Summer Week Part 1!!

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

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???

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

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

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

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

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?!