Flower and Plant Week!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!