I love October!!

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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!!