February Theme: Fruits & Vegetables

We started our monthly theme a day early. We went to the library and checked a bunch of new books:
* Vegetables by Emily Green
* Green Beans by Elizabeth Thomas
* Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
* Apples, Apples, Apples by Nancy Wallace
* Seeds, Seeds, Seeds by Nancy Wallce
* I Eat Vegetables! by Hannah Tofts
* I Eat Fruits! by Hannah Tofts

I am really enjoying Nancy Wallace as a kids author. She wrote Paperwhite, which we read last month and did several of the things she mentioned in that book. I hope she has written a lot of books. We will do many of the items she mentions in Seeds, Seeds, Seeds. I think we save the stuff in the apples book for the fall, as they are more appropriate for then since we would need to go apple picking.

Last night we went grocery shopping to buy a bunch of fruits & vegetables. We are going to be trying several new things and we will be saving the seeds from many of them so that we can add them to a poster we will create (idea from the Seeds book). Plus we get to try new things and talk about all the fruits & veggies & their parts as we cook and eat them.

I need to look up some new songs to teach her that talk about fruits & veggies. She really enjoyed the snowman/rabbit song we learned last month.

We will make a collage of fruits & veggies and we're going to be doing a lot of cooking and eating. Yum! The other thing we are going to do this month is grow alfafa sprouts. I bought some seeds form the natural foods store we go to.

I am sure I will print off some coloring sheets. I have one already to use when we need too. I plan to do the color change celery experiment. She will think that is kinda neat I believe. And we;ll make some crafts with dry beans, count & sort dry beans as well. I also think I will try making stamps out of potatoes (I've never done that before) so we can do a stamping art project.

Some songs I found online:

Two Big Lemons (Sung to: This Old Man)
Way up high, in a tree (hold hands up as high as possible)
Two big lemons smiled at me (put hand on cheeks smile)
So I shook that tree with all my power; (Pretend to shake a tree)
Down came the lemons, whoa, they were SOUR!! (make sour face)

Five Little Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate, (hold hands up)
The first one said "oh my its getting late," (hands on cheeks)
The second one said "there's a chill in the air," (hug self)
The third one said "but we don't care," (shrug)
The fourth one said "we're ready for some fun," (jump)
The fifth one said "lets run, run, run," (run in place)
So woo went the wind, and out went the lights, And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight (sit down).

Red is an Apple
Red is an apple
Yellow is the sun
Blue is the sky
And purple is a plum
Orange is an orange
Green is a tree
Black as the sky
I know my colors as you can see!

Plus, we have Valentine's Day this month, so we'll do some things rlated to that.
Down came the lemons, whoa, they were SOUR!! (make sour face)