Discovery Musuem

One of the Christmas gifts we gave our children this last year was a membership to the Discovery Museum in Rockford. When we are looking for out of town adventures, we usually head to Chicago since we live so close. However, we had heard great things about this children's museum so we decided to give it a try, and I'm really glad we did. The facility's and exhibits were great - all the kids keep asking when we can go back. It's a little bit farther away from us than the Chicago's Children's Museum, but since there isn't as much traffic, it's actually much easier to visit. It's also not nearly as crowded and you don't have to pay for parking. If you live north of Chicago, this museum is definitely worth checking out.

There are tons of exhibits so we didn't quite make it to everything, but here are a few highlights.

big buddy came back to this tornado several times

mini man in a bubble

and a sheet bubble

i couldn't resist making a corn husk doll in their agricultural exhibit - brought back my girl scout days

the kids can either go up the stairs or climb through a maze

They have a special six and under spot for younger kids with lots of imagination play materials. These were a big hit with our family.

we found this at the end of the day and the boys played with it for over half-an-hour -
i was afraid we never get them to leave :)

Before we left Big Buddy couldn't resist doing this with the air tubes.

Lots more great kid friendly ideas can also be found at these link parties: Link and Learn, Weekly Kid Co-op, Montessori Monday, Hip Homeschool Hop, Preschool Corner, For the Kids Fridays, and Show and Share Saturday.

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A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it...

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy...

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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