End of School...

So; although it has been a few weeks ago, we had the end of the school year.  I don't send lunch every day. He often eats hot lunch; so the last lunch I sent was 6 days out.  He really like the lunch. One of his favorite cold lunches is a bagel with cream cheese.


And being that this is my first "end of school year" gift, I had no idea what to give.  I knew his teacher enjoyed gardening, so I decided to get her a plant and gift card to a local nursery.  My son made a card and I laminated it.  I hope she enjoyed it.  I thought it turned out pretty cute.  Sorry the pictures are so poor.  I took this at night at was experimenting with my camera.   

Well, hopefully I will get back to blogging soon.  We move one week from today; and hopefully life will be back to "normal" soon!  We are enjoying summer so far, aside from all the boxes!

The Letter B...

So I have finally gotten around to posting about the letter "B"... we had fun doing our activities to go along with the letter B. Nature helped us out a bit too!

First we worked on the Big B.  We made a letter B out of Bubble Wrap.

We also painted with the Bubble Paper

Then we made a small "b" boat

We read the B Book...many times

We also made Banana muffins.  You can find my recipe that I use here.

He had his "B" Lunch.  Brown Bear Crackers; Apple Boats with Bear passengers; Blueberry yogurt with more bears & a Bone; Blueberry Bagel letter "B" and more Bones and last but not least Berries with more Bear Sprinkles.  

Last but not least...we had a Bumble Bee land on our back door and would not go away after alot of banging. It was kind of weird, but I have to say, I have never seen a bee that close. I hope to get C done in a more timely manor.

In case you have been wondering where I have been...

So I am a bit behind on my creative inspiration. The month of March was crazy and I am trying to catch up on life. My oldest turned 6, then the next week we left for vacation and then the next week I hosted and attended Easter celebrations.

I had intended on having all kinds of car activities to show you; however, after much planning, we didn't do many of them.  We dealt with the stomach flu on both the way there and home.  We did get a couple of my activities completed, but sorry no pictures.  What I did for the boys was go through their books and pick out some of their favorites.  Then I came up with easy car crafts to go along with the books.

The first activity that we did went with the book Goodnight Gorilla.  This is a really fun book...

After reading the book we made keys.  I used this template for the keys.

I cut the key portion out and punched a hole in it.  I made three for each boy.  Then we strung them on pipe cleaners.

The second activity that we did was gorilla masks.  This the template I used for that.

I also cut these out and the eye holes.  They colored them and then I taped a craft stick on.  

After this they eat a banana snack.  This activity took about an hour, so it passed the time well and the boys had fun pretending they were the sneaky gorilla.

A little of this and that...

Here are a few fun things I've been up to with the boys...

My 3 year old likes variety at lunch so I love the idea of the muffin tin lunches. He thought it was fun too, and they are so easy to make!
The boys and I made these rainbows for St. Patrick's Day.  They were fun and easy.  I cut out a rainbow form out of card stock.
I then cut up paper into small pieces and then the boys helped me crinkle them up.  We then glued them onto the card stock and added cotton balls for the clouds.

This was a "silly snack" I made the boys after school the other day.  It is a hard boiled egg cut in half.  I used strawberries for the ears and a food safe marker for the eyes and a chive tail (which you can't see, but it worked well).  And, of course, cheese!  They thought this was pretty cool.

Enough fun for one day!

A is for Apple...

I have begun working on the letters with my 3 year old. He knows most of them and their sounds, but this way I am hoping they will really stick. We are working on recognizing and writing the upper and lower case. Practicing the sounds they make and words that start with each letter.  This has been fun so far.  I'm only on "A" though.  I think he is enjoying it.  We pick out books to go with the letter and then I try to adapt the craft to it.  Here is what we did for letter A...

we read "Alligator Boy"

We made an Alligator with the letter "A"

He turned out pretty cute

We also read "The Apple Pie Tree"
This was a great book.  He really enjoyed it!

We made an apple with the lower case "a"

It turned out well too; although, he said it didn't look like an apple...I think it did???

Our upper and lower case letter "A"

I also made him an "A" lunch.  Airplane sandwich, "A" cheese on pretzels, an apple and yogurt with animal sprinkles

The we read the letter "A" section from the above book, which my cousin wrote and illustrated for the boys (she did an amazing job too, which you will see!!!)

and if you read the book, "Apple Pie Tree" you have to make apple pie

Yummy!!!  All 3 Boys loved this.  Now, on to letter "B"

If you are interested in the recipe for the apple pies here it is to the best of my ability.  I kind of made it up as I went along:

The Crust
4 C. All-Purpose flour
1 1/2 C. lard or shortening
1 t. baking powder
1 T. brown sugar
1 t. salt
In a bowl mix:
1 egg
1 T. vinegar
1/2 c. ice water

Mix dry ingredients, and add shortening; mix until pea sized, by hand or in a food processor.  Add mixed liquids until a ball forms.  Form into a log and divide into 4 pieces, making 4 crusts.

I cut this in half for what I made and it made 4 of the above pies.  I rolled the dough and used a bowl and cut the dough into circles (I guess you could also just roll out 4 circles, but mine don't ever turn out in perfect circles)

The Filling
3 Medium apples - Pealed and Diced
1 T. butter
2 T. brown sugar
1 1/2 t. cinnamon

Melt the butter on low heat and add the brown sugar and cinnamon until dissolved.  Add in apples and cook until slightly tender.

Spoon the filling onto half of the circle and then fold over.  Crimp the edges with a fork and poke a few holes in the top.  Brush them with milk and if you choose, top them with sugar.

Bake at 350^ until golden.  (This is where I'm not sure.  I'm guessing they were in there 15-17 minutes.)

We topped them with the small bit of left over filling we had!

Enjoy!!!

Space Craft

This is one craft project that the boys LOVED!!! My guys are into space, planets, etc...and I found a great idea here.  We added to it a bit.

This was really easy too AND I didn't have to go get any special supplies...which I love.

First take round coffee filters and color them with markers.  The example I looked at was for earth, but we decided to do different planets.  (my 3 year old just colored).  Once you have them all colored then you just spray them with water from a spray bottle (use the fine mist).  It is really fun to watch all the colors blend together.  (Sorry I don't have a picture of that).  I would recommend doing this on place mats or something that you can wash up easily.

Then, I hung them in to dry (there will be a bit of color dripping depending on how wet you get them).  They don't take long to dry.

Once they are dry they look pretty neat.  Here is Jupiter, Earth and a Meteor (aka Meat-eater)

While the planets were drying we made rocket ships.  To make these, we covered a TP roll with construction paper put wings on and a cone out of paper for the top.  Pretty basic, but the best part was the fire.  We did the same thing as the planets, but colored these red, orange and yellow. When they were dry I taped them inside the bottom of the tube.  Then the fire could go in and out and my 5 year old loved this.  Then he could make it "blast off".  I pretty much let the boys do them.  I helped my 3 year old a bit more, but they both had a great time flying the rockets around the planets.