June 2012 Holiday Calendar

There are some fun days coming up in June! Here is a calendar with a bunch of cool and crazy holidays to celebrate with your kids and family. Just right click on the image to save it to your desktop!

The goal: print this off NOW, choose the holidays that will be fun for my family, and prepare ahead for the celebratory activities... then sit back and bask in the glory of being a fun mom!
Reality: I will be staying up late the night before to throw something together for the day. :)

Some crazy May holidays are coming up-
May 25: National Tap Dance Day
May 26: Blueberry Cheesecake Day
May 28: Memorial Day (Observed)
May 29: Paper Clip Day
May 30: Hole in my Bucket Day (Just the thought of hearing the song "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza" is giving me a headache!)


Happy Teaching!

Summer Bucket List

I have a MILLION plans for my family this summer (thank you Pinterest!) Instead of doing the old plan-the-days-in-advance method, I thought I would try my hand at making a more spontaneous and fun bucket list. And for the record- I hate that these summer to do lists are called bucket lists- I don't plan on kicking the bucket this fall! Geez! But my ideas of "popsicle pail list" or "random jar of fun" just don't have the same ring. So I'm callin' this a bucket list! :)

Here is a pic of our summertime popsicle pail (see, it just sounds WEIRD). Notice that there are no cute summertime stickers on the pails- and for one good reason: I will be reusing these for every season. I am bound and determined to cross off some of my pinterest to do lists!!

As you can see from the pic, there are three pails. One pail for our fun activities, one pail for the completed activities, and a third pail to hold extra popsicle sticks and a fine point sharpie. Because I am continuously adding to our list. I think I add about 5 new ideas a day! Which is the primary reason why we have already started picking popsicle sticks. At last count I had a total of 125 things to do this summer!

All of our popsicle sticks are sorted into colored categories. The yellow sticks are things we can do outside in the sun, the blue sticks are summer time treats, the orange sticks are science projects, the red sticks are art projects, the purple sticks are learning activities, the green sticks are places we can go near our home, and the brown sticks are places we can go in Salt Lake (and beyond). This has provided to be SUPER useful already- when my daughter wanted to do something artsy she grabbed a red stick and voila! she had a summertime art project. And I was able to cross of an activity from my Pinterest list! Yay!

When an activity is completed, I have been writing the date on the back of the popsicle stick. That way if I decide to do a journal, I will know the exact dates we did stuff. And when some of the more easy and accessible activities are finished, I write the date and stick it back into the pail of things to do.

I thought I would include the activities we have in our summer bucket list. Of course the list can be easily adapted to meet your family's needs. And I should mention that the pails are from the dollar section at Target, and the popsicle sticks are from the Dollar Tree. I just love a good bargain!

125 Things To Do This Summer


YELLOW (things to do outside in the sun)
1. bubbles
2. catch a butterfly
3. sandbox
4. paperbag scavenger hunt
5. water pinatas
6. water games
7. hopscotch
8. run in the sprinklers
9. make an obstacle course
10. pull weeds (not everything has to be fun, right? :)
11. sidewalk chalk paint
12. mud pie kitchen
13. hunt for predators with water guns
14. sidewalk chalk
15. ride your bike
16. wash cars, scooters, and bikes
17. plant flowers
18. play hide and seek
19. have a race
20. roller skate
21. play red light/ green light
22. play tag
23. plant a garden- even if its just herbs
24. kiddie pool in backyard

BLUE (summertime treats) I have a bunch of dinner recipes that I want to try that I will be adding to our monthly meal schedule (hopefully!).  I wanted to make the summer bucket list fun for my daughter, and pulling out a popsicle stick that said "grilled chicken fajitas" wouldn't do much for her.
25. smoothies
26. campfire cones
27. cupcakes in ice cream cones
28. make sugar cookies and decorate
29. food paint
30. dip a banana in chocolate and freeze
31. take a picnic somewhere
32. muddy buddies
33. mini personal pizzas for lunch
34. candlelight dinner
35. make homemade taffy
36. indoor smores
37. homemade snow cones
38. frozen grapes
39. ice cream in a bag
40. make popsicles
41. use candy melts to make suckers
42. frozen jr mints
43. gelato
44. fruit kabobs

45. strawberry and watermelon lemonade

46. kool-aid ice cubes and 7-up

47. crabby sandwich for lunch

48. frozen fruit bars

ORANGE (science projects)

49. make bird feeders
50. freeze things and dig them out
51. oily fireworks
52. fossil cookies
53. static electricity
54. volcano in a mug
55. m&ms in hot water
56. glow in the dark party
57. weather cloud in a cup
58. blowing up balloons
59. ice sculptures
60. sidewalk egg frying w/aluminum foil
61. floating eggs in salt water

RED (art projects)

62. make bath paints with shaving cream

63. bubble painting

64. make pinwheels

65. sewing project

66. glitter toes
67. make a treasure map and go on a hunt
68. marshmallow and tooth pick sculptures
69. make slime
70. make a paper mache bowl

71. "I wish..." art project

72. paint cement with water

73. ABC handprint art book

74. fingerpaint
75. fingerpaint with pudding
76. self portrait
77. silhouette pictures

78. invisible ink

79. melt crayons

PURPLE (learning activities)
80. use a calculator
81. write digits 0-9
82. puppet show
83. sound sorts
84. write name
85. letter bingo
86. write and illustrate a story
87. follow direction cards
88. etiquette factory
89. Dora letter sound flashcards
90. number bingo


GREEN (hometown activities)
91. bowling
92. bounce house
93. aquatic center/ swimming pool
94. dinosaur park
95. splash pad
96. children's museum
97. playground
98. duck pond
99. city museum
100. train museum
101. nature trail
102. nickelcade
103. Hill Air Force base airplane museum
104. nature center


BROWN (Salt Lake and beyond activities)
105. Symphony
106. Natural History Museum
107. Red Butte Gardens
108. Zoo
109. Kennecott Copper Mine
110. City Creek shopping center
111.State Capital Building
112. baseball game
113. planetarium
114. temple square
115. liberty park
116. aviary
117. childrens theater
118. Park City
119. aquarium
120. Church History Museum
121. Gateway
122. This is the Place State Park
123. ride the bus
124. fireworks
125. fair

I know there are TONS more ideas (Thanksgiving Pointe, Yellowstone, Dinosaur National Monument, hiking, Antelope Island, etc....) And there is NO pressure on accomplishing every single thing on my list. OK, maybe a little pressure- I mean, being able to cross off my entire list would be amazing!
I hope this list inspires you to make some fun memories with your families this summer.

Happy Teaching!

Happy Mothers Day

To my mom, and all the moms out there:

Have a wonderful Mothers Day!

Space Day

"When are we going to go up to outer space?" This is the question that my inquisitive 4 year old has been asking me lately. Of course we can't take a literal trip to space- but we can take an imaginative one! And the teacher brain in me went crazy with the fun possibilities of creating an outer space "feel". Like making a rocket ship and traveling to our own version of outer space. When I heard that there was a Space Day the first friday in May I jumped aboard and made our space visit a reality! I thought I would share some of our fun explorative activities. If your child is interested- set a date and go on an exciting trip to outer space - or just use some of these ideas in a Space Unit.

You can't go wrong with space books. As you can see we have a variety of genres- from non-fiction to science fiction!

My daughter and I made our very own rocket ship out of Ikea bookshelf boxes. Our rocket is tall enough for me and provided lots of space for painting and adding rainbow stickers (as requested from my Boo). My favorite part of this activity was hearing my daughter say "Will it REALLY fly to outer space Mom?"

my little astronaut

our very own rocket ship

We took a quick trip down to the planetarium and walked on the moon! We also watched a planet movie in their dome theater (its pretty cool to see a movie on the ceiling).

Later that night we ate dinner in our star tent and played with rockets from the Dollar Tree.

We then had a glow in the dark space party! I put glow sticks in balloons and hung them from the ceiling in our basement. These made PERFECT planets. We hopped aboard our rocket ship and were traveling through space! My daughter had a special star glow stick (thanks again to our favorite dollar store) that shone the way.

Even my science driven husband said that this was cool. Sweet! 

Happy Teaching!

Animal Unit: Diego Field Journal

My daughter LOVES animals. It just seemed fitting to do a little learning unit about them! After I created an AMAZING outline of all the fun things we were going to do, the lessons stopped being fun and exciting. Maybe it was me- it seemed like putting together my fabulous curriculum plans was more strenuous than I had initially thought- or maybe my daughter was sick of having to learn something every time we played- or maybe it was both of us! At any rate- I live by the motto that learning at this age SHOULD BE FUN- and since it wasn't exciting anymore- we stopped. Plain and simple. I think the fact that my daughter knows about animal habitats, bipeds and quadrupeds, nocturnal animals, animal groups (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, etc) is pretty stinkin' good for a 4 year old! And I have to say I am one proud Mom!

Boo's animal field journal! It's a binder that has a huge variety of animal cards  (found at National Geographic for Kids)

Anyway- we did do some activities with her field journal. For those that have watched Diego you will be familiar with this idea already! Our animal field journal is a place where we keep information about all the animals we learned. I found some free printable cards at National Geographic for Kids- they were very informative, too! I liked that they were categorized by animal group and had information on diet and habitat. And did I mention they are free?! So yes, I spent like an hour printing them ALL. And I have these darling little binder- I think its from Staples- that just so happens to fit perfectly in her Diego rescue pack. It was like they were meant for each other....

Theoretically it would be wonderful to add animal cards one at a time as your child learned about each animal, but I just threw them all in at the beginning. I glued the animal cards onto colored card stock- a different color for each animal group. Since they were already visually sorted by group, I decided it would be fun to sort them by habitat. We went on an animal safari to different habitats to save several animals that were in trouble (again- think Diego).

Boo going on a safari to help the desert animals in trouble (aka locating the animal cards Mommy randomly placed throughout the house)

The first habitat we went to was the desert. We saved about 10 different animals (I tried to get a variety of animal groups represented in this activity, so we had some birds, some reptiles, some mammals, etc). Saving the animals just meant locating the animal card I had placed in various distressing places around the house. (so clever, I know. It would be more fun to actually save a stuffed animal- or imaginary animal even- but we just picked up the cards. It was quick and easy!) After we "saved" all the animals, we brought the cards back to the rescue center and added them to our field journal.

Animal Rescue Center- counting all the different animal groups we found during our safari to the desert

We repeated this activity for a few different habitats- I think we did grasslands. rainforest, and mountains as well as the desert. This time we kept the animals sorted by habitat in my daughter's field journal.

A sample of some of our desert animals- I like that you can look at the color of cardstock and easily see we found a mammal, reptile, and invertebrate. 

That was really the last "official" learning activity we did with animals- at least for now. When my daughter and I are ready, we will relaunch our animal expedition! I think it is such a blessing to have the freedom to choose what we are learning about!

Happy Teaching!

National Truffle Day

May 2 is National Truffle Day. What a perfect time to make a delectable treat! And I have to admit that I have never made truffles before- I was SHOCKED to find out how quick and easy they can be to prepare!

I found this particular recipe for cake batter truffles from Christy at The Girl Who Ate Everything. (Love the name of her site- especially since I am the world's most picky eater and can't bring myself to eat a lot of things!) These truffles were DELICIOUS! And so easy!! I didn't include the recipe on my blog, since I don't want to take any site traffic away from Christy and it just didn't seem like proper blog etiquette! Am I crazy?!

Mix the ingredients together. Include your child by letting her add the rainbow sprinkles.

Roll out dough. Chill for 15 minutes. The great thing about making no bake truffles: You can make a variety of sizes without worrying about them being under or overcooked. Boo had a great time making ginormous truffles as well as some that look like a snake :)

After truffles are chilled and dipped in chocolate- add more sprinkles! This was lots of fun for my little girl!

Baking with your child can be a great way to build your relationship. And after you are done spending time working together in the kitchen, you can indulge yourself with a yummy treat! It's like a win-win situation!
Happy Teaching!

Spring Apothecary Jars

So I am a little late for those that want apothecary jar ideas for Easter, but I think these work well for spring, too! Although I put this one together myself, it would be tons of fun to have your little ones collect, dye,or paint eggs to get involved in the process. And don't mind the garbage on the mantle. It is a wonderful collecting place for all sorts of things!

Enjoy!