Yes, Easter Bells are rung in France and Italy throughout the year but they are not rung on the Thursday before good Friday. They are silent as way to remember the death of Jesus. They are then rung on Easter Sunday as way of telling people Jesus is alive again.
Flying Bells
Cloche volant or Flying Bells are another important part of the Easter traditions of France. French Catholics believe that on Good Friday, all the church bells in France fly to the Vatican in Rome, carrying with them the misery and grief of those who mourn Jesus’ crucifixion on that day. These flying bells return on Easter Sunday morning and bring with them lots of chocolate and eggs. In keeping with the tradition, French church bells do not ring from Good Friday to Easter morning.
Thinking of Easter – if you want a cute bunny to add to your child’s Easter basket see our line of stuffed toy animals on our website.
Growing up I was lucky enough to live near Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. As an adult I used to walk there on my lunch hour for a quick retreat.
With spring in the air it’s time to begin planning a zoo outing with your kids. But if you do not live near a zoo you could provide your kids with one of our children’s wooden toys from our toddler toy collection of playsets.
Our zoo toy is one of our beautiful, fun-filled toddler learning toys that will bring hours of creative play to kids age 3 and up. Our zoo toy includes eleven hand-painted animals, a three piece zoo entrance, a penguin pond and four fences.
Besides providing children wooden playsets it is fun to make simple crafts with your kids. There are several zoo themed ideas I found at this website: http://www.freekidcrafts.com/zoo.html. One that I particularly liked was the Giraffe paper bag puppet. (I have always liked puppets and they are great toddler learning toys.)
Giraffe Paper Bag Puppet – Print out one of the giraffe templates ( color – or – black and white). Color the giraffe, if necessary, and cut out the 2 parts. Glue the giraffe’s head to the bottom of a small lunch-sized paper bag. Lift up the fold and glue in the neck of the giraffe so that when you put your hand inside the bag it looks like the giraffe has a head on top of a neck.
Visit our website today and see all our children’s wooden toys!
We have added a group of three Gibbon’s to our collection of plush stuffed animals. These Gibbon’s are posable plush toys for kids of all ages.
You will love the large 42” Papa Mango as well as the 18 “and 12.5” Baby Mango. As with all our stuffed toys the Gibbon’s are quality, safe hand-sewn plush toys for your young children.
Gibbons are rare, small, slender, long-armed, tree-dwelling apes. These very acrobatic primates live in Southeast Asia. Gibbons are arboreal; they spend most of their lives in trees.
Gibbons have senses very similar to ours, including hearing, sight (including color vision), smell, taste, and touch.
Gibbons are omnivores (eating plants and meat). They forage for food in the forests during the day, eating fruit (which constitutes about 75% of their diet), leaves, flowers, seeds, tree bark, and tender plant shoots. They also eat insects, spiders, bird eggs, and small birds.
Gibbons drink water, often by dipping a furry hand into the water or rubbing a hand on wet leaves, and then slurping up the water from their fur. Gibbons sometimes do this while dangling above the water from a thin tree branch.
More information about this fascinating rainforest animal is available at: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/apes/gibbon/.
See our website for more posable plush stuffed animals.
Pre-Christian fertility lore is the origin of the Easter Bunny. During the spring season, the Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known.
According to what I read at http://www.easterbunnys.net/easterbunnyhistory.htm, the bunny as an Easter symbol had it’s origin in Germany. It was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s. The first edible Easter bunnies were made in Germany during the early 1800s. These were made of pastry and sugar.
The Easter bunny was introduced to American folklore by the German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s. The arrival of the “Oschter Haws” was considered “childhood’s greatest pleasure” next to a visit from Christ-Kindel on Christmas Eve. The children believed that if they were good the “Oschter Haws” would lay a nest of colored eggs.
Easter is early this year and you will want to see our line of plush stuffed animals on our website. Our stuffed animals include a line of plush rabbits perfect for gift giving and including in your Easter baskets.
Providing your children arts and crafts time is not only a great “quiet time” play idea it will help your children develop fine motor skills. Crafts that include the use of scissors, beads, crayons, finger paints or anything else you can think of to get their fingers involved will benefit your children.
An old time favorite from the 1950’s is Silly Putty ® and is a great quiet-time activity to help your children with his fine motor skills. James Wright, a GE engineer, came upon the material by mixing silicone oil with boric acid. The compound, acted very much like rubber in its ability to rebound almost 25 percent higher than a normal rubber ball. My favorite memory of playing with Silly Putty was pressing it onto the Sunday comic’s page and making an imprint.
Did you know that Silly Putty sold faster than any other toy in history with over $6 million in sales for the year? Silly Putty is now the registered trademark of Binney & Smith Inc.
Besides encouraging craft activities for your children you can also provide other activities such as building toys such as Legos, Tinker Toys and cardboard building blocks
. These toys are manipulativies and will enhance fine motor skills just the same as coloring, painting and cutting.
Toy blocks such as ImagiBRICKS are giant sized cardboard blocks and are available in sets as small as 16 pieces. Three sizes of blocks are available in the 24 and 40 piece set or you may get a bulk quantity order when you have several children who will be playing together.
God, it is my settled decision
Not to choose less
When You have chosen more for me.
Not to choose the worst
When You have chosen the best.
Not to stoop to defeat
When You have provided victory.
Not to let my emptiness
Close the door to Your fullness.
The idea for one of the most famous toys in history was inspired by a meter for testing horsepower on battleships. A torsion spring used in a testing meter fell from the desk of marine engineer Richard James and tumbled end-over-end across the floor.
James took it home to his wife Betty and said, “I think I can make a toy out of this.” This he did by devising a steel formula that allowed the spring to “walk.” 
Betty went through the dictionary for a fitting name for the toy and found it in SLINKY, which was defined as “stealthy, sleek and sinuous.”
In 1945, as Christmas neared, Gimbel’s department store agreed to provide counter space for 400 SLINKYs. Richard James was there to demonstrate the toy to a crowd of shoppers and within 90 minutes all 400 SLINKYs were sold. (James Industries)
Fred Kort is a Holocaust survivor who escaped from Treblinka. He was only one of nine people in the world to have survived.
He started his career at General Electric and then as an engineer at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. After decades of learning about the toy industry, he was finally able to accomplish his lifelong dream of building his own toy company in 1969.
He launched his toy company with only one product, a bouncing ball he called “Teeny Bouncers”. Today, Imperial’s product line features more than 800 year-round and seasonal items which are sold in over fifty foreign countries. (Imperial Toy Corporation)
“Kort is 74 years old and was at Treblinka where between 700,000 and 850,000 Jews were exterminated”, according to Fortune Magazine, in a article written by Carol J. Loomis on April 13, 1998. Ms. Loomis went on to say that ” only nine are believed to have survived and Mr. Kort was one of them”.
You can read the entire article on this link. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/
Mr. Kort arrived in America at the age of 24 with one nickel in his pocket and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nowadays there are other ball toys which are manufactured by Purr*Fection and called Bouncy Buddies. These plush stuffed animals are children’s stuffed animal toys that have a hard rubber ball sewn into their bellies. They can be played with by children but dogs also love them; so remember Fido when you are ordering a stuffed toy for your child.
If you guessed that they are all considered rainforest animals you would be correct. Frogs are from the Amphibians category, Bats and Bengal Tigers from the Mammals category.
Other animals that are considered rainforest animals are from categories such as Arachnids, Birds, Insects, and Reptiles to name a few others.
According to Answers.com the Amazon Rainforest has a mossy ground cover and is rich with vegetation, animals and insects. It has many slopes, cliffs and hills for waterfalls and rivers.
The soil is moist because it gets at least 9 feet of water a year. It has many exotic flowers and many fish in the rivers.
Nowadays there are many students studying the rainforest and here is a link with all sorts of useful information for your students. http://www.rain-tree.com/schoolreports.htm. You may also like this rainforest activity pages link: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/animals/coloring-pages/rainforest.htm#alphabet.
If your students are 3 and up we offer a unique rainforest 3d wooden puzzle playset on our website. Each animal is its own puzzle piece and is chunky in size making it easy for young children to pick up and play with. All the toy animals fit together to form a pretty 7.5” square puzzle.
Children are always seeking out new ways to play creatively. But, there is also ways you can help them.
Here is a unique way to use your old typewriter; and if you do not have one maybe I will sell you mine!
Children often have a parent who works in an office and you can have fun teaching them about how an office is set up just like the one you work in. You can set up a mini office with the help of toy blocks by Smart Monkey Toys. These giant building blocks come in sets of Rainbow colors and can be ordered in any quantity you need from All I Can Imagine.
Set up the typewriter or maybe even an old keyboard on a child size table or a table made from the toy blocks. Make another work table and provide your children paper, pencils, telephone, address book and other child-safe office supplies. Set up another office and each of you will have fun interacting.
Children enjoy being creative and it will help them to make sense of the actual world we adults live in and they will especially love having you play with them. When you provide role playing activities in a real life setting you will gain greater insight into your child’s life and help him develop necessary social skills.