Beautiful Day

Why is that when we have 2 carts full of groceries from SAMS, we are always in the small car?! Just as frustration hit, we realized that we should be thankful we had a car and thankful we had money for groceries. It's so easy to get wrapped up in drama, even that of our own making.

We had purchased a set of prayer cards from a conference a couple years back, but it came with 3 of each card. We saved one on our prayer card ring and the other 2 sets just sat in a box until I was getting everyone ready for Adoration today. Inspiration struck and I pulled them out, ready to roll!

What You Need:
A roll of tape, blank index cards and a pair of scissors.
Steps:
1. Cut the index cards down to the same shape of the cards.
2. Tape the index cards to the prayer cards only at the top.
(this is to make all the backs the same color but making the prayer still accessible)
That's it! Now we have our very own memory game and we play the same way as memory, the only difference is when we get a match, that person has to say the prayer out loud before they add the match to their winnings! Learning and fun all in one! You can do this with any type of card you have pairs of, but one side doesn't match or create your own with anything that needs memorizing help!
Interested in other Catholic activities? Check out Our Little Catholic Homeschool, where I try to keep everything in one post for easy pinning and marking!

Enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Pigeons and Robots and Tornadoes?!

Last night we spent an awesome time at a Pigeon Party! We love Mo Willems and his crazy pigeon, do you? If you have not checked out his books, RUN to do so now! My kids were by far the oldest in the room but still had an absolute blast and didn't even realize it, they just became helpers of the teacher and the smaller children. 

As we study different topics, I love to have a hands on activity, game, field trip or vacation to go along with the lessons. This Discovery Kids Tornado Lab was PERFECT for our extreme weather lesson. The kids loved it so much that once class was over, they continued to play. They even added in some Monopoly houses to get the tornado effect really going.

Our LEGO Mindstormers Robotics kit arrived last month and the kids still cannot get enough. They enjoy challenging themselves and then creating and programming. My middle son begins his Robotics Competition club this month and he is so excited.

Adoration Bag #2 is ready to be photographed. You can see the other bags HERE at Our Little Catholic Homeschool! We head to Adoration this afternoon and the kids are very excited. This bag belongs to my oldest. I bought her a bible of her very own. She has always had smaller ones, children's ones, hardcover ones and the like but has been asking for one similar to my wedding one so that she could make it her own and now seemed like the perfect time. She is free to write in the margins, clip the pages, add post its, prayer cards, use a bible highlighter or anything at all. Autumn is 10 years old and her bag contains:
1. Bible
2. Three different bible highlighters & One pen.
3. Holy Bible Crosswords, each clue is from the bible and you must look it up and read the chapter to get the answer.
4. Rosary & Mysteries on a ring for prayer and reflection

Remember to enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Menu Plan Monday...

I have 20 minutes until midnight, it still counts as Monday then right?!
Monday: Chicken Pot Pie with a garden salad & fresh brewed mint tea
Tuesday: Veggie Burrito Bowls served with Cucumber Slices sprinkled with lime, salt & spice
Wednesday: Parmesan crusted Pork Chops with Mashed potatoes and Corn. Served with Ceasar Sald
Thursday: Lettuce Wrap Bar (veggie selection, laughing cow, chicken, shrimp) served w/ miso soup.
Friday: Out to eat for our weekend in Wisonsin, but left pizza coupons for our house sitter! 

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Classroom Confessions

:: Mondays make me nervous that I may not have the motivation to begin school work.
:: The closet of my classroom looks like 321 bins of classroom things threw up.

:: I have a secret stash of smarties hidden away, when caught chewing I swallow quickly!

:: Classical music plays throughout the day and sometimes I doze off

::My heart still soars when I visually see the children 'get' something.

:: I love organizing and reorganizing my book shelves

:: I have feelings of insecurity over their education daily
:: I love the smell of Expo markers

:: I worry

:: I laugh
:: I love

The kids each have Science labs in their bedrooms and the bases are IKEA coffee tables, needless to say they need to be replaced often. They get exploded on, wet, drawn on, experimented on and so much more...this leads to a lot of wear but I am so glad they love to create. As we replaced one, I was ready to toss this, but realized we could use it in the classroom as a gaming center or for group work. Our first project is to give it a makeover this month. Nothing that costs money and using things that are only found around the house. This should be interesting! Hahaha!

Last week I bit the bullet and signed up the children AND I for an adoration hour at our church. This is 1 hour spent in silence with the Lord. I know the big kids will be fine with it but I was worried about the youngest. I figured I would make Adoration Bags filled with things that they can do on their own to reflect and pray to the Lord. I will share 1 each day and they will remain linked over on my LITTLE CATHOLIC HOMESCHOOL post. This week the youngest will have a book on the 12 Disciples along with our foam playset of the 12 Disciples that he can use while reading the story. (I will post more on this playset on the LCH post later). He also has a chunky rosary with a Fr. Lovasik book on praying the rosary. A bible verses book to reflect quietly over and once he has done those things, he has his  Larry Boy book to read. This is more than enough to keep him occupied but I would rather have too much than not enough. All of it is tucked away in his Veggie Tales soft sided bag.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Suddenly Sunday

Give children confidence and you will see them grow! Sunday is here and I am truly blessed for another day with my family. We are celebrating birthdays with family and then coming home to relax and unwind for the week ahead.

A well snuck in nap! We ended up having to get another cart to carry the rest of our stuff!

Multiplication games on the weekends? I Love it! Roll the dice and mark the answer, first one to get 4 in a row wins!

A field trip to the news station brought out so much in the kids, they learned and now love to watch the news with me to see the anchors that are now their 'friends' and they can chat about where they sat and what they did!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Random Round Up!

Saturday has come and gone, why is it like that with the days we look forward to most? Oh what a Saturday we had, complete with Doctors, Dentists and Firemen...what?! Yes, my children (all 3!) got stranded in an elevator! All was well in the end but it was terrifying for them and I may have had a mild heart attack listening to their screams. They were only going for a drink of water while I made follow up appointments (no cavities for anyone, yay!!) and lo and behold the fountain was broken, so they got no water and a day to remember!! Anyway, this photo was taken for a boy that was so proud of his first fruit salad that he diced and chopped all on his own. What age do you give your children knives and an all access pass to the kitchen as long as you are in there with them? My little Roman there is 7!

With Christmas decorations going away, I am taking advantage of this time to rearrage some items in my living room and I wanted to find space to incorporate some of the vintage Singer Sewing machine drawers that I have from my grandmothers machine. I only have 1 set of drawers on the machine, which is serving as an entryway table in our foyer (sounds grander than it actually is) and I have 3 drawers waiting for new homes! 1 went on our mantel of the fireplace and this one is holding books in the bookshelf and I quite like it!

In Our Little Catholic Homeschool, I never talked about our Advent wreath, so before I forget I wanted to share a photo of what we had out for the season. All our advent books and Christmas books get tucked into this bin along with our wreath and candles. It is all felt and perfect for little hands, what I love even more, is that even though the kids are older they can play with it and I don't have any fear of them burning themselves or even worse...when it's time to light the first one, I am not scrambling to find candles! Our wreath heads to the classroom where it will stay out for anyone that wants to look at it or play with it but the books get boxed away for the season.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Not Really A Wordless Wednesday...

It is freezing outside today and all the local schools are closed. We of course are still in school, just snuggly warm in jammies! We will be playing board games tonight for wireless wednesday in class and later on as a family when dad gets home! There is nothing we like better than a giant blanket in front of the fireplace and some boardgame fun! This is a vintage Scrabble board given to me by my husband's grandmother and it always stays out like this. It encourages the kids to word play every now and then and more of the time we can't help but create a word and leave it for the next passerby.

Snap Circuits are BIG in our home, we own too many sets, so I had to come up with a fun and visual way to organize them!  

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Two Tips on Tuesday

A beautiful day for a beautiful girl! Yesterday our Princess turned 10 and we had a great day planned for her with a few surprised that even her detective skills couldn't sniff out. The holiday season is always a mess for us with travel and so many different family houses to see and then add in 2 birthday parties and today the Epiphany. Tomorrow I am glad to see the tree come down and the house slowly get back to normal. We are peppering school here and there but won't get officially back at it until mid January when all has calmed down and the house is beginning to look like a home again and not a warehouse!

My daughter wants to be a spy for the US government when she grows up and she studies spies like nothing else. When she isn't studying how to become a spy or creating spy devices she loves to design fashions and watch movies. One of her surprises was to take her to the movie theater when 3-4 different movies were starting within 40 minutes and let her pick anything she wanted to see. She picked Night at the Museum again and it was still just as great the second time around. One tip that we use often because we are frequent movie goers is to bring plastic or paper bags with us to the theater.We buy the largest size popcorn they have and then give each child a paper bag with popcorn. All of our theaters offer free refills on popcorn so we then refill it for us to share and we are all set! No talking in the movie for someone to pass the popcorn and no freaking out when someone has had it too long. We do the same with a large drink and split it between 3 small reusable covered cups. This keeps movie going cost effective and the chatting to a minimum. Now that the older kids are 9 & 10, they wanted to sit on their own, so we outfitted them with goodies and away they went (5 aisles in front of us when we had the entire theater to ourselves!)

As we begin to re-do our classroom, one thing I always put out first and have handy is the paper. We keep a wide assortment of paper on hand, this allows little hands to always have access to art supplies and creativity. There are notebooks for on the go, colored paper, cardstock, textured papers, lined papers...you name it, we've got it! Organize your paper and you will also always have a visual reminder of what needs to be refilled or replaced.

Making books stand out and look inviting is all it takes to bring children to the library. Long lost books always seem to find a way into little hands when they are on display!

Happy Tuesday my friends and remember to enoy every minute!

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Picture Books & Meals on Monday

Happy Monday my friends, what a long and wonderful break. I needed a break from it all and found solace with my grandmother. She passed on 17 years ago, but I was so close to her that it was a devastating loss to me and she is one person that I think about daily. I really wish she could have met my husband and children. Sometimes a calming moment with her makes the start of the year something to look forward to. I hope you all are ready for this new year as well!

In this New Year I am hoping to spend more time with the Good Lord and reading his word. I plan on journaling more often and listening more. This is also something I am introducing into our religion class and hope that it makes for a very spiritual 2015

Why is it that we all begin to organize in the beginning of a year too? Our classroom is undergoing a makeover to adjust to our daily needs now that we have older students and no beginning readers or kids learning how to count and the like. One thing we still have though? Picture Books! We will keep these forever!! I despise book jackets though, they are too pretty to toss but to delicate for little hands that love to love books so what do we do? Use them as display, works of art and eye catching design in a library, playroom or classroom! Staple them up if you will not need them again or even frame them and hang them to preserve their life. Why hide the jackets, when they, like the books, are true works of art?!

Our oldest turns 10 today...double digits?! Where did the years go and how have I not aged a bit??!! Hahaha, well I will post more on this beautiful princess that captured our hearts upon her first breath and never really gave them back. She is our angel that continues to bring us so much joy and happiness.

Menu Planner!
Monday: Crockpot Herbed Pork Chops served with Green Beans and Rice along with a Garden Salad
Tuesday: Meatball Sandwiches on homemade bread w/ Tomato Slices sprinkled w/ Vinegar, Oil & Basil
Wednesday:  Loaded Baked Potato Soup served with Cucumber Slices sprinkled with salt & lime
Thursday: Chicken Pot Pie served with Ceasar Salad
Friday: Shrimp Scampi over Zucchini noodles served with a caprese salad
Saturday: Curry Chicken and Basmati Rice served with homemade naan and broccoli salad

Sunday: DIY Soup & Salad Bar (we are spending the day working on the attic project that we want something quick and easy!)

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Thoughts on Thursday!

Happy 2015!! How did you spend your 2014 end? We stayed in and partied at home with sparkling wines and mimosas. It was really quite fun and in the end we all created memories. Being together with my wonderful little family always seems to make us all so happy and thnankful, I hope it was the same for you all!

My tip for you all is to use clear brochure holders as book displays in your home. This is a great way to give long lost books a new life. You will be amazed at how much older kids will love getting lost in a 'favorite' picture book. I sprinkle these throughout the home often and change them out whenever I get a chance.

My goal for 2015 is to read 250 books and drink a gallon of water a day! Enjoy every minute my friends!

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