Valentine’s Day 2013

As you may have read in a previous Valentine’s Day post of mine, I love finding ways to tie God in with the holidays.  This year I did a scavenger hunt again (the boys LOVE them).  I did this one a touch different though.  I found some super cute printable cards here.  They have the “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” theme.  I wrote on each of them a different thing that Jeff and I love about the boys.  On the back, I put bible verses found here that go along with conversation hearts.  I found some cute little plastic heart shaped containers at the dollar store (I think there were 10 in a pack).  I wrote a conversation heart saying on top of each that went along with the verses.  Then, I filled each one with a couple of goodies.  I hid the cards around the house with the matching heart and the kids had to find them…it was random, there were no clues.  Once they found them and we read them, they were led to their final destination which had lots of goodies.  I think I spent under $10 for ALL of the stuff they got this year…maybe closer to $5.   The boys loved every second of it!

Here are the cards with their hearts:

Card 1, front

back

Card 2, front

back

Card 3, front

back

Card 4, front

back

Card 5, front

back

Card 6, front

back

Card 7, front

back

The final SURPRISE:

Scavenger Hunt VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

In the bowls were my simple way of making white chocolate covered strawberries.  I just sliced the strawberries up and drizzled some melted white chocolate over the top.  Then I put a Valentine sugar cookie heart the I made in the bowl.  Super easy and super yummy!

I also made some cheesecake pancakes for the boys that day.  I didn’t think they tasted all that great but the boys didn’t seem to have a problem .

Evan and I made the fun little bags pictured below for his friends at Classical Conversations but we were sick and couldn’t pass them out ourselves.  Jeff dropped them off and our director passed them out for us.  I found the idea for the “for crayon out loud” idea here.  I thought it was quite clever and I just had to use it.

I  hope you all had a Valentine’s Day filled with love and joy!

Weekly Report- 2/1/13

Classical Conversations:
History:
Timeline-
Age of Industry to Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Sentence-
The civilizations of Mesoamerica
We watched Mayan Empire Documentary Part 1
Geography:
Africa (Waters)
English:
3 more helping verbs
Latin:
1st Declension Noun Endings
Math:
The area of a rectangle
Science:
The 4 kinds of volcanoes. 
We made a volcano at home.  I just taped a regular empty water bottle to the inside of a plastic dish.  Then I shaped Play-Doh around it.  I put some baking soda in the bottle, several teaspoons.  I filled another water bottle (about 1/2 full) with vinegar, red food coloring and a touch of liquid dish soap.  Then I quickly poured it down the center (into the bottle) of the volcano.  I would have used more red coloring if I had known it would turn out pink…although I’m not sure it would have made a difference.  Evan loved it nonetheless.  I would have made it more of a mountain shape but I didn’t have enough Play-Doh to work with.  Owen missed out because he was napping but I might just do it again so he can see it too.

We watched The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top.  We also watched the following videos on YouTube.
Plate Tectonics
Volcano Eruption Mount St. Helens May 18, 1980 USGS
Fine Arts:
Durer
Presentations:
Evan did his presentation on Mt. Aconcagua.  He enjoyed playing with our interactive globe while finding where it was located.  Owen had fun with it too.

Geography Fun VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Outside of Classical Conversations:
Developmental/Readiness Skills:  Developing the Early Learner, Readywriter
DEL-
Evan has finally completed all four of the series with the following assignments being the last two.

• Comprehension/Awareness
• Comprehension/Language

RW-
Evan has completed level 10.  It definitely made his hand work.  He complained of it hurting and being tired by the end of the worksheet.
Science:  God’s Wonderful Works

• What was the Earth Like In the Beginning- The activity suggested was to use a globe and a flash light in a dark room (in our case, the bathroom).  We put a sticker in the area where we live.  Then we set the flash light to shine on the globe.  As we turned the globe we noted when it was day and when it was night where we live.

• The Spirit of God, Giver of Life
• God Created the Light
• What Is Light- We used water and food coloring to demonstrate how light moves.  I won’t give instructions for this as it didn’t seem to do what it was supposed to…it still looked neat though.

• How God Created Light
• Jesus Is the Light of the World
• God Saw That It Was Good

Math:  Right Start Math Kindergarten A
We have completed all of the lessons for Kindergarten A and will begin work on Kindergarten B, Lord willing, on Monday.

• Lesson 73- Quarters

Quarters VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

• Lesson 74- Tessellations and Octagons

Tessellations and Octagons VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

• Lesson 75- Introducing Fractions
• Lesson 76- Solving Problems
• Lesson 77- Geometric Solids

Language Arts:  Spell to Write and Read, First Language Lessons
SWR-
I gave Evan a quiz on the phonograms.  We still have some work to do before he’s ready to move on.  We continued to work on learning the phonograms.
FLL-

• Poem Narration
• Nouns, verbs, and pronouns
• Copy work- He really does a great job copying, even though he can’t read what he’s writing yet.  We still work on sounding out the words that he’s writing.  Once he can recognize all of the phonograms he’ll be good to go.  He’s about 1/2 way there.  I’m really in no rush.  As far as age goes, he wouldn’t even be in Kindergarten yet if he was in public school so I feel like we’re ahead of the game anyway.

• Months and days review
• Initials review
• Abbreviations
• Titles of respect

Bible:

• In the Fire

Outside of school:
My sister had a Pinterest Spa Party last weekend.  If you’re looking for something fun to do with your girlfriends and you need a break from life, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND doing this!  We had a great time.  Just click the link to see what we did as well as a few recipes for our spa fun and a couple of delish brunch recipes . 

On a side-note, special thanks to all of my Pinterest friends that have been pinning my Valentine's Day Love Scavenger Hunt post.  It's had over 13,000 views alone this past month!  You all are AWESOME!

Feel free to check out my Link Ups page to see the great places this post is linked to.

Girlfriend Pinterest Spa Party

My sister had a Pinterest Spa Party last weekend. If you’re looking for something fun to do with your girlfriends and you need a break from life, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND doing this! We had a great time. Here’s what we did:

We started the day off with a potluck brunch. We brought something that we made from Pinterest. I made Cinnamon Roll Casserole…so not healthy but oh, soooooooooo WORTH IT. It was a hit!  Not to mention, the recipe makes a lot and it was SUPER EASY.

Next, we intended to go for a hike on a local trail near the lake, but one of our group members was a little freaked out about the amount of ice on the trail so we turned around and went for a walk around the local boardwalk instead.  Did I mention the fact that we were all in our p.j.s/sweats and wearing NO MAKE-UP.  I felt sorry for anyone who had to be graced with the picture of me without make-up .

After our walk, we headed back to my sister’s house for our spa fun.  She found all of the recipes we used in the spa on Pinterest.  Everyone pitched in and brought the ingredients needed for these recipes.  We did a microderm abrasion (I’ve actually been doing this for a while and it’s great). Next was an anti-aging mask using avocado, grapes and aloe vera gel (this was gross looking but my skin felt wonderful afterward). 

After the mask we used a facial toner…I don’t recommend this…it left our faces BURNING.  It was made with lemon juice, witch hazel and water.  We then moved on to our hands and feet.  We used an AMAZING hand scrub…just 2 ingredients, sugar and baby oil.  We were all in awe of how soft and smooth our hands felt afterwards.  We did a detox foot soak (look for the “tea detox” recipe) while drinking detox water (which tasted so refreshing).  The detox water recipe is not in English but just click on the translate button at the top and you’ll be able to read it.  We made a sugar body scrub which we put in small jars to take home with us.  I couldn’t find a link for this but I know the ingredients were honey, brown sugar, lemon juice and ground ginger…not sure if there was anything else in it.

She made lasagna soup and garlic bread for lunch (we were still full from brunch) but we had some anyway;  the soup was DE.LISH.

Then we got all dolled up and went out to dinner.  We were all so full so we just had appetizers instead. 

We completed the night back at her house with karaoke…they have a really good set-up for it.  It was extremely fun and surprisingly exhausting.  She plans on doing it every year.  So. Much. Fun.  Do it!

And if you're not yet on Pinterest, feel free to check out my boards to see all of the great stuff I've found.