Primary Printable (Manual 7, Lesson 10)

This lesson is The Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.  For enrichment activity one I made these cards: 

The cards have half of each beatitude on them so you can match the up into sets. For class I printed them on card-stock (laminate if possible).  We played memory with them and then I gave a set to each child to play with their family at home.  You can cut them into rectangles or along the lines.

Download the Beatitude Game Here

Primary Printable (Manual 7, Lesson 8)

For the activity at the end of lesson (Enrichment Activity 2) it states to get pictures of temples and church buildings and write their names on separate paper and have the children match it.  I made up a matching activity doing just that:

Google docs wouldn't let me upload it as a word file because it was too large.  As a PDF it was grainy.  I tried a new site: 4shared.com.  It takes larger files.  Leave me a comment as to which one you like best.  The trick to this site though is to make sure you hit the blue download button:

You then need to wait 20 seconds and then click on the link that appears over the countdown (blue underlined words: Download your file now.)

Click here to download the game

The pictures are mainly of temples, but there are a couple meetinghouses thrown in.  The meetinghouses are in our general area and I had the name of them listed, but for the sake of others I just left it as meetinghouse.  It is a word document so if you choose, you can change the picture to reflect the church building you attend and add the name of the building.  If your local temple isn't included you may want to add that as well.  

After I printed them on card-stock I just cut them into rectangles (I would have laminated them, but my laminator was down for the count).  During class I handed out the pictures to the kids first and kept the names.  I went through the names one at a time and if they thought they had the picture that went with it they held it up.  We did this to become familiar with the matches.  Afterwords we put them face down on the ground and played a game of memory with them.

April Fool's Day

I usually do more for April Fool's day than I did this year.  I'm still working on the never ending project of switching rooms.  In order to do this requires much more work than I anticipated which leaves me little time to plan things out.  If I can find pictures (our hard drive crashed and we lost some of them) I'll post what I've done on years back for future reference.
First thing I did that morning was point out that mom likes to play jokes, but they are always nice jokes.  As a kid I hated April Fool's Day because kids used it as an excuse to be mean to each other.  I never have liked mean jokes so I try not to do anything that would make anyone upset.  Hopefully my kids remember this as they continue to get older and think it is funny to play jokes on mom.  
Fortunately my kids know I've been busy so when they asked me if I did an April Fool's lunch I could tell them that I've been too busy to think about it.  I also told them I didn't have any plans for dinner and if they thought of any to let me know (the first joke was a dinner joke).
But of course I did have some lunch plans (but no dinner plans).  I have a friend a couple years back who packed her kids' lunches using their pretend toy food.  She came to the school and brought McDonald's to eat lunch with them.  I loved this idea, but last year I was substituting and couldn't bring in lunch and this year I was working.  I mentioned this to the incredibly great teacher I work with/for (and I'm not just saying this - she is great) and she suggested that I do it anyway and pack them a special lunch to give them.  If she was willing to spare me for a few minutes then I was all for it (besides I didn't have time to plan anything else out).  So I started their lunches before they were up.  For the two in elementary I gathered the plastic pretend food and put it in their lunch boxes with a drink to give it some weight.  I put the food in plastic bags to help it look more real.

It was great to be in the hall when they opened it.  They looked and looked at the baggies pulling them out trying to decide what to do.  I didn't make them wait long.  I popped right in with their lunch.  I packed something to warm up for them since this was the one day all year I'll get to see them during their lunch.  Although they were already suspecting it I added the two things I did last year (which they loved BTW).
First I emptied a small water bottle and filled it up with Sprite.  Fill it up close to the top and screw the lid on tight.  It looks a lot like water.  There are some bubbles, but the kids don't notice.  I never pack water so they thought it was a great treat and then when it was really Sprite it was like hitting the jackpot!  I also bought them the individual bags of chips (which I'm normally too cheap to do - they get chips, but it is from a big bag divided into smaller ones).  I opened the bags at the bottom (as little as possible) and switched the contents.  Seal it back up with double sided tape.  Naturally you turn the bag right side up to open so they never notice.  It is fun to give them a wrapper of chips they don't care so much for filled with their favorite chips.  This year I only had Sun Chips and that isn't as fun since they are so much the same, but like I said as soon as they saw the bag they knew what to expect.  It did fool them last year though.

Open at the bottom, switch contents, and seal with double sided tape.

I did throw something new in there too.  I was going to do this for St. Patrick's Day, but had already made the rainbow cupcakes.  I made some vanilla pudding and then filled a small container half way full.  Then I put two drops of food coloring on top:

Three things I learned: one drop is probably enough (but two was good too), create a little well for the food coloring, and immediately put the pudding on top (for example don't take a picture while the food coloring runs out to the sides of the container).

After the food coloring is in cover it up with more pudding.  When they stir their pudding it suddenly changes color.  The pudding on the right had the blue food coloring run to the sides so I had to make another.  I did a different color for each kid, but I recommend doing blue.  First the pudding is yellow and then as you stir it turns blue, and as you continue stirring it changes to green (because the yellow pudding and blue food coloring fully mix to green).  It was great fun!

Since I couldn't take lunch to my one in middle school so she had a 6 inch Subway sandwich (we bought the night before), the switched chips, pudding, and Sprite in her water bottle.  Apparently in middle school those are lame jokes, but I told her that the boy that said that was just jealous that his mom didn't do anything like that for him.  Besides we are focusing on NICE jokes not mean jokes, right?

Wacky Wednesday

It was Wacky Wednesday for Spirit Week at Sis' middle school.  It is really the only one I helped her with very much.  Next year she is telling me in advance and we are making plans for every single day!  Here she is:

I started her hair similar to Boo's for Dr. Seuss Day.  The idea to do this (or at least the top one) came to me last year, but she wouldn't let me do it then.  This year she was all excited to be wacky.  My girls have thin, fine hair.  Sis has more than Boo, but still doesn't have a lot.  My secret: cones.  Since she doesn't have much hair I just rolled card-stock into the shape of a cone and stapled it together.  If your daughter has lots of hair try using a Styrofoam cone (but be warned Styrofoam costs more than it looks like it should).

Make a part (I did mine zig-zag to add more wackiness) around in a circle on the top of her head.  Insert cone in the middle and pull the hair up around it covering the cone.  Put in an elastic at the top.  I tried to put it on the tip of the cone, but it just slid off.  At the top it doesn't matter so much, just get it as even and tightly secured as possible.

Part the rest of the hair in half.  These cones are a little harder to put it.  It is nice on the top cone that it can just sit on her head.  On the two side cones I actually put in two elastics.  One first at the end of the cone and a second over the cone and hair (near the end).  Tie with some not matching ribbon.

Yes, I did use hair products.  If I had more time (i.e. a little notice about spirit week) I would have tried to pick up some color spiking gel that we used in my son's hair for Dr. Seuss day.  That stuff has some serious hold to it.  I've only used it the once, but I may have to get more and investigate the possibilities.  But, alas no hair color to be had (or purchased) so I used what we had at home: Garnier Fructis Style fiber gum putty and hairspray.  It worked and was still standing strong when she came home from school!

General Conference Kits

It's that time of year again, time to get ready for General Conference.  I decided to not only try to make print off the Internet a packet for my children, but to make a conference kit for my primary class and for the sisters that I visit teach.  I'll share what I did and the links, but sorry I didn't create anything for this so there are no printables.

For my primary class I rearranged our lessons so that the lesson taught the Sunday before General Conference was lesson 9: Jesus Christ Calls His Apostles.  I thought that it would be fitting to learn about Apostles before they had the opportunity to watch them on TV.  For part of that lesson I printed each of my kids these at Costco.  I purchased some photo books at the dollar store.  Now they have a book of the first presidency and the 12 apostles.  They can learn fun facts along with their names and faces.  We didn't get them fully assembled in class so I brought them home and added them to their conference bags.  I actually had planned that they would be a part of their conference bag, but I also I wanted to give them at church on Sunday, but didn't have them ready.  
Their conference kit: First I purchased medium sized gift bags at the dollar store.  Then I printed off some activities for them to do.  Sugardoodle.net has a bunch.  They even have more now then when I started.  I printed pages 10-12 from here and pages 23-25 from here.  I made the plate mobile for them.  I added two individual boxes of cereal, a package of Starburst for the game, and a sucker.  Hopefully it'll bring a little extra fun to watching conference!

The Prophets and Apostles Books

I also saw the idea floating around to make kit for the sisters you visit teach.  I must admit than I haven't been doing this duty as well as I should be lately and I obviously like to make a few things so I decided it would be a great way to let them know I care.  
I printed off age appropriate kits off sugardoodle.  I didn't always use the full kit (I know my kids don't ever color everything in the kits).  Instead of naming everything off I think I'll just show a few pictures.  This family has children of various ages so I'm showing it:

The toilet paper rolls are for an activity found in the Nursery/Jr. Primary packet.  The plate is like what I gave my primary kids.  It is a mobile that has a picture and a few lines to write about the talk of the first presidency and the 12 apostles.  There is a bag of candy for the game in the kits.  A couple candy bars for the sister I visit teach (or if she wants, one for her hubby).  There is one sucker for each person in the family and a couple breakfast/snack type items.  Next conference I think I'm going to throw in lunch items.  The kits I had viewed had breakfast items so that is what I had on my brain at the store.  But then I realized in Virginia conference starts at noon.  Oh well, next time.  The red and black item actually contains a notepad for the sister I visit teach.  

 The bag: you'll notice a few pencils for the kids I forgot in the first picture.  Oh, I also made them the Prophets and Apostles book.  I forgot to put it in here so I need to give it to her next time I see her.

Here are a couple views of the notebook for the sisters:

Instructions for these are here.  I slipped a matching pencil in the pocket.  I purchased these file folders in Target's dollar section (pencils too).  They are a little smaller than a normal file folder however.  If I had more time I would have jazzed it up with a ribbon and a label (about it being a Conference Notebook), but I'm lucky just to pull it all together.  They aren't as fancy, but it is a step up from just a yellow notepad!


Now I need to finish a few kits, get them delivered and get things ready for my own kids to do before Saturday!

A Day Full of Green and Rainbows - Part 2 (day of fun)

Now for the day of St. Patrick's Day fun.  First the leprechaun comes to visit.  He is never too naughty at our house (although with my house upside down with all the rearranging I've been doing a prank would've probably been to clean my house).  Every year the milk turns green, there are green glitter trails, plastic coins and sometimes a little extra surprise in my kid's shoes.  Leprechauns are little cobblers (hence the fascination with things being left in shoes) and I learned this year in Kindergarten that they make fairy shoes.  Last year in Boo's Kindergarten class the Leprechaun peed green in the toilet so it had to happen here too along with green footprints on the toilet seat.  

The footprints didn't show up so well in the picture and make a note: green food coloring settles so it has to be done not long before the kids come in.

There were green glitter trails to the traps the kids made, footprints along the traps, green coins in their shoes and in the traps, and a battery operated glow stick in their shoes.

Every year we make green pancakes with the milk that was dyed green (I add a couple more drops of food coloring), but we didn't get to do our green eggs on Dr. Seuss Day so I made those instead.  

Lunch is green too (some years more so than others):  Sandwich cut with a shamrock cookie cutter, green grapes, Mix it yourself pudding (Boo loved this one), Koolaid or Capri Sun that had a green label, and a rainbow cupcake shown on the previous post, etc.  Here is how I made the pudding:  In a small container I put in 1/4 cup milk and in a snack baggie I put in 1 Tablespoon pistachio pudding.  I told the kids to add the mix from the baggie to the container and put back on the lid and shake.  It not only turns into yummy pudding (don't forget to tell them to let it sit for a couple minutes - Bugs tried to eat it as a liquid), but it magically turns green.  Boo thought it was great that the Leprechaun could change the pudding green!

After school was the fun for dinner.  I usually make an all green dinner and while it doesn't bother me to eat green food everything green is a little much.  This year I made a rainbow to go with all our green:

It was so yummy!  We love fruit at this household.  Red: Strawberries (and raspberries ~ I considered using these as purple, but they were more of a dark red and there wasn't really room for purple), Orange: Mandarin Oranges, Yellow: Fresh Pineapple, Green: Grapes, Blue: blueberries, Clouds: a strawberry yogurt/cool whip dip (take a container ~or two~ of strawberry yogurt and add a few scoops of Cool Whip to taste).  I thought about adding purple grapes, but wasn't willing to spend $2.49 a pound.  There wasn't really room on the platter anyway.  This is a pretty big platter (I've never filled it before), but I could have used more room.
I also added the green food to the menu.  I made green shamrock jello (instructions below), green rice (add some food coloring to the water), broccoli, pistachio salad and chicken tenderloin cooked in cream of mushroom soup - not green - I refuse to eat green chicken. 

Now for the Jello instructions.  I found these for Dr. Seuss Day (and yes, I will blog about it, but I'm so behind).  I took two small packages of lime yellow and added 2 cups of boiling water.  Stir 2 minutes until dissolved.  Stir in 2 cups of ice cubes (not crushed ice).  The original instructions said to stir for five minutes, but I didn't.  I stirred until the ice slowed down in melting (if you have tiny pieces I recommend pulling them out now before it begins to set) and then I ended up adding a few more cubes to keep it cold.  While it was sitting on the counter with ice. . .

I beat some heavy whipping cream.  When it started forming peaks I added powdered sugar to taste (make it as sweet as you like it).  Then I continued beating until it was stiff (but not until it turns to butter ~ close though).  
I forgot to take a picture of the Jello before I started filling the cups, but it will be kind of chunky.  Don't forget to move the ice when it is partially set like this:

First I took the whipped cream and I put it in a Ziploc sandwich bag and snipped the corner.  I made it a little bigger than I wanted, but it turned out to be the perfect size.

Then I took some clear cups (5 since there are five of us) and started making shamrocks.  The method that worked best for me.  Start towards the bottom and squeeze out a straight line going up.  Then I made three circles (if you want to call it that) next to each other until they touched.  The inside looked like this:

Then I rotated the cup and made one on the other side:

 

Then carefully spoon in the Jello.  Try to work a little fast because you don't want it setting up before you get it scooped in.  Make sure you go around the shamrocks without smearing, squishing, or ruining them.  Don't worry it isn't really hard.

The top will be bumpy because it is already partially set up.  Next year I was thinking of making yellow jello the same way and putting it in black cups like a pot of gold.  (Maybe I'll try that for their lunch boxes).  Be sure to put it in the fridge so it can finish setting up.

Finished product on the plate.  My kids LOVED this!  It was a great surprise.  The best part is that I finished them within 1/2 hour of dinner, but they were set!

Here is dinner ~ a rainbow and various shades of green:

To make it a little more festive the kids had these fun four leaf clover straws and our shamrock table cloth:

I probably left off a few things, but besides running around crazily after school it was fun.  I'm always crazy busy on these holiday, but the kids love it (and so do I) while my husband rolls his eyes and puts up with it.  I view it as creating memories.  And probably future crazy moms!

Linked to:

Flour Me With Love

A Day Full of Green and Rainbows - Part 1 (getting ready)

Another Holiday and another day for me to have fun!  My husband thinks that I like the holidays more than the kids.  Maybe he is right, but I get the most joy out of seeing the kids so excited.  I also decided that he probably wishes I put as much effort into cleaning the house as I do in destroying it with all my projects :).
The holiday began on Wednesday.  I decided to make rainbow cupcakes found on familyfun.com.  I think they are SO cute, but they are a little bit of work.  Plus they only make 16 versus the 24 so if you want to make them for school or something similar you may have to make 2 batches.  Although if you don't eat a ton of cake it cuts down on the amount cupcakes you have on hand.  I made them for the kids' lunches plus took them to my scouts.
Here is how I made them:

Make a white cake mix according to package instructions.  Divide into six small bowls:

 By small I don't mean very big.  To give you an idea I used 2 cup containers and it only filled it this much:

Dye each bowl a color of the rainbow.  They have the formula on the link above, but just in case you are lazy like myself and would rather have it all in one place I'll give you what I followed:

Red: 18 drops

Orange: 4 drops red, 12 drops yellow

Yellow: 12 drops

Blue: 12 drops

Green: 12 drops

Purple: 9 drops red, 6 drops blue

FYI - Make sure your food coloring isn't almost gone.  I also didn't compare the bowls to make sure the batter was even (though it was close) so I used the one that I thought had the most as red since that was the top color.

 I used those teaspoons pictured above to put one scoop into the paper cups.  I then used the back of the spoon to spread out the batter.  The purple is spread out and the bottom left corner shows the blue one spread on top of the purple. 

I found that if I used a swirling motion (twisting of the spoon from the middle to the edge) I was able to spread the batter easier and smoother.  Also I noticed that I tended to make scoops bigger when I first started than when I ended so  I varied my starting place.  You won't get more than the 16 cupcakes so make sure you go ahead and use all the batter.  Color order: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.  Then the top color of the rainbow - red is the top color of the cupcake.

Here is what it looks like finished (I didn't take a picture of it cut in half, but I think I may have one left ~ If I do I will do just that). 

Here is a top view:

I just added some white cloud frosting and some 'gold' found at the end of the rainbow:  Not the prettiest topping, but I was out of time before scouts started ~ they only cared about the treats anyway.  They did like the rainbow however!

Speaking of scouts (which is where I left off before the cupcake pictures) I also made them these cute little handouts found here.  

We also took a break from the bear book and decided do something fun.  I gathered up some boxes and other containers (can, egg carton, etc), some craft sticks, string, glitter, green and gold paper, and Rolos.  Brought some glue, tape and scissors then asked the boys to make some leprechaun traps.  I even hauled my camera there with all that stuff, but completely forgot to take pictures.  They did pretty good especially since I had my 7 year old with me and I was helping her make one most of the time.  Here is what they came up with (when they had them laid out around the house):

 Boo's Trap: Used a Capri Sun box.  She covered it green paper and put some glitter gold inside.  She decorated the outside with a 4 leaf clover and a rainbow.  She put a Do Not Enter sign on the outside because we all know Leprechauns don't follow the rules.  We took the plastic container the cupcake liners came in and punched a hole in it.  We tied a Rolo to the end and strung the string through the container and up through the box.  The string was taped lightly to the top of the box holding the container up.  When the leprechaun pulled on the gold Rolo he would release the plastic cup trapping him inside.  She didn't catch him, but she did catch a few green coins and he left his footprints there!  She was so excited the next morning.

Bug's creation.  He wasn't too thrilled how it turned out, but he created it himself and used his imagination.  The Rolo was in one of the holes and the leprechaun was supposed to stomp on the paper and fall through getting caught.  As you can see the leprechaun left some foot prints and green coins, but didn't get trapped!

Like I mentioned before all of our activities are at the same time so I brought a treat for those that I visit teach that I knew would be there.  I fully intended on delivering the other two the following day, but I didn't have the time to do it and get my dinner made. 

The saying reads: You are better than any Treasure found at the end of a Rainbow!  It is attached to the rainbow candy: skittles and a treasure candy.  I fully intended to take a picture of the bag the candy came in, but got caught up in getting projects done I forgot.  It is a purple metallic bag.  The pieces are individually wrapped and say Treasure across them.  I wasn't even sure they existed, but went looking specifically for treasure candy and was so excited to actually find some!

Download all the St. Patrick's Day tags here!

I also stayed up way too late making gifts for teachers.  After starting to substitute last year I began to comprehend how much time and effort our teachers put into our child's life.  Face it they are with them for 6 1/2 hours + a day.  That is a lot of time in our child's life.  I decided that I would try to show my appreciation for them a little more often even if it is in small ways.  I had bigger plans this year, but working full time for the first time in years I wasn't able to pull it off.  I have an idea though so maybe I'll try it out next year!  Anyway back on the subject, I scoured blogs and found some fun candies and viewed other people's creative genius at work.  A few ideas popped into my head and this is what I came up with:

 

These were for their teachers and Boo's paraprofessional.  It had Twizzler's rainbow licorice in a bag with gold candy (Rolos) and Treasure Candy.  When assembling your rainbows remember Roy G. Biv

I made these bags too:

Our schools are lucky enough to have specialists: 2 PE teachers, a music teacher, and art teacher, a computer teacher, and a Librarian (fingers are crossed that we don't lose ANY of these guys with all the budget cuts).  So I made them these (after subbing for them last year I realized how much work these teachers do as well and how little thanks they get AND they have the WHOLE school to teach!):

The tags were modified to say Librarian, Art Teacher, etc.  I filled one of the 4x6 bags with some fun treats just like the other teacher's present: Twizzler rainbow (there is enough in one bag of Twizzlers to do five rainbows and YES, they have the SAME amount of each color ~ that was a great help!), Rolos and a treasure candy.  I had to trim the licorice to fit into the bag.

Then I was thinking that I keep ignoring the middle school teachers.  After all there are 7 (okay 9 since all three PE teachers work together) and I keep thinking that is SO many.  Then I realize that I just made 9 gifts for elementary teachers.  Hmmm, what could I do?  I took what was left of the candy and assembled some more bags:

They had the cut up licorice in it and the candy.  It wasn't quite as cute, but at least they weren't forgotten.  Actually some of them were (PE teachers) since I only had 6.  My new goal is to continue to find cute inexpensive gifts like these for the specialists AND middle school teachers.  I added specialists to the list last year (all my kids were in elementary last year) and now I need to incorporate the new set of teachers.  I'm not sure what I'll do in two years when they all have 7 + teachers!
I had someone say that they didn't download correctly for them.  If that is the case for you, please leave me a message.  I tried on two different computers and they worked for me.  Just in case I uploaded them to a different site.  To try that site click HERE for the same printables as shown above.

Link up to:

Tatortots and Jello

Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons
I {heart} Nap Time 
Flour Me with Love