Family NIght @ The 'mit House!

Now that the kids are old enough to actually work together, and play together for an extended amount of time, we have started planning intentional family nights. It has been so fun and rewarding to spend family time together that includes Daddy, (as normally the things we plan happen in the day time when he is at work). There is a great website familymuscle.com that has some fun ideas of "theme nights" you can plan for some family fun. We have been doing a mixture of these theme nights, and of our Awana at Home program. This time the theme was DIY, so we made our own pizza's and had fondue for dessert. It was SO fun! There was an activity about creating something from clay, but we opted for the cleaner Awana activity, that suggested a lesson on counting grains of rice, and the hairs on your head instead. Here are some photos...

Eva made a smilely face with her peperoni.

Kezia loves black olives (like her mama), so when they were gone, she proceeded to dip her fingers in the juice and suck them.

They were so excited!

Yummy pizza!

Theo really liked the bananas.

Kezia enjoyed poking the fruit and then aiming at her mouth with the prongs. Thankfully she didn't poke her eyes out. She was not interested in the chocolate (like her mama)!

Eva loved the chocolate, and every fruit!

Couldn't resist the learning opportunity!

Epic Weekend

This fall seems to be flying by like no other. I feel like we just started back at school and now it's already Halloween! Crazy. Anyways, amidst the craziness, we try to have at least one great family day every couple of weeks. This means that "activities" sometime have to be sacrificed. So a couple weeks ago- we passed on Theo's first Floor Hockey game (he is in a local league now), and we headed out to UBC for the Apple Festival (after swimming lessons, that were early enough for us to do both). We have been several years in a row now, and have learned that if you want to buy your favorite apples, you have to go early! Thankfully, they had volunteers, walking through the line up handing out cute apple tattoos to help keep the kids occupied. It was such a beautiful day, that we didn't mind waiting in line.

There is a bit of walk through some bush and under the road until you get to the main event area, and there is always a lovely garden with lots of interesting fruits and veggies growing. Many that I had seen here for the first time, like a kiwi!

 There is a children's area with lots of activities to do. Below is a picture of my boy, having just spent about half and hour at the biodiversity museum's table. We learned lots about antlers- even tried some on!

There was free face painting...

A photo opportunity.

Yummy apple pie!

My favorite part. Apple Taste Testing.

 

Apple chips!

After the Apple Festival we had an appointment to get the van serviced, so we spent a few hours at Granville Island, feeding the birds. Oh how we miss being so close to Granville Island!

A rare moment of stillness as he listens to the music.

The following day, we had a birthday part to go to out in Surrey, so we thought we would capitalize on the fact that we were in farm country by heading to the pumpkin patch.

There was a petting zoo with sheep, goats and bunnies.

 Well, that's all for now. It was definitely weekend to remember. We were blessed with such beautiful weather, a true warm autumn day.

Lap Books

What is a lap book, you may ask? Well it is a popular learning tool that homeschoolers use, to make learning fun for kids. You can pretty much make a lap book out of any topic that you want your child to learn. I get most of my idea's from free websites like: homeschoolshare.com
I thought I'd include an example of a very basic one here. You take a file folder, and fold the edges into the middle seam.

Front

Inside

So you can put little books inside like this apple tree one; where each page shows what an apple tree looks like in all the different seasons.

 This next one is called a "match book" and you can put little tidbits of info. in each one.

We had read a book from the library that talked about what kind of weather each season brings, so we made little matchbooks for each season.

Next we printed off this dial, it shows what months fall into each season.

Another fun book we did was this clothes for each season. I just printed off images from the internet, and let the kids cut and paste them into the appropriate season.

 Lastly, we did a section on what holidays fall into each season.

So there you have it. An introduction to lap books. They can be a lot of work upfront especially if your kids are young, and you are anal. I try and let the kids do as much of the work as possible. We usually plan them out together, by talking about what things we want to include. The kids really enjoy doing it, and are so proud of their work when they are finished. I am learning, that it is also important to encourage the children to share their work with as many people as possible. As they show others (siblings, parents, aunts and uncles etc) their work, they are also solidifying their learning! Some other topics that we have lap booked so far are: All About Me, and St. Patrick's. I think we may do one on a novel soon -as a sort of book report. The options are endless! What lap books have you done? Where do you find most of your lap book ideas?