Summer Fun at The Zoo plus an Eric Carle inspired activity!

Earlier this month we took a trip to our local zoo for an Animal adventure! We love visiting our Zoo! Its a great place for the kiddos to get there wiggles out and run and play while learning and maybe even like we did create a lasting memory by making there own Book. Plus now that its summer who doesn't want to go on a little adventure?

Take a look at the fun we had at The San Antonio Zoo:

Our first stop is always The reptile House! We love to check out the snakes

We got super lucky and caught a snake shedding its skin which is a great opportunity for the kids to learn something new and see it up close.

then we went to check out the fish... 

Love this message! Especially for children "Explore your World"

Then we went to lory landing where you can feed the Lorikeets. Its a real fun experience for the kiddos and great on your wallet because its free to go inside Lory landing and if you want to buy them food to feed, its only $1.50. Trust me its worth it when you see the smile on your kiddos face. I had fun last year feeding the lorikeets when they all just kept landing on me. You can check out that fun day here. 

Another favorite place is the Fun farm where you can touch and even comb pigs and goats. They are super fun and friendly! 

Our final fun spot was Rift Valley where we saw a Rhino and walked down to see the zebras and Elephant.

It was a great zoo visit! Plenty of the animals were out and active during this hot day but since we always arrive early it wasn't so bad. How long has it been since you visited your local zoo? 

Here is the activity book we created using pictures we took during our Zoo visit. This is an Eric Carle inspired activity using the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear". You can make your own with your kiddos and it will be a great memory book for them. Check out how to make one here plus more pictures from this visit. Have fun making one! 

Hope you are having a great summer and making lots of happy memories before the kiddos head back to school or like mine go for the first time. If your still looking for summer fun ideas be sure to check out my 75 Days of summer fun. Its a great place to get started and create your own fun list to prevent summer boredom. Hope you check it out and enjoy your summer! 

Want to check out another fun zoo visit? 
Zootennial Plaza Groundbreaking
Holiday fun at the San Antonio Zoo

Our Visit to The Texas Book Festival in San Antonio

A couple of weeks ago we attended the Texas Book Festival (San Antonio edition) and had lots of fun! It was held at The Central library and Southwest School of Art. There was so much to do, see and enjoy that I wish it was longer. They had various authors, book sales, readings and activities for all ages. I knew we had to go and right off the bat I knew we would be doing the kids version. I planned out what kids activities and areas I wanted to visit as well as kids book readings and sales, but sadly we couldn't even do half of what was on my list because we would stay so entertained in one area that we would lose track of time. 

We started off the day being greeted with people giving out free reusable San Antonio bags for all the fun to come (I love my bag). 

We went to check out the kids area since the Bubble making station was on our must see list and we were excited to see that The San Antonio Childrens Museum was in charge of that activity! We love them and when we saw that they were making dry ice bubbles it was even more exciting since we had performed that Science experiment with them before. My munchkin knew what to do already so he got super bubbly soaked hands ready for fun! Have you tried making dry ice bubbles? When you pop them it looks like a poof of white. Its fun every time and even Clifford came over to say Hi! 

Next we went to go learn how to make our Own Pop up Books. They had colored paper, googly eyes and more fun supplies so you can make your own creation. This was a great activity since a lot of children struggle to learn to read. What a fun way to get children more involved with books, by making there own they will hopefully be more inclined to want to read and show off there own words. 

Then we went to make our own Bookmarks. They had pastels, markers, crayons and brushes with water to make the perfect place holder for your book reading. 

We hopped on over to the Scholastic Literacy caravan. We had been on one of these before. If you haven't been in one they are full of activities for kids to inspire learning in a fun way. At the end when you are ready to get off they have a nice selection of books to choose from because guess what? They give you a Brand New FREE book to take home and keep, read and love! How Awesome is that? If you are in the San Antonio Area click here for a schedule of upcoming places you can visit the Scholastic Caravan at. 

We took a walk over to the tents and stopped at various booths to see what books were for sale and the stories/inspiration behind them. It was fun to see the variety of books and themes. They had plenty of kids books and even some bookmarks. Scholastic had a big booth where they were giving away free pins. My favorite was the one that says" Reading gives you Super Powers". I took that one home with me for sure! 

After a Lunch break while hearing live music at The Festival we knew it was time for some Shopping! We went downstairs to the Book Cellar. They had a great half off sale that day so it was packed! But even still we found a nice spot to sit on the floor and go through the shelves of kids books picking out some fun ones to take home. If your in the San Antonio area and a book lover you should make sure to head on over to the Book cellar and check out the great prices they have on there wide selection of books. You will not be disappointed. 

After getting our huge Haul of books bagged up we headed on home with great memories from the day, more books to fill our home library and wishes for the next Book Festival in San Antonio because we cant wait to go again! 

Did you go this year to the Texas Book Festival in San Antonio? or have you gone to one in your area? Hope it was fun!

Bargain shopping fun

This week after the rain passed we finally left the house and went shopping! I was lucky enough to have won a gift card to Goodwill, its one of my favorite places to shop for bargains so this was exciting! 

Here are some of the awesome finds from this week:

My favorite place to start is the books! I Love Books! I'm a bookaholic....
I literally try to look at every single title afraid I'll miss something. I ended up finding some really cute kids books and even coloring books.

I picked up a couple of photo albums to hopefully have fun with (ideas brewing)

I found a ton of really awesome Christmas items that were half off. I know! Half off the low prices they already have, it was a steal. This cute Christmas baker was only $2! and all those new packages you see of Christmas items they were 25 cents each! 

If you like getting ahead of the season well they have a huge shelf covered in baskets. You can use them for Easter baskets or even make your Valentine a neat basket full of goodies. They even had Heart cutouts! 

Anyone here a teacher? Or even a parent trying to organize there desk or kids arts supplies well there were so many cute containers and bins and more to help you along. 

Lastly kids clothes! If you have a little one then you know how fast they grow out of clothes. So a tip from me would be to shop at Goodwill for kids clothes. Everything 5T and under is 99 cents! Baby clothes is a great bet. They don't walk around yet so how dirty can they get? I saw a bunch of items still with tags! We took home some cute clothes for munchkin and if I wouldn't have told you, you would have thought I bought it new. 

Whens the last time you went shopping at goodwill? Items are being constantly brought out so its like shopping at a new store very time! 

Disclosure: I won a Goodwill Gift card and was not asked to write about my shopping experience. All opinions are my own.

Arte Kids Book launch at San Antonio Museum Of Art

This past week we were invited to The San Antonio Museum of Art for Arte Kids Book launch and had a blast! The museum had this special event to celebrate there New books that showcase art pieces from the museum. They are beautiful books that are not only kid friendly but also bilingual! I love how they integrate art and shapes and colors in a format that appeals to kids. At the event they had activities that were inspired from pages of the books. Here are the fun activities we did with our kiddos:

Square, Frank Stella

Red, Sergio Hernandez



Sun, Metepec, Mexico

We then had a Reading of the Books

Then a Museum tour that led us to the actual works of Art that are in the books



We had lots of fun with the activities and tour. We even had yummy treats that resembled pictures from the books thanks to Lily's Cookies. They are Beautiful!

The whole event was lots of fun for the kids and a treat for the parents. I am looking forward to visiting the museum more often now that starting in January they are going to have new kid centered activities (more details to come).

Don't forget that The San Antonio Museum of Art is Free for all ages on Tuesdays from 4 to 9 pm. So take advantage and stop on by with your kids and enjoy some art. Be sure to pick up copies of the new Kids books for the children in your lives. They will make great Christmas gifts for your little artist!