Here’s a great idea: Neighborly Thank You Gifts with Free Printables to kick off your Thanksgiving week! The lovely thing about this activity is that it’s super kid friendly and you can share it with your vecinos or la policia, the local fire fighters, el cartero, or your family members when they come over for Thanksgiving dinner.

If your children are little then all they have to do is hand out the notes as is, but I bet they still would like to scribble their name.  If they are older then you can encourage them to write a message, if they’d like.  To download your Gracias Labels just click here: Neighborly Thank You Labels

What our familia did is we bought a box of chocolates and stuffed each bag with chocolates and these cute notes.  Our kids helped us get them together and then placed them all in a basket. As we walk out the door or someone comes to our home we will fill their day with a joyful treat in hopes to remind them that they are appreciated.

At dinner time we discussed all the people they had an opportunity to share their Thank You gift with and my son’s eyes lit up and said, “It made me so happy.”  ¡Que lindo!  My older boy shared what each person’s facial expressions were like when they received the gift and he said, “It made them smile.”  Enjoy brightening up your neighbor or community helper with these treats.

“At first glance, the Mexican custom of El Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — may sound much like the U.S. custom of Halloween. After all, the celebration traditionally starts at midnight the night of Oct. 31, and the festivities are abundant in images related to death.

But the customs have different origins, and their attitudes toward death are different: In the typical Halloween festivities, death is something to be feared. But in el día de los muertos, death — or at least the memories of those who have died — is something to be celebrated.” via SpanishAbout.com

Though we don’t celebrate this holiday in our family it intrigues me and I’m definitely a big believer in educating my children about the world around us even if we don’t necessarily hold to those traditions or beliefs.  What I really like about this holiday is how death is not something to be feared but something to be celebrated.  I definitely want to lean in the direction of celebrating over fear.

Here’s a fun Day of the Dead activity you can share with you class or children as you discover and explore the Latino culture. Note every culture celebrates it differently and in Mexico there is a big emphasis on the colorful skull art.

Supplies:

• contact paper
• masking tape
• tissue paper
• Day of the Dead skeleton (from Spanish Playground) or these boy and girl calacas.

1. I printed off this lovely printable and traced it onto the contact paper with it still in tact.  I left out some of the details as you can see but you can get as detailed as you wish. If your child is older let them trace it. My little one is two so I did the tracing.

2. Then adhere the shiny side of your contact paper to a window by slowly peeling it off and using masking tape around the edges.

3. Then let your child enjoy filling it in with tissue paper.

My two year old really enjoyed this activity.

Are your kids getting excited about Fall?  Here’s a fun way to get into the spirit of Fall with this Apple Lacing Card craft.  It’s not just fun, it’s also educational.  It helps build fine motor skills, practice colors, shapes and fruit names in English and Spanish!

Let’s start with the colors in both English and Spanish.

Rojo (pronounced ro – ho) is Red

Círculo (pronounced seer -ku-low) is circle

Manzana (pronounced mahn-sahna) is apple

If you’d like you can copy and paste the cards below and practice them with your child.

While your child paints with the color red make sure to refer to it as rojo to help them make the connection.

Apple Lacing Cards

Supplies:

• red paint & brush
• paper plate
• yarn

1. Have your child first paint the paper plate with color rojo. Let it dry.

2. Then once it’s dry use a hole puncher to make the holes.

3. Take your yarn and put tape on one end to make it easy for your child to slide the thread through each hole.

Optional:  Add the stem with brown paper and draw a face.

The paper plate is pretty durable so you can use them over and over again.

When I first heard of snail painting I thought this would be an awesome way to introduce painting to my boys.  They love icky, slimy critters and they like to get messy.

Slugs in Spanish are Babosas

Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find snails, caracoles, here in Ecuador so we went with babosas. My patio is regularly filled with these unwanted guest so why not have some fun with them.  We usually don’t see them out during the day but today was our lucky day. My 2 year old was immediately intrigued and they watched them intently for 15 minutes.

Here’s our slug painting:

This was the finished product before it crawled away when we weren’t watching.

Here’s the snail painting from Creative Flourishes. I really like the fat lines the snails create as they crawl around the page.

Editor’s note: We continue with our 31 Days of Reading in Spanish. Check out the book review below and don’t forget to enter our weekly GIVEAWAY of $100 worth of books in Spanish!

BOOK DESCRIPTION/REVIEW:

This book touches on a topic that is very common in our Latino world: two last names.

I married a North American and in his world you usually don’t carry both last names. When we started having kids, we decided that they would have both our last names. Since we moved to South America, my boys have noticed that all their friends have very long names, so we shared with them that they also have two last names.

René does a great job of sharing why he decided to not be embarrassed of having two very long last names as a kid in a school in the U.S.  Not only that, but he also shares his family pride as he talks about his decision.

After reading this book, my boys wanted to make a family tree as René did in the story. It was a wonderful activity to end with and we learned so much about family and cultural pride but also the reasons behind our choices. I especially enjoyed that each page is written in Spanish and English.

It’s a must-read for teachers who teach Latino children and for parents who like to share culture through books with their kids.

   BOOK DETAILS:

   Title: René Tiene Dos Apellidos/René  Has Two Last Names

   Author: René Colato Lainez

   Ilustrator: Fabiola Graullera Ramírez

   Ages: 5 and up

   Publisher/Year: Arte Publico Pr; Bilingual edition/2009

   ISBN: 978-1558855304

   Price: $14.86 on Amazon.com

   Website: www.renecolatolainez.com

I love helping my kids think outside of the box particular one of my kids who has a really hard time doing that.  Encourage creative play by giving them flowers and other natural elements to serve as their paintbrush.

“Me gusta pintar. Me gusta pintar, mami,”  my little man says this with a big smile on his face.  I respond, “Yes, I know you love to paint.”  My 2 year old is so very happy when he gets to make a mess with paint. Remember to buy paint that is washable if you have little excited painters.

I remember when one of my boys’ teachers came to me with a concern, “Your son keeps painting the trees blue, orange… and I can’t put his picture up on the bulletin board because he’s not following directions.”  She showed me his picture. I looked at it, and this artistic mama couldn’t have been prouder.  It was absolutely lovely.  ¡Lindísimo!

I looked at her and I said, “I am sorry, it’s really hard for me to be upset at him for not following directions when the picture in your  hand is absolutely amazing for a little 5-year-old. I will talk to him about learning to follow directions, but there is nothing wrong with his picture.  A tree doesn’t have to be brown and green it can be blue, orange, yellow… and his sun can be purple.”  Unfortunately for my son, he had two teachers back to back when he was younger discourage his creativity — his artistic side. He is now nine and his trees are verde and café. It makes me sad.

I still haven’t given up though and I continue to give my boys opportunities to be creative with their hands. Sometimes they would rather run around pretending they are policemen and super cowboys shooting at each other, but I must say any kind of imaginative play makes me happy.

So before trashing your wilted flowers, give them another use!

Painting with Flowers

What you will need:

• paint in different colors
• flowers (I used my flowers that were wilting)
• paper

1. Place paint on a surface that is big enough to cover the flowers in paint.

2. Start painting away. Let them make flower prints or paint houses, cars, abstract art… whatever their little minds take them.

Note: When painting with kids it’s good to have something under the painting project to protect the surface; also wipes for quick clean up.

Summer fun is here! Even if it’s still cool in your part of the world your little ones can still enjoy this ice boat water play activity without having to place their little hand inside. If it’s hot, then go all out and take out the kiddie pool and let the kids play with their mini ice boats.

If you are like me and you try to squeeze an educational twist to activities you can also have your little ones draw a boat and write about it.

The boats will twirl and move around on their own so if they don’t want to get their hands wet they don’t have to. But my kids are very hands-on and they couldn’t keep their hands out of the water.  Either way works.

You will need:

• Ice tray
• water
• food coloring
• tooth picks
• paper cut into triangle shapes
• tape
• plastic tub

1. Fill your ice trays with water and have your little ones (my 2 yr old helped me with this) drop food coloring in each slot.  Stick in freezer.

2. After an hour, if the water has solidified some then you can insert your sticks.  If the water hasn’t hardened it’s hard to keep the sticks up they just flop over.

3. Once they are completely solidified grab your triangle shaped paper and tape on to the tooth picks.

4. Fill your tub with water and place your cubes inside.

Your kids will love watching the water turn colors as the ice melts.

Here’s a great craft for spring or summer for your little one to make: Toilet Paper Roll Spring Prints.

Okay I have a confession to make: I have a shelf full of empty toilet paper rolls. I have a hard time tossing them since there are so many crafts you can make with them. Here’s a great craft that is easy to make with the kiddos. If you’re looking for more Spring crafts, recipes, etc check out Celebrate Spring Issue.

If your child’s flowers don’t look like flowers it’s okay to let them have fun with it. My son loved twisting the toilet paper roll in the paint and pressing it on the paper.  It wasn’t really messy, but next time I will have him wear short sleeves.

To make these darling little flower paint prints you will need:

• Paint
• tissue paper
• empty toilet paper roll
• glue

1. Cut around the tp roll about half an inch all around and then bend the petals over. Once you bend them  you can leave them as is or you can make the petals round. Ours were rounded.

2. Dip in paint and let them have fun!

3. Once it dries take the tissue paper and let them glue on the stem and leaves. It’s a great fine motor skill to have them roll the tissue paper and fill in the middle of each flower.

Los Pollitos Nursery Rhyme brings back such fond memories of my childhood.  It’s a popular nursery rhyme in Latin America.  I have been sharing it with my boys since they were young to get some Spanish fun into their day.

Los Pollitos (The Little Chickies) nursery rhyme goes like this: (I found this over at Kidssongs.com you can go there for  all of the lyrics; she also translates it in English so you know what you’re singing). You can also watch it on YouTube they have lots of fun videos but this is the one my son likes.

Los pollitos dicen
(Los po-yee-tos dee-sen)
Pio, pio, pio
(Pio, pio, pio)
Cuando tienen hambre
(Kwando tee-n-en ambrey)
Cuando tienen frio
(Kwando tee-n-en free-o)
La gallina busca
(La ga-yen-a boos-ka)
El maiz y el trigo
(El maze e el tree-go)
Les da la comida
(Les da la ko-me-da)
Y les presta abrigo
(E les presta a–breeg-o)
Bajo sus dos alas
(Baho sus dos alas)
Acurrucaditos
(A-ku-rrr-u-ka-dee-tos)
Hasta el otro dia
(Asta el o-tro dee-a)
Duerman los pollitos
(Dwer-men los po-yee-tos)

*The parenthesis will help you with the pronunciation.

Play the song and sing it with your child while you make “pollitos” using our toilet paper roll printing technique.  To make the prints all you need is yellow paint to dip the tp rolls in and then have them press it onto paper.

Once they’ve made all of their circles you can have them glue the orange diamonds for the beak.

Draw the feet and the eyes and  you’re done. My son loved pressing on the beak at the part where the song says “pio, pio, pio.”

The next print we will be making using this technique is Spring flowers!

Making this craft got me so excited for Spring, that’s right around the corner.  Las flores, el sol, outdoor grilling…. isn’t Spring wonderful! I have a little one at home who keeps me company all day and one of our favorite activities to do is crafting.

We try to keep away from hard and long activities with my toddler so this one should be a winner since it’s not just easy and quick but it’s also cute! I am a sucker for cute crafts.

I played around with the tissue paper size and shape some because I was trying to figure out what’s the best way a little one can just glue them on.  What you will need is 3 square pieces of tissue paper in whatever color you wish, small disposable cup and a pipe cleaner.  Follow below and I will show you the steps.

Supplies:

• 3 Tissue paper squares
• pipe cleaner
• disposable cup
• glue

Instructions:

1. Notice in picture above I folded my squares in four and cut around the black lines to create a semi-circle.

2. Grab your cup and put glue over the cup.

3. Then place your first tissue paper circle over it.

4. Then gently press the tissue paper down over the cup with glue to cover the whole cup.

5. For the 2nd and 3rd pieces of tissue paper circles you will only place glue on the bottom half so you can start creating your flower petals.

6. Then on one corner using a toothpick gently pierce it so you can run your pipe cleaner through for the basket handle.

If you have more time you can use coffee filters and dip them in food coloring to create the colored petals. Let it dry and then follow the steps above.