St. Patrick's Day 2011

(AHHHH...i could JUST scream. I just typed out this WHOLE blog post. Was just adding pictures and my internet timed out and I LOST my whole post (which is odd seeing as it auto saves as a draft while I'm typing...ugh). I'm SO frustrated. I don't time to type the whole as I didn't have time to do it in the first place. Ugh..technology sometimes...argh! )

This blog post is LONG overdue. I haven't posted a blog post in over a month. I don't know what is wrong with me. I have had SO many blog post topics and ideas floating around in my head but I just could NEVER seem to get myself to sit down and actually get those thoughts typed out. I just wasn't in the mood I guess. So here is my post. It's nothing that profound or anything. It's just a tid bit of what the kids and I did to celebrate St. Patricks Day!

The quick run down of our ST. patrick's day. We wore GREEN clothes, ate GREEN pancakes & drank GREEN milk for breakfast. We baked "Funfetti" cupcakes with GREEN icing.


We ate a GREEN feast for lunch which consisted of GREEN mac n cheese (added food coloring so it was a nasty looking green color..lol), kiwi fruit, salad, pistachio salad (cool whip, pistachio pudding mix, crushed pineapple, mini marshmellows all mixed together), key lime pie yogert and GREEN kool-aid to drink! It truly was a GREEN feast!

After lunch we learned about the history of St. Patricks Day and about St. Patrick himself. THEN the kids painted shamrocks using their thumb print!
Oh and later on in the day once again a leperchan snuck into our house and peed in our potty! If you remember reading my post from last St. Patricks Day (click here to read that post)

Overall St. Patrick's Day 2011 was a success in the Beers Household.

Habitats

(just a warning...this isn't the most exciting post. I'm mainly just posting it for me so I have a written down account of what we did in school.)

A few weeks ago (yes, I'm behind on blogging). My kids were studying habitats in science. I had Jordan and Mya made a habitat out of a shoe box.

Jordan made a "Desert" habitat. (I wasn't so sure about rhinos living in a desert but I did look it up and there are some species of rhino that can live in some deserts so I agreed to let him add the rhino to his habitat. He was BOUND and DETERMIND to have a rhino in his desert!)


Mya made an Ocean Habitat:

Paleontologists in the Making???

Jordan has been studying about fossils in his science book this week. The project we did to go along with this was called "Bag of Bones". (Each child was to be handed a "bag of bones" which was simply all different types of pasta. We didn't do the bags since we were out of baggies at the time) The object was to connect them together to make the shape of a dinosaur.

I decided to include all four kids in this project. Here is what we did:

I put lots of pasta in the middle of the table for the kids to grab as they needed. (we had macaroni, penne, lasagna noodles, and spaghetti noodles--you could use ANY type of dry pasta, I used only what I had in the pantry.)

I gave each child a piece of construction paper (we are out of construction paper so I had to dig in my scrapbook paper stash--eek!)

I was going to give the kids glue to glue the pasta to the paper BUT then I had a vision of what it would look like...a massive amount of glue puddled on their paper (especially for the little ones). SO I decided to make "paste" with only flour and water! Totally edible if they did get it in their mouth (which they did--the little ones anyway) and it didn't matter how much they used! It actually "glued" the pasta to the paper VERY WELL! I had them use paint brushes to get put the glue on the paper and pasta. Those worked really well.

My older kids decided to get even MORE creative and asked for a little bit of dry flour so they could "dust" it on their finished project so it looked they just dug up the bones and there was still dirt on them. Creative!

Overall..this project was a success. MESSY...yes, but they enjoyed it, it kept them busy and it tied into a lesson.

(oh and may I add that I forgot to put the flour up in the pantry and while I was cleaning up I ran to the bathroom--just for a second. When I came back, Gracie had dumped FLOUR all over my camera that was sitting on the counter!!!!! AHHHH....luckily no harm was done to my camera but talk about a scare! wow!)

Here are some pictures: (not sure why both my boys are shirtless..they are so funny...even in the middle of winter they are constantly taking their shirts off. I don't know how they aren't chilly!)

Our Firetruck

On Tuesday we are going to the Fire Station for a field trip. Mason is SO excited to get to go on a field trip with the "big kids". Since we have so many boxes around here from moving I decided to use one of them to make a firetruck for the kids. It was a good project for them to work on. Mason & Mya are the ones that mostly worked on it. We finished it up yesterday afternoon and read a story about a "Fire Fighter". The kids had a great time making their fire truck. Here are some pictures of it.

Earth Day Project

Since yesterday was Earth Day I wanted to find a little art project for the kids to do that had to do with Earth day. SO I found what I thought would be a fun, creative AND easy project. This link right here is what we made. In theory it sounded like a fun and easy project. BUT it was rather messy. EXTREMELY messy when making crayon shavings. I used an old cheese grader to shave the crayons. Maybe there is an easier way to make crayon shavings, not sure??!! Rubbing them on the grader just made them be all static clingy and they stuck to my hands, the bowl, the table, everywhere! When it came time to iron, the little shavings that were on the table melted to the table thru the wax paper(these were the shavings that made their way off the project onto the table). SO I had scrape them off of the table. The clean up ended up taking longer than the project it self. I don't like projects like that. All in all the kids had fun making their sun catcher Earths but Mommy wasn't too thrilled after the fact. If you don't mind the big mess then it's a good project. Happy Earth day everyone! (and yes, I'm aware that is was yesterday)

The Colorwheel

Yesterday in art we made a color wheel. We were studying the primary and secondary colors. I got this color wheel printout from this blog. The blog has the printout as well as the instructions for making the color wheel. The kids had fun doing it. It was pretty simple to do.

What do do with all those egg shells...

Just wanted to quickly post this. I was sitting here nursing Gracie so I was just reading some blogs and I found this post. Such a GREAT idea!!! We colored 2 dozen eggs last night. I plan on making deviled eggs for Easter Sunday lunch and now I have a use for all those eggs shells! The kids will have a blast doing that on Monday. I will post pictures later on when they do them.

Edit: It is now Thursday. Here is a picture of them creating their egg shell mosaics! Warning...there is LOTS of glue involved. But they did enjoy it. We didn't get to it on Monday...but we did on Tuesday. I was worried that the eggshells might be kinda stinky but nope, they seemed just fine to wait a few days to use them. Over all a great after Easter project!

Our "Green" Day

The kids enjoying their Green Pancakes--Mason felt the need to "show" me what was in his mouth! Silly Boy!!!

Our "green" pancakes!

Mixing the pistachio pudding (in a green bowl too!)

Here was our blob of Green Playdough

In celebration of St. Patricks Day we devoted this past Friday (yes, I know St. Patrick's Day was on the 17th and not the 19th) to celebrating all things "green". The kids had a blast! I think Mason FINALLY recognizes the color green! We started off by making some homemade green play dough. (this was mainly for Mason--he's obsessed with playdough so he was excited to get a new color of playdough). We kept singing the "green" song so Mya would remember how to spell the color green. (The song was sung to the tune of "BINGO")

G-R-E-E-N G-R-E-E-N G-R-E-E-N

and Green is it's name OH!

Jordan enjoyed reading the ingredients for all the "green" stuff we made. After the playdough we made pistachio pudding, cut up some kiwi fruit, made green kool-aid and finished with lunch--green pancakes! Our green feast was sure fun!

Here is my homemade playdough recipe. I LOVE homemade playdough! In my opinion, its better than the stuff you buy. It doesn't make quite as much of a mess (and I hate messes). It's also much easier to clean up. Here's the recipe I use:

You will need:

* 1/2 cup salt

* 1 cup flour

* 1 tablespoon cream of tarter

* 1 tablespoon oil

* 1 cup of water

* food coloring (optional)

What to do:

**Combine ingredients in a saucepan. Heat gently, stirring all the time. When the dough has a good "playdough" consistency, take it off the heat and allow to cool!

I haven't done this yet, but I heard you can add a little bit of the powder from a kool-aid packet and it will give your playdough a yummy smell! I wasn't sure I wanted to make our playdough any more appealing though, I already have trouble with Mason trying to eat it every now and then!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We started our school St. Patricks Day celebration today. We learned the history of St. Patirick and also made a few shamrock crafts. We were also visited by a leperchan. We didn't see him but he peed in our toilet and didn't flush!!! He left some green tinkle in our potty!!!! The kids thought that was funny! Mya informed me that there were no such thing as leperchans! By the way..in case you were wondering it was just green food coloring in the toilet! We will do some more stuff tomorrow then finish off our celebration on Friday with a "green" feast. I'm going to the grocery store tomorrow and going to find as much green food as I can! Should be fun! Here is a picture of us today wearing our green clothes! Jordan's shirt has green stripes. It's hard to see in the picture. Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!

Our Valentine Party

I remember when I was in school, well in elementary school, how fun it was to have a Valentine's Day party. It was so fun to give Valentine's to each other and to decorate some sort of "mailbox". And also to eat lots of yummy treats! Since my children are now homeschooled, I didn't want to them miss out on Valentine fun. So on Friday, our last day of school for the week before Valentine's Day we had a party. I had filled treat bags for the kids, we made mailbox sacks for the kids to put valentines in and I had them fill out Valentine's for each other. I had bought a few boxes of cards last year when they were 90% off so I had PLENTY of cards to go around. I didn't ever imagine by the next year I would be homeschooling! I also had the kids write on different cards what is something they like about each other. That way they all had quite a few cards to read. It was a hit with them! We also decorated our kitchen with red, pink & white! We used construction paper to make paper chains, hearts and butterfly hearts! The room looked rather festive! It was a great valentine's party!!


Funny story. Mya woke me up Friday saying "Happy Holiday!" Then she told me " Happy Valentine's Day!". I reminded her that it wasn't really until Sunday. She said she knew but she was SO excited for our party that day!