. It is Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Campground and Park Reserve in Lino Lakes. Check out my other posts regarding to Camp MOM too!

Try It Tuesday: Easy Paper Plate Butterflies

This was such a fun and easy project for my kids to do and for the most part it was an independent project for both my 3 year old and 7 year old. Can you tell which one was made by my son? I will give you a hint, his had to be a monster butterfly with three eyes.

Supplies needed: Colored paper plate, scissors, pencil, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, craft foam, glue and anything to glue on (including glitter glue) to provide decoration.

To start out with, I drew half circles on the back of the paper plate and let the kids cut them out on their own. Kids don't get to use scissors too much so any time they get to practice cutting they are very excited.

I also drew the body of the butterfly on some craft foam and let them cut it out as well.

You can see he is concentrating very hard on cutting out his wings. I chose to use some leftover (from a birthday party, they are the smaller plates you would serve cake on) colored paper plates, but if you only have white plate you could paint them.

Here are both of their creations. Same instructions, but they got to choose from the supplies how they wanted to use them. As my kids get older they like to show off their individuality more and more.

Here are all the supplies I got out for them to choose from that included regular and colored googly eyes, a variety of pipe cleaners, different colors of craft foam, beads, sequins, puffy fabric pieces and glitter glue.

They really had fun with this project and needed very little assistance.