May the Force be with you. Charlie turns 7.

The birthday boy on his birthday with his best buddy.

 We did A LOT of celebrating this year for Charlie's birthday.  We had 3 separate events and they were ALL so much fun!  Daddy was unfortunately out of town on Charlie's birthday but Nana came over for dinner, hot dogs per the boys request and cake from Casa Dolce...yum!

Then the following Saturday we went all out.  First we had a handful of school friends over for a mega STAR WARS party.  All boys and one very sweet little girl :)

I made her these cute little Leiah buns (thanks Christina for the idea!!)

Trent made the coolest jet packs out of 2 liter bottles and light sabers out of foam and colored duct tape.  They were a HUGE hit!

We started the party by building spaceships out of LEGOS which the kids were more then happy to do and probably would of kept at it for longer if I didn't have an agenda and time constraints.

Then we headed them downstairs to an obstacle course, ie Jedi Training.  They had to jump through hot lava,




and then climb over an galactic asteroid (2 chairs covered in a grey table cloth), and then crawl through the slimy green swap (crawl through a tunnel that was covered with a green table cloth).  The kids loved it!  Then they headed back upstairs to design their Jedi wrist bands.  I used an old roll of wrapping paper and cut it into bracelets.  I spray painted some old wooden blocks gold and cut out the lets JEDI in foam and made my own stamps.  The kids stamped with ink, JEDI on their wrist bands and then decorated them with stars.

Now they were true Jedi's and had to return to the basement and battle the Stormtroopers that had invaded our home. 

I drew Stormtrooper faces on white helium balloons and Trent taped them to the basement floor.  The kids went NUTS!!!

Even Daddy had a good time!

Then it was time for cake, presents and for all little Jedi's to go home.

We were awaken bright and early by Tommy who was dressed in his Sunday school clothes, v-neck sweater on backwards and all, which he insisted on wearing backwards the entire day.  When asked why he was so dressed up he simply said with his shy little grin, "I wanted to look good for the party".  Adorable, Thomas, you are adorable!!

Then came round 3!  That same afternoon, call us crazy, we had our family and family-like friends over for our traditional birthday party.

Darth Vader even showed up!  Tommy took one look at her and said "Nana!"....it was so funny!

We had a Darth Vader pinata

The kids made paper R2D2s and Galaxy Playdough (black homemade playdough and they added glitter to it)

And then we had to have cake AGAIN!

Light Saber cupcakes

C3PO Hydro-Oil

 Trent made a lot of really cool graphics for the party.  He made the water bottle covers, the signage for the center piece, Edible Ewoks that were used with gummie bears as a favor and a light saber sign for light saber favors that were pretzels dipped in red and blue chocolate.  He also made the invitation and the sign for our Yoda Soda, green sherbert and 7up.

I totally cheated on the cake this year.  With everything else that we did to prepare, I just wasn't into making a big cake.  So the night before the party I called the local market and went and bought an undecorated cake straight from their freezer.  They sold me a bucket of frosting and I was off.  Unfortunately, they didn't give me enough frosting to cover anything but the top.  Thankfully, I had left over grey frosting from the cupcakes and a can of chocolate ready made frosting in the pantry.  Tada!!! Charlie picked Anakin's Skywalkers flying machine to put on top, I threw miniature R2D2s and his friends around the cake and called it a day.

I think that Trent and I had a lot of fun putting all of this together for Charlie.  But the most important thing was that Charlie had a great birthday surrounded by old and new friends and people that love him.

I can not believe that our boy, our baby, is 7 years old!!

Dearest Charlie,

We love you beyond the moon and back.  You are the sweetest, funniest, most loving boy and we are blessed to have been chosen to be your family.

Happy Birthday Charlie Barley Bear!

Homemade Christmas 2012

This year I decided to make it a homemade Christmas.  For years I have been wanting to really do this, dig in, find lots of ideas, and then actually do it.  I felt that we accomplished a lot of what I had planned to do and it was so fun crafting with the kids, making projects with Trent and staying up late working like one of Santa's elves!  I hope that everyone that received one of our homemade with love gifts, enjoys them as much as we enjoyed making them!

I found this printable on the internet and had it printed as a picture.  Then I put it in a frame and gave to family and friends.

The boys drew pictures and Penny scribbled on some paper or I traced her hand and then modge podge the pictures onto small white tiles to make coasters.  We then added felt to the bottom and gave them many clear coats of paint.  Wrapped with festive Christmas fabric bows and sent them on their way.

 

I modge podged a picture frame with wrapping paper and added a bow.

Hand painted R2D2 ornament for Charlie

Hand painted Boba Fett ornament for Tommy

The Symbols of Christmas tin

Altoid tins decorated with felt and filled with homemade magnets

Magnets made from clear stones, pictures from magazines glued to stones and then magnet glued on the back.

Hand painted train ornament for a friend

Notepad made from clear picture frame, sheet music printed from the internet that was put inside the frame and a post it glued to the front.  I ran out of time and next time would add more embellishment.

Homemade candy cane playdough in spaghetti sauce jars that we have been saving, wrapped in festive fabric and a cookie cutter tied to the top.

 

 

Kindergarten: Mummy week 2

We had a pretty good week this week.  The girls that I watch started back this week, so that meant I had 5 kiddos all under the age of 6 two days a week.  We managed to get some school work done on those days as well.
  Charlie continued with his core subjects, phonics and math.  Both boys were able to do several science lessons based on measurement.  We used a hand graph to see how long and short several household items were, we filled up cups with different amounts of water to compare different weights and we learned about how things are hot and cold.  We even got to use our beloved snow for this experiment!

We then had a spontaneous art lesson when we added food coloring to the water and mixed them to make the different colors we wanted to use in our ice cube suncatcher.  This was a fun project that we all enjoyed.

Our theme for Kindgergarten continues to be about ancient Egypt and mummies.  We are now reading another Magic Treehouse book (Mummies and Pyramids) that dives deeper into the subject.  The boys are learning about the Nile River and how ancient Egyptians use to live.  We are being selective on what we read to them and teach them on this subject.  At this time we feel that Charlie and certainly Tommy are too young to fully grasp and be able to process the details of mummification and the burial traditions of the Ancient Egyptians.  This is a topic that we will certainly revisit in the future.  I have already found some other great projects to do, like mummifying a  chicken or even better yet...BARBIE!!! too funny!


One of our big projects for the week was our mummy paper mache face.  We mixed up our flour/water mixture and used toilet paper to make the facial features.  Charlie did a great job and had fun in the sticky goo!  We let the faces dry for a few days and then painted them. 

The boys also did snowflake resist water color paintings and shape snowmen to go along with Tommy's theme for the week of Snow/Winter. They turned out so cute!
 

Homeschool: Kindergarten Getting Ready for Christmas part 2

(Penny watching Charlie do school)

The last 2 weeks we have all been kind of "off". It all started with a migraine for me, followed by nasty head colds for all the kids and I, ear infection for Charlie and tummy bug for Trent :( There was a lot more fighting and whining going on and far less patience on my part. LOTS of prayers were said :)

So, some days we simply have been in survival mode and others have been better and more productive. We did manage get a lot of school done and do some fun projects along the way. I did scale back our Christmas curriculum that I had planned and I am thankful that I have not tried to push things and get it "all" done. Instead we have been able to spend a lot of quality family time together focused on the true meaning of Christmas!

Charlie is starting to work on graphing in his math and he LOVES it! We did a bunch of graphing last year so he has a good idea of the process and is doing more complicated problems.

He also continues to plow through his phonics and is doing really well. He is spelling words and reading up a storm! I do need to set aside time each day for him to do more independent reading. I also need to find more beginner readers for him to work through.

(Charlie making words)

We are also working on following instructions and listening carefully. He sometimes has a hard time focusing on things if it isn't something he 100% wants to do or isn't something that he choose to do. If it was his idea to do it then he has NO problem giving all of his attention to it. I am sure that this is something that we will continue to work on for a.long.time. with all the children! :) (Thanks Aunt Susie for the advice and encouragement! It helped us a lot and he is doing SOOO much better!!) It is obvious that he is really trying.

(Learning about muscles, the brain and your heart)

We did a really cool science project (despite my migraine) and managed to have fun doing it too! We reviewed about bones and joints and learned about muscles in our body. We made a neat model of an arm with a paper towel role, deflated balloons and tape. The balloons represented our muscles and how they work to make our arms move. Charlie enjoyed this project and even added veins and drew bones on the paper towel roll.

Charlie showing me how his "arm" bends with the "muscles"

We also learned about our teeth and the boys watched a video about Molly Molar on the computer.


The boys made some homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. They were super yummy and no one even noticed that I used whole wheat flour :) Charlie made his cookies "mystery" cookies and hide chocolate chips in the middle.



Then we started working on our Christmas crafts. The boys made pine cone glitter ornaments and Christmas trees out of pine cones that Grandma Candace brought from Whidbey Island.

We also assembled our Gingerbread Train. Trent hot glued the cookie pieces together and the boys and I decorated with royal icing and lots of candy. It was really nice to work together and a fun activity for all of us.

Tommy worked on counting and number recognition using one of our Leap Frog games.

And despite all the sickness, we still managed to have some fun.

Honestly, I am really looking forward to next week. I pray that we will all be healthy and getting back into our new groove!

Homeschool Kindergarten and Preschool: Week 10Thanksgiving!

One of the easiest and our favorite craft for this time of year was the Give Thanks banner we made from a variety of beans, glue, yarn and construction paper. I wrote out the letters on the construction paper, the boys and I covered the letters with glue and the boys went to town placing the beans on the letters. We will definitely do this again next year.


The boys and I went shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes a few weeks back...and Penny went to. That is going to take some getting use to, I am so accustomed to saying just the "boys" :) The boys picked out some toy trucks, stickers, harmonicas etc as well as some fun toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap etc. We did this last year and Charlie really remembered the meaning behind what we were doing and was excited to pick out the different things to send to his "friend".
We had a lot of fun last week and did a BUNCH of school work and lots of fun activities gearing up for Thanksgiving.

There was also a lot of loving going on. Both boys are still smitten with their little sister :)

Tommy had fun playing playdough.

Charlie concentrated on Math and Phonics again this week. His teacher gave us permission to skip through a lot of the lesson since most of them are review for him at this point. I am carefully going through the lessons to make sure that we aren't overlooking any concepts that he does not know. I am excited to see him be a bit more challenged!

Both boys had fun with our Fall sensory bin. I added plastic gourds, paper leaves, crystal pumpkins, pine cones from Grandma Candace and a few trucks. I gave the boys some measuring cups, spoons and containers and let them go to town. They really enjoy these sensory bins and it really holds their attention.

We had fun making these Turkey hand print cookies. The boys helped with the entire process and had just as much fun eating them as they did decorating them ;)



They also completed some foam Turkeys that I picked up either at the art store or at the dollar store.


I also made a Cornucopia out of dough for our table centerpiece. It turned out ok, but I have bigger and better plans to do it again next year.


We read a few books about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate. I had wanted to make a Mayflower ship with Charlie but we didn't get to it...maybe next year.

We have so much to be thankful for! It was a great week!