Freebie - Minecraft Coloring Pages

I did a search for Green Bubbles for some minecraft coloring pages recently and do you know what I found?  Nothing!  I don't know if I just wasn't searching the right way or if somebody really never made any.  So, in the interest of sharing, here's a few that I made for Green Bubbles. 

I made a cake, creeper, sword, and 'golden' apple.  These are the things he's most interested in right now.  There may be more in the future depending on how interested he is in these.  (Link below).  If you download these please leave me a comment so I know there's interest!

Download Here

Homeschool Planning Part 2

This is the 2nd part of my homeschool planning post.  To see part one go here.  Part two will talk about digital planners.  There's quite a few choices of digital planners.

If you have a little extra money, Homeschool Planet is a great online planner.  It's a little on the pricy side at $65/year, but they do offer a free 30 day trial to see if you like it and how it would work for you.  The 30 day trial is awesome.  It allows you to enter in each subject separately and plan out the entire year if you so wanted quickly by autofilling in lessons, e.g. Chapter 1 - 14 spread out over 14 days, 14 weeks, or however you want to break it down.  If you miss a day, say for a fieldtrip or sick day, the planner can shift all your lessons down making it easy to stay on track without feeling far behind or having to reenter everything by hand.  And if you need to miss only one subject, like if you needed extra time to review a concept in math before moving on, you can shift just that one subject. 

There's also an option to make to do lists, grocery lists, check lists, etc.  You can have them emailed or text messaged to someone as well.  Text message your grocery list to your husband, email check lists to your older children for independent learning.  Kids can also have their own log in to check off the lists themselves without being able to edit the actual planner.   During my trial period I also figured out how to create supply lists at the very beginning of each week that we would need for history and science activities and library lists at the end of each week for the books I would need the following week. Everything is also printable if you prefer to have hard copies instead of digital.

If your like a lot of homeschool families I know, $65 is a lot for a planner though, no matter how cool it is.  There are free online planners as well.  Besides just plugging everything yourself into google calendar you can try cozi.  Cozi is a free app and website that allows you to schdule everything. From their website, "It helps you manage the chaos of family life with a shared calendar, shopping lists, to do lists and more. Cozi keeps track of everything from school schedules and sports activities to grocery lists, meals and chores — all in one place the whole family can access anytime, anywhere."

Cozi, similar to Homeschool Planet, allows multiple log ins for the same calendar and also allows texting lists to family members.  They email you a weekly summary of everything on your schedule as well.  You can color coat things to different people for your family to quickly see at a glance who has a doctor's appointment or who needs to go to that field trip.  

What type of planners do you like to use?  Online, paper, a mixture of both?  Leave a comment and let me know what works for your family! 

Homeschool Planning Part 1

Not going to lie, it feels like Christmas!

We got most of our curriculum in now, only missing our math.  Green Bubbles was just as excited as I was.  Well, maybe not.  But he did ask to start school almost right away just because he wanted to do those magic school bus kits!  If you haven't tried them, you really should.  They are fun, follow the scientific method, and are perfect for hands on learning for the younger crowd.  I'm making him wait to do them when we hit that section in our science and he can't wait.  I like having something for him to look forward to that he's that excited about.

So what do you do when you get new books in?... Plan!  I'm delving into these books.  Many of these are new for us this year. There's as many different methods for planning as there are homeschoolers.  Some plan out the entire year in detail, others go monthly, or weekly.  Some homeschoolers plan it out the day off and really just fly by the seat of their pants.  I have totally done all of the above methods before as well and may I recommend NOT doing the last one.  Scrambling the day off to put together supplies only to discover your missing something important (where's the tape?!) is not fun.  Planning the entire year out doesn't work well for us either because things always come up that get you behind track and then you feel the pressure to catch up the entire time which is a losing battle.

So, I'm trying a new method this year!  I still want to see things out pretty far in advance because I'm crazy like that.  But I don't want to attach any of it to a specific date.  Donna Young is a great website to use if you want to make your own calendar.  Her forms, calendars, and planners are all free to download so it's very budget friendly. She has everything you could ever need there from How to Plan for beginner homeschoolers to Household forms for chores, shopping lists, and housework.  There are even handwriting sheets, math worksheets, and pretty much a form for anything you can think of.  I highly encourage you to explore it for yourselves.

From there I downloaded her quarterly planner, one for each subject.  I pulled out the All About Reading book and wrote one lesson in each day on the planner.  Since it is a quarterly planner I am able to get 9 weeks planned out on one piece of paper (per subject of course).  Then, as we actually do the lesson, I will then write it in on a weekly planner that I also got from Donna Young to check it off our list.  I know that last step isn't really needed and many people could skip it completely.  We have to turn in a learning log of what we covered every month and it is much easier to create these monthly logs when I  have a weekly lesson plan to look back on.  Or, I should say, an accurate weekly lesson plan that didn't get behind because I was only writing in what we ACTUALLY did that week.


I put all of these into a 3 ring binder for myself.  I divide the quarterly forms under different dividers by subject.  I put a school calendar at the very front of my binder with all holidays and vacation days marked for quick review.  There are also dividers for field trips, unit studies, notes, weekly schedule that I fill in as we go, and a weekly calendar that includes lists for library books needed that week and supplies we need for our history activities or science experiments.

Of course, these are all paper planner resources. Check back tomorrow for part two in my homeschool planning post all about online planners.

Note: These are my honest opinions.  I was not given anything, or even asked to write these reviews. Nor do I receive anything if you follow the links.  I just like it and wanted to let others know about them.

Nature Study - County Fair

The County Fair is a summer tradition for us.  We don't do the rides and games though since our kids are still so young.  When we go to the fair it is much more nature study then anything else since we spend our entire time visiting all the animals.  This year we made it an event with our nature group and were able to share it with friends. We Care Wednesdays allow you to get free admission with a donation.  On the day we went it was children's books which I have plenty of! Kids 5 and under get in free as well so it worked out well for our group. 

We all meet up at Centennial Farm which is there year round. If you follow the link right now you can see a live webcam of one of the pigs at the fair. The farm is a great place for the kids to see all kinds of farm animals they wouldn't get a chance to see with living in a city.  We got to see chickens, goats, pigs, cows, and sheep.  And of course, since it's the fair, we got to see baby animals of all of those as well.  The kids got to review the vocabulary of the animals: ewe, bull, chick, piglet, calf, and more.  Little Miss' favorite was the two little calves they had while Green Bubbles was particularly interested in the piglets. 

 

After the farm the kids all went to check out the bees where they got a chance to find the Queen bee in a hive, and earned a sticker by doing so!  Most of the kids, including Green Bubbles and Little Miss, also got a chance to make beeswax candles too.

Now here's where it gets real.  It's getting hot here, and I was baby wearing Megatron so I probably didn't have the best patience level this day.  Green Bubbles and Little Miss were pretty naughty that morning as well and we almost didn't go to the fair at all.  They both weren't listening and were just running amock in the house.  We went because it was with our group and I'm glad we did because I don't know when we would have made it another day.  But it also means everyone was a little on edge.

This came out when Green Bubbles announced he was hungry and had to eat.  We had lunch less than an hour beforehand for exactly this reason so I was frustrated.  But we stopped and got a fair favoriate, funnel cake. (Sorry for the shadow in the picture).

Keeping it real... pushing Little Miss in the stroller, babywearing Megatron, and carrying a funnel cake and drink all at the same time does not work well.  The drink flew and the entire thing spilled.  But this is why you have friends with you!  I was about to lose it but our nature study buddies helped out.  We managed to find a good table for everyone to sit.  We ate our cake, but Green Bubbles complained the entire time about everything.  The heat was turning up at this point which I think contributed to the problem.

So we went indoors next and checked out the kids explorium.  Here the kids got to make a bracelet out of pipe cleaners and little beads, explore the principles of  buoyancy placing beads and other objects on pipe cleaners to see how slow they could get it to sink, played a fishing game, and pretended they were archeologists.

It was lot and hot still though, and Megatron just woke up so we took a pitstop at the baby station right next door where I was able to change diapers, refill out water bottles with cold water, and nurse Teddy.  We all felt better after that and ready to take on the rest of the fair!

Of course, we ended up walking right by a splash pad before we managed to do anything else.  It was still hot so I let the kids play.  That was probably my mistake.  They both got wet, Green Bubbles was soaked. They had so much fun but were just to wet and cold to keep going through the rest of the fair so we ended up leaving shortly after.  I'd glad we did it though.  Even though we didn't make it over to the livestock area or the pig races, I would much rather leave on a high note then with crying and complaints!

 

I'm linking this post up with Homeschool Mother's Journal.

Weekly Wrap-Up

So I'm going to start trying to join in on Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-Up link. Every Friday there is a weekly wrap up where you talk about your week and what happened. We haven't done a lot of 'school' things this week, or even planning for school, but it is still summer for us!

Monday -   We started out Cats theme for our preschool, although all we really did was read a few books.  Mostly, I am trying to get a secret project done (stay tuned for the results).  The local consignment sale is coming up as well and I'm trying to get all of the outgrown clothes I'm selling tagged and ready to go.  This is a little bittersweet since it's the first time I'm not keeping clothes for a hand me down.  Little Miss' clothes are going away completely and as Megatron quickly outgrows his baby clothes those are going away as well.  Only Green Bubbles' stuff is being saved now. 

Tuesday -  We decided to go visit a friend today.  We spent a few hours just hanging out.  She has a son Little Miss' age and another son a few years older then Green Bubbles.  Her son and my two had a lot of fun playing out in her yard and with her kids toys.   Other people's toys always seem better then your own, right? The husband flew out of town this night too so we spent the rest of the day spending time with Daddy and saying goodbye.

Wednesday - This is our normal nature study day and we spent it at the county fair!  Here's the post all about it.  It was a really hot day and Green Bubbles and Little Miss were not exactly angels before we had to leave.  We had fun at the fair but it made me realize that I need an extra adult helper when I go some place that crowded with Megatron and Little Miss.  This time next year will be so much easier.

Thursday - Today was a quiet day.  I finished up more of the prep work for my project.  Although this is proving to be harder then I expected it to be with Megatron never letting me put him down lately.  Green Bubbles also had a speech therapy lesson today.  Then I took the two youngest grocery shopping with me while Green Bubbles went with Grandma to Costco.  Divide and conquer! The rest of the day was just spent at home relaxing and avoiding the heat. Until the power went out just before dinner.  We have an electric stove and oven so we went out to dinner and walked around Target for as long as possible to avoid the heat and stay in the AC.  Lucky for the kids, they were excited to stay up past their bedtime.  The power came back on just in time for bedtime so we avoided sleeping downstairs to try and keep cool.  As much as the kids were excited about sleeping on the couch, that means the baby and I would end up on the floor and I wasn't looking forward to that!

Friday - Friends of ours are moving out of state next week and we haven't seen them in awhile.  We're going to go to a farewell party they are throwing last minute today after Green Bubbles speech session this morning.  Daddy is supposed to get home tonight too and I know the kids will be excited to see him, almost as much as me. The cat preschool lessons will just have to move onto next week!

Review: Egyptian Woman: A Year in the Life..

First of all, I love the kindle.  It's so easy to read a book with the kindle, or kindle app, versus a real paper book when you have three kids five and under.  I don't get a lot of time to read, and when I do I'm usually hunting for wherever I left my book.  I even have to hunt around for my kindle most of the time.  The auto sync with the app on my phone is a life saver because I can switch off between my phone and the kindle and actually get through a book.

So, maybe this will color my review, but it's been a long time since I've actually read a real, adult book.  All of it. But I really did enjoy this one.  Not only was it an interesting story, but I felt like I learned a lot in the process.

The book I just finished is called Egyptian Woman: A year in the life of a woman during the reign of Ramesses II .  Yes, it is a mouthful.  It is totally worth reading though!  I came across this book on accident while searching for other books on Egypt for our homeschool next year.  I've been doing so much researching the adult version of a living book intrugied me so I went ahead and purchased it.  I can honestly say I'm so glad this book crossed my path.

This book is written as a story that follows the life of a middle age woman in Egypt.  She is from a middle class family and through her experiences you are able to really see what life would have been like back then.  Each chapter in the book is one month of the year, all centered around relgious festivals they have going on.  I had no idea they had so many festivals!

The author was able to touch upon almost every subject you can think of.  Happy events such as marriage and childbirth.  Sad events such as death, of both the elderly and a child, war, and infertility.  It dicusses their gods and beliefs, medicine, food, jobs, family life, even puberity.

The woman in the book has 6 children and throughout the story you get to learn all of theirs as well.  From the daughter who has just entered womanhood to the boy who runs off to war, it's easy to feel both a sense of familiarity as well as something exotic and foreign.

If you have an interest in history, Egypt, or just curious about what family life looked like in ancient times, I recommend this book. 

(This post contains affiliate links for your convenience). 

10 reasons we homeschool

My husband and I are a very traditional couple.  Like 1950's traditional.  He brings home the bacon while I take care of the kids and house.  Well, I try and take care of the house.  Or maybe I don't really try that much at all.  Anyway, when it comes to things about the kids it's nice knowing he will always support my decision.  Even if that decision seems to come from out of the blue and isn't on most people's radars.

After Green Bubbles was born, and I mean 2 months after he was born, with my husband's encouragement I went back to school.  I already had my associates degree but never continued on to get my bachelors like I had wanted.  My priorities had changed since then anyway and, after a little soul searching, I changed my major from English to Liberal Studies.  Why liberal studies?  Because they had a track for elementary education and I thought teaching was where I wanted to be.  At the time I thought I would be a teacher.

It didn't take long for me to realize I didn't want to be a teacher.  My first class that I had observation hours in made me realize that there had to be a better way.  I did observation in a 1st grade classroom and while many children did excel I saw many that didn't.  There were boys who were high energy, constantly in trouble, and as punishment were made to miss recess and sit still.  How could that possibly help?  There was an English language learner who sat in the back of the classroom, lost and confused, and totally ignored.  There was no time to help her.  Another student with behavioral problems who was actually kicked out of school for a time for throwing things at other students, spitting at students, and hitting the teacher.  First grade!

I knew then and there that I wasn't going to send my son into that.  Besides having a classroom of 35 6 year olds to one teacher with a flawed system, there was such a huge push on test scores and testing in the schools.  Teaching to tests isn't real learning.  I told my husband what I thought and he agreed.  That marked the beginning of our resolve to homeschool our children, before Green Bubbles was even one year old.

Over the years I've added a few more to my list.  Some because of children and being in the thick of it.  Serious and silly, here are 10 reasons we homeschool.

1) Because the public schools in our area, even the 'good' ones, aren't that good.

2)  I want them to learn at their own pace.  Be that a year ahead in math, or a year behind in reading, it is their pace and not what someone who has never met my child thinks their pace should be.

3) We can get outside!  This one is huge for us.  We can go hiking at 10am on a weekday, head to a museum anytime we want, get our wiggles out at the playground down the street anytime we desire for as long as we want.

4) Follow their interests.  If Green Bubbles wants to learn about bridges, we can drop our science and take a week or two to study bridges.  (This was awesome, by the way.)

5) The friends we have met have ranged in age from toddlers to teenagers.  And they are all respectful, get along, and are generally more socialized then many public school kids I've met.  Espeically the teenagers...

6) We can stay in our pj's all day long.

7) I don't have to wake my children up at 6am to get to school by a certain time.  They wake up when they aren't tired anymore.

8) No packed lunches!  At least, not everyday.  We still have packed lunches on fieldtrips and nature days.

9) No peer pressure to wear name brands, do drugs, or other random things.

10) Studies show homeschool students actually perform better on tests, are more likely to attend and graduate from college, and generally just be happier.

I would like to point out that religion or sheltering my children were no where on that list for those that think all homeschoolers are sheltered religious fanatics. 
 
And just in case you were wondering, I did finish my degree anyway.  I'm a firm believer in having a back up plan.  If anything were to happen later on, I needed a real career I could go to.  I focused it on natural sciences however so instead of elementary school I could go into middle school science.

What does Galleon's Lap mean?

Do you know what a Galleon is?  
It's defined as "a sailing ship in use (especially by Spain) from the 15th through 17th centuries, originally as a warship, later for trade. Galleons were mainly square-rigged and usually had three or more decks and masts."   They were a way to travel the world before we had things like trains, cars, or planes. 

  
So why did we name our homeschool after an old ship? 
We didn't!  If you haven't read Winnie the Pooh, the original books by A.A. Milne, your missing out.  Not the Disney movies or books, but the original.  It's full of laughter, love, and childhood innocence and I totally fell in love with them while reading them to Green Bubbles as bedtime stories a few years ago. He was to young at the time to truly appreicate the humor of the books and I intend to reread them to him again as a literature book for school.  But even as an adult, I'd recommend reading them just for yourself.  The stories are so very sweet.  But what does Winnie the Pooh have to do with Galleon's Lap?  The very last chapter in The House At Pooh Corner has Winnie and Christopher Robin visiting Galleon's Lap to say their goodbyes.

So what is Galleon's Lap?
"It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for somewhere else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap." - A House at Pooh Corner, Chapter X. 

What I Want? 
A Galleon is a large sailing ship.  A way to see the world and travel to new places.  Galleon's Lap was a magical place in Pooh Corner that allowed them to see the entire world.  I want our homeschool to be a place that my children can meet the world, explore, discover, but also be in a comfortable and safe place to do so.  While they are a little young to be truly going off into the world, they aren't to young to show them how big the world is, and the magic that's within it. Christopher Robin said goodbye to Winnie the Pooh when he went off to school, but I hope my children never have to say goodbye while they are learning.  I hope they have plenty of time to also just do nothing.

 And just in case you want your own copy of Winnie The Pooh, just like us, there's a link to a good copy.  The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh  You are never to old, or to young, to have Winnie in your life.  

Our Family

Who are we? 

We are a family of 5.  Wow, it feels weird to say that.  I always knew I wanted to have 3 children and now that I do it feels surreal.  My husband and I have been married for 10 years and there are times where it doesn't feel like that long, and then there are times where it does.  We've had our ups and downs but are enjoying life together and with our family.

Green Bubbles is our oldest.  He's 5 years old and entering Kindergarten this year!  You may wonder why we call him Green Bubbles and I honestly wonder at it myself.  Like many kids, he has discovered Minecraft and totally loves it.   When you create a new account they ask for a name and we let him pick his own.  Green Bubbles is what he came up with for himself so it feels like an appropriate nickname for him.  He does see a speech therapist currently to help with articulation problems but he doesn't let it slow him down.  He is sweet, social, and joyful.  Current loves: Minecraft, Flag Football, Iron Man.

 Little Miss is 2 years old, in the middle, and the only girl.  I'm actually very grateful for that because she is an independent little spit-fire.  Having a sister to share with would probably lead to conflict.  She is a girly girl who loves to get dirty, just as happy playing with babies as she is with hot wheel cars.  Her loves of the moment: pink, glitter, and all things princesses.  Although Frozen and Elsa hold a special place in her heart like most little girls right now. 

Megatron is a happy baby.  The youngest, we're still waiting to really see his personality come out and shine.  My favorite thing about this age is watching them discover the world around them and how much they change just day to day. Where did Megatron come from?  Since he was our third we kept the gender a surprise which means we didn't have a name for him until after he was born.  But we had to call him something, so Green Bubbles decided Megatron would make a really cool name and it just stuck. Current loves include: sucking on his hand, rolling out of his bouncy seat and swing at every opportunity, and trying desperately to crawl despite lack of any progress.  He's also got a special place in his heart just for his siblings. 

Curriculum 2014-2015

I love this time of year.  I walked into Target yesterday and got positively giddy at the back to school section.  Is there anything more exciting then shelves full of pencils, crayons, markers, paper, notebooks.. you get the idea.

So in honor of "Back to School" I thought I would share our curriculum choices for 2014-2015.   Now, I may have 3 kids, but only one of them is old enough for a real curriculum.  I learned a lot from last year's TK.  For example, I'm awful at just winging it and really need a little more structure for what to study and when.  So, even though it's just Kindergarten this year, we have a lot more 'formal' curriculum.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to push Green Bubbles to hard.  Everything will still be kept to his pace and when things stop working, we'll take a break and switch it up a bit.
(Note: There are some affiliate links below)

Megatron - Baby!

Megatron's job this year is to just keep growing.  I'm sure we'll see crawling, first words, first steps, none of which require any type of curriculum.  I think it's important to keep that in mind for the older two as well.  So much learning takes place every single day, no matter how old you are, without a well planned out curriculum to follow.

Little Miss - Tot school/Preschool

  I totally intend to just keep doing what we're doing right now.   Using weekly themes for her, reading everyday, and just exploring what she's interested in.  She'll sit in as desired on Green Bubbles lessons and I'm sure she'll suck up whatever knowledge she wants to in the process like she already has.  I'll probably grab some fun packs from Confessions of a Homeschooler and 1+1+1=1 for her to play with as well. 

Green Bubbles - Kindergarten

Language Arts
 - Handwriting without Tears: Letters and Numbers for Me  : We used HWT last year and it was great. The preschool level only teaches upper case letters.  That was great at the time but over the summer Green Bubbles has started getting frustrated that he doesn't know how to make many of the lower case letters.  Thankfully it's something we'll be covering this year so I'm sure he'll be as excited as any little boy can be with handwriting.

- All About Reading: Pre-reading - This is one I wish we did last year and I have hopes it will help him learn his ABC's better then my letter of the week type approach we did last year.  Green Bubbles is not one of those kids who just picked up the ABC's and phonics sounds all by himself (unlike Little Miss which, from what I can tell, knows more letters than her brother).  All About Reading does more than just letters though which is why I picked it.  Stay tuned later in the year for our review to see how it worked out for us.

History
 - The Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times and Activity Book - We'll be reading through Story of the world and using at least one activity and various books recommended in the activity book to supplement. Also, there should be a few history related field trips coming up. Hopefully, this will help history stay fun since it will be more hands on than what we did last year.

Science
 -R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey- Life (level one) - We tried REAL Science for Kids last year and it started out great but mid-book we struggled.  Odyssey has more hands on projects and activities so I'm hoping it will be a better fit for my guy.

- Magic school bus kits including: A Journey into the Human Body, The Wonders of Nature, and The Magic School Bus - Microscope Lab

- Nature Study - We have a group of friends we meet with weekly at various nature centers, beaches, and wilderness parks in the area.  This is still very informal for us and isn't really guided yet.  1st grade we'll step up how structured we are with this.


Math - Singapore Primary Mathematics Standards Edition Level 1 - We did the Early Bird level (Kinder) over two years, preschool and TK.  Depending on how Green Bubbles does we may stretch this out two years as well or pick up our pace and complete it in one year.  He does well with math but I don't want to burn him out.
 
Electives
- Swim Lessons with Blue Buoy Swim School: Green Bubbles has been asking to  go back ever since we stopped for summer.  He loves his swim teacher and has improved dramically from last year.

- Flag Football with i9 sports - We've done two seasons now and Green Bubbles keeps asking for more.  He didn't enjoy t ball so I'm glad we found something he likes so much. 

- Art - I still need to figure out how much funds we have left over from our charter school.  If there's enough I'd like to enroll him in Art Steps. A friend goes here and it was highly recommended.

Preschool - Jungle

So it's another week and another theme.  This past week we went with Jungle!  I decided to deviate from the Letter of the Week curriculum and am mostly just using the theme as a jumping off point at this point.

First, we listened to A Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saens and danced around our living room pretending to be animals in a jungle.  I threw pillows and blankets in various places to help pretend we were in a jungle.  Couches became trees, pillows were rocks, blankets spread length wise were logs, and we even ended up with some sort of pretend water feature that Green Bubbles kept ending up in.  The kids had a lot of fun with this one and it got a lot of our wiggles out.

 We also made these paper plate lions.  Little Miss picked blue for her lion while Green Bubbles went for more tradtional colors.  After coloring their plates I gave them the noses and eyes to glue on themselves.  I drew the smiles and whiskers though.  They really liked making the lions and Little Miss spent the entire week walking around with her lion roaring at everyone.  These were a big hit!

The books this week (note: links are afflicate links) --

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild - We read this one at the same time as our dancing game. It was the perfect fit since the kids were already keyed up and roaring whenever Mr. Tiger roared was acceptable at the moment.  And my kids were totally wild the beginning of the week too.  We just got back from a weekend trip and they weren't back into our normal routine yet.  Both loved this book, but I think the favorite part was when Mr. Tiger swam in the fountain and took off all his clothes.

Crocodile Beat - A story about a lot of animals making noise, waking up a crocodile, and a hero lion!  Green Bubbles loved the ending of this book and Little Miss got very involved when she realized the crocodile was awake and hungry.  We made our lion plates after reading this book too!

If I Were a Lion - A story about a little girl who's in trouble for being wild.  But she doesn't think she's wild at all and compares herself to a bunch of real wild animals.  While this one might be a stretch for a 'jungle' theme, I've read this one before with Green Bubbles when he was Little Miss' age and knew I wanted to bring it up again.  Especially since they are both in the wild stage right now!

Verdi - The story of a baby python living in the jungle who doesn't want to turn grow up and turn green.  Verdi wants to stay yellow because he thinks only yellow snakes are fast, fun, and exciting.  After an accident Verdi understands why the green snakes act the way they do and, even though he grows up as well, he learns he can still have fun.  This book was cute but for the littles was a bit of a challenge.  The beginning was tough but about half way through it Green Bubbles got more into it.  He said his favorite part was when Verdi met the baby snakes, which was the very end of the book.

The Little Little Girl with the Big Big Voice - Little Miss' favorite for the week, probably because she is a little girl with a big voice as well.  This little girl scares away a lot of big tough animals because of her big voice.  That is until she meets the lion and giggles ensure.

Gumption! -  A cute story about a little boy named Peter who goes on an adventure with his Uncle where he learns all it takes is a little gumption (and a lot of great luck) to have a great time! Green Bubbles liked this one a lot.  I think because the boy saw and did things that the uncle never even noticed.  There were elephants, crocodiles, and snakes as they made their way to the jungle and the gorilla within.