It was my husband's birthday this week, he really likes reptiles, so it was just appropriate to do our first theme on reptiles and amphibians. Two birds with one stone, we could have a theme he really likes, use our craft and food items to help celebrate without too much extra work. Thoughtful? Lazy? Hard to say.
We had a ton of fun. Since it was our first week, we didn't get to spend as much time on the theme as I wanted, but a general routine will fall into place eventually.
The picture above shows the books we used. They are wonderful little books that are very informative and perfect for ages 4-8. They are all by Carmen Bredeson and set up very clearly starting with contents, diagrams and words to know.
My favorite part of these books is the simplicity and realism of the concepts. All the general parts of the reptiles/amphibians are explained in easy to follow paragraphs.
Then the realism. "What Eats Frogs." I thought these pages were very important, staying away from predators are a vital part of ever animal's life. This can lead to more discussion about habitats and camouflage. Another nice part about these books is the last page. I neglected to take a picture, but it shows the life cycle of the subject of the book. This is especially important if it is an amphibian and goes through a metamorphosis. The book didn't elaborate on the life cycle, but with the pictures and a little creativity, metamorphosis is easy to explain to a preschooler. It is lots of fun to quiz on what is a reptile and what is a amphibian. You can look at baby pictures of the species, if they look like their moms when they are born, then they are not an amphibian, since they don't go through a "big change."
Last year I decorated the house for my husband's birthday with pictures of different reptiles I had printed out. Aimee and I colored them and hung them up. I saved them and we hung them again this year. It is very fun to hang them in different places and go around and say what kind of reptile and amphibian they are. Even labeling them, so your preschooler can see the word, but we never got around to that. Here are some pictures.
The craft we choose this week was to make some paper plate snakes. We took some regular heavy paper plates and decorated them with water colors. Markers will work well also. Then I cut the snake out, by cutting the paper plate in a spiral way from the outside in. I shaped the head, and we poked pipe cleaner though the head so it could hang up. (Caution; if you have a cat this might not be the best craft. We found out just how high our cat could jump after we made these. Many of them got ripped).
The last part of the theme we did was making a cake. Aimee and I used 2 round cake pans, we made yellow cake and frosting and decorated. It was great fun to bake together and Aimee is a big fan of our new hand mixer, as am I. We were finally able to make decent frosting! Here are pictures. Be warned though, we used the round cake pans, since we didn't have a bundt pan, but a budnt pan might work better for this, as it would add a roundness to the snake. You would have to make 2 bundt pans to get some length. If you are not savvy enough, like us, to have bundt pans, cut out the center circles of the round cakes, after getting them out of the pans, then cut the main outer circle in half.
Here are our 2 cake pans. Apparently they are different sizes; this is obvious in the picture, but has taken me a year to figure out. I remember questioning it once, but now I know.
Wow that is big and beautiful. These cakes end up being very long!!! We had to use a pizza box completely folded out. Our cake recipe came from the Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book. The actual cake without frosting was so good, you will be glad to have pieces left over.
Our finished product!!! We could have done more, but I was running late for work.
Until next week!!!
Happy Themeing!!!
Tiffany & Aimee
Very creative! Love it.
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