Literacy Zone: Books About Gardening!

Check out some of these books for your child to read while they are exploring flowers and gardening this month:

The Vegetable Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta, Bob Thomson, & Edgar Stewart

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

Who’s in the Garden? By Phillis Gershator

Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth

How Groundhog’s Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry

A Tree Is a PLANT by Clyde Robert Bulla

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

Yucky Worms: Read and Wonder by Vivian French

The Dandelion Seed by Joseph Anthony

Flowers by Vijaya Khisty Bodach

Mrs. Spitzer’s Garden by Edith Pattou

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

A Leaf Can Be… by Laura Purdie Salas

From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons

Seeds by Vijaya Khisty Bodach

Sow and Grow by Tina Davis

From the Garden: A Counting Book About Growing Food by Michael Dahl

Leaves by Vijaya Khisty Bodach

How Does It Grow? Vijaya Khisty Bodach

Fruits by Vijaya Khisty Bodach

A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston

Zinnia’s Flower Garden by Monica Wellington

Oh Say Can You Seed?: All About Flowering Plants by Bonnie Worth

The Flower Alphabet Book by Jerry Pollota

Jack’s Garden by Henry Cole

Green by Laura Purdie Salas

Splish, Splash, Spring by Jan Carr

Flower Garden by Eve Bunting

This Year’s Garden by Cynthis Rylant

Stems by Vijaya Khisty Bodach

Do you have any other books you would add to our list??

Let’s Get Down to Earth!

Let’s get ‘Down To Earth’! This month is about the wonder and excitement of all things that grow in a garden! The children will experience the wonder of planting, growing and working with flowers and plants! They will even get the chance to plant our own seeds and watch what happens!

 

Our sandboxes will bloom with artificial flowers that the children can plant and replant as they compare and learn about color and size. We are excited to get ‘Down To Earth’!

Hammer Away!

Does your little one wander around the house “hammering” on things?

Give your child a piece of Styrofoam and plastic golf tees and have them bang the golf tees into the Styrofoam with a hammer! Fun for hours!

Fun Food Ideas: Marshmallow Building

Marshmallow Building

You will need: marshmallows of any size and pretzel sticks

Set out the marshmallows and pretzels. See what types of creations can be built with these very inexpensive ingredients. Everyone will enjoy eating their completed creation!

Sing-A-Long: Songs about Construction

This is the way we pound our nails

Pound our nails, pound our nails,

This is the way we pound our nails

So early in the morning!

Additional Verses:

Saw the wood…

Turn the screw…

Drill a hole…

 Paint the wall…

Stack the bricks…

Stir the Paint…

The backhoe scoops the dirt

the backhoe scoops the dirt

Hey-ho! Look at it go!

The back hoe scoops the dirt

Additional Verses:

The dozer moves the dirt…

The loader dumps the dirt…

The dump truck bumps away…

Signs: Shapes and Colors

While driving around town, help your child point out different signs and equipment related to construction. Can they tell you the color and shape of the sign? What about the cones?

Fun Food Ideas: Silly Structures and Extreme Buildings!

Silly Structures and Extreme Buildings!

You will need: rectangle or square cookies (such as graham crackers), frosting or peanut butter, candies

Let your child explore building with this fun snack! The frosting or peanut butter will act as “glue” and hold the walls of the house in place. When their structure is complete, set out soft candies to decorate their very own house.

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Literacy Zone: Books About Building!

Check out some of these books for your child to read while they are exploring construction and building this month:

Construction Trucks by Betsy Imershein

We Can Build It! by Fischer Price

The Tallest Building of All! by John Deere

Building a House by Byron Barton

Building the Skyscraper by Justine Korman

The Chickens Build a Wall by Jean-Francois Dumont

Construction Zone by Tana Hoban

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld

Olivia Builds a House by Maggie Testa

Henry Builds a Cabin by D.B. Johnson

1 2 3 I Can Build! by Irene Luxbacher

Dig, Drill, Dump, Fill by Tana Hoban

Look at That Building by Scot Ritchie

Building Our House by Jonathan Bean

Architecture and Construction by Scholastic Books

Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming

How to Build a Bratchet by Daniel Errico

Under Construction by Paula Hannigan

Do you have any other books you would add to our list??

Did You Know: Building Facts

There are approximately 150+ careers involved with building a home.

A typical new home weighs in at about 339,000 pounds, or more than 150 tons.

In France, a team of 50 people have taken on an extraordinary feat : to build a castle using the very same techniques and materials used in the Middle Ages. Work on the site began in 1997 and is scheduled to take 25 years to complete!

The word skyscraper originally referred to a type of sail on a sailing ship.

The world’s largest office building by floor size is the Pentagon in Virginia, USA, with over half of its 6,500,000 square foot floor area used as offices.

Tall buildings need fast elevators, recent developments have led to elevators that can travel up to, and sometimes over, 3280 feet a minute!

Did You Know: Legos

This month at Creative World, we are learning all about building and creating with materials. One way many people learn to explore building is through play with Legos. We did some digging and found some pretty interesting facts:

• LEGO got its name when the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, took the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, meaning “play well”, and put them together – quite unaware that LEGO in Latin means … “I put together”.

• Approximately 20 billion LEGO elements (bricks) are made every year in the LEGO factory in Billund – equivalent to approximately 2 million elements an hour or 35,000 a minute.

•  A professor of mathematics calculated that there are over 915 million ways to combine six LEGO bricks.

•  Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world.

• On average there are 62 LEGO bricks for every person on earth.

• The world’s children spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.

• a production of about 306 million tires a year, the LEGO Group is the world’s largest tire manufacturer.

• Approximately 440 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured since 1949.

• When the minifigure first appeared, it was decided that its face should have only one color  yellow and that its facial features should be happy and neutral. Now the minifigure appears in many guises, including Santa Claus, Spiderman and even Steven Spielberg.

• There has been approximately 4 billion minifigures produced – making it the world’s biggest population group.

Did you use Legos when you were a child?

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