Bittersweet, Bad Diner

One of my favorite things - Bad Diner Book Club, a group of us who meet once month at "bad diners" to discuss a book. This month we met at Ray's Family Restaurant. It definitely had the diner aesthetic but was surprisingly busy and had above average food - real(!) pineapple on the sundaes. The book up for discussion was Bittersweet by Shauna Niequest. We all agreed that there were chapters in the book that we loved; they were beautifully written and spoke to us on a deep level. We found ourselves either relating to her experiences or yearning for them. The book is particularly filled with stories of intimate, healing friendships. It left us desiring to be better friends, to go deeper, and to speak with more vulnerability. There were other chapters, however, that I struggled through. The writing seemed forced, the thoughts unclear, more rambling journal entry than poetic prose. My friend Bethany (you can read her review here) made a good point about Mrs. Niequist being a young writer who is perhaps still trying to decide which literary style best suits her voice. For the most part the book was an enjoyable read, yet not a must read. I would however recommend it to a friend who finds herself at one of life's crossroads.

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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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Joyfully Weary

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