Valentine's Day!!!

Between a sale on Tim Holtz dies and texture folders at the Scrapbook Page, and a DVR full of about 3 weeks of shows I had yet to watch, I decided to have a craft night. The result? Awesome Valentine's for my friends and family...

Heart paper from Target - 8 pages/ $1 in the dollar section up front. The glasses sticker came from a Tunes & Seasons 12X12 sheet of stickers at The Scrapbook Page.

Heart paper from Target - 8 pages/ $1 in the dollar section up front. The typewriter sticker came from a Tunes & Seasons 12X12 sheet of stickers at The Scrapbook Page.

The gears texture folder and the dressform and thread spool die cuts are all from the Tim Holtz collection. They are currently buy one get one 1/2 off at the Scrapbook Page in Shawnee Mission. I used a sander to make the white part show through on the gears.

The gears texture folder and clock texture folder were actually in the same package. The clock die cut and bird with cage die cut are also part of the Tim Holtz line. I actually just bought that clock die cut this week because I wanted it to go with my clock textures. This is the heart paper from Target flipped backwards, this picture doesn't show it very well but I sanded the textures so that the red of the heart paper would show through.

This puzzle die cut is actually one of the first die cuts I ever bought for my sizzix! I got it at Jo Anns the week that I got my Sizzix, and I love it. It looks super cute on paper, like in this example, or to cut pictures!

Another type of eyeglasses from the Tunes & Seasons stickers on heart paper. (It has mustache stickers on that sheet, also!)

This sticker comes from a paper packet called "All About Boys." In edition to paper it has one 12X12 sheet of cardboard punch outs and one 12X12 sheet of stickers. You can find this packet at most craft stores, I got mine at Target. This one will be Alex's card, in case you couldn't tell.

This is Isabella's card. The Hello Kitty sticker actually comes from a Christmas Hello Kitty sticker set that Target had in their $1 section at Christmas time. Target has started having a lot of paper, ribbons, and stickers in their dollar section when you first walk into the store, so it is a great place to find scrapbooking supplies if you don't have a lot of money. Also, keep in mind that all stores - Hobby Lobby, JoAnn's, Michaels, Archiver's, and the Scrapbook Page (which has the selection of Archiver's but is privately owned so is cheaper and has a train table for the kids!) almost always have coupons. I never, ever buy scrapbooking stuff unless it is on sale, super cheap off of Amazon, or I am using a 40% off or higher coupon. Otherwise, it is just ridiculous. Last week Hobby Lobby had a bunch of their scrapbooking paper for only $.17 a piece, so I bought a ton then. Otherwise, it can get horribly expensive, and quickly! Here are the dies I currently own. Trust me, there are way more on my Amazon wishlist! I have one whole wish list just for Sizzix dies *sigh* A girl can dream of cutting up paper, can't she?

It Has Begun!

Today I got the stuff to start making Alex's weighted blanket. I used some coupons and ended up spending about $25 on the supplies, I bought the Polly Pellets and Batman fabric, the rest of the fabric is actually leftovers I got out of my storage box in the garage. We are only going to the therapist this week and then we are taking three weeks off so hopefully that gives me some time to get him a weighted blanket and weighted vest made and see how it helps Alex out.

Also, the therapist is recommending we buy a cuddle swing for our home. She tried it with Alex in the office, and it seemed to help some. Before she tried it he was running into walls and stuff, and he calmed down afterwards. Have any of you tried any of these things or do you know someone who has? Any suggestions/advice? We are only a couple of months into our life with Asperger's, so it is all pretty new to us. Here are the swings I am talking about. One is the actual one from his therapist and the other is a similar product from IKEA that is much cheaper, but a bunch of the comments say that it works well for children with autism and sensory needs.

Little House In The Big Woods - Chapter 8

Language Arts:


Vocabulary:

Corsets
Venison
Bugle
Napes
Basin
Whether
Sprigged
Nestling
Scalloped
Waxing
Graining

Spelling:

Autumn
Knot
Straight
Coiled
Flounces
Nestling

Questions:

1. Laura couldn't decide whether to be scared of her wild Uncle George or not. How would you feel?

2. What did the two Laura's argue about?

3. Why do you think this was so important?

Science


 Pig lapbook

PE


Do a Square dance! Square Dance Lesson on YouTube


Home Ec:


Eat pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast! (Yum!)

Make Hasty pudding! Chocolate Hasty Pudding

Make a clove apple! Ma Ingal's Clove Apple

Geography - China

We went to China for our geography last week and we really enjoyed it!

We used the Expedition Earth curriculum from Jen over at

It is an awesome curriculum. With her curriculum we learned some geography, a little bit about the culture, did a couple of crafts, and learned a little bit of the language.

One of the fun crafts we did with the curriculum was to make a Chinese fan.

In addition to the curriculum we bought a kit to decorate Chinese lanterns. We made the paper lanterns as well, but I really enjoyed decorating these so that Bella could use them to decorate her bedroom.

At the end of the week we had crab Rangoon and orange chicken for dinner. It was delicious.

Asian Orange Chicken at AllRecipes.com

Crab Rangoon at AllRecipes.com

I also add garlic salt to my Crab Rangoon mix and I deep fry them, not bake them. They get nothing but rave reviews every time I make them! Try using this recipe and deep frying them and I promise you will be so happy with it that you will never even want to eat Crab Rangoon from a restaurant again!

Little House In The Big Woods - Chapter 6

Language Arts:

Spelling:

Quivered

Eagerly

Frightened

Icicles

Vocabulary:

Eaves

Quivered

Calico

Eagerly

Mending

Questions:

What sort of things do you hope for when your parents make a trip to the store?

What sort of things might you hope for if you had lived in the same time as Laura?

Do you think the girls were frightened waiting for their father to come home? Why or why not?

Father and mother each had funny stories about trying to fight a bear. Who do you think was braver? Why?

Word Search

Science:

River Otter Print Out




Rabbit Lapbook

























Art:


Make tin can lanterns:

1. Fill an old can (family size soup cans work best) with water and put it in the freezer.

2. Have your child draw a simplistic drawing of something they would like to have on their lantern. You really only want a silhouette so that it will be recognizable once you make the design.

3. Use a rubber band to hold the paper with the drawing on it onto the tin can.

4. Take a hammer and nail and make holes at regular intervals all around the outline of your drawing so that you end up with wholes in the shape of your drawing when the paper is removed.

5. Run hot water over the can to remove the ice, dry the can.

6. Paint the can with acrylic paints.

7. Put a candle inside and enjoy!!!!

what's a girl to do when she's laid up?

Scrapbook, of course! I have been scrapbooking with my daughter (and have 3 new finished books to prove it) nonstop. My husband bought me a sizzix bigkick for valentines, and i love it! Here is a page i made using the puzzle die cut.

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Penguins, Penguins, Penguins!

Your eyes are not betraying you, we are still working on penguins! Alex can't get enough of them and because of my surgery we are having lighter school days anyways. I still have at least 2 weeks left of being unable to really even leave the couch, and I don't want to get into anything new that I would have to go shopping for or anything in the mean time. The stairs here are so steep I have to crawl up and down them to leave our house, and that is not fun!

Here is my favorite project this week: it came from the Penguins and Mittens book, of course, and it is just adorable. You take googly eyes, card stock, a film canister, and glue and make  a penguin. How handsome is this guy!?!

Here we (attempted) to make igloos out of marshmallows and toothpicks. It was not as easy as I thought it was. There are a lot of projects for penguins and Antarctica involving igloos, so I have now had to explain to my 3 year old that penguins don't REALLY live in igloos. Oops.

Alex really just wanted to eat the marshmallows. 

Here are some Penguin fractions that I got from Love2learn2day

Here is a penguin potato stamping project from Penguins and Mittens. I posted this picture so you could see how the potato pieces were cut in order to make the penguin parts. 

And here is the final product! 

Here is Alex with his Penguin toob. He enjoys playing with all of the penguins, for Bella she can try to identify the different species.

Here is our "Frozen Adventures" wall. Each day Bella writes a story about something that happens to her while she is visiting Antarctica and we post it on our wall!

We are loving our trip to Antarctica, and hope that you will enjoy it, also! 

Penguin Art, Volume 1

We have taken the Penguin plunge! (By the way, doesn't that sound like some fun zoo exhibit where you get to swim with the penguins? I wish it were real!) At any rate, we started our penguin studies this week and we are loving them! We just want to be a part of the cool crowd, I guess, because everyone is studying penguins and Antarctica right now.

See that baby? It is Alex on his first Halloween. He was so ahead of the penguin trend. 

Here are our current penguin-y resources:

Expedition Earth from Erica at

Which has about a million ideas for crafts, snacks, games, etc. because has several penguin unit studies in it (It covers such books as Tacky the Penguin and Mr. Popper's Penguins)

tack

Finally, I have also been dabbling over at the website of
Love2LEarn2Day where they are also doing a penguin study right now and there are tons of fun ideas and links!

We have been having so much fun! Anyone who knows my Alex knows he has a love for all things penguin, and that is what actually made me decide to take a brief interlude from my other studies to do some penguin studies with the kids. I just knew
he would truly enjoy it. Also, I am going to be getting surgery on my foot next Friday so I didn't want to start a new chapter in our science or Little House in the Big woods. I will be posting this week to finish up the chapters we were working on, but then I will take a week off and post about other things as I will be laid up for about 7-10 days.

And now, onto our penguin art for this week!

First, we have this lovely penguin made from a balloon, cardstock, and scotch tape. Isn't he handsome? We call him Mr. Waddles. But he mostly just falls over, so don't get your hopes up in that department.

Up next we have some lovely penguins made out of toilet paper tubes. Everyone loves to have something to do with those empty tubes once they have removed all of the precious TP, right? Well today, you are in luck! You can turn them into a cute little penguin! Male and female versions are available, just change out your bow!
You can find the template here, at DLTK's Penguin Crafts for Kids

And for our final craft of the week, a delicious one. 

Enjoy! We did! 

What's In the Box Wednesday 2

Since it is Wednesday, I decided to share what is in our boxes. Today, I will share Isabella's boxes, she is in 3rd grade:

We have Expedition Earth and are studying Antarctica in our first box.

In our second box is Learning Language Arts Through Literature and Little House in the Big Woods

In our third box is Daily Geography Practice Day 2

In our fourth box are some books and a worksheet about wildcats that go with our Little House in the Big Woods curriculum.

In our Fifth box is our Science.

In our 6th box was our story of the world activity, we made a salt dough map of Italy:

In our 7th box was Gummi Bear Science. (How cute is that!?)

Here is the link: Gummi Bear Science Projects

Today was our last day of Singapore Math 3B. We Will be moving on to 4A! Yay! 

The last box is my favorite! We got lots of fun stuff from the Disney family website. We got patterns for hair accessories, and for Alice in Wonderland and Mickey Mouse shrinky dinks that I just print onto the paper. We are going to make bracelets and hair accessories.

You can find the link here: Disney Printables

It's a Day late, but it is Art!

This week Isabella made a Cereal Box Collage:

Isn't it gorgeous? It is really easy and fun to make, but it takes a bit of time!

Here is how to make one:

Materials:

glue stick

magazines

cereal box

scissors

pencil

1. Cut a square out of the cereal box, leaving a frame for your picture.

2. Draw a picture inside of your box. It is better to draw a large picture with less detail. Isabella chose a flower.

3. Chose your colors for each part of your picture, including the background and the frame, and begin cutting pictures of these colors out of magazines.

4. Glue down the pictures inside of the areas you have drawn, overlap and fill it in until you have made a collage, but be sure that some of the pictures still show through as recognizable pictures (not just colors). That is part of the fun!

5. Tah Dah! Isn't it gorgeous? Enjoy! 

Also, Alex had his own little art project this week since this activity was too complicated for him. He did do some random cutting and gluing from magazines, but when he got bored of that I got out a stamp pad and roller he had gotten for Christmas. He really enjoyed it! I would recommend this product for any little busy person! 

Christmas break is almost over!

This is the first year that we have actually taken a Christmas break. Isabella is finally old enough that she wanted to be out of school when the other kids were, and I agreed. She has enjoyed it for the most part, but Alex and I are bored. The structure that school brings to our days is very important, I think. Without it we are all just kind of laying around in our pajamas while the house gets dirtier and dirtier because I never feel like the day has actually "begun." Alex cannot entertain himself as easily as Isabella can, so that also makes it hard. I am tired from trying to find things for him to do. He prefers school to toys. I can't wait for Monday!  Bella, meanwhile, is enjoying her crafts like (shrinkidinks) and all of her new dolls. They have taken turns having "sleepovers" in each other's rooms. 

Bella with her Shrinkydinks.

Yesterday was my husband's day off so things were a little more interesting.

We spent the day looking for the red booster deck for our Killer Bunnies game, and

finally found it in a game store in Independence. The red booster deck is only $11 in stores but there was a problem with the printer so most places are on back order and they are selling for about $35 a deck on ebay. I was so glad to finally find it! You can't expand to any new decks until you have the red deck, and the game is so fun!

We have played with a lot of people and most of them love this game, if you haven't played it you should definitely check it out. 

Today my husband's little sister is over, which means we have a third person to play it with, I can't wait! We also bought the kinderbunnies edition yesterday to play with Alex. Bella is old enough to figure out killer bunnies, but kinder bunnies is for kids ages 5 and up and Alex (age 3) can play with a little help.

We took the game to a coffee shop, ordered drinks, and settled in to play. What a fun way to spend the day.

Next week I am going to start posting about the new curriculum I have been working on, which uses the Little House in the Big Woods book. I will also start the Expedition Earth geography in earnest. 

 

I got a new camera for Christmas, so I can't wait to post and share all of our adventures with you!