Marian Artist Trading Card Swap 2011.

I read about this last year and was bummed that I had missed the whole thing. So this year, I've been keeping an eye out for it. It's the Marian Artist Trading Card Swap 2011! Head over to Pondered in My Heart to get all the details.

I have never done this before, but thought it would be so much fun for the kids to participate. You can also read more about it at Jessica's blog, Shower of Roses.

I'll have to keep everyone posted on how it goes for us.

Prayer Wheel.

So I've been talking religion curriculum with a friend lately and trying to revamp some things. While trying to get things in order for the new school year, I came across our handy, little prayer wheel and thought it would be something you might all find useful!

Last year, Marco made a neat prayer wheel at one of his sacramental prep classes. It had a few prayers on it and the assignment was to have him "spin the wheel" and recite whatever prayer the wheel showed. I thought it was such a fun way to practice that I decided to make one with all the prayers that the kids know (or should know!).

Of course, the prayers didn't work on one wheel so I adjusted it and made it into a double wheel. It's not fancy, the words aren't centered, and they even might be a little crooked....but it worked for us!! I printed them on card stock paper, inserted a fastener to what looked like the center, and then I made cut-outs for the prayers to show through.

Simple, easy, and a fun way to work on prayer recitation. Feel free to print out my version or you can even make your own. Replace prayers for the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, poems, or anything you need your kids to recite.

Yea...it's a bit crooked as you can see. But it's fun way to practice!

Keeping Busy.

So we never got around to doing all the wonderful things I had planned for the weekend. My fun, 4th of July crafts are still in my drawer and we missed out on fireworks with friends. Plans can never be set when you have sick children! But I'm glad that some of them are getting better. Unfortunately, little Jimmy has caught whatever bug they had and now he's pretty miserable.

But we keep moving forward!! I'm working on a little space in our school room that I'm excited to share with you. I can't blog about it now since it's not ready and I want to have pictures and everything. BUT...I will let you know what we did today that can maybe give you a clue!

We spent the morning reviewing lessons and then finally got to some fun stuff. And if you wonder, we have all the Teacher's Helper CD's from Nippert & Co. Artworks. We love them and have most of their books and other products!! Anyways...it was nice to depart from our regularly scheduled activities to have a bit of fun doing crafts.

And like I mentioned earlier, these crafts go along with what we've been preparing for our school room! I think you can guess the theme of what we are working on!

We started off with colored pencils and a print-out for a "cootie catcher" featuring the Beatitudes.

Here is a finished product! These are great!! A Beatitude Cootie Catcher!

Pick a number.

See if you can memorize all of the Beatitudes!!

While we colored, Christian got a little bored and decided to play with "Father Nick"...another clue to what our little project is all about!!

"Father Nick" is a paper doll that helps the kids learn their liturgical colors. Each one of the kids has their own and although I was waiting to use them once our school room project was done, they couldn't wait and I couldn't resit letting them play with their paper dolls. They each colored and cut their own, after all!

Any guesses? Little by little it's getting done and hopefully by next week, my little project will be done!! It will, however, always be a work in progress.

Getting Ready for Father's Day With Crafts!

I haven't posted any "how to's" in a while. So I figured that since Father's Day is right around the corner, I could post about what my kids are doing for their dad!

Isabella settled on a doctor bag card! It seemed fitting, since DH is a doctor, and it's very easy to do. On the inside she put her "Happy Father's Day" message.




Marco wanted to do something different, so we searched until we found this fun, spinning card from Martha Stewart. It's super cute and not to hard to do. He also added some paper cups in which he stuffed with tissue paper and some candy. Tutorial for that is on this post.


Anthony wanted something totally different from the other kids. It was hard to come up with something because he didn't want a printable to color in. Finally we found this cool measuring tape card from Family Fun (in their current issue). I had to help him along the way, but he is very proud of how it turned out!!




Lastly, I wanted to give my husband something I knew he would treasure. In our home, he is the story teller. He loves telling the kids stories, and he is so good at it too! There is one story in particular that the kids love to hear, all about a special rock. So I got the grand idea of altering his story to send a father's day message to him.

I started out making a bound book (see below). Then I printed out the story lines and cut them with decorative scissors. Each of the kids illustrated a page and it was then all glued into the book.

The back of the book has the father's day message. I thought it turned out really cute and I love the fact that all the kids worked on it together!






To Make the Book: you need paper, scissors, and a ruler.

1. You take two sheets of paper and fold them in half.



2. Measure 1 inch from each side of the folds and mark with a pencil.



3. On one of the sheets, cut up from the bottom to your mark from both sides.



4. On the other sheet, you want to cut a sliver out between both of your pencil marks.



5. Go back to the first sheet you cut from the bottoms and fold it lengthwise. Slide it through the 2nd sheet's sliver opening and open it up. Fold the pages and you have a book!





If my directions for this are confusing...you might want to check out the Big Book of Books and Activities by Dinah Zike.

If you are still searching for more ideas, check out these links!

• Crafty Crow Father's Day Cards To Make

• Catholic Icing (we'll be doing something for our priests this year as well, thanks to the great idea from Lacy!)

First Day of Co-op.

Monday was our first day of co-op and it was awesome!!! I really can't say enough about how wonderful the day went! We started off with Rosary in the chapel. It was so beautiful to have a room full of kids reciting the Rosary! I was also so impressed by how well behaved the children were.

After Rosary, classes begun and everyone went to their designated rooms. It was a blessing to be able to have the babies in a nursery while the older kids were in class. And although I enjoy teaching part of the preschool class, I can tell that I'm going to love teaching Catholic arts & crafts with the kids.

We followed our schedule and made Holy Water Fonts this week. They turned out great and I couldn't ask for better behaved children than were in my class! I'm looking forward to our next project (Prayer Pockets) and I know that the kids will enjoy making them as well.

Holy Water font made by me and Isabella to use as a sample for the class.

Marco's Holy Water font.

I'll keep updates on our co-op adventures!

Celebrations, School, etc.

Today has been an extremely busy day. We started with lessons around 7:30am and kept going until about 10:30. Since I had a few errands to run, I wanted to get as much done as possible. Once we were back from the store, we got to decorating around the house. Just setting up some spider webs and other fun stuff for Friday. What was really fun to see while I decorated, was Isabella making her own creation. "Mami, I'm working on a sculpture for Halloween." Although I would like to say that Marco and Anthony helped, it was really her creative genius who did all the work!

Isabella working on her sculpture.

Marco and Anthony get in on the picture.

Lessons continue to go well with Marco and Isabella. We are still in the review part of Saxon 2, so everything is fast and easy. Isabella is also doing extremely well with Saxon 1. Phonics and reading is a bit more of a struggle with Marco, but we are making advancements. He just doesn't like it as much as Isabella does. The word wall has definitely added a fun element to our day and Marco is responding well to it (that means he doesn't whine when I tell him it's word wall time).

As for Anthony, today we revisited Yellow Ball. It is such a simple book, that he practically has it memorized. I was afraid that with the lack of words, he wasn't going to enjoy it; but he actually really does like it and likes to make comments on the pictures as we go along. Our activities for today were painting a yellow ball and an ocean scene. I used white construction paper and drew ocean animals with white crayon. When he started painting with his watercolors, the images appeared. It was lots of fun for him (and the other kids!).

Anthony painting an ocean scene.

The kids really love painting!

And since we'll be celebrating All Saints Day on Wednesday both at co-op and faith formation, we've been reading a little about each one of the saints that the children will be dressing up as. Today we concentrated on St. Therese of the Little Flower. We read some stories from Catholic Treasure Box and we made good deed beads. It was a simple enough craft that both Isabella and Marco did it with little assistance. I do think, however, that Marco liked that craft the best and has spent all day carrying around his beads trying make his presents for God.

Marco working on his sacrifice beads.

The finished product!

Sacrifice or good deed beads.

To further help us celebrate All Saints Day we also colored pictures of some saints and posted them on the kids' bedroom door. We'll be saying the Litany of the Saints every morning instead of our regular devotionals. I thought it was a good idea and a good way to celebrate All Saints Day.

So today really was a full and busy day. Tomorrow doesn't look to be any easier since I'll be squeezing in swimming lessons at 1pm and 6:30pm. I'll be doing history during Isabella and Anthony's 1pm class. For Marco's evening swim, I just need to drop him off with dad. We'll see how this new schedule goes!

BFIAR Revisited.

Anthony has been doing so well with BFIAR! When we started earlier in the school year, he was still so immature in terms of following directions and sitting still with the activities. Reading the books were never a problem, but he would lose it when it came to actually doing something. Running around is always so much more fun than listening to mom telling you what to do! I decided to revisit some of the books and basically start over because we never really enjoyed the activities.

I'm really glad I decided to go back and redo some activities! Maybe it was the whole turning 3 thing or he just had a mental growth spurt; but he has completely changed! This past week we did Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and it couldn't have gone better. We completed our scheduled activities and even added a couple. If you are curious to what our activity schedule is, you can find it here. The activities we added were dressing up an actual teddy bear, using pattern blocks to make a bear figure (and other figures as well), and making a bear mask. It's amazing to see all the kids in on the projects and working together. I think it is also a nice break for Marco from his more hectic school work.

Working with pattern blocks.

Anthony has gotten really good with his scissors!

All the kids working on their masks with our book as a centerpiece!

The final product!! Anthony wore his mask all day!

I used Word to print out the mask. I cut and pasted from the Black Bear Conservation Committee and then just sized it to fit the page. You can also read the story of the teddy bear on the same site as well as other interesting facts about bears. The kids enjoyed clicking through the site!

Nature Activity for the Week.

We have been ignoring our nature activities these past couple of weeks; and now that the weather is cooling off and the leaves are changing, I decided that we better get back to learning from Mother Nature! I've planned some outdoor activities as well as crafts.

This week we are reading our monthly issue of Your Big Backyard. We love this magazine because everyone enjoys the pictures and the stories. It also gives us great ideas on nature studies and crafts. We will also be doing the "Leafing Through Leaves" activity suggested as a go-along. In this activity you basically collect different leaves and make leaf rubbings. After collecting leaves and placing them in our nature journal, we will be using the following website to help us identify the tree that the leaf came from...What Tree Is It? This activity is simple enough for Anthony to enjoy, yet provides enough complexity for older kids. Trying to figure out the tree is like solving a mystery!

The Current Issue of Your Big Backyard.

We will also be doing the NWF Green Hour Activity. You can find it at NWF Green Hour. I'm sticking with the craft part of the activity, especially for Anthony and Isabella. Hopefully Marco will enjoy the poem writing. The great thing about all the nature activities we have planned is that they all go along with each other, making it easy to tie it all together. As you can see, I am a great fan of the National Wildlife Federation. Their magazines are great as well as their websites!!

You can find the whole NWF Green Hour Activity at their website.

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy Independence Day!! Today was great. We were able to go to a 4th of July parade, the first ever attended by my kids and the the first since I was a kid. It was a little disappointing, but the kids had a great time getting all the candy. It seemed like it was a parade of cars (with only a little flag waving) as opposed the the heavily decorated and more animated 4th of July parades of my childhood.

Once we got home, I was lucky enough to have our babysitter over for a couple of hours. This gave me plenty of time to set up our work stations and get some supplies together. It also gave me a little time to myself! After Anthony was down for a nap, the babysitter left and we started on some craft projects. The kids made stars, banners, and puzzles.

I also re-re ad some books to the kids and included these new titles: America Is..., The Story of America's Birthday, and Me on the Map. The last book was a great way to let the
kids have a deeper understanding of what America is and where they stand on it. We located ourselves on a U.S. map and then located the U.S. on a world map.
It was fun to decorate our school room and decide where to hang things up. The kids were excited to see their artwork adorn the walls. They are definitely more aware of the meaning of the holiday now and I feel like I have accomplished something positive. I think for next year, I'll expand the celebration for a whole week in order to accomplish some more projects. I'm thinking along the lines of creating a lapbook.

At the end of the day, we made a cake and celebrated with some fireworks out in the driveway.So now our school room is now officially decked out in American attire. We really got into the 4th of July spirit and it will be fun to have it all up for the rest of the month!

Check out the pictures of the kids and their triptych below. These were made yesterday. We decided to fold them into a triangle and hang them from the ceiling. I was amazed at how wonderfully they colored the images! Dh didn't believe they did it all by themselves. To accomplish the results, however, I did have to sit next to them the whole time and tell them what colors to choose. It was time well spent!!

Happy Halloween!

Today was a great Halloween day! I had been so busy preparing for our little party while still trying to stay on top of our school lessons. All I can say that planning ahead of time is key if you want to get things done with time to spare! We started our morning off with a visit to our friends' house for our monthly Story of the World activity day. We reviewed ancient Africa and made some crafts to go along with the Anansi the spider stories. The kids had a great time and they are always happy when it comes to getting together with friends!

On our way to our friends' home. It's a short drive with lovely views of the fall leaves. I had to take this picture, but it doesn't do the scenery justice. I love how trees line up every part of the highway.

Christian got to hang out in his jack-o-lantern suit while the kids worked on crafts.

The kids had fun creating their own Anansi spiders.

Final product! Not included are the shakers the kids made.

After we got home, our babysitter was waiting for us. And let me just add that we LOVE our babysitter!! She is awesome and the kids always have a great time with her! Melissa, if you read this...you ROCK! But back to the main idea. We got home and the kids played while I quickly picked up around the house and made some final dishes for the party. I had prepared mostly everything, so it wasn't too much to do. I then sped off to the costume shop to look for DH's costume. I found it, bought it, and got home with plenty of time to get ready.

Anyways...long story short. The party was lots of fun. We had our great friends over and the kids had a blast! The food was good and the company was even better. I was a bit skeptical that we would finish passing out all the Halloween candy, but at the end of the night, all the candy was gone! My only regret is not taking more pictures. This should be nothing new, since I always forget at each Halloween party to take more snapshots. Perhaps in the future I will post pictures of me and my hubby dressed as the king and queen....perhaps.

Our trick-or-treaters get ready to take to the streets!

Christian tries his hand at a craft.

Sweet success!!! Enjoying their loots are all the kids.