Fourth of July treat

The activity department held a festive Fourth of July activity for the kids. They made a berry shortcake and frosted cookies. Clearly, something they all liked and its tough to find something all three of my kids enjoy. 

The kids rinsed out their mason jars. Ten they cut pieces of shortcake and put the pieces in the jar 

Then the kids scooped strawberries and blueberries to their jars. Finally whipped cream was added to the top to complete the red white and blue theme 

They liked frosting the cookies too. Gabriel made purple frosting out of the blue and red to create an "experiment".  

Happy Fourth of July! 

More Valentines Fun 2013

It is important that my children learn to be generous of their time. I want them to learn how to give, especially to people they love. Valentine's Day, even though it is coined as a Hallmark holiday, seems like a great day to teach this to my three cuties. I don't need much encouragment to celebrate a holiday with my family. They are at fun ages for cute crafts and treats.



They made handprint card for their teachers. The card said, "children hold our hearts in the palm of their hands." I added a gift card to each card to make it extra special for them. I got the idea from this site: http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/2011/02/index.html



The boys took store bought cards with a red sucker taped to it. Lane, however, helped me assemble cards with bubbles. She actually helped with five of the 36 cards. The cards said, "I am bubbling with excitement that you are my friend." She lost interest rather quickly. I heard that she was thrilled to hand her cards out to her friends. A free printable is here: http://www.simplymodernmom.com/2012/02/a-bubbly-valentines-card-printable/



Alex's class needed treats for their party. I was at a creative loss until I saw marshmallow pops. All it takes to make them is sprinkles, sticks, marshmallows, and meltable candy. It took me a little while to figure out how to melt the candy to get it to coat on the marshmallows. I burned a couple bowls of the candy but once I figured it out, it was easy peasy. I saw the idea on this site: http://applevalleygirl.blogspot.ca/2013/01/valentines-marshmallow-pops.html The kids LOVED them.



Alex's teacher sent home this card that she made with the students. It is one of my favorite things this month.

Our Valentines Boxes

The boys teachers asked for Valentines boxes this year. I haven't made one with the boys in a couple years so I wanted to make some fun ones this year. When Gabriel was in PreK, I made a Valentine's box with a dog on it and he wanted that again this year. I went on an internet hunt and found the template. On the same site, was a bear template. It was perfect for Alex's class of bears this year.
I felt like the Little Red Hen baking bread. The boys thought the boxes were great ideas but didn't want to help. Lane was interested until she realized the bozes weren't for her. I transformed red dollar store paper boxes into delightful dog and bear Valentines boxes complete with their names.




The dog template can be found here: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/valentines/mdogbox.htm
The bear template is available here: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/valentines/mbearbox.htm

Drip Pans - who knew?

A big thank you goes to Pinterest yet again. Pinterest will either make me a more fun and involved parent or it will make me feel like a less adequate parent, I can't decide. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun finding things that I enjoy doing with the kids. I've had a drip pan idea pinned for a while. I even had "drip pan" written on my Walmart shopping list for quite a while. And why the drip pan? I wish I could say that it was there to change the oil in our vehicle but I'm not quite that inspired yet. Nor do I know if I ever will be but in any case, drip pans can be made into HUGE magnetic board. For under $12.00, I created an enormous area for our magnets that didn't include our fridge. I can't stand a bunch of magnets on a fridge because it looks junky and the magnets migrate under the fridge, driving me crazy. Lord knows how many toys we left behind and under our fridge in Iowa. I was thrilled to find something that could give the kids access to their magnets without taking over the fridge. They seem to like it too. Every day they put the entire magnet collection back on the drip pan.

Red step stool

I love color especially in my home. It makes me happy to be surrounded by different colors rather than plain white. Gabriel's obsession with red has become apparent in our home so it's a good thing I don't mind bright colors in our home. When I bought this red step stool for their bathroom, I knew I wanted to do something fun with it. Something a little more personal and cute.
Yesterday I painted their feet yellow and added them to the step stool. I was a little concerned that their feet would be too big but they still fit. I'm happy with the way this turned out.

Andrew's Big 4-0

Ack! How can Andrew be 40? And how can the big 4-0 be right around the corner for me?? We had a casual family celebration for Andrew this year.
Lane and I took an entire day to complete shopping and wrapping for his birthday. We made this "40 sucks for him" (an idea from Pinterest):

Lane was so proud that she gave the gifts to Andrew the night prior to his birthday. It was adorable to see her ask him to open his gifts. Gabriel tends to have a tough time with birthdays but he did well and even wished his dad a happy birthday.
Happy Birthday Andrew - may your 40th year be the best yet!

Playing Homeschool

Besides the many crafts we finished this winter break, we worked on a lot of homework. I found great themes for the kids to work on and I am grateful for people who are willing to share their themes and units with the internet world.

2teachingmommies.com has a wonderful candy cane unit available. The kids worked on patterns, sorting, spelling, and fine motor control. I was able to give each of the kids something to do from this unit.

1plus1plus1equals1 has an angry bird theme that was pefect for the boys. They LOVE angry birds. We worked on sight word recognition, matching, fractions, number lines, and rhyming. We also colored cute red angry birds.

teachingblogaddict.com had cute mazes to print. The boys need to practice their fine motor and this was a fun and easy way to work on fine motor control.
The list Alex brought home for winter break homework is extensive. He had to write the alphabet, 50 sight words, his numbers, and more. The list included 18 items and took up a lot of our time but we made the most of it.
On top of their homework, the boys had a computer game to complete. They had to answer math and reading questions and then play a sports related game. They had to earn 5000 points during the break. It took hours for us to complete this task. I'm glad it's done.

gingersnapstreatsforteachers posted a super cute idea about snow globes. I printed "If I lived in a snow globe..." The kids each drew a picture and the boys wrote what they would do if they lived in a globe.

Holiday crafts part 3

There is a boy named Max who is in the hospital fighting leukemia. His holiday wish is to receive one million cards. The school is collecting cards from the students to mail to Max to make his holiday brighter. Lane, Alex, and Gabriel created cards to add to Max's collection. I hope he likes the cards because the kids worked hard on them and we talked a lot about Max while they made their cards. We all hope he isn't in the hospital very long

Saturday, May 7th

We took the kids to the Home Depot Kids Workshop this morning. Alexander and Laney hadn't been to it before but Gabriel knew actually what to do from his Loews building experience. The activity is FREE and instills a big sense of accomplishment. The kids were able to use hammers and wood glue to create tulip planters. They are adorable. Some of our playgroup friends joined us which always makes an activity more fun.
We weren't entirely sure what we would do after that and it was only 10 am. We decided to hit up the Hinton garage sales. We had a great time walking around Hinton, drinking lemonade, and checking out the things that were for sale. We found snow pants, sweaters, shoes, toys, and a few other things that needed a home. The kids played on the playground too. It was a fantastic way to spend the day together.
We grabbed a snack and drink at Sonic - a fun treat - after walking around for a couple hours.
Gabriel had several autism moments. It breaks my heart to watch him interact or try to interact with other people and they just "don't get it." As always, I put on that fake smile and push through it. His latest issue is where we park the van. Apparently we need to be in the lead whenever we park but that means being in the last spot and it isn't always available. It isn't an easy issue to accommodate so we're going to have to figure out what to do about this problem. A parent of a typical child could help them get over the issue but that doesn't work on a child with autism.
On top of that, Gabriel is scripting. We haven't seen this in a while but out of the blue he will say, "I'm Mario, not Gabriel." Or "I'm bigger than Alex." It doesn't have anything to do with the conversation at hand but it gets blurted out any way.

Another January day

Alexander didn't attend school today because he was sick. It changed my plans of taking Lane to Le Leche and LapSit this morning which ended up being a good thing when she had an explosive diaper later in the day. I'm glad we weren't sitting at story time when that happened.
Since I was at home, I got a couple projects checked off my list. I laminated the 09 and 10 holiday place mats. Last year I was frustrated with the thought of throwing away the photo cards that our friends and family took the effort to make and send to us but I didn't want to keep a stack of photos either. I cut the photo cards into circles and glued them to a piece of paper with the boys, making a place mat. This year I didn't get as creative with the circles and simply cut the photos out which was much faster. I hope to continue this because it was fun to compare the photos from 09 and 10 with the kids.