Unforgettable Childhood

Yesterday we celebrated Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. After the girls got home from school they ate Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes.

After school we read There’s A Wocket In My Pocket” by Dr. Seuss. We talked about the bright colors and fanciful characters that are found throughout Dr. Seuss’ books. Each of the girls started to brainstorm their own Seussical Character. They drew their pictures on paper first.

Then they drew them on canvas and painted their creations.

We have Floom-A-Zoon by Madi (age 7):

We have the Smilies by Nadia (age 4):

We have Wikabeem by Taylor (age 9):

We have  Fleeket by Calico (age 9):

This project was a lot of fun. The girls were so creative with their characters.

Today we are celebrating Writing Wednesday. We are decorating journals. Check back tomorrow to see the activities I used to spark their imaginations.

For our first day of celebrating Read Across America we decorated canvas bags. Summer is right around the corner (we hope) and that means we will be taking a lot of trips to the library. We love to ride our bikes to the library and these bags will be perfect to hold our books.

I wanted to do keep this project simple so that all of the girls could participate and I don’t really sew. . .

I headed to Hobby Lobby last weekend to find my supplies.

• Canvas Bags
• Iron-On Printer Paper
• Heat Bond
• Ribbon
• Fabric Markers
• Fabric

We got really creative with our circle templates. Glasses, ribbon containers, even a applesauce jar were used to cut out different sizes of circles.

We printed out everyone’s initial for the front of their bag onto Iron On Transfer paper. The girls set all of the pieces in place and then I did all of the ironing.

Here is the finished product. This was a lot of fun for all of us. Now the snow just needs to go away.

Today we celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. I was going to serve the girls Green Eggs and Ham for Breakfast, but they thought that was pushing it. The girls celebrate at school today and then we will continue the celebration at home.

Happy Read Across America Day!

Do you celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday on March 2nd?

Books are a big deal in our house, and an opportunity to celebrate reading, well that is a given.

March 2nd is on Tuesday this year so we are going to celebrate the entire week.

I am headed to Barnes & Noble on Saturday to find some books to add to our library on this special week. I am still making all the plans but here are a few of the ideas so far. . .

Canvas Book Bags – I am always worried about getting our Library books mixed up with our regular books (I just found one of stuffed into one of the bookshelves this week). Summer is right around the corner, we hope, so we will be making a lot of trips to the library. We are going to design some Book Bags that we can use on our trips to the library.

Birthday Party for Dr. Seuss - Tuesday will be our day to party. We will celebrate all things Seuss.

Wordy Wednesday – We will be celebrating words on Wednesday. Instead of reading, we will be writing. My oldest daughter loves to write. She is the only kid I know that gets super excited about a blank notebook or loose leaf paper. I am going to purchase journals and supplies to pretty them up.

Poetry Party – I love all things that rhyme: Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Dr. Seuss. We are going to read some poetry, write some poetry and have a little poetry party. I will share more when I find all my poetry books and I finalize the details.

Illustration Stations – You can’t celebrate reading without taking some time to celebrate the pictures that help you jump into the story. We will be celebrate with some awesome picture books. One of my favorite Illustrators is Mark Ludy. I love his book The Flower Man. I hope to find my girls When I Was A Girl. . .I Dreamed. I am going to set up art stations with Watercolors, charcoal, pencils and color. We will be making our own picture books on Friday.

I would love to know how you are going to celebrate Read Across America. I can’t wait to share our pictures, stories and parties with you.

I spend a lot of time playing games with my 4 year-old. She really likes to win. When it is just her and myself, I give her a little slack and most of the time I let her win. I am realizing that maybe that isn’t the greatest strategy.

Tonight the three girls and I had some family game time. The first game we played was Guess What I Am.

We all love this game. It is fun to stick our faces through the holes and make guesses like, “Am I an animal? Do I have feathers? Am I a girl or boy?”

This game went pretty well. No tears. Little one kind of did her own thing.

Then we played the new Connect 4X4. Nadia did not want to be blocked. She did not want to wait her turn, She wanted to win. Her sisters are not quite so easy on her as I am. They wanted to win, too.

This almost turned into a game of war. This is usually when the tears come. Luckily tonight we all laughed.

I will never forget when we had some friends over for a night of games. Their then 4 year old lost a game and said, “I hate myself”. We laughed back then and couldn’t believe that our kids would ever act like that when they lost. . . Fast forward 5 years and I am the one that isn’t laughing at my 4 year olds behavior.

So how do you do it? How do you get a 4 year old to participate and not always think they have to win?

We didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day until Saturday night. Last week we were crazy busy preparing for a Dinner Theatre at church. I was in charge of the decorating. Try decorating a dinner for 124 on a very limited budget. This is what I came up with.

It really was beautiful with all the lights off and all of the candles lighting up the room. The cookies on the table. . .they are the sugar cookies that I posted last week on The Girl Creative site.

So, we decided on Saturday night to go out for supper and then come home for dessert. I wasn’t sure what I was going to make that everyone would enjoy so I made two things.

For my hubby I made miniature cheesecakes. Nothing fancy here, just out of the box with a little caramel and chocolate drizzled on top.

For the girls, a giant chocolate chip cookie. It was really yummy, despite the fact that I almost caused a fire in my oven. The recipe said to put it in a 14″ Pizza pan. I put mine in a 12″ pizza pan which resulted in it overflowing onto the bottom of my oven. Oh well, I added a little frosting to make it pretty and everyone loved it.

My oldest daughter had to make a homemade Valentine’s box for her school party this year. I remember the days that I made my boxes. I always had grand ideas, but I never quite pulled them off. This girl, doesn’t settle for anything less than the best.

I gave her some ideas and she decided that she wanted to do a treasure chest. . .well that lasted until she saw some of the other boxes come to school. Then she decided that she needed to go a little more elaborate. My suggestion to her was the Love Boat.

I sent her to the garage to find four boxes. I went to the store for a lot of tin foil. Luckily I have a lot of paper around here for one of these days when I am going to find time to scrapbook. . .

We shaped the bottom box to form a ship shape. she figured out a way to reinforce the inside of the box with cardboard pieces and duct tape. We wrapped all of the boxes in tin foil.

We added some windows and waves. The back of the box even opens up for her unloading zone. There is a opening at the top for her valentines.

This was a super fun project that her and I were able to work on together. Her sisters were jealous, but they will have to wait until they are in third grade to tackle this project.

Mission accomplished, I think it was a success.

Back of the Boat:

Front of the Boat:

The S.S. Taylor:

Nadia decided yesterday that we needed to celebrate her birthday. We didn’t ever celebrate her birthday at home. Taylor was in the hospital so we just celebrated with her there. And then with the craziness of Christmas that followed, she didn’t have a friend birthday either.

So we made a little cake and let her have her moment last night. Yes, she is in her pjs at the supper table. Her middle sister was sick and in her pjs all day so she decided that she needed to stay in pjs, too.

Blowing out her candle.

She thought it was funny to have Daddy wear her Birthday Girl Hat.

I am joining Seven Clown Circus for Wordful Wednesday.