Tag Archives: fun

April Fools Day Dinner

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8DB3AF89-3BA1-4157-A96A-F3661FF578D8.pngA23FEA70-C43D-4AE8-B647-99A5C6EE6F58.jpegTomorrow is one of my children’s favorite days of the year. April Fools Day provides so many funny moments and fun activities if you just look for it. Every year, I make a special dinner or dessert. My kids look forward to it, so I can’t let them down. I’m including last year’s menu and the year before if you want to start a tradition like this. The way this works is that they are given a card for each of the three courses. They must pick 3 or 4 items at the beginning of the dinner for each course with no duplicates. They could end up with a fork, a cake pop, and a glass for one course. You just have to make your best guess. I try to save plates and napkins from other holidays and use them on this day.  There are so many silly things you can do! I hope you have a fun day tomorrow no matter how you choose to celebrate it!

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Star Wars Dinner {May 4th}

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Last night we had our May the fourth be with you Dinner. I decided that hamburgers and hot dogs would be the main course. I also served chocolate shakes, chips, green jello, and Star Wars chocolates. I ordered the Star Wars molds from Amazon from a company called Vibrant Kitchen. I was very impressed with the quality of these molds!

The foods were labeled:

hamburgers: Han burgers

hot dogs: Hutt dogs

Jello: Carbonite jello

chips: Chewbacca chips

Star Wars graham crackers: Wookie cookies

buns: Princess Leia’s buns

chocolate shakes: Stormtrooper sippers

I had the children gather all things Star Wars around the house. We decorated the table with a silver tablecloth and then put a roll of Stormtrooper wrapping paper down as a runner. Then I let them use all the Star Wars items to decorate the table. (I think they did a great job!) I got Star Wars and holographic plates from Target.  I made all the labels using Dafont’s Star Jedi font.

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During our school day, we used several worksheets from Year Round Homeschooling 

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After dinner, we played bingo from a pack I downloaded from Royal Baloo .

I’m so glad that so many talented people create these cool printables, and share them with those of us who don’t share the same gift!

I love how much the children and even my husband enjoy this little celebration. My husband even said we should host a party next year.

It was a fun May 4!

Countdown to Valentine’s

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I try to plan out fun things for my family to do for most holidays. Sometimes things just don’t work out or things come up and change our plans, but I usually try to get something lined up anyway.

For the days leading up to Valentine’s day, I wanted to have something heart or love related for each day.

Here’s the tentative plan:

February 1: Make Heart Shaped Rock Candy

February 2: Groundhog day craft

February 3: Build toothpick and heart candy shapes

February 4: Make strawberry cookies

February 5: Heart-shaped cinnamon rolls for breakfast

February 6: Charlie Brown Valentine dinner and a movie

February 7: Make Valentine cards for grandparents

February 8: Heart Oreo Truffles

February 9: Make a pie with Maw Maw

February 10: Valentine tic-tac-toe snack

February 11: Make Valentine slime

February 12: Make friend Valentines

February 13: Make Daddy Valentines

February 14: Valentine Dinner and gifts

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The “Glad” Game

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In Pollyanna, the main character (Pollyanna) plays the “glad game”. She is always looking at every scenario with the outlook that there is always something to be glad about. We started playing the game too. We aren’t as good as it as we should be, but we’re working on it. It’s so easy to be discouraged or disappointed in this world. It’s easy to become bitter and for the good to seem rare. It’s not really that rare; we just don’t look for it like we should. So, for this Thanksgiving month, I’d like to challenge everyone out there to play the “Glad Game” with us. Look for the good. Find something to be glad about. Reflect on all that you have to be thankful for. image

Change of Plans {Hurricane Matthew}

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I am so incredibly sad for all those affected by Hurricane Matthew. I pray that the cleanup will be quick and that those affected will be able to recover from their losses. I’ve heard that there has been loss of life. I pray for healing and comfort for the families of those people.

While our fall break was interrupted, we really can’t complain. We tried to make the best of the change of plans. The drive out of Hilton Head took about twice the time it should have, but the state officials did a GREAT job moving people out!

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We had to break the trip into two days due to the fact that we are traveling with a small child, children who get extremely carsick, and two sets of grandparents. When we finally arrived at our hotel, it was mid-afternoon. We ate an early dinner at a restaurant called Farm to Fork in Ringgold, GA. I’ll have a full review of that place soon (hopefully). Later, once the grandparents arrived, we met up at Gateway Antique Mall. They had lots of Civil War items. None of us bought anything because the prices seemed a little inflated. The next day, we headed out early to Chattanooga, TN. The first thing we did was head to the Tennessee Valley Railroad. We took the Missionary Ridge ride. It was extremely short, but I think everyone enjoyed riding a train and seeing the way it worked. imageimageimage

Later, we traveled on to the Chattanooga Aquarium. They were so nice to offer people who’d had to evacuate due to the hurricane, 50% off admission. We enjoyed the aquarium. We were a little disappointed that there weren’t any dolphins, manatees, or any kind of whale. There were several touching stations, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I could have stayed in the jellyfish exhibit forever! I actually think we will be getting an aquarium with some of those amazing creatures come Christmas time. Chattanooga is a cute city and I could probably visit again over a long weekend and really find lots to enjoy!

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Science Party Fun {Continued}

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We did a couple of other experiments. We did the dancing gummy worms experiment. It was kind of a dud. We also did the Mentos and Diet Coke geyser. That was lots of fun!! Most of the adults had never seen it before, so it was really a treat for them. They also did the turn an egg shell into mercury glass. It was really tough and took forever to do. The ones that had the patience, did get to see how cool it turned out in the end. I also had prepared slides for them to look at under the microscope.

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We played trivia of course. I had educational posters up all over the house. They were cute decorations, and now make their home in the school room. Back to trivia, most of the answers could be found on the posters.

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We also made cells from cookies and candies. A few of them turned out really good!

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I made chocolate lab rats, fossil cookies, petri dish jello, strawberries, pineapple, and grapes made up the fruit tray. We had a cheese tray. We had chips and guacamole and potato chips. We had tuna and chicken salad as well. I made educational signs for the foods and hung them by them.

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I made a cake with sprinkles and a jello petri dish.

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The invitation was from Etsy shop ohbejoyfulshop. IMG_8612.JPG

It was such a fun party!

Science experiment {Science Party}

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We had a Science Lab birthday party a few weeks ago. There is so much to share that I thought that I would just do a few things at a time.

We did several experiments. This one is one that both of my older daughters have won ribbons for in science fairs.

Yeast Loves Sugar:

Each child took a water bottle and put one teaspoon of yeast inside. They then put in 1/4 cup of warm water. They then had to decide on something else to add. I gave them the information that yeast is a fungus and that it loves sugar. They ran all over the house finding things to add to their yeasty bottle.  They had to add 1 tablespoon of whatever they chose. We then swirled the bottles around and placed balloons over the mouths of the bottles. I had the children write down which one they thought would blow the balloons up the most. We watched over the next few minutes and hours as the balloons inflated with the byproducts of fermentation. It is one of my favorite experiments because they really get to see the effects and they also learn that some of the things that they thought were full of sugar really were not and vice versa.

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The sugar bottle ended up the largest in the end. I saw it wasn’t as big as it should have been and realized that the child forgot to add the water. Once I added the water, it quickly surpassed all the others.

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Antiquing

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My new favorite thing to do on the weekend is going to the local antique stores. I didn’t go this weekend and I felt like I was going through withdrawals. I have found so many wonderful items. I bought a bundle of letters from a couple during WWII.  I also found a picture of a baby that is likely to be a distant relative of my husband. I have a love of milk glass and hobnail glass. I’ve acquired some new pieces for my collection.

There is something wonderful about walking in to those stores and thinking of the days gone by. It makes me long for simpler times. The craftsmanship and attention to detail in those antiques is hard to come by in today’s instant gratification world.

My daughters have also found a new love in those old things. It is an activity that we can do together and that has sparked many conversations about many different topics.

Here are some of the items that we’ve come across on our outings.

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Science Fun {experiment}

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Our elementary science this year covers a broad range of ideas. I decided to do at least one science experiment a week from a couple of Steve Spangler’s science experiment books. Last week, we did an experiment that demonstrated Bernoulli’s Principle. For this experiment you’ll need a hairdryer, toilet paper roll, and a ping pong ball. He performed this experiment on the Ellen Show. My children loved doing it over and over. I think it really did help them understand the idea of lift that makes an airplane able to fly.

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Science Party Goody Bags

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We had a science themed birthday party for my two girls whose birthdays are a week apart. For the goody bags, I included Dum Dum lollipops (since we weren’t Dum Dums), a solar system pencil, syringe pens, safety goggles, nose pencil sharpener,  brain splat ball, brain eraser, magnifying glass, Bath and Bodyworks antibacterial hand sanitizer, and some eye ball candies. Everyone was so excited to see what they had to take home. I can’t wait to share all the details of our science party soon!