School Time Adventures

I wanted to let you wonderful people know that the month of April is "children and nature awareness month". I'm sure a lot of you already take the time to play outside every day, but I thought it would be great to be apart of the great outdoor challenge hosted by the blog 5 orange potatoes. I know the last thing you want to remember while you are playing outside is your camera, so this is the first post that I have with pics.

I think it would be great if you all want to participate by posting pics on her blog or by using the facebook fan page to post pics. Just wanted to spread the word about this fun challenge happening this month.

So I played around on the simple mac iphoto edit with these pics. (I put them in order from the most liked to least liked picture. )We played outside in the rain, which is so appropriate since this week is "April Showers bring May Flowers"!

So here is River with our falling apart umbrella as he was checking on the daffodils. (still haven't bloomed). He loves to accessorize every time we go outside, so today it was the strip beanie and blue gloves. It was raining on and off so I was glad our camera is waterproof.

We had some left over playdough from a play date a 2 weeks that worked perfect to create a playscape.

The plain colored playdough became the sand and the blue swirl became the water, 
we put it onto cardboard.

 Each day there are new people, cars, or other colored umbrellas. 
River has loved opening and closing the little drink umbrellas and he puts them into his sandwiches, drinks, and other food to "have a little party" (his words).

(We use umbrellas to block the sun to create shade, or we use
umbrellas to keep the rain/snow off us.)

This is one activity that will bring you good luck by opening an umbrella in the house! I call it the umbrella letter spin.

Materials needed....

Umbrella

Letters. We used : 4- U and 1-X, 1-G, 1-W and a few other other random letters.

(I did pick a few to review from previous weeks)

The Amazing Action Alphabet poster

1 fun child

Put all the letters inside the umbrella. As your fun child spins the umbrella (the kitchen floor worked great) sing the letter song. So I sang "U the pup" each time he began to spin the umbrella until a letter spun out of the umbrella. (Sometimes I only sang the first line, other times I needed to sing a little longer.) After the child has picked up the letter(s) that spun out of the umbrella have them place it onto the poster saying the correct sound and name.

 Yeah for letters!

I am a person who loves music! I know most people will say that they love music, but I still can sing songs I remember as a 4 and 5 years-old, yeah, yeah, yeah, you say that's not soo special. So when I was in the 1st grade my Mom went to a presentation to become a Brite Music Distributor (she has got conned into doing a lot multi-level-marketing schemes). However, I am really glad that she decided to become involved with Brite music because much of my love for learning and music can be contributed to it.

So I have made up quite a few songs as I have grown up. When I was in the 6th grade, I made up the tune on the piano and sang away. It's called, "Raindrops are falling". It goes like this...

Raindrops are falling

People are dying

Why are you still buying 

things that you don't need

While I am singing

you could be bringing

things to help each other

so why don't you please

(It's funny to read those words and realize that as a 12-year-old I didn't really know a lot of world issues and problems, but I was always acutely aware of the needs of other people.)

Then in my sophomore year of High School I wanted to raise the most money ever for the drama department! So I knew I needed a little advertising jingle in order to become the biggest success selling candy bars and laffy taffy.

Here is the candy bar song that I would perform between 3- 10 times a day depending on my customers (other classmates)...

Chocolate, chocolate, it's so good

Everybody's eatin it in your neighborhood

You eat it in the morning, you eat it at night...

Anytime you eat it, it will be alright.

So I did go on to raise like $2500 for the drama department....winning myself the "Top seller award".

Now about 13 years have passed since my candy selling days and I still like making up little random songs, but now they are preschool focused.

This week we will be focusing on the letter U, with the theme being "April Showers bring May flowers". So without further ado the Umbrella song sung to the tune of Rain is Falling All Around by Moiselle Renstrom.

Rain is falling all around

on the house tops on the ground

Rain is falling on the plants

on the grass and flowers and ants

Time to get your Umbrella out

April showers are here no doubt

pretty May flowers we soon will see

lavender, roses, and daises


p.s. I would love if you would share the songs you still remember as a kid!