State Resources Books - The Boxcar Children

We love books at our house and I love to seek out books both new and old to share with my children.  We are fortunate to be able to travel, mostly to see family and friends.  To get ready for a trip I hit the library for some non-fiction books to learn about the area and pull out any resources I might already have.  Once our oldest kiddo was ready for some longer stories I looked for books that featured the place we were going.  All our travel is within the United States and I thought it would be easy to pick up a few fiction books that featured a specific locale, turns out it's not as easy as I would've thought. 

So, I'm making my own list!  I've started my list with The Boxcar Children created by Gertrude Chandler Warner. 

Now, this is just my list so I might've missed a book that featured a location, especially since I didn't actually read all of these books; the list is organized by state and at the end are Washington D.C. and regions that span more than one state.  I have typically not included books about "the beach" or "in a wild west town".

State Resources Books - The Boxcar Children

Alaska: Special #12
Arizona: #52
California: #51 (San Francisco), #57
Florida: #41 (Key West),  #66 (Everglades NP), Special #20
Hawaii: #64
Illinois: Special #10 (Chicago)
Iowa: #101
Kansas: #105
Louisiana: Special #19
Michigan: Special #9
Missouri: #20 (Hannibal)
Montana: #139
New Jersey: #131
New York: #38 (New York City), Special #8 (Niagara Falls),  Special #13
North Carolina: #77
Oregon: #132
Pennsylvania: #123 (Philadelphia)
South Carolina: #54 (Charleston)
Texas: #58 (The Alamo)
Vermont: #90
Virginia: #63
Washington: #111 (Seattle)
West Virginia: #59
Wisconsin:  #98
Wyoming: #61 (Yellowstone)

Washington D.C. - Special #2
Navajo Reservation-  #37
New England - #39, Special #3
The Rockies - #71
South Sea Islands (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida) -  #6

Cute poster

Found a cute poster on flickr, but apparently I can't pin from that.  Here's the creator Krissy Venosdale's flicker site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/venosdale/

Thanksgiving Songs

I'd really like to teach JeffJeff some Thanksgiving songs this year.  I spent some time looking up songs and I've picked my favorites and divided them into categories:  Let's try these, Favorites and Maybe next year.  (The picture is one of Jeffrey's favorite Thanksgiving books.)

Let's try these

Turkey Chant
            (Tune - Military Cadence)
Gobble Gobble is the sound (repeat)
Of the turkey fat and round (repeat)
Thanksgiving Day will soon be here (repeat)
Then he'll surely disappear (repeat)



Pumpkin Pie (Tune - Peanut Butter & Jelly)
First you take the pumpkin and you pick it (pick it)
Pumpkin, pumpkin pie - yummy!  Pumpkin, pumpkin pie - yummy!
Then you take the pumpkin and you carve it (carve it)
Next you take the spices and you mix it (mix it)
You put it in the oven and you wait (you wait)
Let it cool and you eat it (eat it)

I'm A Little Turkey (Obviously - I'm A Little Teapot)
I'm a little turkey on a farm.
Here are my feathers, here is my beak.
When Thanksgiving comes I get real freaked,
Please don't eat me for your treat!

Thanksgiving Day (Tune - Farmer in the Dell)
(from Building Literacy With Interactive Charts by Schlosser and Phillips; Scholastic , 1992)
The ____ ran away
Before Thanksgiving Day.
He said, "They'll make a ____ of me
If I decide to stay!
Choices:  turkey/roast, pumpkin/pie, cranberry/sauce, bread/stuffing

Favorites

Albuquerque Turkey (Tune - Clementine)  I sang this as a child!
Albuquerque is a turkey 
And he's feathered and he's fine
And he wobbles and he gobbles 
And he's absolutely mine! 
He's the best pet you can get yet 
Better than a dog or cat 
He's my Albuquerque turkey 
And I'm awfully proud of that! 
And my Albuquerque turkey 
Is so happy in his bed 
'Cause for our Thanksgiving Dinner 
We have spaghetti instead!

Fat Turkeys Are We (Tune - Did You Ever See a Lassie?) 
Angie taught us this song last year 
Oh, gobble, gobble, gobble,
Fat turkeys, fat turkeys.
Gobble, gobble, gobble,
Fat turkeys are we.

We walk very proudly and gobble so loudly (Chorus)
We're not here for living, we're here for Thanksgiving (Chorus)
They stuff you and bake you and then they will taste you (Chorus)

Chorus:
Gobble, gobble, gobble.
Fat turkeys are we.

Maybe next year

The First Thanksgiving (Tune - Twinkle, Twinkle)
Pick the corn and pick the beans,
Pick the squash and other greens
It is harvest time you see
Come and share a feast with me.
Bring your family out to play,
We'll call this Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving Song (Tune - Row, Row, Row Your Boat)
The Pilgrims sailed away,
Far across the sea.
They came to America
So they could be free.
The Native Americans
Helped them plant the corn.
Then they shared a great big feast,
Thanksgiving Day was born!

Love me some ABC's

I stumbled upon this abecedarium from My Outdoor Alphabet, I believe they are all by Seth Neilson, and I just adored some of the images.  They have several different alphabet's available with more to come.  You can buy them from their website http://wasa.bigcartel.com/.

C is for Compass

 

N is for North Star

Y is for Yellowstone

 

 

 

K is for Kickstand



 

 

 

Count to Twelve!

First, I did not come up with this concept, it came from the website genkienglish.com, they focus on teaching English as a foreign language, mostly in Japan.  Anyways, I had been thinking about teaching a little class on numbers for my moms group when I stumbled upon this idea:

1 -----> 12 -----> 31 -----> 60

Teach numbers 1-12

• Each of these numbers has it's own unique name.  
• This might also be a good time to start referencing the time since you now have all the hours of the day memorized.

Teach numbers 13-31

• These numbers now begin to follow a set pattern (teens, twenties, thirties, etc).
• This number range allows you to "sneak" in some calendar time by pointing out that no month has more than 31 days.

Teach numbers 32-60

• Now you can count to 60 which is the number of minutes in an hour.

Teach numbers 61-100

• I haven't gotten this far with Jeffrey, but I think the next set I would do is 100.  That is how many pennies are in a dollar and it will naturally lead into more in depth discussions on fractions and percentages.

My Pintrest pictures

Here I am again posting pictures on my blog for pintrest, stupidly I forgot to save the links to give credit for the original originator of the idea for the nail polish and workbench.

This here is a beer fridge under a wine rack.  I don't know that we'll need wine rack storage but we could really use something like that for Jason's beer.  Perhaps a wine fridge would be good so we could put some of the larger beers in it as well, guess it would just depend on what we end up getting.  I really love refridgerated drawers like that though, always wanted to have one in my bedroom for pepsi and hiding the "good" ice cream in.

Stupid blog ate my picture!  Dang you auto save.  It was a crib with a tension rod between it and the wall creating about a 2 foot space for kids to have a cozy reading nook.

 These are marshmallows dipped in frosting with tootsie rolls on top - cute for a spa party or party for your little girl.

Workbench made from a nightstand.

http://feedingmykid.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/fireman-dress-up-tutorial/
This is a woman's shirt with ribbon and patches.  It also has velcro instead of buttons.  There is an iron-on ribbon similar to this that is about $8.  I'm thinking that or some duct tape would be fine.

Pinterest

So of course since I'm a big ol' joiner I'm on pinterest.  I had been avoiding it because I didn't want to become obsessed.  The more I think about it though, it's really perfect for me. I'm big on favorites links and this is just another way of organizing it but visually - you know, with pictures!  It's also easier to view than a list of links.

The only problem I've discovered is that you can't put your boards into other boards. I really like to have things very organized on my computer so normally I'd have a folder titled Travel with my various travel plans inside, but you can't do that on pintrest so instead I have boards titled Travel-Montana Summer 2013, Travel-New York Summer 2014, and so on.

Anyways, the whole reason I'm making this post is that I tried to pin something the other day and it wouldn't let me because it said the pin was linked to spam or some such thing.  I figured I'd just save the picture to my computer and then pin it from there but then realized I couldn't do that, I also can't pin from facebook which is where I would normally put a picture.  Then my "aha!" lightbulb went off and I remembered I could put the picture on my blog.

Okay, that took awhile to figure out but I've got it up now.  Anyways, I love these in wall storage ideas.  I was thinking that one this size would be perfect in a hallway for linen storage.  We lived in my grandparents home for a year and there was very little storage space.  Something like this in the hallway would've been super great for linen storage.  Oooh, I just had an idea!  This would be awesome in a family room for game storage!  It would work really well at my mom's house on the wall that adjoins the garage.  It would be a little different because it would extend into the garage but it would be nice unobtrusive storage.