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Fantastic Spring eBundle 2018

January 16, 2018 by Mama Carmody Leave a Comment

Create excitement this with this Spring eBundle of learning activities and crafts. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and pretty flowers are only some of the fabulously fun themes included. (Affiliate links included in this post.)

Ages: Preschool to Grade 2
Includes: Valentines, Spring, Easter
Sale date: January 14-23
Value: $150 on Sale for $14.95
Save 90%
33 Items

Item descriptions:

VALENTINES

14 Super Cool Valentines Day Science Activities
This ebook contains bubbly, hands-on, colorful projects that will delight kids ages 3-10. Treat your students to some of their first lessons in chemistry, thermodynamics, acids and bases, catalysts, solubility, surface tension, color mixing, and static electricity with these simple and engaging heart-themed science experiments.

Printable Valentines Day Tracing Sheets
A set of 8 Valentines Day themed tracing worksheets to download and print at home. This love themed pack of tracing sheets are designed with preschoolers working on pencil control, fine motor skills and learning letters in mind.

Valentines Day Activity Pack for Preschoolers
Looking for something to help teach your preschoolers about kindness and friendship, as well as letters and numbers?! This Valentine’s Day Activity Pack includes six super fun activities and multiple variations of each!

8 Valentines Day Adding and Subtracting Activities
These 8 activities help children practice adding and subtracting within 10. There are games, task cards, expression sorts, and more.

Valentines Day ABC Order
This Valentines Day ABC Order literacy center set is perfect for hands-on practice. Students alphabetize differentiated groups of sight words to the 1st and 2nd letters. Plus, there’s a challenge set of words for sorting to the 3rd and 4th letter.

Hands-On Valentines Pre-K Pack
This hands-on downloadable workbook is designed to help anyone teach their preschoolers (and pre-k students) this Valentine’s season. Using fun, differentiated and creative methods of learning.

Valentines No Prep First Grade Math
Celebrate Valentines with a fun math set! Work on addition, subtractions, place value, fractions, fact families, and more!

Broken Hearts Letter Matching Game
A set of A-Z letter puzzle matching cards with a Valentines Day theme!

Valentines Letter Games Bundle
These letter games are designed to have fun while practicing letter recognition. Just print, play and enjoy learning!

Nature Crafts for Kids — Fun Nature Crafts

SPRING

Bug Theme Pom-Pom Match Packet
These are perfect for preschoolers and young learners to develop fine motor skills & color recognition!

50 Nature Crafts for Little Kids
50 Nature Crafts for Little Kids is a fun book that is packed full of nature-themed crafts for your kids to enjoy throughout the year.

Spring Science Packet
Spring is the perfect time to get outside and learn about the world we live in! This spring science packet contains 10 fun and easy activities to do with your little learners. 7 of the activities contains printables for the lesson.

Spring Printables Pack
The Spring Printables Pack contains 75 spring-themed printables with activities for kids ages 2 to 7. The activities in this pack cover a range of skills, including colors, same vs. different, patterns, puzzles, fine motor, mazes, math number identification, counting, addition, subtraction and literacy letter identification, alphabetical order, phonemic awareness, word searches.

Spring-Themed, Editable Name and Word Tracing Pack
This spring-themed printable tracing pack can be customized for names, words, or numbers … a low-prep activity that is perfect for classroom or home! This is a Montessori-inspired pack to help with name recognition and writing, sight word reading and spelling, and identifying cultural spring symbols.

Flowers Word Family Picture Sort
Sort the short vowel pictures on each flower into the correct short vowel word family flower pot.

Plant Life Cycle
Plant life cycle vocabulary cards and activity sheets for preschool students.

Spring Beginning Sounds Bundle
Add these beginning sound matching cards to your spring literacy centers. Practice beginning sounds and phonemic awareness with frogs, ducks, and rainbows! Bonus Rainy Day themed rhyming match up cards also included!

Insects, Bugs, and Creepy Crawlers Yoga
Kids yoga poses that are themed to go with your favorite insects, bugs, and creepy crawlers. Included is twelve yoga cards with descriptions of how to get into the pose and 12 full sheet pictures of the yoga poses. All poses included pictures of real kids in the insect, bug, and creepy crawler themed poses!

Spring Theme Pack for Preschool & Kindergarten
This 300-page theme pack has a huge variety of activities for your spring seeds, plants, and gardening unit in preschool or kindergarten! You’ll get printable vocabulary cards and nonfiction books with real photos, emergent readers that your learners can read and color all by themselves, clip cards, beginning reading games, printable math centers, activity pages, and more.

Rainbow Activity Booklet to Teach Colours Through Hands-On Learning
Promote play-based learning with this interesting and engaging printable activity This booklet includes colouring pages, interactive activities, and bonus material that you can print off again and again!

Rainy Day Make Ten Addition Activity
Help kids learn how to add numbers to make ten with this printable rain cloud activity! Kids can color in the correct number of raindrops and attach them to their clouds to make ten!

Garden Themed Early Learning Printable Pack
This garden-themed early learning pack is great for the pre-K to K age range! With 4 games and activities, it includes a Bingo game for 4 players, cutting and pre-handwriting sheets, an I-Spy game, and a matching game! The pack is B&W so that kids can color the games in themselves.

Spring Theme Color Graphing Set
Work on colors and graphing skills together with these fun spring themed centers and activities! Use the whole class winter color graphing set to graph umbrellas during circle time, use the spring spin, color & graph printables for morning work or independent math practice and use the spring spin & graph sets for math centers.

Butterfly Life Cycle Easy Reader Books & Journal
There are four easy reader books with the life cycle words. Plus it includes life cycle bookmarks and an easy to make a journal in an easy reader book style. It also has some writing activities and reader strips that match up to the books.

Sheep Beginning Sounds Match
This Sheep Beginning Sounds Match is an engaging and hands-on way to practice identifying beginning sounds! To prep, print out the sheep and the pastures on cardstock, then cut out. Let your kids match sheep with matching pastures.

Awesome Printable Flower Activities for Kids
Get ready for the amazing season of Spring, we have some really fun and completely awesome flower activities for kids to celebrate while learning and practicing skills such as color matching, fine motor skills and so much more!

EASTER

25 Printable Easter Activities
Explore Easter with these printable easter learning activities! Cut, paste, shape, mold and manipulate as you learn!

Easter Coupon Booklet & Easter Egg Hunt Printables
Set up your own Easter Egg Hunt in minutes with these done for you clues that work in any home & use the personalized Easter Coupons as a basket stuffer or a gift!

Montessori Inspired Easter Preschool Pack
This unique Montessori inspired Easter pack is perfect to teach preschoolers language, math concepts, literacy, fine motor skills and much more. The pack is made with a mixture of real photos and gorgeous watercolor clipart giving it a realistic touch.

St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day Activity Pack
In preschool, we use the month of March to teach our students about the weather and rainbows, but it’s also a time to have fun with leprechauns, fairies and gold coins! These printable St. Patrick’s Day activities are all about rainbows and all things green and yellow, making them the perfect supplement to your weather theme or St. Patrick’s Day parties.

March ABC Order Literacy Center Set
A differentiated ABC Order literacy center set and related worksheets, all with a March theme including St. Patricks Day and more. Students alphabetize sight words to the 1st and 2nd letters. Plus, there’s a challenge set of words for sorting to the 3rd and 4th letter.

MIXED

Fun Felt Busy Box Ideas – Holiday Edition
Fun Felt Busy Box Ideas for Valentines Day, Easter, Birthdays, Christmas etc. Perfect for traveling with young kids!

Think Spring Bundle
THis bundle has 20 easy crafts, 12 printable activities and 14 coloring pages – All with a spring, Easter or St Patricks Day theme!

Don’t miss this great deal on Spring activities for your kids.

Review – Christmas on Monument Circle Indianapolis

December 10, 2012 by Mama Carmody 11 Comments

It has been several years since we headed downtown to check out the huge “Christmas tree” and decorations on Monument Circle, Indianapolis. We usually just drive around the circle, take in the sights and then move on. I am not a fan of the one way streets, the crowds and the parking situations so driving through is enough for me. But since it was 60 degrees outside, on this December 1st, and I wanted to gather information for my readers I grabbed my camera and we headed downtown for an adventure.

We did have trouble finding a parking spot and the closer you got to the Circle the worse the traffic was but we finally found an empty parking meter. Since it was after 9:00 p.m. we didn’t have to pay so that was nice.

The “tree” was just as wonderful as I remembered it but I don’t know that it was worth parking and walking around the monument. There really wasn’t a lot there. Of course there was the tree, the large toy soldiers and sailors that stood along the edge of the monument and the beautiful Nativity scene in front of Christ Church Cathedral. I believe I would have enjoyed it just as much from my car window.

Christmas Tree at Monument Circle Indianapolis

I did find two reasons that you might want to get out of the car and walk around the Circle: The Rocket Fizz Soda Pop and Candy Shop and The Chocolate Café – The South Bend Chocolate Company. Both shops were open late on Saturday evening and had plenty of tasty treats to offer.

Since I like to include a little fun learning in my activities I wanted to share a few interesting facts I found in an article by Julie Sickel, a writer with the Indianapolis Star. The title of the article is “Here are 50 Facts Relating to the Long-Running Holiday Tradition”. I am going to list a few of my favorite facts but you should read the article to find the rest of them.

1. More than six miles of electrical wire and more than two miles of garland are used for the Circle of Lights.

2. There are 52 strands with 4,784 colored lights strung from the top of the monument to its base.

3. The colors of the bulbs represent different branches of the U.S. military: green for the Army, clear for the Air Force, blue for the Navy, yellow for the Coast Guard and red for the Marines.

4. There are 26 12-foot-tall toy soldiers and sailors and 26 10-foot-tall peppermint sticks surrounding the Circle. (This would be a great counting opportunity for your kids)

5. The ceremony’s most revered annual guest is Santa Claus, who arrives after the lights are switched on.

6. The switch to light the Monument is flipped by a child 12 or younger.

7. For more than two decades, the lucky child has been chosen through a coloring contest.

8. At 284 feet tall, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument is about 21 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty and 16 feet short of a football field.

9. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument is the largest in the nation to be dedicated to the common soldier.

10. The 38-foot-tall bronze figure atop the statue is named “Victory” but also is called “Miss Indiana” by Hoosiers. She faces south to welcome soldiers returning from battle.

Here is a fun observation my daughter made when she was about 10 years old and I still see it every time we go to see the Christmas lights. (I’m going to give you some hints before I tell you what we actually saw. I want to give you a chance to see if you see the same thing we did.)

As we drove towards the Circle my daughter kept saying that she saw a certain character from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special created by Rankin/Bass. I looked all around and couldn’t find it. I thought it was a character at the foot of the tree or in a store window. As it turns out, it was an illusion created by looking at the monument through the lights. Take a look at the picture below and see if you can figure out what character we see. Leave a comment as to who you think it is. Once you have made your guess you can click on the picture to see who the character is that we see.

Do you see a character from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

If you don’t see what we saw, then click on the picture below. I have created an overlay of the character on the portion of the monument that we saw it. See if that helps you see it when you look back at the Monument picture.

So can you see him too or do my daughter and I just have vivid imaginations? If you take a drive downtown to look at the lights please leave a comment and let me know if you saw him. We usually see him as we are driving towards the Circle not once we are really close to it. Have fun enjoying the sights, lights and fun this holiday season.

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Review: Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo Review

December 19, 2013 by Mama Carmody 8 Comments

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo Review

Disclaimer: I was given 4 tickets and a parking pass to attend Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo. However, I was not influenced by the promotional materials. All opinions and insights are my own.

The temperature was approximately 34͒ F, which was double the temperature from the day before (thanks goodness). We bundled up our little Texan (my 4 ½ month old grandson) and headed out to enjoy Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo.

This was the welcoming view we received as we entered the zoo.

I couldn’t wait to get inside to see how the rest of the zoo was decorated. It was even more beautiful and magical than I remembered. My pictures hardly capture the beauty but you can at least get an idea.

One of the first animals to greet us were the seals. One of them was barking quite loudly. We walked over to take a look but he was hiding among the rocks so we didn’t get a good look at him from up top. We did get to see him swimming from underneath though.

We were waiting on some family members to show up so we decided to walk over to the gift shop to wait inside. We didn’t want the little one getting too cold. On our way, we ran into one of Santa’s reindeers.

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo: Santa's Reindeer — Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo: Santa’s Reindeer

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo: The Oceans Building at the Indianapolis Zoo

Our next stop was the Oceans’ building. It was a warm place with lots of interesting animals to interact with.

Petting sharks was a hit with the whole family (no matter what the age).

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo, Petting Sharks

We enjoyed spending time looking at the penguins; even though they seemed to be resting.

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo: Checking out the Penguins

There were so many wonderful things to see in the Oceans exhibit.

Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo: Oceans Exhibit

It was too dark for me to get a good picture of the polar bear but he was sitting right next to the window. We were able to get a good look at him.

We then walked over to the Dolphin Pavilion. I found out, from my sister, that we were supposed to have been offered tickets for the dolphin show when we went through admissions but it wasn’t mentioned, so we didn’t have tickets. My sister and her family came in after us and they were offered tickets so they got them, but then didn’t go to the show since we couldn’t. I thought that was really sweet. We did go underneath and watch the show from below. It was interesting from below too. I think it would have been nice if they would have the audio for the show running through speakers down below so we knew exactly what was going on.

It was getting late for my grandson so he got fussy, because he was ready for bed, so we cut our trip short. We are hoping to get back there this week, if the weather permits. Regardless of whether we get back this year or not, we will be back. It was beautiful and the snow made it magical. I hope you and your family gets a chance to enjoy Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo.

Snow and Lights during Christmas at the Indianapolis Zoo

You might also be interested in:

Review – Christmas on Monument Circle Indianapolis