I came up with this fun game for Sunday Singing time in Primary. I took a square box and printed pictures of Angry Birds for each side. I cut them to square sized and then taped them to the sides of the box. Then I wrote different ways to sing based off of the bird in the game.

Here were our birds and ways to sing:

Blue Bird - Boys sing

Red Bird – Girls sing

Yellow Bird – Sing Fast

Orange Bird – Crescendo

Black Bird – Staccato

White Bird – Kids only

I had the kids roll the box like a dice and whichever side faced up was how we sang our song. It was great way to practice because we sang our song over and over but it was still fun! Beckham really loves this dice so we use it at home now to sing songs around the house!

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Here is our St. Patrick’s Day Pre-K Pack Expansion!  This is the Expansion Pack to the St. Patrick’s Day Pre-K Pack!  These learning activities are more challenging than those that are in our basic Pre-K Packs!  I create the Expansion Packs for my 4 year old.  To help him with mostly letter and number writing practice!  Enjoy!

In this pack is:

Letter Maze

Character Word Tracing

Character Letter Tracing

 1-10 Number Tracing

Do-A Dot/Magnet Sheets

This is meant to go along with our St. Patrick’s Day Pre-K Pack for those who have not already checked it out!  It’s great for ages 2-5!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!! Hope you are all feeling the love today! I’m going to share with you today a game that my family LOVES!

This game was a staple in my house growing up! As kids we loved it! The best part is its so easy and it never seems to get old for kids! All you need is a glass of water, a thimble, a pad of paper, and a pen.

The person that starts chooses a category. For example months, fruits, colors, people in the room, a number 1-10, holidays, sports…whatever they want to choose. Then they write down their choice. For example if they chose Months and pick August, they would write August on the paper. Then they fill the thimble with water and go over to where everyone is sitting. Each person then has to guess a month.

The person who guesses the month they wrote down gets the water thrown at them.

Its not enough water to drench anyone but enough to make it fun. The person who gets the water thrown at them then gets a turn to be the one who picks and throws the water. Our kids beg to play this all the time and seriously cant get enough. It’s a  great go-to game for Family Home Evening when you don’t have a lot of time to play or plan.

As a mom its fun to go try to translate the paper when the game is over and see how they spelled their words!

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The other day I was thinking about how I could help my kids understand honesty better. While they understand what it means to be honest I think as kids their little minds think that lying can actually change the truth. I came up with this idea for a Family Home Evening lesson to help illustrate how a lie doesn’t cover up the truth.

For the lesson you need:

Vanilla ice cream

chocolate syrup

salt

3 bowls

a big bowl of water

To prepare in the morning I put a little water in one of my bowls and then I added a bunch of salt. I let it dry and also used a blow dryer on it to help the salt harden in the bottom. I added another layer when the first dried and did the same thing to make sure it was thick and hard.

That evening I took my tray out at lesson time and the boys were so excited to see ice cream and chocolate syrup for our lesson! I dished a scoop of ice cream in a bowl and handed them each a spoon and asked them who liked ice cream.  They were so excited! I said that sometimes we make bad choices. What about putting salt on ice cream, would that be a good choice? They said no and I took about a teaspoon of salt and sprinkled it all over the top of the ice cream. I made a big deal out of it saying oops!

Then I said sometimes we are embarrassed about the choices we make so we try to cover them up with a lie. At this point I took the Hershey syrup and covered all the salt with the ice cream. I then asked them questions like, can you see the salt anymore? How does it smell now? How do you think it would taste? I took their  spoons and gave them each a spoonful of the ice cream and syrup. I made sure to take shallow bites so there would be lots of salt. I asked who wanted to try it and shockingly they all did. I really think they thought you wouldn’t be able to taste the salt. Be prepared to laugh at some funny faces!

I said that’s how lying is. We try to cover up what we did that was bad but it doesn’t really go away. The only way to get rid of the salt is to start over and go back and make our mistake right.

I took the second bowl and added a little salt to it. I told them that when we tell a lie we can go back and make it right. I had them take a paper towel and had them easily wipe the wet salt out of the bowl. Then I took the bowl with salt dried in it and said sometimes we have told a lie a long time ago and everyone has forgotten but we don’t. Sometimes the lies build up because we have to tell more lies to cover the first one we told. I talked about how the longer you let it go the harder it gets to tell the truth. I let them try to swipe the dried salt away with a paper towel but it wouldn’t come off.

I took the big bowl of water and talked about how we need the Savior to help us make it right through repentance. Then I took the bowl with the hard salt in it and put it in the big bowl of water and swished it a few times and the salt dissolved. We talked about taking the sacrament each Sunday and how that reminds us of our baptism and how each week we can be washed clean.

The boys were mesmerized during the whole lesson – no fighting or whining! Yea! After we were done we dished up ice cream with syrup and had that for our treat. They have referred back to it a few times so I know it made a difference for them. Yay! I love when a lesson actually gets through!

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 We had cousins over the other day and they were wanting to play with the playdough!  So, we decided to make a couple new colors! I have tried probably 3 or 4 different Homemade Playdough Recipes with my boys.  I originally made homemade playdough to just have a fun activity to do with Nathan when he was younger.  Nathan had such a blast, that he would request to do it often.  The other recipes I tried weren’t necessarily awful, but when I saw this one, it just jumped out at me.  It is the recipe that we have used the last 2 years and WE LOVE IT!  It smells SO good and stays soft for months, plus it only takes 5 minutes from start to finish!

I originally saw it posted over at No Ordinary Moments!  Thanks so much Jolanthe for sharing it!

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 Tbsp cream of tartar
1 envelope unsweetened Koolaid
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Instructions:

1) Combine 1 cup Flour, 1/4 cup Salt, 2 TB Cream of Tartar, 1 Envelop Koolaid and 1 cup Water.

2) Turn on medium heat and stir in 1 TB Vegetable Oil and keep stirring for 3 to 5 minutes until the mixture forms into a ball.  The mixture will darken in color.

3) Remove from heat and knead for a minute or two.

4) Store in a air tight container or ziplock bag.

We keep ours in little containers and our playdough stays soft for months of play!  Just use different flavors of Koolaid to get all your color options!  They have this great Koolaid variation pack on Amazon.

If you haven’t ever tried to make your own playdough I highly suggest you try!  Your kids will love it and it is so fun to see them so excited about it!  GOOD LUCK AND HAVE A BLAST!

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