Love Notes

I always loved getting love notes from my mom written on a napkin or the outside of my lunch bag at school, but since my kids don't go to school I had to improvise. So when Maren was just starting to read a few years ago, I started writing her notes and leaving them under her pillow while she slept, kind of a combination love notes/tooth fairy thing. She was always so excited to wake up and find a note under her pillow.

Now my kids will also leave me notes under my pillow (sometimes asking if I will leave them notes) and it's always fun to get an "I love you mom" surprise note from my 5 year old. This is one of our favorite family traditions.

Eyeballs For Sale! (aka kid's book club)

This summer my kiddos have been participating in a weekly kids' book club with some of their friends. At the first meeting, each child chose a book for when it was their turn to host, and then a schedule was set up. Rather than trying to get the kids to sit down and discuss the book, the moms are in charge of asking questions and coming up with an activity or two when book club is at their house for their child's book. My kids have had a lot of fun reading some Magic Tree House books, Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and others. This week was Maren's turn, and she chose "A Pizza the Size of the Sun" by Jack Prelutsky. It's a book of poetry and so we thought we would do a poetry reading. We set up a stage and put chairs in front (although mostly the kids wanted to sit on the floor) and let each child choose 1 or 2 favorite silly poems to read aloud. My kids loved the poem "eyeballs for sale!" and so we made eyeballs for a snack at the end of book club. We also had pizza NOT the size of the sun (bagel bites) which Maren actually liked to call Pizza the size of doorknobs.

This was my first time making cakeballs, which I've seen on various sites before. I think they turned out cute and they're super easy. You bake a cake, cool it, crumble it in a bowl and mix it with a can of frosting, roll into balls, put in the fridge for an hour to harden a bit, then dip in melted white chocolate and add a gummy lifesaver (which I actually sliced in half to make them thinner) and add a chocolate chip in the middle (definitely not a health food). I used a white cake mix and vanilla frosting, which I thought was a bit blah, but the kids really liked. My friend said she particularly likes the spice cake mixed with cream cheese frosting combination, so maybe we'll have to try those next time. I think it would be fun to make pumpkins at halloween.

Next week is Joshua's turn, and he's chosen a Cam Jansen book, so I'll post when I think of some activities for his book club.

C is for Carnival

For our "summer school" this year, I decided to do an alphabet theme, since I've kind of been ignoring Christopher's education and it's about time he learned his letters. Each day (supposedly) the activites have been based around the letter of the day. We start by making a letter card and drawing pictures of the things that start with that letter. I hang them on the wall to display, and when the summer's done I'm planning on laminating them and making an alphabet book for Christopher. I especially love Christopher's drawing of his Aunt Angela. The kids loved thinking of things to do for each day. For C day they insisted we have a carnival and invite our friends over to play. We planned simple games, like shoot the stack of cups over with a spray bottle, bounce the ball into the glass, water balloon toss, and then we ate clown ice cream cones.

(sorry the picture is so badly back-lit.)

We had to have donuts for D day, and invisible ink on I day, and it's been lots of fun playing with the kiddos.