Another Entry Of My Very Talented Hubby

Every year at my husband's office they do a toy drive. So every year my husband makes a stuffed animal for the drive. I thought that I would share some pictures of this years stuffed animal.

Now how cute is that!

A Holiday Craft Post....

I know I went missing again for a few days, sorry. I have been really busy getting ready for the holidays though. Well the other day while I was reading blogs, I saw a great project on one of my favorite sites. It was a really cute turkey hat from over here. So of course I had to try and make one for my boys because they love to be silly as you can see from the following pictures.

Hope that you all have a great thanksgiving.

Chariots

For our Social Studies class we are using the Story of the World. One of the activities for the chapter we are on is to make a chariot. The boys were so excited to start this lesson today. I assembled this for them the other day. I put this together for them because it involved putting holes through the box and using hot glue. Both of these would more than likely involve an injury with my boys. Even though it does not look like an actually chariot, more like a farmers wagon, I was very pleased with the way it turned out. I mean I even got the wheels to move. LOL

Today the boys got to decorate it and make the harness for the horse. I love the hawk on the side. Sam informed me that the hawk is something that Egyptians would paint on the sides of their chariots to protect them. He never stops amazing me with the stuff that he knows.

Tomorrows project : HANDPRINT TURKEYS (an oldie but a goodie)

Animal Charades

Today for gym class I had the boys play charades, animal charades that is. They had so much fun doing it. It is a definate do again for them. I did take a video of them playing, I just can't put it up here because of it size. If you would like to see it click on this link. It is 4 minutes 15 seconds long. They did play it for like a half an hour or so it is just a clip of what they did. I hope you enjoy it. Make sure to tune back in tomorrow for our pictures of the chariot. Have a great night everyone.

Dragons, Transformers, and Ponchos

Our project for today was for our world studies class. They got to make ponchos from Mexico. They had an absolute blast making them.
I picked up a bunch of muslin the other day cut pieces down to make the poncho for the boys. I then gave the boys fabric markers to let them design their ponchos. I would have loved to see the ponchos with a more authentic design but I NEVER put a stop to their creativity so.....

We got the dragons and transformers. They are just to cute. On the front of Gabe's is the movie version of bumble bee. Sam drew different dragons. The thing that I love is that these are free handed by the boys. I never helped and they turned out great. They are becoming quite the little artist.

I thought I would share a view of the back of their ponchos.

Tomorrow I will share a video of their project. The boys are going to play animal charades for gym class. I will make sure to get a video because a it should be very entertaining.

Some Love and Paint...

I am going to try and post more of the boys projects that they are doing. Todays project fell in their sensory. Since it is fall I had them paint some fall trees. I painted the arm and hand brown for them to make the tree trunk. After that I put spots of red, orange, and yellow paint on and gave them straws to blow the paint. This was to make leaves.
This one was Sam's version.

This one is Gabe's.

The little guy here loves taking baths so I told him after the painting he could take one. He wanted to make sure though so he laid his belly in the paint. Oh Silly Kid!

Here is the love that happens on a daily basis around here. I am such a lucky mom!

Oh that child of mine.....

Sometimes this child that I love so much says things that make you want to laugh so hard. Last night was one of them. We were watching the movie Akeelah and the Bee. Incase you have not heard of the movie it is about a little girl that tries to compete in the national spelling bee. There is alot of big words thrown out the whole movie. My favorite word was Logorrhea. It means
1. pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.
2. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.
The reason that I love this is because when it was said during the movie Gabe said "wow that is like me!" So true my lovable little boy, so true.

A JUMPSTART REVIEW AND A CONTEST...

Recently I recieved an e-mail from our friends at Jumpstart. They wanted to know if we would be interested in reviewing their new game for the Wii.

It is called Escape from Adventure Island. As soon as Sam heard the name he was so excited because that was his favorite land on their website. So of course we jumped at the chance. They were kind enough to send us a free copy. It arrived the other day and the boys started playing on it right away.

The game is great. There is so many different skills that they can learn on all the different subjects. Dh played it too and he said it is really good because the kids can grow with it. The challenge can increase with each level.

I did find a couple of things that I did not actually care for on it. The first one is the amount of players that they have. It is only a one player game and that makes it hard when you have two or more children. I hear alot of "Mom has he played long enough yet, I want to play now" (they really love the game). You can get past that though by putting time limits of course. The only other problem that I found was the spot that you can save the game. It only has enough spots to save three different players games. Which is ok in my family because I only have the two kids but with familys that have more than that it can be difficult.

With that being said I LOVE the game. It is a game that is filled with wonderful learning oppurtunities. Being homeschoolers I do try to fit the game in the lesson. I mean when you have to learn about rhyming words would you rather do a worksheet or ride on a jet pack blowing up mines that do not rhyme with your words. Even if you do not homeschool I still recommend the game because it is such a fun way to learn.

To end I included a video from each of the boys about what they like and do like so that you can hear straight from them. Just a note though, in Sam's video he mentions the thing that he does like that the game controllers freeze up. I was watching and it was not doing that. I think that it was an issue with our controller (low battery).

Now to the contest. Jumpstart is running a contest over on their site. All they want from you is to know how you use your imagination and escape from your everday life and turn it into an adventure. Check out this prize list:

This is the grand prize:

1 copy of JumpStart Escape from Adventure Island (rated E by the ESRB)
1 Nintendo Wii console – to escape boredom
$250 in SpaFinder® gift certificates – to escape stress
1 Flip™ Mino HD video camera – to record your adventures
3 lifetime JumpStart memberships – 1 for you, 2 to share with friends
500 JumpStart.com virtual coins – to keep your kids’ online adventure exciting
JumpStart gear – to dress for adventure

If you do not win this maybe you can be one of the 50 winners that will recieve a copy of the game. Pretty cool if you ask me so hurry on over and sign up between now and November 16th. Good Luck to everyone that enters.

AIR BOYS......

Well I am in a rythym giving new post. I hope that you are enjoying my new post. It is not just the post that I have found a new rythym we have with the schooling to. Everyday the boys are finding something that they are loving with the school work. I am trying to capture all of the things that they are having fun with. Today the thing that they loved was their sensory lesson. It was kind of a combination sensory and science. They took three different items that blew air. Then they tried to see how different item s moved using them. It has already been requested to go back on the schedule again. I included a short video of them during the lesson. Hope you enjoy.


I will back tomorrow with a review. See you all then. Have a good night!

Day Of The Dead Crafts...part two

So here is part two of our "Day of the Dead" crafts. I purchased the Sugar skull kit from hearthsong. The boys have been so excited to make them.
Here they are trying to decide what colors they want to use.

The finished skulls.

A closer look at some of the ones that the boys did.

The one with the blue hat was done by DH. The green hat was done by Gabe.

I did the one with the green mouth. Sam did the one next to it.

The boys had such a good time doing all of the projects that we can not wait to do it again next year. It was a wonderful way to start off our unit study of Mexico.

Day Of The Dead Crafts...part one

We started our unit study of Mexico with the start of November. This timed out nicely because November 1st and 2nd is the "Day of the Dead" celebration there. The boys are having so much fun doing the crafts for it.
This is Gabe with his monkey. One of the projects that I wanted to do was decorate some skulls. I found some Paper Mache Skulls at Michaels . I painted them white in preperation (they were tan).
Then the boys started painting them.
Daddy even joined in and painted too. *smile*

Gabe thinks that he is scary with the mask so he has been working on that scary creepy laugh. Too funny, the kid cracks up people more than he scares them. LOL

Here are the completed mask. Sorry about them being turned. I tried to fix it but the computer would not agree with me.. This first one is Sam's Mask.

Second in line is Gabe' s mask.

This is DH's finished mask.

Last but not least here is mine.

Gabe also found a project to make a skeleton from a book of crafts (shown below).

I also have included a couple of videos of Gabe playing with some of the projects.


This video is of him trying to scare us with the mask.

Here he is showing you his skeleton that he made.

Now the books that we used to honor this holiday...

First is Clatter Bash! This book was so cute. It shows how the festivities go. A very easy read, great for younger kids, but my boys even enjoyed it. Great for all ages in my opinion ( I kinda Liked it too) LOL.

This book is filled with a lot of great ideas for kids to make.

I am going to post the rest of our projects tom... stay tuned for the sugar skulls....