Road Trip Prep

      As I sit to write this blog post I am in Manawa, WI at Daniel’s Aunt Kelly and Uncle Dave’s house, tucked away amongst tall, green trees where chirping yellow canaries feast from the feeder and woodpeckers knock away on the mighty trunk.  The serene water of Bear Lake is within view, and the gentle breeze coming in from the open windows is heavenly.  It’s peaceful.  It’s beautiful.  It’s perfect.  I’m in my happy place and the company couldn’t be better.

I will tell you all about our drive up here and more about our stay in Wisconsin, but before I get there I just want to devote this post to the preparation part of this trip.   The two weeks prior to this trip, my life was consumed with making lists upon lists of things to pack, and scrounging around for ideas of activities to buy/make to keeps kids occupied on a three-week road trip…where a large part of the time all four of us would be in the confined quarters of a vehicle…daunting.  So far though, all the hard work and late nights has been totally worth it!!!  Let me share with you all what my plan for surviving a long road trip with a 4-year-old (almost) and one-year-old (almost) was/is…

Thinking of activities to keep Selah busy was really easy and fun, so I’ll start with that:

I cut up three different colors of pool noodles,
about 1 inch chunks, with a bread knife.

Then I printed off and laminated strips of paper with
 circles in those same colors in different patterns
(for example: blue, blue, green, blue blue, green...),
and then gave Selah a piece of rope so she could string the noodles
on the rope following a pattern...so far, this has been her favorite.
I have the inside of the folder covered in packing tape
and then the strips stuck on with rolled up tape so that whichever pattern strip
she picks I can tape it on the back of the headrest
in front of her as an easy access reference.
The inspiration for this idea came from here.

We also brought along a portable CD player so she
 could listen to/look at books on tape...
sadly, our brand new CD player doesn't work :(,
fail.

We packed a clipboard to serve multiple purposes.  In this picture I have
an activity for Selah to practice writing her name, I found the template
for this here and it is titled "Name Stamping".
Since I didn't want Selah to have access to stamps and an ink pad in the car
I brought ABC stickers instead.  I also have pages with Mom, Dad, and Owen
written on them so she can practice writing those as well.
She also uses this clipboard for coloring and working on a little booklet I made
with a picture of each state we go through in the order we go through it.

The clipboard is also used to hold these laminated Bingo cards.
I printed off two different kinds, one for the trip up and one for the trip down.
When she finds one of the objects she places a sticker over the picture.
I found the templates for these cards here and here.

This is a cookie sheet with magnet pieces cut from a magnet roll
stuck on the back of each puzzle piece.

This is an I Spy bottle.  Don't you just love my duck tape addition?? Sure makes
it look cute huh?! These projects were all about functionality and getting
as much done as possible, not about cuteness...clearly :)

I found 60ish odds and ends around our house
(bracelet, plastic spoon, paper clip, plastic butterfly, etc, etc.)
and poured some rice into a 2 liter bottle, added a few items, poured a bit more rice,
added some more items, so on and so forth until I filled the bottle up to the top.
Before putting the items in the bottle I took a picture of each item so that
I could print each picture, laminate it, hole punch it, and put it on a binder ring.
This activity hasn't been introduced yet so that I have something to whip out
later on, so I'll tell ya if it is successful or not in a future post.

I also brought along a coloring book, BrainQuest activity book, spiralgraph and magnetic draw pad thing (I don't know the technical term for either of those??) both found at the Dollar Tree, and lots and lots of books.

Now for Owen, who was a little bit trickier to plan for because his idea of fun is moving and shaking, not sitting in one place doing a quiet activity...

Here is a mess-free art activity, however, thus far, Selah has enjoyed the art
part of it and Owen has enjoyed destroying the packaging...whatever works!!

I got this fabric from my mother-in-law who had saved it from years ago,
when her boys were little.  I had no idea what to use it for until I saw THIS.

I found an empty Puff container and cut a hole on the top of the lid.
Then I cut strips of that fabric, tied them together, and stuffed it inside.
So far, this has been Owen's favorite activity and
 has kept him busy up to 10 minutes at a time!
Again with the duck tape...it may not be
super cute, but it gets the job done!
Selah loved this activity too, and she was super
helpful at stuffing the fabric back in the container.

My puppets!  Found clipart on google, printed them, laminated them, taped them on popcicle sticks

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Cast for Old McDonald Had a Farm

Cast for Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
or
Five Little Monkey Swinging in a T

Owen's view.
I sewed these curtains with some of
that above pictured fabric too.  I just
sewed some velcro on the very top and then
about half way down so that I could
loop it over the car seat handle.

The puppeteer, ready for duty!
Sadly, Owen doesn't care too much for the curtains,
he plays with them a bit since it's hanging in front of him, but when I sing
he just stares at me.  O well, still fun to put on a "show".

I took a piece of felt and sewed on ten pieces of ribbon.

And then I added beads, and then sewed the top piece of ribbon.
This proved to be super fun for both kids!
Got this idea from here.

Here's a picture of all the STUFF...we brought a tub of toys that Owen hadn't played with in awhile as well as some bigger toys he hasn't ever seen, like the shape sorter, hammer thing with shapes, and pop up thingy (again, don't know the technical terms), but they were great to bring along and had him busy for awhile.  Selah also watched two movies on the iPad during the trip.

That was helpful too. But I'm glad we were able to really limit it, I didn't want that to be our only form of entertainment.  We also enjoyed just looking out the window at the beautiful scenery!!

Like I said, I hope to be able to post in more detail about our trip later, but fore now, this was our preparation process.  And so far I'd say it has been very successful! Stay tuned! 

Sweet Summertime

Last Thursday, we had ourselves a fabulous, spur-of-the-moment, get-soaked-with-clothes-on, summer afternoon.

Like most of our spontaneous, messy, who-cares-about-the-aftermath activities, this one occurred due to the fact that we just could no longer remain in our house...there were tears and attitudes in abundance...

So, I, as patiently as I could, declared our need to get on shoes and head on outside! We gathered chalk, bubbles, squirt bottle with water, and loads of just stuff, anything I thought would be fun to play with outside with water, without getting our sprinkler/pool out because it was almost time to get dinner started.  Our :( afternoon, quickly turned into a :D afternoon for all!!

Playing with paintbrushes and bubbles.

Practicing pouring...hopefully sooner rather than later
this will transfer over to other
liquids being poured into other containers
(i.e. milk into cup, milk into cereal bowl),
that could be helpful.

The setup.

He's so cute... especially when outside concentrating
on how to make the biggest splash in a mixing bowl
with a paintbrush,
as opposed to indoors,
concentrating on the most successful whine
for mommy to hold him... 

My sister is awesome, I love her...

And now it gets really fun, and really wet!

More pouring...

with toy sorting.

Squirting water into penguin shaped ice cube trays.

Getting messy and creative is one of the few, tried and true, solutions to grumpy, cranky, whiny kids (if they aren't sick, hungry, or tired that is), so I'll continue to share with you all the future, I-am-going-to-go-insane-so-we-need-to-do-something-drastic activities, because I'm sure there's bound to be a couple (100) of these days left ahead of me! I LOVE this time in my life, and I LOVE them!! Yay summer...yay water!! 

Do you think I may have a small obsession with hyphens today?!?! Geesh, where did those come from?? 

CR Week at Preschool

I actually taught CR week for preschool a whole two weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it...but it's better late than never!! 

Day 1

We started the morning by doing a matching game with pictures of CRowns.

Then, we did another chart similar to the S/SH/ST chart the week prior, but this time, we did C/CH/CR, and instead of handing each girl one picture of each sound, I had them each draw from a cup.  

This randomized who got what, when, and was much more effective in challenging them to think through which column the picture should go under. 

Upon completion of the chart, we talked about one of the words, crowns, and read a book about a princess, The Very Fairy Princess by Julie Andres and Emma Walton Hamilton.  Cute book!! As we read we tried to spot her crown on every page. 

After this book we were all inspired to become princesses, so we made our own crowns.

The supplies: printed crown for tracing,
pink card stock paper for tracing/cutting out crowns,
containers filled with fun jewels,
and long piece of construction paper stapled to the end

  

As you can see, I ended up needing to add
an extra strip of paper to make it long
enough to fit on the girls' heads.

After snack and playtime (very important components of preschool!!) the girls played with paint bags.  I used large Ziplock bags and put some paint in there, but, don't... it worked okay, but would have worked much, much better if I had used the smaller Ziplocks and filled it up with more paint.

We practiced writing our letters and numbers
 (I think this is an M for mom, I'm gonna go with it!)
and then just made fun designs.

We did this activity earlier this week as well, Owen included:

Selah found that an empty tape roll
is perfect for making circles in the paint...
we also ended up using some plastic cookie cutters
we had around.

I used the smaller bag for Owen (worked MUCH better!!) and taped it to his tray...he basically just clawed at it the whole time trying to get it off, but hey, he was still having fun, I think.  Tip: Make sure baby's nails are clipped before this activity.  Because Owen's sure weren't, and he clawed right through and ended up getting painty hands anyway.  So much for my attempt for a mess-free activity! 

ANYWAY...back to preschool!! 

Day 2

We started this day with a fun CRayon activity.  I gave the girls a few hints as to what we were going to sort that started with CR and they were able to eventually come to the correct answer...was much more fun than just telling them!

I wrote the name of each color (in its color) on a paper plate:

Then, I laid them down in a circle and gave each girl a handful of crayons at a time from our big bag of mixed up crayons.  Then they walked around and found the matches! They LOVED this activity!! 

We also sorted the crayons onto a plate labeled "short"
and another plate labeled "long".  Just for fun!
Good to know we have way more unbroken, long crayons
than short, broken ones!! Selah must be a gentle colorer. 

After our fun sorting adventure, we quieted down with a book titled Clumsy Crab by Ruth Galloway.  

And then we made crabs...

We started by painting half a paper plate red...

then I helped the girls fold two strips of red paper accordion style
and glue eyes onto another two tiny slips of paper.

Finished products!! Aren't they cute!?  

After snack and playtime, we played with shaving cream, and I made sure to ask the girls to figure out which word on the can, "shaving" or "cream", started with CR.

We again practiced our letters and numbers, and then just played!!

To end the day, and week, we did another activity with Crayons, except this time the crayons were made from yarn. 

Daniel's sweet neighbor from his childhood made this blanket for us,
and it came in very handy this week!  It doesn't look like it from the picture
but one of those crayons is blue and the other is purple.

I would call out a color and the girls would jump on it, kinna like Twister I guess, and they had so much fun bouncing around! 

That's all!! If you have any questions about anything or want any materials, let me know!! 

Free Friday Fun

As I looked at our jam packed calendar the other day I realized that there was a tiny white square with absolutely no pen scribbles in it for the AM.  Odd.  For some reason our mornings are always so busy, busy, busy!! I was relieved to finally see that we had nothing scheduled; no doctor appointments to go to, no playdates/Bible studies to attend (which, I do actually love, but sometimes a day at home is just perfect), no errands to run...it was a free Friday (morning)!! YAY!! I wanted to plan something super fun for the kids and I decided to let them paint the kitchen! Well, just the floor...with paper covering it...

Selah is super excited to get to squeeze the paint,
and Owen is content to hold tight to that brush!

Very curious as to what sister is doing over there.

Let the messy creating begin!!

Owen's favorite part was squishing
the slimy, cold paint in his hands,
not so much getting anything on the paper.

And Selah's favorite part was
painting with her feet,
that's how that big blue blob came to be.

Owen's just as colorful as the paper!!

Finished product! 

Now for the clean up...I knew this could potentially be a bit tricky, but it really ended up being so easy and surprisingly super enjoyable (until I took Owen out of the sink and took away the spoon he was playing with in the bubbles...then he shed buckets and buckets of tears!!). 

I knew these big sinks would come in handy one day!
He really, REALLY, really, didn't want to leave this sweet spot!

And then, of course, Selah wanted a turn in the sink because Owen made it look way too fun to pass up...so she got to soak her feet while washing out the paint brushes...win/win!

Then, this had to happen...

Goodbye pretty artwork...
at least we still have
pictures to remember you by!

I didn't know what else to do with it.  So I crumpled it up... so, so sad.   Usually, I try to keep everything the kids make, but if I do throw it out I keep it for at least a couple weeks to display it somewhere, this piece didn't make it two hours!  I couldn't keep it on the floor without Owen getting into it and completely colored again, and I didn't have a big enough space up high to let it dry...so, what's done is done.  What would you all have done with it? 

We have since moved on...

to jumping off of chairs onto couch cushions!

I hope you guys had a fabulous Friday!!  Ours didn't start out stelar (Owen basically wanted to be held from the time he woke up at 6:15 till his first nap at 9... exhausting!), but after a couple hours of messy, creative fun, things were looking up!  

Sloppy Selahs

Tonight we ate Sloppy Selahs (AKA: Sloppy Joes) for dinner.  I have never had a sloppy joe from a can (which may be delicious, I haven't a clue!) because my mom just always made a super simple, super yummy, homemade(ish) sloppy joe that her mother used to make her...and maybe her mother made her??...I have no idea who originated this recipe but I'm sure glad it's been past on!! Here it is:

Ingredients:

1 lb hamburger
1 can chicken gumbo soup
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tsp mustard
2 Tbsp brown sugar

Ground the hamburger and drain.  Add the rest and heat.  That easy!

Place on buns...with a slice of American cheese if you wanna get crazy (I personally like to leave it cheeseless) and serve with green beans or whatever veggie you prefer (and, for leftovers, I like to use it as a "dip" with tortilla chips).

**Tip: Up until like 4 years ago Campbell's used to make a regular chicken gumbo, but now all they have is a light version, which is a bit more watered down, so I drain a little bit of the liquid before adding it to the beef.