Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: Littles Learning Link Up: March 13, 2018- Shamrock Puppies {A Littles Learning Link Up Highlight}

Each month you will find:

A seasonal round-up (usually toward the beginning of the month)
Posts where I share what I have been up to with my early elementary children (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

What have we been up to?

We have been happily chugging along in our My Father's World Creation to the Greeks curriculum here in our home. In our Bible reading we are up to the time of the Judges. We've read about Gideon and Samson and Samuel. We read the story of Ruth who lived in the time of the judges. And we have just read about Saul being made king. At the same time we have started learning a bit about the early early Greeks, the Aegean civilization. We learned about the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, we read about Theseus and the Minotaur and the Trojan War. We have just started reading The Children's Homer, plus in our bedtime storytime we are reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with our MFW science lessons. At this rate we will be doing science through the summer. Same for the art and music.

We did finish our Ancient Egypt Timelines from Home School in the Woods and are going to be playing the Tomb Dash! game that we also received for review. It is a wonderful review of Ancient Egypt. I'm thinking of getting their Ancient Greece timeline as well, plus I think there is a file folder game. I'm going to have to check that out.

One of the reasons we are falling behind in some of our MFW subjects is that, once again, we have lots of fun review products (which I will share about below). Of course, the children have also been enjoying the snow we've been getting.

For our preschool co-op class, I have moved past the winter projects. Last week we made a Shamrock Puppy and this week we will begin working on an end-of-year poster. This week's craft will be a rainbow for St. Patrick's Day. Then we will add some flowers for the first day of spring, and the next week we will finish it up with some butterflies (most likely).

The Shamrock Puppy was one of the crafts that was a part of last week's St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Fun Round Up. There were 70 different shamrock ideas, from crafts to hands-on activities and printables. I thought the puppy was so cute, and while Tabitha was helping me get one ready to show the children at co-op, she did say she could definitely see how the shamrock looked like a puppy.

The original Shamrock Puppy can be found over at Jinxy Kids. As usual, I tweaked it a bit to work for me. I did use her shamrock template, but I made it quite a bit bigger than hers was. When I first saw the craft, I thought it was going to be a big puppy, but when I clicked on the template, I realized the finished product was going to be quite small. So, I enlarged the shamrock so it took up most of the sheet of paper, then I just cut out my own shapes for the remainder of the craft. I chose to use colored construction paper to make the puppy's head, instead of white and allowing them to color it. However, the children did get to use the Thin Stix to decorate the hats.

Shamrock Puppy Craft

Here is what you will need:

Green construction paper

Shamrock Template (I used the one from Jinxy Kids to make sure it was the correct shape)

White card stock

Red construction paper

glue sticks

black marker

green Kwik Stix, Thin Stix, or markers (or whatever you would like to use to decorate the hats)

As usual, I found a book to read to the children. The book Green Shamrocks by Eve Bunting was a cute little story about a rabbit who planted seeds to grow his own shamrocks to wear in the St. Patrick's Day parade. The night before the parade his pot went missing. After asking around, he found the pot with his shamrocks and made a new friend to join him in the parade.

Before class I cut out the green shamrocks, red heart noses, and white oval eyes. I used my paper cutter to cut out squares and rectangle brims for the hats.

The first thing the children did was to make the hats. They put glue on bottom of the square and attached the brim.

Then they applied some glue to the stem side (bottom) of the shamrock and attached their hats.

Then it was time to decorate the hats.

Then they glued on the eyes and nose. The final step was using the marker to finish the puppy's eyes and give it a mouth.

And here are our finished Shamrock Puppies:

Let's take a look at that review schedule real quick:

So far this year I have shared my reviews for Bytes of Learning's UltraKey Online and Starfall's Home Membership. This week I will be sharing my reviews of the book What Every Child Should Know Along the Way from Parenting Made Practical, plus MathArt in Ancient Cultures from NatureGlo's eScience. Also in March I will be sharing my reviews for the a la carte products from Home School in the Woods, the 3-D Super Bead vehicles from Zirrly, and a few books from Carole P. Roman. In April you will be able to read my reviews of a couple of Unit Studies from Creation Illustrated, Traditional Spelling from Memoria Press, a movie titled Princess Cut from Watchman Pictures, HelpTeaching.com, and the Planet 316 Story Book Bible plus app.

Here are some things I would like to share with you:

St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Fun Round Up

Focusing on Jesus Resurrection Day Round Up

Focusing on the Cross With 15 Jesus-Centered Books for Resurrection Sunday

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 16 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing a randomly selected post and the top clicked-on post.

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's randomly selected post is:

Thaleia from Something 2 Offer shared Home School Convention and Lost Children

And here is this week's most clicked on post.

Jeniffer from Thou Shall Not Whine shared Teaching Children to Write with WriteShop Primary.

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.