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Friendship, Readathon, Book Clubs and More

   
Today I thought I would share a bit about friendship. It is the theme of the Readathon 2012 Week 2. Did you know that 1256 readers have signed up so they have donated over 1256 meals to hungry kids via FoodforEducation.org? (If you want to join just click on the Readathon 2012 button above and for each reader that joins a meal is donated!) For more information and some links to different friendship crafts and activities go to MeMeTales.


For Lott's Tea Party the obvious activity is to have a tea party with friends. We have not done this yet this week, but we will at least with the two of us. Update: We had the tea party today. Hazel had her babysitter over and we had a tea party for the two of them.



Arthur is about a dog at a pet store where all the other pets keep getting homes except him and of course it has a happy ending. StickFiggy Makes a Friend is about StickFiggy going for a walk and finding an egg that hatches without anyone around so he helps the young chick until its mother returns. All of these stories are nice and Hazel loves reading them on the computer.





However, I have to say for good friendship books I really like Mo Willems' Elephant & Piggie series, which of course takes us into The Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids which is still going on. Last week I shared the Elephant and Piggie masks Hazel and I made. I have to say although we do not put the masks on, Hazel is always re-enacting the stories. I think she knows Elephants Cannot Dance by heart and recites it or as me act it out with her. Another of our favorites is Should I Share My Ice Cream? where Gerald obsesses about whether to share his ice cream with Piggie or to eat it himself. Of course he takes too long and the ice cream melts. Then Piggie comes along with her ice cream cone and shares it with Gerald. The perfect activities for this book would be to have an ice cream sundae party with a friend or to make ice cream with a friend. (To see our adventures in ice cream making click here.)





Coyote

Since Hazel is only three and her idea of playing with a friend is still developing, we did something else. Our plan for today was to get together with a boy who will be in her class in the fall and go to their club where there is a pool. Unfortunately the rain over the last few days has cooled things off here so it really was not swimming weather. We called them and asked if they would like to go to the zoo with us instead. We met them at Stone Zoo. They had only been to it once and he did not remember it at all. Hazel was very excited to show them around.


Cougar



Jaguar



Flamingos

The flamingos had some babies. I love this picture of the mama feeding the youngest baby.


Hazel and Friend Petting Goat

The Petting Area was open so the kids got to pet the goats and then played on the playground. Then it was off to the rides. They even both rode in the zebra truck together.

So for friendship, we are working on building one between our two shy kids. After the zoo we went to Bertucci's out to lunch. The kids had a great day!! And Hazel took an unheard of nap when we got home!

Oh, and this week we signed Hazel up for the local library's summer reading program. The theme this year is Dream Big READ!. For every 15 minutes we read we color in a star on her chart and then she gets prizes for every row of stars we color in. Do you sign your kids up for your library's summer reading program?
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