Poodlums

Let me preface this by saying I bought a CD nothing was given to me to write this post. I enjoyed it so much I want to share with you all.

Anne E. Howard and Jason Wright are poodle owners with aspirations of their poodles, Murry & Dina, being service dogs hence the name The Poodlums. They are married musicians but also board certified music therapists. Better than any child music group on tv (in my opinion). I actually cried (yep thank goodness for sun glasses) it was so beautiful and touching & Ava was listening, following direction and having fun. I hope to see them in person a few more times while I'm in California & I hope they come out with a DVD.

 Yeah yeah Ava enjoyed watching & singing along but more importantly ::snicker:: I loved it too. They are fun, funny, expressive, engaging oh I could go on. They sing about numbers, letters, science & etc in Spanish & English. These two NEED to have their own show I would so watch them. Ava (and I) had so much fun singing along that when it was over she made up a song about them it goes like this "Poodlums are people, people who like animals, they are good guitar players and know the alphabet, they are fun" ::clap clap clap::

Visit their website http://www.thepoodlums.com/ for cd & upcoming shows. To share a bit from their "about you" page:   

MISSION STATEMENT: The Poodlums aim to provide high quality, educational music experiences to children with and without special needs and their families, and to educate the community on the benefits and importance of music as a tool to optimize learning, and as a means of creative artistic expression that connects each of us to our own humanity and thus to one another. 

Library Reading Programs

FREE FREE FREE 

I'm all about free activities

Check if your library has reading programs, ours has summer reading programs for age 0-18.
This year was titled Catch the Wave. They provided fun prizes when number of books were read (50 pages counts as one book if reading a long one, for older kids, obviously no way am I reading Ava 50+ pages for one book. Can you say attention span? Me not her) Read 5 we got a pencil and notebook, 10 a beach ball, 15 a water bottle, 20 a cute t shirt.

We read the following books (all new to us)
Five Little Chicks by Nancy Tafuri
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turnaround (One of Ava's favorites, she made her teddy bear do the actions :)
Dora's Sleepover
Betsy B. Little by Anne McEvoy
Sleep Tight Little Mouse
The Sheep Made a Leap
Cold Little Duck Duck Duck
I love My Pirate Papa by Laura Leuck (Sweet Sweet Sweet this is my favorite)
Pat A Cake
The Alphabet Atlas
Good Night Harry
The Jazzy Alphabet
Who Likes Rain
Time To Get Out
Skippyjon Jones and The Big Bones
Noodled Lou
Dora & The Unicorn King
A Birthday for Cow
Where is Baby Jaguar?
A Dozen Ducklings Lost & Found

Now our summer program is over but we are lucky that our library also provides story-time and crafts.This is where Ava has gotten her love for Ring around the Roses.

Puppet fun

a new friend

Fun at the Local County Fair

Every year the local county fair comes to town and with it brings smiling faces of the kids when they realize that they are going to get to go...an afternoon of petting a thousand different animals...eating gyros, cotton candy,chili fries and funnel cake...red velvet funnel cake yum...riding rides and being creeped out by the carnies... what could be better?

To be frugal try some of our helpful hints:

• Check the fair schedule.  They generally will promote a day of discounted admission prices.
• Eat lunch before you go so that you can save your pocket change for that red velvet funnel cake.
• Buy the ride bracelet if your kids will be riding rides a lot.  If not pick out one to two rides buy the individual tickets and walk away.
• Bring your own drinks.

Pick Me Up Tuesday

Snake and Sassy begins with S

When Learning Becomes Play

Ava has known her shapes and colors for a while so I decided it was time to work on the alphabet. She calls lowercase g and any case s a snake so that got me thinking. I busted out some sidewalk chalk and went to town drawing out an alphabet snake.  What started as a learning activity became the most fun we've had in a while.  

Ways to mix it up:

• Have the child trace the letters
• Draw upper and lowercase letters
• Sound them out  
• Throw a rock on a letter like Hopscotch then have them hop to the letter and  yell it out
• Have the child come up with words that start with the cooresponding letter
• Make it a shape or number day instead of alphabet 

We had so much fun!