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Homemade Lemonade

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I’m not a huge fan of lemon, but my kids and hubby love lemonade.  During the school year, I did a cooking unit with my kindergartners and we made fresh squeezed lemonade.  (In all honesty, we squeezed some of the lemons and then used bottled lemon juice when we got tired of squeezing lemons.) Lemonade is really easy to make.  It’s just lemon juice, sugar, and water.  I thought it might be a good recipe to share with my bloggy friends, since the summer days are here and we might need a little cooling off!
Oh, how I love cooking in the classroom with my kids!  They were jumping with joy when they walked in the room and saw lemons and a lemon press.  Of course a few kids yelled, “What are we making Teacher?” (Yes, they still call me Teacher, even at the end of the school year.) I asked them what they thought we should do, and it didn’t take long for the suggestion of LEMONADE to come up!
I started by showing them an online book about lemonade that was on Reading Rainbow.  Our school has a subscription to the service, so I can’t share the link.  Then, we started squeezing lemons.  We needed 2 cups of lemon juice and all of our lemons made about 1/2 of a cup.  At that point I pulled out the bottled lemon juice and told them that we’d take the easy way out to come up with the rest of the juice.  (Although I think they would have squeezed lemons all day if I would have let them.)
Here is the recipe we used:
2 cups sugar
1 cup hot water
2 cups lemon juice
1 gallon cold water
Dissolve the sugar in hot water.  Add lemon juice and then cold water.  Stir.
We made our lemonade on a very hot and sunny (by Pacific Northwest Standards) day.  The kids were thrilled with the cold treat and really loved sharing with the recess teachers who are outside for most of the day.  
If you are interested in more lemon activities, here is a post I wrote for LeapFrog Learning Path with more ideas.  Lemony Learning Activities
It might be a good time to break out the lemonade stand and share some lemonade with the neighbors!
Happy lemon squeezing!

Easy 4th Of July Fruit Kabobs

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Happy 4th of July Friends!  Here’s a repost of a favorite 4th of July snack that I wrote from LeapFrog last year!

A few weeks ago my friends at LeapFrog asked for some 4th of July activities.  I’ve been busy, over the past few weeks, getting these ready.  I’ve been creating, writing, and photographing some really fun activities to do with kids.  The 4th of July Fruit Kabobs turned out very pretty.  It was SO easy and involved a trip to the Farmer’s Market for fresh fruit.  What could be better?

(click here to go to the activity)
Several of my 4th of July activities are now posted on Learning Path. If you are not familiar with Learning Path, it’s a website (an an app if you have an ipad or iphone) that provides tons of different activities for kids of all ages.  You just click on the type of activity you are interested in or the age of your child and resources will be right there at your fingertips.  Honestly, I thought it was super-cool even before I was asked to start writing content for the website!
Speaking of writing content for the website, let me just spout off a bit about my happiness!  THIS IS THE COOLEST JOB EVER!  It is SOOOO much fun to get to combine all of the things I’m passionate about.  The activities, articles, and videos I’ve been making for LeapFrog are all about home, family, kids, literacy, artsy-craftsy stuff, early childhood, and trends in education.  I’m constantly reading teacher books, mainly about literacy, and I spend my down-time searching the web for articles about education, home and family, and photography.  I’ve taken a lot of classes too, in addition to my degrees and endorsements, and I’m surprised at how everything has all meshed together in the end.  I have a job (even if it’s just a side job) that incorporates my B.A. in Family and Consumer Science, my M.A. in Reading and Literacy, my endorsements in Elementary Education and Early Childhood Education, AND all of the blogging courses and photography courses I’ve taken on my own.  Who knew that all of things I am passionate about could be rolled into one?  I feel so fortunate!
By the way, my kindergarten readiness videos and articles are starting to be rolled out on the Learning Path website too.  If you’re interested, pop on over and check them out.  (I’m totally amazed that they can take 5 hours of video where I ramble on and on, and turn it into a 30 second video that sounds so carefully planned out and rehearsed.)  Like I said, it’s a pretty cool job!
Happy Learning Path web browsing!

Using Light in Photography

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I’ve always been a bit afraid of using direct sunlight in photography.  Everything I read about light says that direct light is a no-no.  It washes out the subject and creates hard shadows.  Well, I’m finding that sometimes rules are meant to be broken, when you understand why you are breaking the rules.  For example, the other day when I walked into my classroom, I noticed that the light was perfectly hitting my rocks and water bowl.  I have a tiny little window on my classroom door and the sunlight was coming in through that one little spot.  The rest of the room was still dark and I thought it made the water and rocks really stand out.  I snapped this picture and I love the combination of light and dark.

On a different day, when the water jars were set up, I noticed how the light really reflected in our water jars. Again, direct sunlight was not supposed to be ideal, but in this situation I really love it.  I also love the transparency of water and glass. In Reggio Emilia (a place in Italy that has inspired teaching in a different way  of teaching from our traditional American approach) transparency is one of the key pillars.  The idea of transparency in education is inspiring in SO many different ways.

I’ve been playing around with collage in my light-filled photos as well.  I think collage is a great way to tell a story.  On the computer I use the collage feature in Picasa, which is a free photo editing program.  On my phone I use Pic Stitch or PhotoGrid.  Both apps have been fun to play around with.

I’m kind of loving these light-filled photos, even though they break all of the rules.  I’m such a rebel!

Happy light-filled photo taking!

Easter Activities For The Kids

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One of my first assignments, when I started working for LeapFrog, was to create some Easter activities for their Learning Path app and website.  They were looking for a range of activities that would work for very young children and something that would be great for the older kids as well.  I came up with three activities including sensory play-doh, sensory egg shakers, and a scappy/artsy card for older kids to try.  The colors in the play-doh eggs made my heart go pitter patter.  Well, after completing this assignment, I sent it off and had the most wonderful response from LeapFrog.  They sent me an email telling me that they loved these activities, photography, and my writing so much that they were going to use these as the cover in their newsletter that was slated to go out to 2.75 million people.  That totally stopped me in my tracks, friends.  It was such a great feeling to know that my work would reach that many people!  Since Easter is coming quickly, I thought it would be a good time to share these again.  You can click on the links, below, to take you to Learning Path and find out the instructions for each of these activities.

Scrappy Easter Egg Card
I hope these activities keep your kids busy and you enjoy them as much as we did!
Happy Easter!

Grow Your Own Pizza, Lemonade, and A Sensory Garden

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I get so excited each week when my friends at LeapFrog update the Learning Path app and website. New activities are posted every week and the app will even sort them out by age of your child. This week there are a few different activities I’ve written and photographed on the website. (Squeeeel!  I get SO excited to see me work on LeapFrog!) One of my favorites is the Grow Your Own Pizza activity.

My Lemonade Stand thematic exploration is also on there.  This was one of my favorite activities to take the photos for. Lemons and lemonade are just so pretty.
My Summer Sensory Garden was my favorite activity of ALL TIME to put together, and now my garden bench looks so pretty.
I hope you’ll stop by the LeapFrog Learning Path Website and check them out.  I also have a LeapFrog Pinterest Page where I post some of my favorite activities from the website.  
Happy learning!