Ghost

For our G craft, we made a cheesecloth ghost. It's a little early for Halloween, but we're ready!

Materials:
newspapers
balloons
drinking glass or vase
cheesecloth, cut into double-layer 14 inch squares
shallow bowl
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons glue (I used Elmer's)

1. Prepare your work surface with newspapers. Blow up the balloons (one per ghost) and set them in drinking glasses; this will let you mold the damp cheesecloth in a ghostly shape that you like.
2. Cut square of double-layer cheesecloth. In a shallow bowl, mix the glue and water. Dip the cheesecloth square in the mixture and squeeze out excess. Drape the cheesecloth on the balloon in a ghostly shape of a flying or standing ghost. Let it dry overnight on the glass.
3. When dry, add a face (we used googly eyes), then remove the balloon by popping it.

Our finished version:

G Books

General Store by Rachel Field. Emma loved this book because of the pictures; at first she thought it was about a house. There weren't all that many G words, though.

The Growing Story by Ruth Krauss. With the arrival of a new baby and comparisons to pictures of baby Emma, we have been talking a lot about growing lately. This is a sweet book that talks about how things grow over time: trees, crops, puppies, and children. My only complaint is that it's a bit wordy and Emma got a little bored.

Double Trouble Groundhog Day by Bethany Roberts. What makes a better G book than one about groundhogs? A book about groundhog twins named Greta and Gregory. LOTS of Gs, both big and little, to look for in the text!

Glasses: Who Needs 'Em? by Lane Smith. Smith has a fabulous, if slightly offbeat, sense of humor. This book, which has fabulous illustrations, is about a doctor who tries to convince a boy why it's cool to have glasses. Besides the fun story, one of the best things about this book is that the little Gs are normal, not the funky Gs you get with many fonts, so they were easy to recognize.

Grown-Ups Get to Do All the Driving by William Steig. Steig has such a distinctive style to all of his illustrations, and it this book it's combined with all of the things that pertain to grown ups: in addition to "get[ing] to do all the driving," grown-ups also "always have to know what time it is" and "like hands to be clean." Funny and fun. The font is also all upper-case letters, which can make it easier to spot the Gs.

Gingersnaps

Can you tell that we love baked goods? As with our previous ventures, Emma was especially good at dumping the mom-measured ingredients into the mixing bowl. Oh, and she's quite adept at tasting the final product as well. :)

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
4 Tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons cloves
2 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg and molasses. Combine baking soda, spices, and flour, and add to mixture. Bake at 350* for 10-12 minutes.

Games

Emma is just at the cusp of understanding rules to games, so for our G activity we played "Candyland." She knows all of her colors, so actually playing the game isn't a problem; however, her obession with playing "people" was, sort of. When my mom came to take care of Emma when Madeline was born, they spent a lot of time playing with Fisher-Price Little People. In particular, their Little People would go on pretend trips to the zoo. Hence, any time Emma sees any sort of figurine (such as the playing pieces in Candyland), she uses them to go to the zoo. So we played about half of a game of Candyland following the specified rules, and then it fell into a game of going to the zoo. Either way, Emma now knows that game starts wtih G. Oh, and she had fun too.
PS. Originally I had planned to play "Go Fish"--double points for a game that starts with G! But I didn't have time this week to search out a card game with actual fish on it, and I thought she might get confused if we played with face cards. Maybe I'll find one by the time Madeline is ready to learn the alphabet...