Our Favorite Weiner: Schnitzel Von Krum Forget Me Not App Review

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Each month we join a group of creative Bloggers and feature a Children's book and learning activity . This month's theme is Transportation!

Transportation makes us think of travelling and the good old fashioned 'Road trip'. This is probably because we move so frequently! One of our Favorite travel themed books is Schnitzel Von Krumm Forget-Me-Not (Hairy Maclary and Friends) by New Zealand Author and illustrator, Lynley Dodd. We own a very well-read book copy and the Q Book version.

It is Summer Vacation time for Schnitzel Von Krum (with a very low tum) and his Family. Everyone is running around packing up the car as the confused Weiner dog keeps getting under foot. He gets  shooed away and is accidently left behind! What's a lonely Pup to do? Thankfully there is a heroine give him a ride and save the day.

You really can't go wrong with any of Lynley Dodd's books. The characters are as lively as the illustrations. The rhyming text are fun for parents to read aloud and young kids love to read along with you (because you have read it so often!).  Now that we have a hound dog of our own they love reading about Schnitzel even more. A close second to this title would be Schnitzel Von Krumm's Basketwork (Hairy Maclary and Friends).

Mini Piwi did the book activities this month during our Pre K time together. She was excited to see the activity I had made which asked her to imagine that it was our Pup, Butter going on a Summer Vacation. The printable consisted of a 'place mat' featuring Butter's Backpack and 'house' and a set of Summer and Winter themed picture cards. Mini Piwi sorted items into two groups: The Summer Gear to pack in his backpack and the Winter gear he could leave at home. 

Other ways we used the picture cards were:

• Counting the number of items in the backpack
• Comparing the number of items in the back pack vs. those being left at home
• Classifying items as 'wear it' or 'play with it'

Here is the cute Puppy we used to animate our own Puppy, Butter.





Please grab a free copy of this activity for your own Preschool Travel or Summer theme!

Here are the Download links...

Butter's Backpack and Doghouse Placemat

Summer and Winter picture cards for Sorting

 



If you have wheel-crazy kids too then be sure to check out all the participating blogs. Don't forget to link up your own Transportation posts as well!

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Royal Baloo - 3 Dinosaurs - Monsters Ed - Chestnut Grove Academy - Growing in God's Grace - Royal Little Lambs - Life with Moore Babies - Teach Beside Me - The Usual Mayhem - Mum Central - Fantastic Fun and Learning - Kathys Cluttered Mind - Play Create Explore - Toddler Approved - Growing Book by Book - Adventures in Mommydom - B-Inspired Mama - The Fairy and The Frog - Edventures with Kids - Learning and Growing the Piwi way - A Gluten Free Journey - Mom to Crazy Monkeys - No Doubt Learning - Preschool Powol Packets - To The Moon and Back - Our Craft ~N~ Things - Farm Fresh Adventures - Proverbial Homemaker

A week long Volcano Unit Study

Miss K's unit on Volcanoes ended up having a strong New Zealand theme. I didn't realize how much I remembered from school about New Zealand Geology. The Kids were excited to hear about the active volcanoes (Mount Ruapehu, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe) I grew up close to.

Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand

The imagery in the Maori Myths and legends really capture the beauty of New Zealand. There is one about about the mountains and the river in my hometown that really stayed with me. This week I read it to the Piwi's. We didnt have much luck finding books on New Zealand Volcanoes at the library but the the Volcano zone on the GNS science website was a great alternative.

Another great resource we used was an book and activity set called Volcanoes of the world. The book itself was full off information about how volcanoes are formed, how they erupt and highlights some of the more well known 'trouble makers'. What Miss K loved most was the kit to make your own World volcano map and a flip book of an erupting volcano!

For Miss K's Notebooking pages 

• Parts of a Volcano three part cards from Etc Montessori 

• How a Volcano erupts mini book from Crayola.com 

• Some of the basic mini books from the Volcano Lapbook at Home school share

 
Books as always were the main source of all of Miss K's investigations and we found a good selection...some we already had, others we borrowed.

Multimedia resources we used in our unit

•  Earth quake report has Daily volcanic activity updates that include photos and videos

• Magic school bus blows it's top game -this was a fun activity after we watched the episode and read the book 

• Discovery Channel's Extreme World App-Ultimate Volcano was one of the eight interactive subjects
  
  Volcano Tour App took us on a Virtual tour of 80+ volcanoes

 Mini Piwi also had her own 'V is for Volcano' activities and Miss K was an eager assistant for the messier ones! Like...

Erupting Mini Piwi's Playdoh Volcano....

and playing with Lava in the bath thanks to the great idea from in lieu of preschool 

 

Fluffy Sheep fun

This week in Piwi Pre K is all about S for Sheep. Our first book to explore was Russell the Sheep by Rob Scotton. Poor Russell can't fall asleep and he has tried every thing! After reading the story we looked at each illustration again and asked Mini Piwi how she thought things in the pictures would feel. Rob Scotton did a great job at making the Sheep look so soft and fluffy!

 Mini Piwi made her own fluffy Russell with a Paper plate and cotton balls. Apparently it looked suitable fluffy to Perry the cat, because I caught him licking it -ew!

To practice letter tracing we made up another Paper plate sheep complete with an S. The S is covered with several layers of invisible tape to make it raised and to protect it from some of the things we plan to put on the plate this week. 

First up was rice. Here Mini Piwi is searching for the letter and then tracing it. She was super excited to play with the rice and made piles with it before scooping it back onto the plate.

It would be really neat if the Piwi's could visit a farm with some baby lambs in the Spring but I'm not sure there are many Sheep around here. Miss K visited a sheep farm in Auckland, New Zealand during our last trip home but Mini Piwi hasn't see them yet. If the Piwi's grew up in New Zealand Sheep would not be such a novelty.

Source

 Fun fact: The population of New Zealand is approx. 4.43 Million (source), we have 31.1 Million Sheep (source) That's about 7.5 sheep per person.You don't need to travel too far to see a sheep -or a thousand. Still. for me, there is nothing cuter than lambs frolicking in the green spring paddocks (that's a British/Kiwi word for a field).