With summer in full swing, I was looking for some good preschooler summer books to share with the kids.  I felt like I hit the jackpot when I came across Bats at the Beach.

First, it’s about bats — which earns me bonus points with my son.

Second, it is a really cute book!  As the sun goes down, the bats prepare for their trip to the beach.  The night is full of playing in the sand, roasting marshmallows (bat-style), and singing campfire songs, all written in a lovely rhyming scheme.

The kids both loved the book immediately.  And I couldn’t wait to have a little fun with a few Bats at the Beach book activities.

I drew some simple pictures to represent 5 different parts of the story.  Then I had them put the pictures in the order that they happened in the book. 

Next, we dished out some bugs for our bat picnic.

They had fun rolling the die to see how many bugs to dish up.  I added the tongs to make it a little more interesting and to help work those hand muscles to help with writing skills down the line.

My daughter asked if we could make bat masks… Time to get crafting!

Looking for other activities for bat books?  Check out the fun we had with Stellaluna!

The post Bats at the Beach — Book Activities first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Spring is here!

And that’s the name of one of the books we had fun with this week: Spring Is Here!: A Story About Seeds (Affiliate link).

Ants are the main characters in this cute book.   And what do ants like more than a picnic?

We started our fun by having lunch picnic-style (inside because the temps are still way too cold outside).

Then we read the book.  Three times.

The 3 year-old loved how each activity the ants did rhymed with one of the ant’s names.  He giggled non-stop.  (Good thing we waited until we were done with the red Kool-Aid before I read!)

The book deals with some seeds the ants find and plant.

After waiting patiently, and having plenty of spring rain, the seeds grow into beautiful flowers.

We have our own set of seeds that we have been patiently waiting to turn into flowers.  We measured their growth and made sure they had plenty of water.

Then we hit the great outdoors for a spring scavenger hunt.  I gave each preschooler a picture list of some spring items to find, such as daffodils starting to poke through the ground and buds on the trees.

They had fun hunting for each item on the list.  The toughest one to find?  Bugs.  It was just too chilly to spot many of the little critters today.

What ways have you been welcoming spring?

The post Preschooler Book Activities for Spring first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

If you have multiple children, it’s inevitable.  At some point one of them will feel like (and probably even say) that you love their sibling more.  That’s what’s been going on here.  My baby girl has been feeling like I might just love her little brother more.

Thankfully we stumbled upon the book Most Loved Monster.

If you haven’t read the book before, Momma Monster has little monsters who all want to know who she loves the most.  The book focuses on the fact that all her little monsters are special to her because of how different they each are.  I couldn’t wait to use it to reinforce the fact that I love both of my little ones and that they are both special in their own ways.

Activities to go with Most Loved Monster:

The first thing we did I actually came up with spur of the moment.  My youngest had all his stuffed animal “babies” on the chair with him as we read, and I used them as a learning tool.  Taking two stuffed animals at a time we talked about what was different about them.  We talked about what they looked like, where they’d each live if they were real, what they’d each eat…everything that was different.

And then I asked him which one he loved.  Of course he loved each and every one of them.  After a couple rounds with his animals, my oldest went running off to bring a few of her own.  Since neither of them have just one special stuffed animal, we were able to talk about how they love all their “babies” even though they are all different.

Then we checked out the snowflakes they made a few days ago.  I explained to them that in nature no two snowflakes are the same.  The same was true for all their paper snowflakes.  And yet they are all pretty.

I probably didn’t need to do the snowflakes with them after our impromptu look at the stuffed animals, but I wanted to use the opportunity to also talk about how just one snowflake on the door would not have been as pretty as the entire collection — that it took all the different snowflakes together to make it as beautiful as it is.

By then they needed something more hands-on to do, so we headed to the Play-Doh.  We’ve used random objects to make Play-Doh Monsters before, but today I wanted to use our often forgotten Potato Head pieces to build some wacky creatures.

They had fun adding multiple eyes, arms, mouths, etc. to create their own funny monsters.  And we talked about how each of the monsters, although different, were fun to play with and interesting to look at.

Most Loved Monster and the activities we did to go with the book helped ease my little girl’s mind.  She no longer is worried that I might love her little brother more.  And, just in case there is any lingering doubt in her mind, I plan on telling her every night just how much I love her.

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