Workboxes - St. Patrick's Day

Our theme for workboxes last week was all things St. Patrick's Day including rainbows and leprechauns. I was excited to do this theme because normally we don't really celebrate St. Patrick's Day because it is the day after Ellie's birthday and after having everyone over and cooking and cleaning I am just too tired to plan any fun activities. This year I was able to plan and it was really fun. We started off by reading lots of books and talking about St. Patrick himself. The books we read came from this recommendation. The rest of the boxes included:


Shamrock file folder game printed from here: Color the letter R for our alphabet book using color changing markers. The R printout came from here.Leprechaun grid game from hereRainbow scratch off sheets from Lake Shore LearningLetter R pin punch from hereColor by number rainbow printed from hereUpper and lower case alphabet rainbow match from hereMake a fruit rainbow for snack. I took this picture before I filled the other pot of gold with Nutella. YUMMY:) This idea came from Family Fun magazine.We made green lemonade by mixing yellow lemonade with blue food coloring. I got this idea from here.We did an experiment using food coloring and milk to watch the colors swirl around. It is really cool and easy. Add milk to a shallow dish and then add a few drops of food color. Dip a toothpick into dish washing liquid and then dip it in the milk and watch the colors swirl. We made a leprechaun trap using a box and paper towel holder. We lured the leprechaun in by making gold nuggets with rocks and gold glitter.

We didn't catch a leprechaun but they did leave us some chocolate gold nuggets, a mess in the living room and green toilet water, silly little guys!

Ellie's Birthday Party

This is the first year that Ellie has had a friends party. Normally we have all of our family over to celebrate but this year she wanted to have a ballet party so we had her party at a local dance studio. I have to say it was so nice to not have to clean, plan and get ready for an at home party. I hope everyone had fun and I know the birthday girl did!

Sisterly love
Tumbling TimeOne of the few things I had to bring was cupcakes. I found a tutorial to make this cute topper from here and I didn't have pink sugar/sprinkles so I just sprinkled jello on it and it worked! See how tasty they were!!

Ellie is 5!!!

I just can't believe my sweet baby girl is 5 today. For some reason this is such a big birthday to me. There is just no way she can be 5 already. When I was getting all sappy with her this morning she told me not to worry because she would always be my baby and she would stop growing for awhile and that cheered me right up:) Ellie is so much like her dad it is not funny! She can tune people out like no one else but is also so sweet and compassionate not to mention funny (she gets that from me : ) )! I love they way she is so appreciative of the little things I do for her. She says thank you for making dinner most nights and thank you for making school fun most school days. I just love that! Ellie, mommy loves you more then you can ever imagine!!!! Happy Birthday baby girl!

Before I Was Your Mother

This was a last minute find at the library the other day but I just love it! Honestly, I like it better then the girls but I still recommend it!!

School Things I Could Live Without But Don't Want Too

I have several school tools I am loving and wanted to share. Here is my list:


Elmer's Glue Pens. I love these and Emily LOVES these. They are so much easier to use then a bottle that can be hard to squeeze and a glue pen that can be goopy. It fits there hands so well but just be prepared to go through a ton because they are so easy to use that they are gone in no time. Luckily, they have them at the Dollar Tree!



My laminator. It is a GBC Heat Seal and now that I know Sam's has 200 laminating sheets for $20 I have been a laminating fool:)
My paper cutters. I have a small one, a letter size one and a big industrial one. Believe it or not all use all 3 of them often but I didn't have to pay for any of them. One was given to me by my sister, one came with the laminator and the last one my husband found who knows where:)


I just got this a few weeks ago but Hot Dots Pen. I originally learned about that from here (she gives a good explanation)but you can make just about anything into a flashcard/ multiple choice work. Ellie loves it and I love that she can check her own answers!!!



Based off Sue Patrick's recommendation I got a continuous ink system (this isn't the one we got) and to say I am in love is in an understatement. We purchased it new on Ebay. We still haven't completely got the color ink to print the colors exactly right but the b&w works awesome!! I think I could print non stop for a year before running out of ink.


Let me know if you have any questions about anything listed and I would love to hear what school tools you love!!!

Penguins

I have been meaning to post about our penguin activities for a week now but life has been busy:) I could not believe how many fun penguin printables and activities I found on other blogs and sites!! I love the Internet. Anyway, we had a lot of fun learning about these cute little guys. Here are some of our activities:

Reading lots of penguin books while eating goldfish of course!
Playing a penguin grid game from here (such an awesome site)

We used the printables from here to make words ending in at

I made a little sensory tub of cotton balls and the McDonald's penguins. Both girls enjoyed this.

Penguin dot marker pages from here

Learn to draw a penguin. This great idea came from here

Matching penguin colored hats to the right penguin

Making penguin puppets. I used Ellie's penguin as the circle time leader the next day and the girls loved this. They directed all of their questions etc. to the penguin. I really thought Ellie would think this was silly but she surprised me!

We also painted the bottom of our feet black and white and two of our toes orange and made really cute penguins out of the footprint. I didn't get any pics because I had a 4 year old and 2 year old with paint on their feet so you understand! If you want to see the finished product check out this site where I got the idea.

We finished off the week with the movie Happy Feet and these yummy treats. They were tasty. I got the recipe from here. Basically it is an Oreo dipped in dark chocolate with white chocolate bellies and orange chocolate feet and beak.

The Word of Promise New Testament

I was so excited to receive The Word of Promise New Testament to review for Tommy Nelson Publishers. It is a CD set of The New Testament. There is a huge cast of well known actors reading for the people in the bible. Here is just a few of the many well known actors:

Lou Diamond Phillips (Mark), John Heard (Matthew), John Schneider (James), Terence Stamp (The voice of God), Stacy Keach (Paul). Louis Gossett jr (John), Marisa Tomei (Mary Magdelene) and Luke Perry (Judas) and Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ

I am keeping the CDs in my car to listen to when I am by myself and I am really enjoying them. I really like being able to know who is talking since each person in the bible is read by
the same character. My favorite thing about the CD's is the way it really brings the stories to life for me because of the dramatic way they are read. If you enjoy listening to books on CD I would recommend listening to this CD set.

stART - Story Art

This is my first time participating in stART and we used one of Ellie's new favorite books, Tacky in Trouble. In the story Tacky, the penguin, steps in food like ketchup and grape jelly and runs all over an elephants tablecloth. I took 4 toy penguins from McDonald's kids meals and glued sponges on the bottom of their feet. We dipped their feet in ketchup, grape jelly, blueberry juice and spinach (red, purple, blue and green paint) to create beautiful art:)

Workbox

Here are some of Ellie's workbox activities from the past few weeks. Our theme has been penguins but I am going to do a separate post on those so I didn't include those activities.
Matching small pictures using a magnifying glass. This fun activity came from here. Using playdoh to make letters

Sequencing cards

Using miniatures to practice beginning word sounds

Transferring water with a dropper

Using picture perfect tiles

Get Set for the Code workbook

Handwritting Without Tears