Fun at Home

Flower and Plant Week!

2010-04-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

What a fun, happy week we have planned at the Johnson home!! Spring is here (maybe, if it doesn't snow again!:) and we have some fun flower/plant theme activities planned.

The first thing I am really excited to do with Skylar is a very simple science experiment. She has recently discoverd the TV show "Sid the Science Kid" and she is obsessed! Every day she asks me when we can do an experiment :) One thing I have learned with my children is if they are showing an interest in something I need to jump on it and take every opportunity I have to get them excited about learning. And if today it happens to be science experiments, so be it!! We did this probably two years ago, but now she is actually old enough to understand :) All you do is get a bunch of white carnations. Then you fill up cups with water and different colored drops of food coloring, and as the flowers drink up the water you can see them changing colors! :) I think it will be a fun way to explain how plants and flowers need water, and I'm also thinking we could put together a graph showing which colors affect the flowers the most.

Another fun activity we did when Skylar was in a cute little playgroup a few years ago. One of the moms had the best idea :) She got little planters and let the kids plant grass seeds. The great idea was they planted the seed to form their first initial. So as the grass grows, it will form an S or a K for my girls, and I think they will love looking at them :)

In the last few weeks I have dedicated myself to helping not only myself but also my kids be more healthy, so I was excited to find some fun ideas for healthy snacks this week. First up we will be attempting this...

Ok, probably won't turn out QUITE like that, but I think it will be fun to attempt :) Sometimes its also as simple as making PB&J sandwhiches for lunch and using the flower shaped cookie cutter...I don't know, my kids love it!!

The thing we are looking forward to the most is attending the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. This is one of our favorite activities that we have done the last few years, and I am excited to do it again! Hopefully the weather cooperates and we can spend some quality family time together in the beautiful gardens.

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week and take some time to treasure all the precious moments we have with our little ones!

Easter Week!

2010-03-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

What a great week we have planned!! Hopefully we continue to have beautiful spring weather to go along with it! :) Tonight I am just posting some fun activities we will be doing this week that deal more with the secular part of Easter. I have a great fhe I will post about tomorrow and some other fun ways we can really try to focus on the Savior more and the Easter Bunny less this Easter, but for now heres a few ways to entertain your kiddos this week:

First off is this adorable craft-

Handprint Easter Lilies!! All you do is trace the kids hands, cut out the tracings and roll them up to form a lily. Then you tape them to a straw and there you have it! When I was on bedrest last year my darling sister-in-law made these with my kids while she was watching them for the day. Love you Jen ;)

Then a fun snack that the kids love to make, edible egg nests! And I just realized that my other sister-in-law made these with my kids while I was on bedrest too! Thanks Crista :) Wow, what a great family I have!

Photo from www.familycorner.com :)

This is a fun week to play some education games using plastic easter eggs! One thing we love to do is get a bunch of our eggs and and write different letters on them, upper and lowercase. Then I have the kids run around in a mock easter egg hunt and try to match up the letters. You could also use these to sort and help teach the younger kids about colors. My younger daughter is working on learning about shapes so we will take advantage of that this week and focus on the difference between circles and ovals using the eggs.

Tomorrow I am going to the craft store to pick up some styrafoam egg shapes. Then I am going to let the kids paint them, glitter them, etc! And of course the old standby...dyeing Easter eggs! I just realized I have yet to do this with my kids, I can't believe I held out this long!

I hope you all have a wonderful week with your families. I love this time of year, a time of rebirth and a time to renew our spirits and find the beauty and joy that are all around us!!

Farm Week

2010-03-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Spring is in the air and I am absolutely thrilled about it!! :) I thought this would be a perfect week to learn about farms and farm animals. There are alot of great ideas out there, and some really fun things I can't wait to do. For more fun ideas check out all the links on my sidebar, there are some very creative people out there.

My favorite thing we will be doing this week is going to a local farm. The kids LOVE going there and feeding all the animals and taking pony rides too :) They have a really cool display on how we get milk, so we will focus on that aspect of the farm. I also want to talk about the different foods that come from farms so for a snack we will bring apples, veggies, etc.

One day we will focus completely on pigs :) I want to read the kids The Three Little Pigs and then do a really fun craft to go with it. Out of cardboard you cut out 3 house shapes. Then let the kids make each of the 3 houses using dried grass (straw), toothpicks (sticks), and squares of red paper (bricks). Another fun craft I found was to make pig noses out of egg cartons. Let the kids paint them pink and then draw on black nostrils. Then attach a string and walaah!! Of course if you need a fun snack for that day, pigs in a blanket will do just fine :)

Finally one day I thought we could learn about lambs. Using cotton balls we'll let the kids make their own fluffy lambs, and talk about how they are sheared and where wool comes from.

I am excited to use this week to hopefully help my kids become more aware of the world and where things come from. We have so much that we often take for granted, hopefully they will learn a lot and have some fun too :)

St. Patricks Day and Rainbows

2010-03-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

What a fun, fun week we are going to have! I don't know why, but I just love St. Patricks day :) Check out my post from last year on some fun traditions that we do in our family. This year we will keep the ones we did last year, and also be adding a few new fun things.

Going off of our fhe that we are having tonight we are going to be talking a lot about rainbows this week too. On that note check out these fantastic pancakes the kids will be waking up to on St. Patricks Day...

http://ediblecrafts.craftgossip.com/rainbow-pancakes/2009/10/25/

Too cute!!

On www.preschoolexpress.com they had the great idea to make a rainbow fruit salad. Using yellow pears, green and purple grapes, raspberries, blueberries and mandarin oranges and then have the kids pick out and identify each color.

Now, St. Patty's Day fun! :) On www.preschooleducation.com they had a lot of great ideas and songs. I don't know about your kids but my almost 5 year old LOVES to learn new songs, so I think this week we will learn this one:

I'M A LITTLE SHAMROCK
Tune: "I'm a Little Teapot"
I'm a little shamrock,
Look at me.
Here are my green leaves,
One, two, and three.
When I'm out you know
It's time to say
Have a happy
St. Patrick's Day!

Another darling idea was to make Leprechaun Dust. You simply take old, cleaned out baby food jars, I am going to decorate them with green paper and lots of gold glitter :) Then you pour some instant pistachio pudding mix in the bottom. Have the kids add some milk, put the lid back on and shake to their little hearts content!

Finally before we do our annual 4-leaf clover search we are going to make leprechaun hats. Simply take a plain paper bowl, let the kids go crazy with green paing and glitter and voila! Hole punch the brim of the bowl and tie a string through to make their very own unique leprechaun hat!

Have a happy St. Patricks Day!!

Rainbow Family Home Evening

2010-03-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am so excited for this Family Home Evening! This week we are learning about St Patricks day and Rainbows and I was happy to come up with something that would go along with our theme.

We are going to start by talking about leprachauns and how they are always looking for the end of the rainbow so they can get to the pot of gold. We are going to talk about how beautiful rainbows are, and what they represent for our family.

Red= Love
Orange= Service
Yellow= Happiness
Green= Knowledge
Blue= Faith
Purple= Honesty

On the floor we will have tons of squares of papers in all the different colors of the rainbow. One at a time, starting with red, I will ask the kids to pick up all the papers of that color. Then they will tape them all up on the wall and we will talk about what that color represents. For instance, Red=Love, Jesus taught us that we should love one another. We need to love everyone, even if people are mean to us. We will do this for each of the colors. By the end we will have a "rainbow" of squares leading around the corner. Around the corner I will have a pot of Gold (gold chocolate coins). Of course, this represents what we will find if we do all the things represented in our "rainbow", eternal life and being with our family forever!

I am excited for this lesson for several reasons. I love a good visual, and I hope we can make the rainbow a reminder for our family of all the things we need to do to live with our Heavenly Father again.

Bugs and Butterflies Week

2010-03-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

Spring is on its way and what better time to learn all about bugs and butterflies? I am so excited to do some fun activities with the kiddos this week, we have been crazy busy and I am THRILLED to get back to our weekly themes :)

I found a really fun song on one of the preschool sites, and it goes to the tune of Wheels on the Bus :

The fireflies at night go blink, blink, blink,
blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink,
The fireflies at night go blink, blink, blink,
out in the garden.
Bees/flowers/buzz
Crickets/fields/chirp
Caterpillars/on the leaves/munch
Spiders/in the bush/spin their webs

To go with the songs I printed out pictures of each insect, colored, and laminated them. When we go to sing the song the kids will get to pick a picture out and then we will sing the corresponding verse.

I am excited to do a fun butterfly craft with the girls. Once again it will be a footprint/handprint craft, love those!! They will use their feet and hands for the wings and then color the body and antenea. I'm thinking their will be lots of glitter too :)

As always, gotta have fun treats!! The old standby we couldn't do without...Ants on a log. We have actually never had these so I think my kids will love them. I also found a fun idea on www.familyfun.com. Check out these cute ladybugs!

They are just made of strawberries, grapes and mini chocolate chips.

I would love to hear any great ideas you have for fun insect activities, feel free to leave a comment. Have a great week!

Noah's Ark Family Home Evening

2010-01-25T14:55:00.000-08:00

This one is a little bit thrown together, but I hope its still fun and the kids learn something :)

I've been thinking about our family home evenings, and I've decided I want each week to include a scripture story, and then we can expound on the lesson that story deals with. I want to try and foster a love for the scriptures in my children, and help them see that they truly were written for us, that they are applicable even today!

Today's story is Noah and the Ark. As we talk about the story I have gathered all the stuffed animals we own and will hide them around the house. Then I have a biq plastic bucket that we are going to pretend is the ark. Once we talk about how Noah was obedient and even though everyone teased him he still did what Heavenly Father wanted him too, the kids will climb in the boat. Then we will put all the stuffed animals in with them. Then we will read about how the wind and the rain came down, meanwhile rocking the basket and spraying the kids with my little water-sprayer-fan thing :) (I think this will be their favorite part:)

To close I really want to talk about how obedient Noah was, even in the face of persecution. How we need to strive to have a close relationship with Heavenly Father, so we can find out what he would have us do, and once we DO find that out, let nothing get in the way of us accomplishing our Father's will.

Finally for treats we are having good old-fashioned animal cookies. You know, the yummy pink and white ones? :) Happy Monday!

Keeping it simple

2010-01-25T08:05:00.001-08:00

I wrote the title to this post, and then had to laugh. I should hardly be telling anyone how to keep things simple!! Not really one of my strengths ;)

I just wanted to give an idea on one thing I make sure to do every week, even if we can't really do much else as far as the weekly theme goes. Let's be honest, some weeks I (and you I am sure) am just trying to keep my head above water, let alone plan and follow through with some amazing activities for the kids. But by doing this simple thing I still feel like I am teaching my kids something and we are accomplishing things.

Simply go to www.dltk-kids.com (check out the link on my sidebar) and click on the Alphabuddies section. Then they have templates for each letter. It has an upper and lowercase letter. I print, cut them out, and glue on to cute scrapbook paper. Then we hang it up on the frigde under the sign that says "Letter of the week". In that same section they have tracer pages also for each letter. I print out a few of these, and throughout the week we practice writing that letter. Its great for my 4 year old who loves to write and is working hard on developing that skill, and its helping my 2 year old start to recognize letters.

Excercise Week!

2010-01-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

Since we learned all about our bodies last week, I thought it would be great to follow up this week with learning about excercise! I also wanted to do this while it was cold outside. It seems like when the weather is nicer the kids automatically are more active, but its the winter months that we really seem to become couch potatoes!

There are a lot of frightening statistics regarding obesity and children in the United States. My hope is that some of these activities can help my children (and myself!) see how vital excercise is, and also how fun!!

I found a FANTASTIC article on the website www.abchomepreschool.com. It had some fun excercises to do that were all named after veggies or fruits. I printed out and colored pictures of the individual fruits and veggies, and I am hoping that we can do these fun excercises everyday, and by the end of the week when I hold up the corresponding picture the kids will know what excercise that means! Here is the entire article for your viewing pleasure :)
For general warm-ups, try the "Tater Tot Trot." Jog in place and pump your arms. Every ten steps or so slowly stretch your neck, look back at the right shoulder and then at the left shoulder. For "Spud Sprints" look straight ahead and speed up to a running pace. It is important that students land on their heels and not on their toes. If fairly large plot of ground is available, try trotting on a running trail inside or outside. The "Trot" works the posterior deltoid, hamstrings, quadriceps, and illiposoas.

The "Strawberry Stretch" is a great exercise to stretch the back, arms, and shoulders. It teaches balance and coordination. First, cross your right foot in front of your left. Bend down, touch your right toe, count to eight, and then straighten up. Make sure your back stays straight and does not arch. Cross your left foot in front of your right and repeat the stretch. The "Strawberry Stretch" works the lattisimus dorsi, teres major, the triceps, and the biceps. It also engages all three parts of the deltoid, including the anterior, posterior, and the lateral parts of the shoulder.

"Pumpkin Peeler" works the legs, back, arms, and shoulders. It also requires balance and dexterity. To perform this exercise, stand and lock your fingers together behind your back. Bend forward at the waist and keep your legs straight. With your fingers still locked, raise your arms over your head. Hold for a count of eight. This can also be done by bending at the knees. Teach the children the importance of flexibility by stretching the calf and leg muscles. The "Pumpkin Peeler" synergistically incorporates the lattismus dorsi, teres major, and deltoids, while it gently stretches the legs.

The" Sweet Pea Ski" benefits the muscles in the legs and challenges the child’s balance. One should begin with feet together. Slowly bend at the knees while swinging both your arms to the right as if you were using two ski poles on that side. Straighten up then repeat the bend and swing to the left. The "Sweet Pea" is great for the inner thigh, the hip adductor, or the gracilis. It is good for the hip flexors, the obliques, and the pectineus. This exercise offers the added benefit of working the whole gluteus, which includes the maximums, medius, and minimus.

"Pepper Pops" are great for both the beginner and the advanced exerciser. It works the legs, chest, and back. Do jumping jacks and clap above your head. For a "Pepper Pop Plus", add a right kick and a left kick with a clap under the knee while ensuring that the back stays straight. These additional movements work the erector spinae at the lower back. The muscles of the chest, namely the serratus anterior and the pectorals major, also receive a workout.

The "Broccoli Bounce" is good for the upper and lower body. Stand with hands clasped behind your heck and your elbows drawn back. Walk in place, raising your knees, bring your left elbow down to touch it. When you lift your left knee, bring your right elbow down to touch it. The "Broccoli" is good for both the hamstrings and the quadriceps. It works the smaller muscles as well as the important part of the legs, the calves, or the gastrocneumuis, soleus, tibialis anterior and the knee.

"Cauliflower Chippers" are a great way to end an aerobic session. It works the knees and the arms. Bounce up and down with your knees without taking your feet off the floor. At the same time, stretch your arms to each side and swing them in giant circles. You may also flex and extend the important yet neglected extensors and flexors of the wrists. You can change the movement of the chippers as well as cooling down by a stretch by elongating your shoulders, back, chest, and arms. The students should be encouraged to walk slowly in order to stretch their legs properly.

I am excited to one day put together an obstacle course!! As I was doing some research on line, this is a great way to help develop preschoolers large motor skills, and sounds fun too :) I am going to have to get creative to make one in my house, but crawling under things, jumping over things, and balancing are all things I want to include :)

One of our favorite ways to excercise is to DANCE :) One fun idea I had was to scroll through the music stations we have on our satelitte, and do different kind of dances that match up with the different kind of songs (fast, slow, ballet, crazy!!) Then we can talk about which muscles we were using for each different kind of dancing.

My goal for this week is simply to make my children more aware of the benefits of excercise, and to show them those benefits in a fun, easy way. Have a great week everyone!!:)

Bodies Week

2010-01-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

What a fun week we have planned! On my family blog I posted about a few of these activities 2 years ago, and it is so fun to look back at the pictures of my oldest, now the same age as my youngest daughter :)

One really fun activity I though of was to have the kids lay down on a big roll of butcher paper. Then they help me label all the different body parts, and afterwards they get to color them. Skylar LOVES this, and enjoys hanging her "Skylar" on the wall for the whole week :)

The other things they really enjoy is making a face out of fruit. We talk about each of the different parts of a face and they get to make their own. String cheese for hair, bananas for mouth, mandarin oranges for eyebrows, etc! You can use whatever you have on hand, and it makes for a healthy snack too!

One game my kids really love to play is Hullabaloo. It is so fun, and great for their ages. Well this week we will use the different mats, but instead of doing what the little game says, I will direct the kids, having them touch the pads with different parts of their bodies.

Last but not least, who doesn't love a little Hokey Pokey :) Have a great week everyone!! :)

Aquarium Activity

2010-01-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

This fun activity takes a little bit of prep work, but it made our trip to the local aquarium a lot of fun for the kids! All I did was make a scavenger hunt sheet for the kids with animals they would see at the aquarium. I also had a bucket of foam oceanlife stickers so I picked animals I had stickers of. Next to each word I put a picture of each animal/thing found in ocean and when the kids found it, they put the corresponding sticker next to it. My kids love all kind of games, so this made seeing some things that they had seen a million times before a little more exciting.

Choose the Right Family Home Evening

2010-01-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

This last Sunday my oldest daughter was moved into the CTR 4 class. She has been SO excited to be a big girl and not be in Sunbeams anymore, so I thought it was a great opportunity to learn more about what CTR means.

I got some great ideas on Sugardoodle.net and tweaked them a little to fit out needs. I started off by reading a story from the March 1999 issue of the friend. Here is the direct link:
http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=f08a735f764bb010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD"

It talks about a big sister choosing the right and setting a good example for her little brother, perfect for my daughter! After we talked about how important it was to set a good example we sang Do As I'm Doing and let everyone take turns picking the actions. Then I had a list of examples of choosing the right, and not choosing the right (ie. helping mom clean up, making fun of someone at church, yelling in the chapel, and folding your arms during the prayer.) I had printed out a big yellow smiley face and a big red frowny face. I taped these up on the wall and everytime I read an example the kids would run and touch the smiley face if it was choosing the right, or the frowny face if it wasn't. It was a great way to get the wiggles out after reading a story. All in all a pretty good little family home evening! :)

Ocean Life Week!

2010-01-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, its been a long time since we had a theme for the week! :) But its a new year, and a new chance to be more consistent and do more fun, educational activities with the kids! I love this week because it always includes a trip to the local aquarium. One of our favorite things to do is a craft we do the morning before we go to the aquarium. We have a big bucket of oceanlife foam stickers. On a blue piece of paper the girls put on all the different stickers. Then we take it with us to the aquarium. Skylar calls it her "map" and we go around and try to find everything on it! Simple, easy, and SO fun :)

We will also be making jelly fish to hang up around the girls room for the week. You just let the kids fingerpaint paper plates and then attach different colored crepe paper for streamers.

Our letter of the week is the letter B so I think we will take one day and learn all about the fasciniting world of Blowfish :) Along with printing out tracing papers for the letter B I like to have a word we talk about to reinforce the sound.

As always, the food must go along with the theme :) One day we will be having hot dogs that look like an octopus. If you have never done this all you do is cut slits in the bottom and when you cook the hot dog the ends curl up to look like tentacles. My girls LOVE it :) My friend also gave me the great idea of having tomato soup for lunch and putting goldfish crackers in. Then you let the kids "go fishing"

I hope you all have a great week. One of my years goals is to embrace this precious time I have with my children and not let it go to waste. Doing simple little activities like these are one way I am hoping to get closer to that goal!!

A Christmas FHE with a twist

2009-12-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

Last week we did a different kind of Christmas Family Home Evening. My husband wasn't quite sure about it, but I made sure it was very reverant and respectful. When the kids came out from playing I had made a little banner that said Happy Birthday and crepe paper streamers. On the table was a cake that said Happy Birthday with a bunch of lighted candles. We sang Happy Birthday (not to anyone specifically) and then the kids blew out the candles. Then we talked about birthdays and why they are important. We talked about how we celebrate someone's birth, and we do that because we love them. We also talked about how alot of times we give presents on birthdays too.

After that we moved into the living room where I had soft Christmas music playing. I read a scripture about Christ's birth and talked about how we were about to celebrate that wonderful occasion. I had some little boxes and we talked about what we would give Jesus for Christmas this year. I wrote down what kind of things the kids wanted to give him (ie, be nice to sister, help mommy clean, etc) and we put them in the boxes with a bow on top. On Christmas morning we will open them again to remind the kids of the things they are going to give Jesus.

I thought it turned out really well, and using something kids are very excited about and familiar with like birthdays made it more real to them that Christmas is a celebration of our Savior's birth. I also loved focusing on what kind of gifts we can give the Savior, instead of just thinking about all the fun toys that are coming :)

Individual Worth Family Home Evening

2009-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Again last night we had a really simple but wonderful family home evening. I was wanting to save up my Christmas fhe's for the next few weeks so I was trying to think of what our family needed. Just a quick side note: I believe very strongly that if we go to our Heavenly Father in sincere prayer he will guide us every step of the way as we prepare our family home evenings. I personally have received a lot of personal revelation regarding the needs of my small family, and I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that helps me to see the things that will benefit my family the most.

Anyways :) We started off the night by reading my MOST favorite childrens book. If you don't have this book RUN, don't walk, RUN to the nearest book store and get it!! It is so fantastic, and the kids even at age 2 and 4 were mesmerized by it. What book you ask? :)

I couldn't get through reading it without tearing up. It beautifuly teaches us about the love of our Heavenly Father, and how we are special simply because of our existence, and the only love and approval we need is that of our Father in Heaven. I am not doing it justice, it really is wonderful!

After we talked about it we went around the room and everyone said what they thought made everyone else special. It was so cute to hear what the kids said, I especially loved it when my four year old said the reason her sister was special is because she is her best friend :) It was a beautiful moment for our little family, especially considering those two usually fight most of the day! It increased my testimony even more of family home evening and the spirit it brings into our homes, allowing us to become better and recognize the gifts that we have.

Gratitude Family Home Evening

2009-11-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

This last Monday we had a really great family home evening. It was one of the simpler ones we have done, and thats ok!!

Wanting to focus on gratitude I told the story of the 10 lepers. I always try to tell the story in my own words so the kids can understand a little better, but I think its really important too to read directly from the scriptures and help the kids understand that too. Skylar was really touched by the story, and couldn't believe only one man went back and said thank you. We talked about how we want to be like the one that told Jesus thank you.

Then I showed them the gratitude jar I had made. I am sure many of you do something similar, I think its a great reminder :) I just took an old formula can, decorated it with scrapbook paper and ribbon, and filled it with strips of paper and a pen. Then we all went around and said something we were grateful for. Now every night at dinner we do the same thing, and so far it really has brought a special spirit of thankfulness and gratitude into our home.

Question:
As I was bearing my testimony to my kids and expressing my love for my family, I got a little emotional :) My daughter asked why I was crying and I told her that is how I feel my Heavenly Father and Jesus talking to my heart. She said she felt like crying too, but she wasn't sad. I explained that she is just like me, that is Heavenly Father and Jesus talking to her heart, telling her the things we learned about were true and expressing his love for her. I believe we can't make our children have spiritual experiences, we can only create the proper environment for them to occur, and when they do help our children recognize them. What are some things you have done to help your children understand feeling the Spirit??

Pumpkin Family Home Evening

2009-11-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Was October as crazy for you as it was for me? I can't believe we are already working on being halfway through November! We did a REALLY fun fhe that I wanted to share. It was simple, but made the point and my 4 year old is still talking about it. We did this before Halloween, but if you still have some pumpkins laying around...go for it!!

Lately Skylar has been having a little trouble with lying. I think its pretty normal and part of a stage she's in, but still, I felt like it needed to be addressed and I think fhe is the perfect place for that. So for this one I got two big pumpkins. I cut the tops off of both of them and scooped the guts out of one, and left them in the other. Then I made up a silly story about two pumpkins, Patty and Perry. Both cute pumpkins made some mistakes and told some lies, but Patty said she was sorry and tried very hard to not do that any more. Perry didn't say he was sorry and kept telling more and more lies. I then talked about how Perry felt inside when he kept lying, and how Patty felt when she apologized and didn't lie anymore. Then I had the girls stick their hands into the pumpkins, Perry was yucky and dirty, and Patty was nice and clean. I asked Skylar what she wants her insides to be like, you can guess her answer.

It was really, really fun and a good visual for something I am always trying to explain. You could also definitely use this for repentance or a lot of other things.

Then we topped off the night with homemade pizza shaped like a pumpkin and these fun candy corn desserts. They are just butterscotch pudding, banana cream pudding, with some cool whip on top!!

I love October!!

2009-10-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

October is now coming in a VERY close second to my favorit month, December! I love this time of year for so many reasons, and one of them is all the fun opportunities it gives me to do some fun things with my kids. This year I made a fun little advent calendar to count down until Halloween.

This was made out of a 24-count muffin tin covered with square magnets. I am excited to use this to make our Halloween season a blast! Behind every day we will either have an activity or a little surprise (like stickers, etc) I think we will do an activity every other day, just so I can keep my sanity:) I thought I would post all the activities so you can use them too! I do have to apologize, this will be my longest post EVER! :) We will be starting this on the 8th, since my magnetic calendar only has 24 days on it :)

Make monster mouth snacks and serve peanut butter to dip in (www.familyfun.com)

Ghost footprint craft. You use a 12x12 piece of paper and dip the kids feet in white paint. Then they make a footprint on the paper, the heel is the ghosts face and the toes are the bottom. Super cute!

Adorable pumpkin pie bites! (www.bakerella.com)

Decorate our own witches hats with boas, glitter and anything else!

Make Nutter Butter ghosts

Make glitter pumpkins (www.sistersstuff.blogspot.com)

Make bread bowls shaped like pumpkins and have soup in them for dinner. Check out www.theidearoom.blogspot.com, they look SO cute!!

Make these cute pipe cleaner spiders (www.familyfun.com)

Go to the library and read books about Halloween

Make these simple pumpkins out of rolls of toilet paper and fabric and take them to our neighbors (www.sisterstuff.blogspot.com)

Make mini caramel apples

Such a fun month, right?! These are just the little things we will try to do every other day to really enjoy the season, I hope everyone has a fantastic October!!

Rainforest Week!

2009-09-16T12:23:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone! It's been a while, but we are back! This month at Skylar's preschool they are learning all about the rainforest, and she has been really intigued by it. I thought it would be a great time to do some fun things at home with her, and also a great way to work with my 2 year old on numbers and colors.

One fun thing I thought of doing would be going to the grocery store and picking out some exotic rainforest fruit that we don't normally have like mango, kiwi, papaya, star fruit, etc. Then have a little fruit buffet and talking about which ones we like the most.

Another fun idea I found on Everything Preschool is to make our own rainsticks. I know the kids will not only love making them, but driving me crazy by playing with them nonstop :)

One thing Skylar has loved learning about is frogs. She was full of facts about tree frogs so I thought this next treat would be tons of fun:

Too cute, right? You can thank Familyfun.com for that one! :)

I also wanted to work with my 2 year old, so I colored a bunch of these frogs different colors and then laminated them. We are using them to learn colors and to work on counting (1 pink frog, 2 orange frogs, etc.)

Finally I found this cute craft idea on Familyfun.com. I am using my handy Cricut to cut out a bunch of leaves and flowers, then you just get a long piece of green yarn and sandwhich it between the flowers and leaves to make some fun vines. Then I think we will hang it on the girls door so they can enjoy it for the whole week!

Outer Space Week

2009-07-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

I am excited for this one!! Next week we are learning and doing things all about Outer Space. Since my kids are still pretty young, I think we will mostly focus on the moon and stars, but maybe throw in some planets and meteors too :)

At the beginning of the week we are going to make paper mache planets. I am really excited for this since I have never done it before. We will make them on Monday so they have a couple of days to dry before we paint them.

Another craft is too get a paper plate and let the kids glue pasta and dried beans on it. Then once they have dried you cover the plate with aluminum foil and it looks like the moon with lots of craters.

At one point in the week I will be making this for dessert...

You just make a chocolate cake and bake it in a glass bowl. Then you crush oreos in the frosting and at some whole ones to look like the craters.

The activity I am looking forward to the most is this...

You simply make a few different stamps out of potatoes and then stamp away! I got this idea from Family Fun. First you stamp in white paint and then you let it dry and stamp over it with the glow in the dark paint. We are going to make these for the kids on Thursday and then they can wear them when we go to the planetarium later in the week.

Lastly we are going to make meteors to play with out of styrafoam balls. You just cover them with aluminum foil and then attach crepe paper as streamers. Then we can go outside and throw them around! Hope you all have a great week!!

The Creation FHE

2009-07-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

For once I am actually a little bit ahead of things, so here is the fhe we are doing next week!

Since our theme for next week is outer space I thought the Creation would be a great fhe to have. Online I found a really fun idea to help the kids learn what different things Heavenly Father and Jesus created on the different days.

First you print out these letters 1-7. Then I backed them with cardstock and cut them out. Then as you talk about each day you have the kids glue on things that represent that. For instance cotton balls for clouds, pictures of animals, stars and a moon, etc. My kids are really hands-on, so I hope this will help them to remember and understand the beautiful world we live in :)

After we do that I want to quickly talk about how Man was created, and to teach that I will simply get out the playdoh and have the kids use a cookie cutter in the shape of a person. We will talk about how even though we are using the same type of cookie cutter, everyone's person will be different, and that no matter what color, or size we are all children of Heavenly Father!

Beach Week

2009-07-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

What a fun week we have planned!! Especially since we are ending the week with a trip to a real beach :) Since we are going to visit family in California the end of this week I thought there would be no better time to do some fun activities that will get the kids excited for surf, sand and sun!

The first activity we are doing is making a Beach in a jar. I have a bunch of cleaned out baby food jars that we are going to fill up with sand, pebbles, shells and grass (seaweed) to look like the beach. Then we glue the lid on and spray paint the tops gold. I think the kids will love shaking these up after and looking at them.

I also bought the biggest pasta shells I could find, and the kids are going to paint these however they want. Then we are going to talk about how just like their shells are all different, no two shells are the same. I am excited to use this activity as a way to reinforce colors with my almost 2-year old.

It's also so fun to talk about some ocean life so aside from going to the aquarium, we are going to do a fun little octopus craft. All you do is put paint on their palm and four fingers, then have them stamp their hand twice to make a cute octopus :) My kids love anything to do with fingerpainting, and it will be fun to work on counting with all the legs.

Now for the most fun part: the treats!! :) Tomorrow we are making beach cups, these are simply clear cups filled up with vanilla pudding dyed blue with food coloring (water) crushed nilla wafers (sand) and gummy fish/sharks. But what I am most excited for is this...

This adorable thing is a cake!!! You simply get a new sand bucket, bake a round cake of your choice. Then you cut it into strips and layer them in the bucket, a layer of cake and then a layer of pudding. Yumm!! Then you top with crushed cookies to look like sand and add some candy shells. Isn't that too fun?! I can't wait to make it for my kids, they will just love it :) Have a great week everyone!

4th of July Week!

2009-06-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

I LOVE the 4th of July!! There are so many fun things to do with your fam, and I found some really great ideas we can do at home this week. I also think it is the BEST time to help our kids realize how incredibly blessed we are to live where we do, and to help them learn to appreciate our basic freedom, things I think we all tend to take for granted.

The thing I am looking forward to making the most this week is this:

I found this on Tip Junkie, isn't it darling?? A flag made out of your childrens handprints and footprints... I love it!

Since it is FINALLY feeling like summer here, I thought these little fans would be fun and easy to make, especially if you are at a park waiting for fireworks or a parade. I think I will just use solid blue and red paper, and let the kids stamp stars and paint stripes.

(I found this craft on Familyfun.com)

And finally since we will be spending alot of this week out enjoying the sun, a cool treat is just what we need. How cool are these rocket pops??

And you have to love this idea...

Make red and blue ice cubes with Kool-Aid or a sports drink, then pour some clear soda over them and watch the drink fizzle! My kids are gonna love it!

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July, and God Bless America!

4th of July Familly Home Evening

2009-06-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is a little late, but I thought it would still be good to post for the future or if you want to do a little lesson with your fam later this week. I found the MOST fantastic website that had a really great FHE plan. Here is the direct link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16391109/Star-Spangled-Banner-FHE
I really liked how easy it was to take this lesson and make it applicable for a 4 year old. Also the kids loved stirring the spoons in the water and seeing it turn the different colors that are on our flag. After we spoke about America being the promised land and how blessed we are we focused on the flag and talked about some fun things we do on the 4th. Of course, Fireworks!! So this is what we did for a little craft

All you do is get some acrylic paint, water it down A LOT (I think that was my downfall, not quite enough water :) and then put some drops on a piece of paper. Then you give the kiddos straws and when the blow on the paint it makes these cute little fireworks. Pretty fun!!
And what is FHE without a fun, themed dessert?

Mine didn't look quite that professional, but you get the idea :) All I did was make a yellow cake, top it with cool whip and then use blueberries and strawberries to decorate! Happy 4th everyone!!

Summer Week Part 1!!

2009-05-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hello!! Life is finally feeling a little bit back to normal now that we have our sweet baby boy here. So bring on the weekly themes I say!! Today was Skylar's last day of preschool so that motivated me even more to start planning again. Since it was her last week of school I thought we would kick next week off as Summer Week! Wahoo!!

The first part of the week we will be learning all about the sun. For breakfast monday morning we will have Sunny Snacks. These are english muffins with cream cheese spread on them. Then you put triangles of cheddar cheese slices all the way around to make the suns rays and then use chunks of pineapple to make the eyes and mouth. So cute, right?

One craft I definitely want to do is to make a sun handprint wreath. You will probably notice I LOVE anything to do with handprints or footprints. I just love to be able to look back and really see just how tiny they actually were. Plus these kinds of crafts are easy and fun for both my 4 year old and almost 2 year old.

Another thing I really want to focus on is the importance of protecting ourselves from the sun. We will be decorating foam visors that you can find at any craft store and making our own sunglasses out of cardboard and using colored plastic wrap for the lens :)

Finally I want to talk about the sun and shadows, so we will use our abundant supply of sidewalk chalk and trace each others shadows. Then we can all fill in our own shape with facial features and clothing. I can't wait, it should be a great start to the week! Stay tuned for more summer fun focusing on...WATER!!

St. Patricks Day

2009-03-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

What a fun little holiday to celebrate with little kids!! I love it because you don't have to go overboard, but with a little planning you can make it a special day for you and your family. Most of the ideas I will be posting are from www.familyfun.com, they have some great ones!!!

When the kids wake up and come out in the morning they will find the living room COVERED in clovers. The trick is there are only a few that have 4 leaves, the rest all have 3. Then we go on a hunt to find the lucky 4 leaf clovers, and the ones we find have chocolate coins taped to the back. We did this last year and Skylar loved it. I was planning on cutting all the clovers out but ended up finding a bunch at a party store that worked just fine, then I just made the 4 leaf clovers. If you do cut yours out I would reccomend laminating them so you don't have to go to that much work every year :)

I am excited to do this craft with my girls this year, it looks so fun!! This awesome stamp is made by using a heart cookie cutter on a potato, and then cutting the potato to make the heart shape. Then you use the potato as a stamp and just use a paint brush to make the stem. We are going to stamp a plain white tablecloth that we will be able to use every year in the future for St. Paddy's Day!

Okay, this next one is really fun!! After reading some kind of book about leprachauns and their gold, we went on a search for the gold at the end of the rainbow. I just hid clues all over the house and eventually they led to fridge, where Skylar found this adorable little bowl full of square yellow jellow jigglers. It was a blast!

Last but not least is our St. Patricks Day dinner. I am sure everyone has their own fun things they do, but of course it all has to be green! I have found a fun easy meal is fettuccini alfredo, breadsticks, salad, and of course a yummy green dessert. These are all super easy to give a green tint too, and the kids get a kick out of it! Hope you all have a wonderful St. Patricks Day!!

Does anybody still look at this thing???

2009-03-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Hey you guys!!! I cannot believe how long it has been. Due to some complications with my pregnancy I have been laying low for a while and just have not been that fun of a mom!!! But with St. Patricks Day on the way I couldn't resist a post with some of the really fun things we did last year and some new ones I am hoping to try out this year. Enjoy, and please leave comments with any fun traditions you have with your family, I love to know what other people are doing :)

Fishers of Men FHE

2009-01-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

This week we are learning a lot about Ocean life and such so I thought this would be a fun FHE to go along with it! First we start off with the scripture in Matthew 4:19, "And Jesus saith unto them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Then we will have a short lesson on how because we have been blessed with the gospel we have the responsibility to be a good example and share what we know with everyone.
You could make this as long or as short as you want depending on the ages of your children (ours will be short!)
Then I found some cute little coloring pages of fish. Here is the direct link:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://jodyspets.com/site/images/kids/fish1.gif&imgrefurl=http://jodyspets.com/site/kids.html&h=957&w=718&sz=15&tbnid=TI6ufr3YnTPDGM::&tbnh=148&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfish%2Bcoloring%2Bpages&hl=en&usg=__dca7RzcYmVI-8cU_0qLl7UfuvgI=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=2&ct=image&cd=1
I printed them off and colored them, and then wrote different things on them like, Start learning the stories in the scriptures, say hello to people, had a chance to invite a friend to primary but didnt, etc, etc. Then I put paper clips on each fish and get out our little magnetic fishing pole I made. Basically a stick with a string and magnet attached :) The kids will go fishing and then decide if that fish is doing something that will make us fishers of men or not.

For the treat I am going to make blue jello and when it has started to set put little swedish fish in it. Hope you have a wonderful Family Home Evening!!

Dinosaur Week

2009-01-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

What a fun week! My daughter loves dinosaurs, and I imagine the little boys do even more! I was able to find TONS of ideas for fun things to do, and tweak them a little to add some learning too. A while back we went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point and I bought a pack of little dinosaurs. One fun activity is to get old plastic easter eggs and put the dinos in the eggs. Then you can hide them around the house and go on a dinosaur egg hunt with your kids. I wrote a lowercase letter on each egg, and then would show Skylar the matching uppercase letter so she could find the corresponding egg.

This link had some really great ideas too, most of them are very simple, which I love!
http://www.preschoolexpress.com/theme-station08/dinosaurs-oct-nov08.shtml

I am definitely going to get a posterboard and draw a big dinosaur, then cut out pieces and make it into a puzzle for Skylar. We are also heading to the library to find some fun books on dinos. Hope you all have a great week!!

Dinosaur Family Home Evening

2009-01-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, hope you are all having a fabulous year so far :) This week we are doing fun little things about dinosaurs, so of course, got to have a dinosaur themed fhe! I searched and searched for this little lesson because I remember when my mom did it for us when I was about 5 or 6. It struck me how odd that I would still remember a specific fhe we had years ago, and reminded me how important it is to keep doing them for my kids, even when at times they are super unsuccessful! Anyway, I finally found the same story my mom used on the website www.executivehomaker.com. Here is the direct link: http://www.executivehomemaker.com/content.asp?pid=87&id=551

You can print out the pictures of the dinos, which I did. This is a great lesson for all ages I think, I sure know my kids can't hear too much about manners. To do this lesson, I taped the different dinosaurs on the walls in different rooms in our house. Then we went on a dinosaur hunt where we walked through each room as I told the story and found the dinosaurs. The final dinosaur (the polite one :) was in the fridge, taped to a bowl of chocolate pudding. In the pudding I hid little dino fruit snacks that Skylar LOVED digging for! It is a really great fhe that I love having in my files. Enjoy!!

New Year's Family Home Evening

2008-12-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

I am really excited about this family home evening, I think it will be great for our whole family. We are going to open with a short lesson on goals, and working toward things that are important to us as a family. Then I have printed off a bunch of my favorite pictures throughtout the last year. I have also gone through tons of magazines and found pictures that represent things we have done this year, good and hard, all memorable. Some examples are a toilet because Skylar learned to use the potty, anything Disney related since we took a wonderful trip to Disneyland, school items since Skylar started preschool this year, babies crawling since Kendall is STILL crawling!! :) But you get the idea. Then we are going to make a fun, glittery collage with all of them that we can hang up and remind us of all the wonderful things we accomplished and did this year. After that we are going to take some time as a family to set some goals for the upcoming year, not only for us parents but for the kids too. For the treat I am making confetti cake cookies, my sister in law Becky makes them and says they are fabulous!! I think it is just the recipe that is off the box, but I will have to call her tomorrow and check! What says New Years more than confetti?!

Happy New Year's Week!!

2008-12-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Wow, long time no post!! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, I know that we did. I was kind of excited that the holidays were over, just so we can get back to normal, only to realize we have one last holiday, New Years! Now, if you are like me and have young (very young!) children, New Years is not the easiest holiday to celebrate. However, after a lot of searching I found some amazing ideas that could make the holiday really special for the whole family.

Almost everything I found that I loved was on www.familyfun.com. My favorite idea that they had was for those of us that don't want to try to keep our children up til Midnight (thats all of us, right? :) The brilliant idea they had was to celebrate with a theme from a different time zone. Examples were having a New York theme party, and at ten ringing in the new year. You could have Broadway music playing, New York cheesecake for desseret, etc. I thought that was a fabulous idea, plus you know how I love a theme!

We are already planning on making our own party hats, streamers, and noise makers for the big night (all of the ideas for these are on familyfun.com)
The other thing I wanted to focus on with Skylar was teaching her about time, telling time, and clocks. I thought this week would be perfect as we focus so much on the countdown New Years Eve. If you just google preschool telling time, you will find some great resources, I already had some books so I didnt need to print anything off. Hope you enjoy the final week of the holidays with your family, I love the start of a new year, the chance to do more and be better!

Samuel the Lamanite FHE

2008-12-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

This year I want to really teach Skylar the Christmas Story, and I think you have to include the story of Samuel the Lamanite with that! This next Monday will be our FHE on Samuel the Lamanite and the Monday after that we will talk about the Nativity story to reinforce it all. I found a cute idea on the internet (sorry, I can't remember where so I don't know who to give the credit too :) where they built a wall out of rice crispy treats and had a little lamanite action figure (the kind you get at Deseret Book) on the wall. Then they got all their little toy figures and set them up to be the people mocking Samuel down below. Then you have your kids throw mini marshmallows at Samuel, pretending to mock him. I think Skylar will really get into this :) Then we will share the rest of the story, ending with the signs of Christ's birth.

I like the idea of helping Skylar begin to understand that the Bible and Book of Mormon are contemporaries, and show her what was going on in both places of the world at the time of Christ's birth. Plus, because of the rice crispy treat wall your treats are already handled! Wahoo, sounds like a great FHE at our house!

(Just FYI, I have been talking to a lot of people about how hard it is to have FHE. I hear ya! I hope these posts don't make ours sound in any way amazing, because they usually last about 15 minutes, and sometimes they are great, and sometimes they are a total flop. But I do find peace in knowing that we are trying, and I love that once a week Paul and I get the chance to bear our testimony to our children. Skylar gets very excited for FHE because we try really hard to make it fun and spiritual at the same time. I also understand that, like going to church sometimes, when you have young children you don't always get much out of this stuff, but I believe it shows obedience, and sets an important example for the kids. Anyway, enough of my rambling! Hope someone finds this helpful! :)

Christmas fun!!

2008-12-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

Wow, can you believe Christmas is in two weeks??? So little time, so many fun things to do with the kids. For the next two weeks education has pretty much gone out the window, and it is all about fun and the real reason for the season. I am sure you have so many wonderful traditions and fun things you do in your family, but here are just a few we have done, or are trying this year.

This year has been fun because we have teachers at church and preschool to make gifts for, and I really wanted them to be from Skylar. So first of all she made this super cute santa handprint card that I found on www.familyfun.com. Then we are going to make homemade ornaments in the crockpot! I am so excited about it, and I found the idea on one of my favorite blogs, the Crockpot Lady. You can find her link on my other blog, and it is one of her most recent posts.

Another thing I did last year that has been fun is to go to dltk-kids.com and print off their Christmas memory game cards. I then backed them on scrapbook paper and laminated them, now Skylar loves to sit down with me and play that game forever!!

One thing I just found that you may already do with your family is Scriptures 12 Days of Christmas. You just read one each day, we will do it at night before we go to bed, to remind you why we have this wonderful time of year. And if you start tomorrow you can still get them all in! Here is the link: http://www.sugardoodle.net/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3481&Itemid=407

Lastly, I love advent calendars and all things related. Last year my mom got us a cute advent calendar type thing, that has little boxes for each day that you open up that can hold little candies, or stickers, or something! Even though I got started late, I have tried to put a thought/scripture in each day, and then an idea how we can focus on that thought for the day. I just came up with my own, so if anyone is interested leave a comment and I will post them too. I hope everyone is having a magical Christmas season, and please feel free to leave any of your amazing ideas that you do with your families, I would love to copy them! :)

Christmas Symbols FHE

2008-12-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

Hi all! I thought I would post this FHE in advance, in case anyone else wanted to do it :) I have a little 2-foot tree from our newlywed apartment days. Last year I got several ornaments to represent the symbols of Christmas. I believe I have an angel, star, candy cane, red ornament, green ornament, wreath, bell, tree and lastly a gift. I plan to wrap all of these up and put them in a big Christmas box. We are going to read the Christmas story and talk about the reason for the season. Then I will let Skylar unwrap 3 ornaments and place them on the tree. As she does I will read what that symbol represents. Then on Tuesday night we will open 3 more, and finally Christmas eve we will review the Christmas story again and open the last 3, making sure that the gift ornament is the last one we open. This is the 2nd year we will have done this, and I am really hoping it will be a lasting tradition that can put our hearts in the right place in the days leading up to Christmas. Here is an awesome website I found last year that has explanations for each symbol.
http://llerrah.com/truemeaningofchristmas.htm

Winter Week Part 2

2008-12-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Well, so far winter week has been a hit! The only thing putting a slight damper on it is NO SNOW!!! It is so much more fun when you can go out and play in the stuff :) But we make up some fun substitutes.

One of the most fun things that we did last year was messy and kind of yucky to clean up after, but seriously so fun! Since we can't have a real snowball fight we got out some bags of big marshmallows and went at it! We pulled out the couches so we could each hide behind one, and then I put mittens in the middle of the floor. The goal was to run out and grab as many mittens as you could without getting hit. If you got hit, you had to drop the mittens and start over. We played this forever, and Skylar was getting pretty good at throwing by the end :) One idea I saw that would be SO fun as soon as we do get some snow is to fill up squirt bottles with colored water and let your kids paint the snow. I think this would also be a good way to work on letter recognition, write a huge letter on the snow and have them tell you the letter and the sound it makes.

Last year I found a cute little poem on www.dltk-kids.com about snowflakes. The direct link is http://www.dltk-holidays.com/winter/m5snowflakes.htm and you can print out 5 little snowflakes to go with it. We laminated them and put them on popsicle sticks so Skylar could act it out with me.

Finally I found two fun things to make on www.familyfun.com. The first is (what else?) a cute snowman treat. Here is the direct link:
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50093

And second were these fun snowflakes made out of pasta. Here is the link and picture. Can't wait to start doing all our Christmas stuff next week!!
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=10484

Mitten Family Home Evening

2008-12-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

I try to have our family home evening go along with our theme for the week, and sometimes its a stretch, but I am excited about this week! At lds.org I found this great story about mittens and service, giving to others, from an old issue of The Friend. The link to the story is http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=8a239633afcab010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1.

I thought we would read this story and then talk about how blessed we are and how there are so many people/kids out there that have so little. I think it will be a great tie-in to our upcoming Christmas fhe's. Then to go along with our mitten theme I have cut out matching pairs of mittens. On the back of the mittens I have pictures of different ways we can serve ie, pictures of doing chores, sharing toys with siblings, etc. Then I laminated them and I will tape them all over the house and Skylar will have to find the matches.

To round out the night we are decorating sugar cookies shaped like- what else?? Mittens!! A little over the top, maybe, but so fun!!

I think this could be really adaptable for all ages, so if you happen to try it and your family enjoys it, let me know!!

Winter Week Part 1

2008-12-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving! This week we are focusing on winter, and I can't wait! At Skylar's adorable little preschool they just finished their quarterly evaluations, so I am using that in planning this week. Skylar had 3 letters that she had trouble recognizing, so I picked one to focus on this week and that letter is M. So for the first two days of this week we are all about MITTENS!! First of all I went to dltk-kids.com and printed out a template of upper and lower case letter M, then I glue them to cute scrapbook paper and color them. I put this on my fridge so every morning at breakfast we see it and can talk about it, hopefully making it familiar by the end of the week. We are going to the library today to check out the book "The Mitten" by Jan Brent. It talks about mittens and lots of winter animals and at preschooleducation.com they have a link to where you can print out the pics of the animals. I glued them to popsicle sticks so Skylar could use them as puppets while we read the book.

Then we cut out a lot of mittens on different scrapbook paper that is white on the back. We cut out pairs and are going to play the matching game with the different mittens. Finally I cut out two HUGE mittens and Skylar will put her painted handprints all over them. Cute, right?? Wish I could claim I came up with them, but I am strictly a copycat :)

Stay tuned for our service-mitten based family home evening and the rest of winter week!

More Thanksgiving fun!!

2008-11-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving week, I know we are!! This activity I found on Sugardoodle.net, such a great resource for Young Womens and Primary, but also just for fun things to do with the kids. It is called a Blessing Mix, and we put some together last night for FHE, and I am taking them to the sisters I visit teach, along with having my YW put them together at our activity tomorrow. Here it is:

You mix
2 cups Bugles brand corn snacks
2 cups small preztels
1 cup candy corn
1 cup raisins/craisins
1 cup peanuts/sunflower seeds
1 cup M&M's
16 Hersheys kisses

In a large bowl mix all ingredients except for Hershey kisses. Place a 1/2 cup mixture in cellephane bag. Add one hershey kiss to each bag.

Then here is the little saying that goes with it. I printed it out, backed it on cute paper, and tied it to the cellephane bag with cute ribbon.

Blessing Mix

Bugles: Shaped like a cornucopia or Horn of Plenty. A symbol of our nations abundance.

Pretzels: Arms folded in prayer, a freedom sought by those who founded our country.

Candy corn: The sacrifices of the Pilgrims' first winter. Food was so scarce that settlers survived on just few kernels of corn a day.

Nuts: Promise of future harvest, one we will reap only if seeds are planted and tended with diligence.

M&M's: Memories of those who came before us to lead us into a blessed future.

Hershey's kiss: The love of family and friends that sweetens our lives.

Enjoy! Isn't it amazing their are so many wonderfully creative people out their that we can copy :)

Thanksgiving advent calendar

2008-11-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I didn't think of this one until too late for this year, but I am excited to start working on it for next year. I LOVE the Thanksgiving advent calendar Pottery Barn has, and think it would be pretty simple to make my own that would look great in my house. This weekend my mom is coming out and we are going to get all the fabric and get started on it! Next year (when it is done :) I want to put a little slip of paper in every day that says "I am grateful for...." with an activity that goes along. Some activities I found were "I am grateful for good books, go to the library today." "I am thankful for my grandparents, draw them a picture and mail it to them", etc, etc. I love the idea of focusing on gratitude every single day of the month. I know in our house Thanksgiving tends to get overlooked, but I think it is such a great opportunity to help our children realize how truly blessed they are.
Here is the pottery barn link, it wouldn't let me post the pic:
http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/ty200/index.cfm?pkey=gthmocctsk

Tom the Turkey FHE

2008-11-20T21:55:00.001-08:00

I found this great little story, and thought it made a wonderful family home evening. I found clipart for a turkey and then colored one brown,one red, one blue, one purple, one yellow and one green. Then I laminated them, and glued them to popsicle sticks to use as puppets while I told the story. I also cut out feather shapes in each color that can be velcroed onto the brown turkey, so by the end of the story you have a brown turkey with all different colors of feathers. Then I read the following story:

Once there was a little brown turkey who had a terrible temper. He often flew into rages and ranted around until he was a nuisance in the farm yard. One day he lost his temper about some little thing and got so angry he flew into a rage and went RED as a beet. The other turkeys laughed at him and said:

You're RED, RED
RED as a beet:
Red from your head
To the tip of your feet.

Tom Turkey didn't like anyone or anything so he ran away and hid. He sat and sulked for a long time. When he calmed down and came out of his hiding place he was really RED all over. His head was RED and his neck was RED- he was RED from his head to his feet.

He hurried to the edge of the farm to visit Dr. Owl who was wise and knew all the answers to everything. "You have to learn to control that temper of yours!" hooted Dr. Owl. "if you don't remember in time you will end up being a very sorry turkey."

The next day Tom Turkey was brown again except that he had a red feather in his tail. He was very glad to be brown again, but he still thought it was everybody else's fault that he gotten so angry the day before.

Tom's mother called to him to help with the Monday wash. But Tom got the BLUES as soon as he started working. he moaned and groaned until his mother said he was acting like a baby. You can guess what happened next- he lost his temper again. This time he went BLUE all over! As he was running, the other turkeys yelled:

You're BLUE, BLUE
From your head to your toe,
BLUE all over
wherever you go.

This time Tom Turkey sat and sulked and blamed his mother for losing his temper . By morning he was BROWN again but now he had a blue feather next to the red one in his tail.

You can guess what happened the rest of the week. On Tuesday Tom didn't want to clean up the yard. He said he hated cleaning up with a PURPLE passion. Just as soon as he said that, he was in a rage he turned PURPLE all over. the turkeys shouted:

You're PURPLE, PURPLE
That's all we can see,
You'd better go hide
Under your favorite tree.

Of course Tom Turkey sat and sulked and blamed everything onto everyone else.

On Wednesday morning he was BROWN again but he had a purple tail feather added to his RED and BLUE one. He was beginning to feel ashamed that he couldn't control himself like he wanted to.

He went out for a walk when he saw a big ear of corn that his turkey friend was eating. Tom was GREEN with envy. He thought the farmer had no right to give someone else the cob of corn. And before he knew it, he had turned GREEN all over, and was in another terrible temper tantrum. The turkeys all turned to him and yelled:

You're GREEN, GREEN
GREEN as the grass
Why don't you get wise
And stop all the sass

And of course again, Tom Turkey went to his hiding place to sulk and feel sorry for himself.

On Thursday morning he was BROWN again but now he had a green feather amongst the other brightly colored tail feathers. But something was happening to Tom Turkey. He was really beginning to change. He wanted to keep his temper. He didn't feel like being ashamed of himself. He was determined to try hard and do just that.

Of course all the turkeys like to tease Tom and while they were playing a game of Gobble and Waddle someone called Tom a coward. Before Tom stared to think he had flown into another tantrum. this time his face turned YELLOW and his neck was YELLOW and the turkeys were saying he had a YELLOW streak down his back. They yelled:

You're YELLOW turkey
Just like we said
Why don't you go home
and hide under the bed?

Tom Turkey had turned YELLOW all over because he had forgotten to control his temper. But this time he sat under the tree and thought a long time about everything. He had only himself to blame for his mistakes. He was beginning to realize that he was the only one who could make things better.

When he awoke in the morning he was brown again with a new yellow feather in his tail. He didn't say a word to anyone, he just went about his business and said to himself, "I can do it, if I try hard enough!"

Mother Turkey asked Tom to keep an on the little turkeys while she went to the store on Friday. While she was gone all the baby turkeys ran through the house with muddy feet. When Tom saw what they had done, Tom almost lost his temper. But this time he just held his breath as long as he could. He turned as pale as a ghost, but didn't lose his temper. The turkeys yelled:
You're WHITE, WHITE
But your temper didn't show
Maybe you're changing
We really hope so.

all Saturday and Sunday he kept calm and was tickled pink to think he had gone two days without a terrible temper tantrum. He was still a little brown turkey, and a very happy one too.

He reported back to Dr. Owl on Monday and Tom Turkey thanked him for his help. Dr. Owl told Tom he earned the wright to wear the brightly colored tail and that he should show it off proudly from now on.

So when you go to the farm and see the turkey with his fan shaped tail all unfolded, remember this story about the turkey with the terrible temper.

After that we talked for a while about how we can always choose how we react to situations, and that we are the ones who decide how we will feel. Afterwards we made these cute little cupcakes from (again:) www.familyfun.com. Great family home evening, Skylar has made reference to it several times since, so I know she was kind of listening :) Sorry for the cheesy pic!

Here's the link for the cupcake recipe:
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50291

Pilgrim and Indian Week...Part 2

2008-11-20T16:28:00.000-08:00

Obviously, the rest of the week we focus on Pilgrims. I have really loved the website www.dltk-kids.com, it is full of printouts, coloring pages, and fun crafts to do. I printed out a pilgrim girl that doesn't have a face so Skylar could focus on not only coloring the pilgrim, but practice drawing her face on as well. We also went to the library and checked out a few books on The First Thanksgiving. Probably our favorite pilgrim ativity is making these pilgrim hat treats from www.familyfun.com. Skylar loves to dip the marshmallows in chocolate, and we all love to eat them!! Here is the link to the recipe! http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=40570

Pilgrim and Indian Week...Part 1

2008-11-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

Part one of this week we focus on Native Americans. We did some really fun crafts that Skylar absolutely loved. We always make the traditional headbands with feathers, letting Skylar color the feathers. Then this year we bought indian corn at the grocery store and then rolled it in paint, and then on paper. It made a cool design, and kept Skylar busy for an hour (that is forever for her :)
We also made a fun treat I found on familyfun.com. Basically it is rice krispie treats made with Corn Pops, colored purple and red with food coloring. Then you mold them into corn shapes on a popsicle stick, and use fruit by the foot to make the corn stalks. Our own edible indian corn. The last project we did was too make our own indian corn. I cut out corn shapes from green construction paper, then tore little squares of red, orange, and purple tissue paper. Then Skylar glued all the squares onto the corn, making her own indian corn. So far so good!!!

Welcome!!

2008-11-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

One more blog from me, just what you've always wanted!! One thing I have found as my daughter is getting older, is how much I truly enjoy teaching her and doing fun, educational activities with her. I love to know that our time together is meaningful and love to see her eyes light up when she gets something for the very first time. I am so grateful for all the amazing people out there that share all their ideas, I get mine almost exclusively from the internet. Still, doing a theme each week and coming up with activities to go with takes at least a few hours a week. So what this blog will do will give you my week full of activities, all of the things I have put together from countless places, in one little blog :) I hope this might be helpful for someone, if not it is a great resource for me when my little ones get old enough for this. Here we go!!