Mommy School-Valentine’s Day

We mostly just read lots of Valentine’s Day books for Mommy School.  We did fit in a few projects.  I loved these easy and fun giant Hershey Kisses we made.  idea here

For the tag sticking out I wrote their names.  Grace concentrated so hard and traced hers really well.

Their kisses were just as good as the real ones!

One of the books we read was My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall.  We loved looking at all the animals made from heart shapes. 

I had planned to just copy one of the animals from the book, but then I saw this Lovebird project and decided it was perfect.  Isaac and Grace had fun putting them together.

Grace’s Lovebird hurt her leg so she put a band aid on it!

I made them a special Lovebird lunch to go along with it.

We also read Ten Rosy Roses by Eve Merriam. 

I shamelessly copied the activity we did along with it from storytime at the library.  We retold the story with 10 roses of our own.

Then we made celery print roses.  They turned out so pretty!  We made them into cards and delivered them to a few special people. idea here

With Love

Our favorite Valentine’s Day tradition is decorating mailboxes and leaving notes for each other the week or two before Valentine’s Day.  Emma can hardly wait to finally get those mailboxes out.  We got to work after Family Home Evening one night.

It’s always fun to see how they turn out!

Even more fun is seeing those flags up in the morning and looking inside.

Isaac and Grace would wake up and immediately ask to check their mailboxes.

They were excited for good reason.  We all found the most heart-felt and thoughtfully written notes from Emma every day.  Sometimes the kids found notes or little treats from mom and dad.  Grace liked to leave sticker laden letters for each of us.

Some mornings the contents were a little more exciting.  All three kids were thrilled with their new socks.

The secret message Valentine’s were a big hit.

Best of all was the love spread around our family, it’s nice to have the opportunity to on the things we love about each other and then to express it.

We tried to share the love outside our family a little too.  The kids and I made these cute Valentine’s that we shipped off to grandparents.  We also decorated some packages full of treats for our cousins.

 

Of course we had to decorate some heart shaped cookies as well.  Most of those got delivered to neighbors.  Well, we may have eaten our share…

Images of Greatness

The sixth graders at Emma’s school spent quite a few months researching a famous person of their choice.  Emma chose J.K. Rowling, no surprise since Emma loves the Harry Potter books. 

She put together all sorts of information about J.K. Rowling, both imagined and real.  All of that hard work culminated in an evening where all the students dressed as their chosen person and families got to visit with each person and learn more about them.  It was a fun evening and we learned lots of new things about different people.  I also thanked Emma over and over for picking somebody that was easy to find a costume for.  It wasn’t too difficult to come up with her ensemble and it looked pretty darn close to the picture she chose.  I got MANY comments throughout the evening that she looked like she could be J.K.’s daughter!

I wish I got pictures of all our family that came to support Emma, thank you!  I think Isaac and Grace were a little star struck. 

Maybe I was too!

It was fun to see all the different people that students chose to research.  Not only were we able to brush shoulders with all those cool people, but we were also able to get their autographs!

Even better, we got an autographed head shot of our favorite!

Mommy School-Winter

We had so much fun reading books about winter, snow, snowflakes, ice and Groundhog’s Day for Winter Mommy School. 

After reading The Snow Globe Family by Jane O’Conner and we had to make our own snow globes.  Emma joined in on this activity, and she and Isaac and Grace found themselves in the snow globes!  They loved this activity and those snow globes have been shaken many times! idea found here.

Then we made some yummy tortilla snowflakes, complete with sprinkles!  Too bad I baked them a little too long and they were quite crunchy…

It was a big surprise to wake up the next day to a sprinkling of snow!  Isaac and Grace watched it while they ate their breakfast.  Couldn’t have been better timing!

We celebrated that day by pretending we had more snow than what we got.  I pulled the kids around on a makeshift sled (blanket) which they thought was hilarious.  I loved how they held on to each other.  So fun!

We even had our own snowball fight with crinkled up paper.  Each paper had a letter written on it which Grace had fun matching to the letters on the alphabet puzzle.  Isaac was have way more fun throwing the snowballs.  He carried that basket of snowballs around for a couple days. 

We talked a little bit about the letter W. Grace loved to trace her W’s, Isaac not as much.

Isaac and Grace practiced drawing and writing a little more on some paint bags (paint in a ziploc bag), this is truly a mess free way to paint!

We ended that Mommy School with a cute snowman snack.

Reading the book No Two Alike by Keith Baker made for some good discussion.  Not only did we talk about snowflakes and how unique they each are, we also talked about how even though Isaac and Grace are twins they are very different.  We looked at a beautiful book of close-up pictures of snowflakes.  They are pretty amazing!

Then they made two different snowflakes out of M&M’s…  idea here

…and they also found the different objects on a fun worksheet.

That day we started a science experiment, Borax snowflakes.  It was awesome to watch the crystals grow on the snowflakes and we ended up with some beautiful crystals.

Another day I let Isaac and Grace play in shaving cream snow.  This was a hit and they played for quite a while with their hands and toys in “snow”.

After clean-up they ate some yummy snowball snacks.

We took advantage of a day when we had Arianna visiting to make egg carton snowmen.  They turned out so cute!  I love to just set out random supplies and see what they come up.  I especially liked the eyes on Isaac’s snowman!  idea here

For dinner that night we had a snowman pizza.  idea here

Another day we made shape snowmen.  I gave them a plate of different shapes and gave them directions which shapes to use and where.  Isaac again had to be a little different by making a frowny face snowman.  Love that kid!  I also love the snowflakes Grace drew around her snowman.

I pulled out the button jar for a snowman button counting activity.  I think they enjoyed playing with the buttons more than counting them! 

They each chose a few buttons to decorate their footprint snowmen.  idea here.

That day we also made Rice Krispie snowmen when Emma got home from school.  I got the idea from my sister.  Hers turned out much cuter.  Ours look more like Mexican snowmen…

Of course we couldn’t let the winter go without doing activities around one of my favorite books, The Mitten by Jan Brett.  After reading the book we played a fun glove matching game and we put together a mitten puzzle.  Then I hid little objects in a glove and the kids had to reach in and guess what the object was.  They loved this game!  They could have played it over and over.

We also painted pieces of bread cut into a mitten shape with colored milk and then put some sprinkles on them and toasted them.  It made for a good snack.

Then Isaac and Grace painted pictures of the animals from the book and put them in a giant white mitten.

Playgroup was at our house one day during this time so Isaac and Grace helped me make some cute donut snowmen.  We read Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner (love those snowmen books!), then we made cute marshmallow snowmen.  It was a little crazy as always, but fun.

I threw a “special” lunch in there, too.  Isaac and Grace loved the snowmen!

We took two days to talk about Groundhog Day (that silly day…).  Isaac and Grace had so much fun with these little pop-up groundhogs. 

The next morning we watched Punxsutawney Phil make his prediction.  We read so many groundhog books that Isaac and Grace knew exactly what he was doing.  It was so darn cute to hear them say Punxsutawney!  We were all a little bummed that he predicted 6 more weeks of winter. 

We had some friends over that day so they joined in our fun.  We had a cute snack (the kids DID NOT like the pudding snacks), and we made paper plate groundhogs.  snack idea here, craft idea here.

The last thing we talked about was ice.  We read books about ice skating and ice fishing.  I froze some small toys in blocks of ice and we watched them melt in a big tub of water.  Isaac and Grace were shocked that their toys were frozen and loved pulling them out of the ice once it melted enough.  They got a little wet and cold, but I loved watching Grace comfort Isaac when he got upset about the cold.  idea here.

We also did a little ice painting.  I froze colored water and Isaac and Grace used mittens to paint with the colored ice.  We did the painting outside so it was fun to see the colors and the texture from the sidewalk.  I was surprised by the bright colors we got. idea here.

We’ve had such a mild winter but it was fun to enjoy some cold weather activities in the warmth of our own home! 

Several of the printables and some of the ideas were from this Mommy School packet.