Egyptian Dig

Jayne really enjoyed November's Little Passports package! He got Egypt and Sam and Sophia sent him a pyramid excavation kit. I have seen these in the store before and thought it might be a 5 minute project. As it turns out, it took us about 30 minutes to dig out the little quarter sized trinket. Those little buggers are really hard and the tools that come with it are not designed for cracking it at all. We had so much fun working on it though and by the end all 3 of us were digging at it, between photos. Little guy was so proud of our effort when he was finally holding his mini Sphinx!

Daddy gets a turn

It is getting smaller at this point and I am trying to get a large chunk off since we know where the trinket is at this point.

Little Guy with his Sphinx!

Homeschool Fun: Pirate

Pirate Jayne digs up doubloons

Pirate week was a blast! We read Pirate Pete several times and it is a very cute book. The pre-k pack we used this week was from Homeschool Creations. No formal worksheets this week so it was mostly play and games. Jayne dressed up and went on a pirate treasure hunt with his daddy. They followed the clues that led to his sensory bin. Now, years ago I got a game called Morgan's Revenge. We had not chosen the name Morgan yet, so it was coincidental. Anyway, the game comes with gold and silver doubloons and a top. Technically it is a gambling game but this week it was a buried treasure! Jayne had a blast digging them out and picking them up with his bug tweezers. He took some time to check them out under his magnifying glass too.

The preschool pack came with a board game  that we played every day. Jayne loves games and this one was nice and easy. We used the alphabet cards to play go fish. At the end of the week we recycled a page from a desk top calendar and put all the letters on it to make a poster for his classroom. We made the puppets from the pack and acted out the Pirate Pete story with them. We also talked like pirates all week long. After a trip to the store we came home with a very small paper bag that is now a pirate puppet.

It has gotten rather cold up here lately. Colder than I like, but I do live in Minnesota. Yesterday it was 32  degrees out when we got up. That means we are spending a lot less time outside. We still walk everywhere to get some fresh air, exercise, and quality time, but that is about the extent of it right now. To add a little physical activity we broke out our wintertime friend the Wii. We don't usually use it at all in the summer, but in the colder weather it is great. Jayne has been doing Nickelodeon Fit and having a blast with it. Here is a short video of him doing one of his favorites, hula hoop with Dora.

Homeschool Fun: Swallowed a Fly

Old lady coloring pages

We used my Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly pack this week. If you want to use the pack it is under the printables tab. It was a relatively small week. That worked out well with the holiday and our terrible to juggle schedules. Jayne enjoyed every minute of it. He loves the book and has gotten other variations of it from the library before. The worksheets went well and his tracing is improving with each day.

The main event was the old lady herself. Granted, she has been missing her fly for some time now. But lo and behold, the fly was in a sock in the laundry on Friday afternoon. She now has all her pieces. We spent lots of time singing the song and stuffing the old lady. Next week is Batman week, Jayne is more than a little excited for that one!

How absurd to swollow a bird!

What's in Your Lunch?

Pirate pack collection



School starts today for the public schools in our town. Many kids will bring their lunch boxes for that first lunch of the school year. So what is inside? I bet there will be a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit snacks, chips and crackers. There is one main thing that will be in most of those lunches, garbage! A lot of it too. When I grew up each thing I ate came packaged in some kind of plastic that ended up in the trash when I was done eating. It is one of the main reasons that I designed the lunch packs. Since we don't go to school, we use our for picnics and long car trips. Here is a clip from our listings:



"Pack your lunch box with flair with our complete lunch pack. Not only will lunch time be fun, it will also be environmentally friendly. Your set includes 1 sandwich sized bag, 1 snack size bag, and 1 coordinating napkin for complete lunch time packaging that is entirely reusable. The bags close and open easily with the traditional sandwich bag closure. The outside of each bag is 100% cotton and the interior is nylon. The napkin is 2 sided cotton. All 3 pieces are machine washable. Do not wash or dry any warmer than warm. Hot water or dryer air can melt the nylon and that’s just no good. They can also be brushed out or wiped out and reused between washings."



Halloween pack collection

 School may have started, but it is not too late to make your child's lunch the coolest, and greenest, in school. So stop by the shop and see what is available, and feel free to ask what other colors we have that are not listed yet!

thecrazyelephantboutique.com

Homeschool Fun: Camping

Putting in the "today is" card



The first week went great! We did so much fun stuff and fit in a fun birthday as well. We used the camping themed printables from Homeschool Creations this week. They were great as always. Jayne is getting better on his handwriting and we are taking more of a focus on how he makes his letters. He can trace the letter well, but he likes to follow the lines any which way. That method will not work well when he starts writing freehand. We finished up his pocket chart calendar too. The calendar has been a great too the last few weeks since we got it. We do a counting song to the date each day, he is learning about the seasons, months, and days of the week too. When school started this week, we added a word of the day to the calendar chart and ask him to go read it a few times during the day. The calendar has weather and holiday cards too. He is really enjoying all that calendar time has to offer.

The lizard is camping out

The sensory bin this week really had his creativity flowing. We did sand this week. I added some yellow beads for fireflies and some card stock pieces for him to build tents with. Jayne added a lizard. He loved making tents for his lizard and then he started experimenting with the card stock. He positioned the card stock in different ways and poured sand on it to see what would happen. When he held the card stock, the sand fell through and the card flipped up. When the card stock was in the sand at a slant the sand slid down. I am really happy at how the sensory bin concept has been working!

Jayne made the landscape with playdough

We did do one extra special thing for camping week, roast marshmallows! We did not camp out because of how bad our allergies have been, but we did get to nibble some yummy s'mores. Jayne loved it! He looked for sticks and for the first time we let him toast his own marshmallows. We stayed out past his bedtime. The dark made him nervous. Overall we had a really fun week. Next week we have the old lady that swallowed a fly that I made for him.

Jayne toasts a marshmallow with his daddy

Homeschool Fun: Hot Dogs

It was a light week since I didn't make many pages (the computer issue). It turned out to be good timing though. Jayne had a nasty cold most of the week and my allergies hit hard toward the end. Jayne really loved the sheets that I did make and I think I will add more to the collection and make it one of his school year packs. Jayne liked the cut and paste sheets the best. That boy loves cutting! He did a great job of cutting on the lines. We also had a line tracer and pattern cards, oh and a hot dog colors book. The sensory bin this time around was another big success. This week we had red beans. I put in Barbie hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, buns, and grill. Jayne got to dig through and find all the meat and grill it. We also measured how many beans his measuring spoons and cups could hold. I discovered that while he isn't good at his teens, he can count the 20s perfectly! His tiny root beer mug held 61 beans and he enjoyed getting to know some higher numbers.

I plan to share my hot dog pack with all my fans and followers once I reach 50 followers on the blog or 300 fans on our facebook page (http://facebook.com/thecrazyelephant). So, make sure to share!

Homeschool Fun: Dinosaurs

Jayne works on his sequencing puzzle

 Jayne always loves when we do dinosaurs. This time around we worked with the dinosaur unit from 2 Teaching Mommies. The dinosaurs they used were just adorable. He really loved all the worksheets and activities. He is still a huge fan of the number clip cards but also had a lot of fun doing the number sequencing puzzle and size sorting activities I have decided to add food Friday into our routine. On food Friday we will have a snack or meal that goes with our theme for the week. This week we had dinosaur mashed potatoes. Just use a cookie cutter and fill with potatoes, easy and fun. We even put his lunch on his dinosaur plate. Jayne really loved it and gobbled up his food really quick, a rare occurrence lately. We also sang If You're a Dinosaur and You Know it from The Mailbox's Day by Day Preschool Plans book. Jayne enjoyed being able to stomp around and be noisy. Over all, it was a great week. We will be spending part of today reorganizing the classroom. Jayne is very excited about it. I described what we are going to do and he thinks it will be very fun.

Jayne sorts sizes

Dinosaur mashed potatoes

Hot Dogs by Request

Jayne has developed a facination with hot dogs. He has even been telling us that he wants a hot dog cake for his birthday. While that is unlikely to happen, his request for a hotdog preschool pack is perfectly reasonable. The heat advisory this week has prevented me from getting started, but today is so much cooler and it is making me think that I could get it done over the weekend. I am going to be using clip art for most of the pages. I am also going to do a hand drawn hot dog colors book and a hand drawn color by number page. Right now I am looking at a possible 15 pages. That will be much longer than my first set. I am looking forward to Jayne's hot dog unit because I secretly like hot dogs as much as him...shhh, don't tell anyone!

Homeschool Fun: Popsicles

Jayne had so much fun with this lesson! Now that we are having a heat advisory, I am dreaming of repeating it. The topic was, as the title suggests, Popsicles! We got our great activity pages from the 2 Teaching Mommies blog. Jayne really loved playing with the pattern cards. He liked that the cards came with patterns to copy. He was able to take a pattern sheet and copy the pattern with his individual cards. I really like that about the 2 teaching Mommies preschool packs and it is something I am planning to add to my packs as I make them.

Jayne works on his clip cards



He has been showing off his Popsicle clip cards to everyone that stops by. He is really proud of himself that he can count them and mark the correct number. He is pretty sure that means he is big stuff now, and he would be right! Knowing your numbers is a great thing to be proud of yourself for. Instead of clips we use the little glass bead, stone things that you put in vases. Jayne likes to use the clear ones the best because they magnify the answer, as you can see in the pick.

Jayne uses his tongue for observation

By far his favorite activity was the Popsicle observation! He didn't quite understand what to do at first. He used his eyes to see what color his Popsicle was and if it was big or small, his ears to find out if it made a sound, his hands to see if it was hard or soft, and his nose to see if it smelled good. The best part of course was using his tongue to see if it was sweet, salty, or sour. We have done observations of all kinds of things since. On our vacation we observed tables and food and anything else we could thing of. Jayne has so much fun doing it. It is so easy to do and it helps him to think about the things in his world. I love it!

Homeschool Fun: Happy Fourth

I hope everyone is having a great time celebrating the fourth of July! We had a blast doing all kinds of holiday events and also got in some homeschooling fun.

Jayne spent some time doing firework tracers. He started at the firework and when he got to the explosion he made all kinds of fun sound effect and motions to portray the fireworks going off.

He did many patterns with his firework pattern cards too. He is starting to get the whole pattern thing. We even did some harder patterns too and I showed him how you can go back and look at what came after the last card the last time and that helped him a lot.

He really enjoyed graphing too. It was his first graphing experience and he loved taking turns to roll the dice. He liked coming up with interesting ways to mark the boxes too.

Jayne is so excited to start "official" school in the fall. We have found some really great preschool packs online and I have made some to go with his mailbox curriculum as well. He was happy that I found the fourth of July preschool pack at http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/06/4th-of-july.html. It gave him a taste of what is to come and I think it is going to be great!

We are still working on Head of the Class this summer and doing lots of trips to the library. The library is also having 6 presentations for different countries this year that we have been going to. Jayne loves getting a sticker for his little passport and there is usually a candy from the country. Last week was about Germany and the week before was about Russia.

My First Artfire Collection

Well, obviously, not the first one I have made. I have posted many of my own. This is the very first one I have been featured in, that I didn't make! It is a really nice one too : )

Ocean Sunset

Curated By: biddysbeads

ArtFire.com

Vintage Fashion

Brand New at The Crazy Elephant

We have a new addition to the merchandise family at The Crazy Elephant! They are pantiliner packs. I have been using my own for a while now and I finally have the first one for sale. Now you can tote your little peanut pantiliners in style! This little pack is a great way to conceal your spare liner in your purse or contain your used one till you get it to the laundry basket. Each pantiliner pack is made with a cotton outer layer and nylon on the inside. Simply fold you liner in thirds and slide it inside the pack. It makes a package size about the same size as a traditional use and toss liner but is so much more fun!

Get Active

In an effort to get people moving in this cooling season, The Crazy Elephant is kicking off Get Active a digital walk-a-thon. Participants will be entering in their actual walked miles or miles travelled through anyform of aerobic activity and digitally and collectively walking from Minnesota to Paris. The project is taking place on Facebook and will end when a grand total of 4206 miles have been walked. All participants will be recieving a 10% off coupon for http://artfire.com/users/thecrazyelephantboutique and 1 lucky winner will be getting a free lunch set of their choice. If you would like to join in on the fun, just visit the facebook page and become a fan here.