Happy Halloween

**Last two Day of the Dead post will appear tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!!

Pay it Forward

One of my favorite blogs, The Activity Mom, invited three of her readers to participate in a project called Pay it Forward. I, of course, wanted to participate and she kindly sent me some fun items in the mail. First, I received several beautiful monogramed cards.

I also received ABC and shape cards to play the fishing game. D has had SO much fun with these cards.

This day we tied a string to the magnetic letter D (his favorite) and "fished" for the "vocales" or vowels. He has created many other games to use his "peces."

A big thank you and a hug to the Activity Mom. If you ever need a great idea of a project or learning activity to do with your child, visit this blog. She is a former teacher with some of the best activities out there.

Would you like to play along?

•Be one of the first three to leave a comment on this post, and I'll send out a little something to you.

•Then you "pay it forward" to three others. That's the only rule!

•Don't forget to leave a way to contact you!

Toys my children ACTUALLY play with.

**Sorry for the poor condition of the post. I tried to fix it but no luck. It looks fine when I edit it but the spacing is weird when I publish it. :(

*** If you want to join in, read the post here and then link up to the MckLinky below. It will be open for a couple of days. If you do not have a post ready to go this week, I will be posting a new one each Thursday. It doesn't have to be a new post, an OLD POST about a toy that your child loves would be fine! Also, post or email me if you have a question about a toy that you do not own but are considering buying so that we can look for someone to give you a review of it.

For example, I have two little boys so it is very hard for me to decide what to buy my five year old niece. I would love some suggestions.

Today's choice for Toys that My Child Actually Plays with is Mr. Potato Head. I originally bought this toy a year ago to use to teach body parts in my Mommy and Me Spanish classes that I hold in my house (which worked very well by the way.) Since then it has been played with MANY times both by my boys and all of my son's friends that come over for playdates.

Pros: 1. The basic set is pretty inexpensive.

2. You can buy addtional sets with different themes such as policeman or vampire.

3. Good for language development. Besides the obvious body part vocabulary, D uses his Mr.Potato Head's to make up stories.

4. There are many uses for the Mr. Potato body parts. We have used them to make Playdoh people and a Mr. Calabaza Head (seen below).

Cons:

1. Depending on how many you own, there can be LOTS of pieces.

M recieved a couple more for his birthday so now we have several.

2. If you are a creative Mommy like The Adventures of Bear you could save yourself some money and make your own.

Toys that we are interested in: I am looking for some board games that would be appropriate for my soon-to-be four year old.

Día de los Muertos- Decorations

When the boys get older and can better understand the significance of Day of the Dead, we plan to make an actual "ofrenda" in our house to honor the memory of our loved ones that have passed away. This year we will simply take out old photographs and talk to the boys about our grandmothers and light a candle in rememberance. We have also put up decorations around the house that are Day of the Dead related along side our Halloween decorations. We are truly a bicultural family. :)

Skulls and skeletons are a very important symbol of Day of the Dead. Beside the fact that they obviously represent death, they are also shown smiling or doing day to day activities (like riding bicycles or playing a guitar. In this way, they are showing that death is not something to be feared but it is simply part of life. I drew some skulls from looking at different pictures of the internet and D and I painted them with water colors.

Cempasuchil or marigolds are an important symbol of Day of the Dead. The bright colors of these flowers and the powerful scent are supposed to help lead the spirits of your deceased loved ones to your home. As luck would have it, I have an entire garden full of marigolds this year so D and I glued them to a piece of paper that I cut out in the shape of a cross. Many of the people who celebrate Day of the Dead are Catholic. Most "ofrendas" include religious symbols such as crosses.

Finally we made and decorated with "papel picado" or cut paper. You have probably seen these at a Cinco de Mayo or Christmas celebration or even at a Mexican restaurant. They are a very common way to decorate in Mexico. For Day of the Dead, the images cut of the paper are in the shape of skulls or skeletons.

We also made our own simple form of "papel picado" made of a tissue paper. You can find the instructions to make them here. I forgot to take a picture of D making them. :( Basically you fold a piece of tissue paper like you are going to make a snowflake. Cut out little triangles and other shapes in the folded paper. When you unfold it, you have a design. String them together and hang them on the wall.

Here is a wall in our kitchen decorated for Day of the Dead.

I hoping that you are enjoying learning about Day of the Dead. If you make any of these projects or have any ideas of other projects that we can do, please let me know.

Día de los Muertos- What my child is reading.

This week's addition of What my child is reading will focus on Day of the Dead related books. If you would like to learn more about Day of the Dead click here.

Pablo Remembers

This was the favorite book of the week. Pablo Remembers is about a little boy and his family in Mexico getting prepared for a Day of the Dead celebration. The year before Pablo's grandmother passed away and they are going to build an altar to honor her. The family first goes to the market place to buy the items that they will cook and put on the family's altar. I used this book to show D what a typical Day of the Dead celebration consist of. The family cooks tamales, buys Dead bread (I will talk about this later in the week) and calaveras de dulce or sugar skulls, and builds a beautiful altar with photos of the deceased, candles, flowers, and all of the items that his grandmother loved while on Earth. Finally, the family gathers at the cemetery to decorate the tombstone with flowers and pay their respects. This book is entirely in English and a bit advanced for a pre-schooler. However, I would recommend it to a parent who wants to learn more about Day of the Dead and then use the pictures to explain the celebration to the child.

Day of the Dead

The illustrations alone in this book are worth checking it out. This is another book that takes you through the preparations for Day of the Dead. It is mostly in English with a few words in Spanish that are easy to figure out the meaning.

Calavera Abecedario

This book takes you through the letters of the alphabet in Spanish using beautiful artwork and skeletal characters. There is a glossary to help you understand the words but I do not think that you will need to use it much if you look at the illustrations.

If you want to find out what others are reading this week head over to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Día de los Muertos-Day of the Dead

It is important to my husband and I that our sons grow up not only bilingually, but also biculturally. That is why we have decided to celebrate Halloween and Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. What is Day of the Dead? It is nothing like Dawn of the Dead as my high school students guess every year. (no zombies!) In fact, Day of the Dead celebrations more closely resemble Memorial Day in the United States than Halloween. To understand this holiday you must first understand how the people of Mexico's view of death differs from the view of death in the United States. In the United States we generally fear and do not want to talk about death. In Mexico, death is not the scary part, but being forgotten after we pass away IS scary. Therefore, every year our friends and family who have died are remember and honored for two days during the celebration of Day of the Dead.

Click here for a simple list of facts about Day of the Dead provided courtesy of the Smithsonian.

If you would like more detailed information about the history and customs of Day of the Dead, click here.

If you are interested in learning more about Day of the Dead to teach your child (or just for yourself) check back each day this week. This is the planned schedule of post for the week:

Monday- General facts about Day of the Dead

Tuesday- Books that we are reading about Dead of the Dead.

Wednesday- Crafts/Decorations

Thursday- Toy post with MckLinky(not Day of the Dead related.) Click here to find out more.

Friday- Day of the Dead activities to do with your child.

Saturday- Food of Day of the Dead

Calabaza- Marker Holder

I love to pull items out of the recycle bin and repurpose them. We keep our crayons and markers in old yogurt containers. For Halloween, we painted one of them orange and I drew on the outline of a jack-o-lantern face. D painted the face with a q-tip and black paint. The best part is that after Halloween we can put it back in the recycle bin. :)

United Nations Day- Traveling around the world at the dining table

Tomorrow is United Nations Day. I always remember this date because it is also my birthday. :)

I posted this project a little while ago but I thought that it would be a good project to do if you would like to "celebrate" United Nations Day. If the weather holds up we are going to an international festival this weekend. I love to share my love of other countries and cultures with my boys.

I have been a high school Spanish teacher for six years now. When I was pregnant with D, I took a group of students on a trip to Mexico. (When we starting planning the trip, I was not pregnant. That little surprise happened after it was too late to cancel the trip. I even climbed to the top of a pyramid four months pregnant. :) Anyways, I haven't been on any more trips lately, but I still get the travel magazines from several companies. I always give them to D to look through since they have wonderful pictures of places from around the world. When he was done looking at the last magazine, I cut out the pictures and glued them to a piece of butcher paper to make a table cloth. For each meal, I would ask D where he wanted to eat (China, España, Inglaterra, etc.) and he would put his plate on that place. The pictures made for great conversations all week.

Learning Through Love

Susana at My Family, My Forever has started a new weekly link-up called Learning Through Love. I am excited to participate. This week was very busy since we spent most of it out of town playing and visiting my parents. Most of our learning involved the outdoors since my parents have a huge back yard. We played in the leaves, hunted for bugs, collected acorns and rocks, and played in the mud. We also found time to visit another pumpkin patch. Here are a few pictures of our fun (and learning).


D is looking for the perfect pumpkin.
M loved to roll around the ground and get VERY dirty. That's my boy!
M was fascinated with the leaves.
My niece is looking at a praying manthis that we found in the apple tree. Can you see it?

Toys my children ACTUALLY play with.

*** If you want to join in, read the post here and then link up to the MckLinky below. It will be open for a couple of days. If you do not have a post ready to go this week, I will be posting a new one each Thursday. It doesn't have to be a new post, an old post about a toy that your child loves would be fine! Also, post or email me if you have a question about a toy that you do not own but are considering buying so that we can look for someone to give you a review of it. For example, I have two little boys so it is very hard for me to decide what to buy my five year old niece. I would love some suggestions.

Today I am posting the third edition of Toys my children ACTUALLY play with where we can share our children's favorite toys. Click here to see the first edition and here for the second addition.

Lincoln Logs

Lincoln Logs are a recent addition to our most-played-with toys list. My husband found a bucket of these fun toys at a garage sale for $10 about six months ago. At the time, D did not show much interest. He would quickly become frustrated and would want me to build him something just so he could knock it down. This was not my idea of fun and the Lincoln Logs went back in the closet. A couple of weeks ago I decided to pull them out and give my now almost four year old another chance. Since then my son has played with his Lincoln Logs daily. He now has the dexterity and patience to place the log in the correct position to make a house, a barn, a castle, or a tall tall tower.

Pros: 1. Like most blocks or building toys, it allows for a lot of creativity.

2. The logs seem to be very durable and strong. Our logs have slammed against the hard kitchen floor several times without damage.

3. Depending on the set that you buy, it may come with pioneer people and other pioneer gear (this is the one that we have) or a train and train tracks (this is the one my niece has and you can see above.)

Cons: 1. The little brother factor. Two problems: comes with small pieces for M to eat and M feels the need to destroy whatever his brother has built. (I don't know where he learned it from.)

2. It comes with A LOT of pieces. I mean A LOT of pieces. If you have a child who is reluctant to pick up his toys, this may drive you crazy. I suggest that you only offer the child a few logs at a time to save your sanity.

3. Prices vary with each set and some can be very expensive. Here is a link to a page with some of the options.

Toys that we are interested in:

This one is not actually for me but I saw a recent discussion on another site asking about the Jumpstart Wii. Does anyone have experience with this toy that you can share?

Árbol de Halloween (Halloween Tree)

**Don't forget to link up to Toys my kids ACTUALLY play with tomorrow!

This last weekend I was lucky enough to spend some time with my favorite little girl in the world, my niece. As usual, Tia (as she calls me) had some fun activities planned. One afternoon while M was napping, we made Halloween trees. This activity gave the kids a lot of tracing practice. First, the kids traced my hand and forearm to make the tree. Then they traced a cup to make the moon and I traced their hands to make the ghost. After we cut them out and glued them to a piece of black paper, my niece wanted to add more so she made a pumpkin and I made an owl. She was very happy with the results. D's picture is last. He decided to make 2 moons, a scary faced ghost, and run away before I could take his picture. Boys and girls are SOOOO different.

Camión de Bomberos

After our trip to the firestation, D wanted to make a firetruck. I found some inspiration here from Susana at My family, My forever and their fire safety week study. The ladder is made out of a cut-up drinking straw. D came up with the idea of using the foam stickers as lights and sirens and aluminum foil for the "partes brillantes" (shiny parts.) Very clever. I wanted to add a fireman and hose but D was done. Maybe another day. :)

Spanish vocabulary below.

firetruck- el camión de bomberos

firemen- los bomberos

ladder- la escalera

siren- la sirena

fire- el incendio

Estacion de Bomberos (Firestation)

Hace unas semanas fuimos a la estacion de bomberos con un grupo de amigos. A D le fascinan los bomberos. (Va a ser un bombero para Halloween.) Aqui hay algunas fotos de la excursion.

A few weeks ago we went to visit a firestation with some friends. D is fascinated with firemen. D is going to be a fireman for Halloween. Here are some photos of the trip.

Toys my children ACTUALLY play with.

*** If you want to join in, read the post here and then link up to the MckLinky below. It will be open for a couple of days. If you do not have a post ready to go this week, I will be posting a new one each Thursday. Also, post or email me if you have a question about a toy that you do not own but are considering buying so that we can look for someone to give you a review of it. For example, I have two little boys so it is very hard for me to decide what to buy my five year old niece. I would love some suggestions.

Today I am posting the second edition of Toys my children ACTUALLY play with where we can share our children's favorite toys. Click here to see the first edition.

I am going to talk about two Leap Frog toys. My sons and I are big fans of Leap Frog toys. It is very difficult to find quality bilingual toys but Leap Frog has recently come out with several. The first of our favorite toys is the Leap Frog Fridge Farm Magnetic Animal Set.

Your child mixes and matches the animal pieces to make a correct animal or create a silly mixed-up animal. The child knows whether or not the animal is correct or not by the song that it sung when you push the button.

Pros- 1. This toys is DURABLE. I can't tell you how many times the boys have dropped (or thrown it) onto the hard kitchen floor.

2. The boys always giggle at the silly songs for the mixed-up animals.

3. This toy comes in either English only or bilingual. The bilingual version has an extra button to switch between English or Spanish.

4. There are two volume settings.

Cons- 1. You have to keep track of the pieces. Ok, this is our fault. We have misplaced a couple of the pieces over the last three years so most of the animals that we make are the mixed-up kind. :)

The second favorite toy today is Baby Croki (Spanish version) or Baby Tad (English version). We bought this little frog for D almost four years ago and it is now getting a lot of playtime with M.

Pros- 1. The sounds and music are pleasant. Each of the shape buttons on his chest sing a different song. We, of course, own the Spanish version and I like the traditional songs that it plays.

2. It teaches color and shape words.

3. The frog's right hand has a button that plays up to 5 minutes of soft wordless music. When D was a baby, he would fall asleep to the music.

Cons- 1. The body is hard and stiff so it is not a cuddly toy.

2. If it is in the child's bed at night and the child accidently touches it, it speaks. I know this because D's crib was in our bedroom for a LONG time and I was often awaken to "Estoy aquí!" (I'm here!)

A toy that I am interested in: Anyone have My First LeapPad Learning System? If so, what do you think of it?

Things Kids Say Thursdays

I recently found a great blog called Mudpies for Mommy. She is hosting a MckLinkey on Thursdays in which you keep track of and then post the funny things your kids say. Up until each kiddo was about 18 months I would write down every new word they learned and then I stopped because I am just too busy to keep up (and they talk all of the time.) :) I love this idea because it will remind me to write down the hilarious things that I do not want to forget.

M: About the only thing he is saying right now is "NO." No, when I want to change him. No, when I want to bathe him. No, when it is time to go to bed. You get the idea.

D: I will write his exact words and then translate them since we only speak Spanish at home. D was playing with his trucks and I was trying to join in. "No mami. No puedes hablar con mi camión porque solo habla francés. Como se dice "vroom, vroom" en francés?" No, mommy. You can't talk to my truck because he only speaks French. How do you say "vroom, vroom, in French?

That's my boy! :)

StART- Lodo, lodo, y más lodo (Mud, mud, and more mud)

We checked My Colors, My World Mis Colores, Mi Mundo out of the library again because we liked so much. This is a beautiful bilingual book in English and Spanish. It is about a little girl who lives in the desert so her entire world seems brown. She looks closely and finds all of the beautiful colors around her.




In one part of the book, the little girl makes mudpies and decorates them with bright orange marigolds. Since we have had rain almost daily for a month, we have a yard full of mud just begging to be played with. Here is one of D's mudpies and other fun in the mud. It looks a little gross but they, of course, had a blast!

Upcoming MckLinkey for Toys my children ACTUALLY play with

I hate it when I buy a toy for my boys (especially if it cost a lot), it gets 5 minutes of playtime and then it is another dust collector in our toy room. If you did not see my post last week Toys my children ACTUALLY play with, I reviewed one of my son’s favorite toys. I have received a lot of positive feedback and requests to participate so I have decided to make this a weekly post through Christmas on THURSDAY. This THURSDAY(and each THURSDAY after that) I will review one or more of my son’s favorite toys and open up a MckLinkey for anyone who wants to join in. Here is how you can participate.

1. Blog about your child’s favorite toy or toys and give an honest opinion about it. If you will notice in my post last week I talked about not only the pros but also the cons of that toy. If you missed them last week, The Activity Mom did a wonderful post here about several of her son’s favorites and Elise at Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds wrote a post here about a board game that I have never heard of but will now look for.

2. Link your blog up to my MckLinkey so that we can shared ideas and maybe help each other out on our Christmas shopping.

3. Post or Email questions about toys that you do NOT own but are considering buying so that we can look for someone to give you a review of it. For example, I have two little boys so it is very hard for me to decide what to buy my five year old niece. I would love some suggestions.

Toys my children ACTUALLY play with.

**** I have added a Mcklinky below if you would like to join us and share your favorite toys. We do a new toy every week so join us for the fun and share the toys your child ACTUALLY plays with this Thursday!

When my first son was born about 4 years ago, my husband and I thought that we needed to buy out Toy's R US on a weekly basis. I am pretty sure that they saw a spike in sales in 2006! With time and a tighter budget, we got smarter and much more particular about the toys that we would buy. Now every time I pick out a toy for the boys I give it the time vs. money test meaning how much time/fun can we get out of this for the price. I came up with the idea for "Toys my children ACTUALLY play with" this rainy (again) afternoon when I asked my son what he would like to play with. The answer, not surprisingly, was his bucket of dinosaurs. We bought this bucket of dinosaurs for about sixteen dollars for D's birthday last December at Toys R US. For the hours and hours and HOURS of playtime this toy has provided, I would definately say that it has been worth the money. Other more expensive toys have been collecting dust on the shelf for months while the dinosaurs have lots of playtime as they migrated to the ocean (our bathtub) or to the great desert (our sandbox.)

With Christmas (a.k.a shopping season) quickly approaching, I thought that it would be fun to share toys that we like (and do not like) with each other. If you want to participate, let me know. I will be posting a different toy each week, at least until Christmas.

Animal Planet Big Bucket of Dinosaurs

Pros:

1. Comes with 14 dinosaurs of different colors and sizes. (D can name them all! :)

2. Comes with two volcanos which make for good imaginative play.

3. Dinosaurs are very durable. Like I said, they have stood up to water, sand, and the occasional volcanic eruption at our house.

4. The bucket is very handy for keeping the dinosaurs together.

Cons:

1. The trees fall apart and leave small pieces that little brothers can eat.

2. The mat is made of thin plastic and even though it has not torn, it is very wrinkled.

Overall: I think that for the price, it is a good deal. If you bought that many dinosaurs of the same quality, it would cost you a lot more.