Boy Scouts

In September, Ethan started a new activity outside of school. Cub Scouts.  He had been waiting to start in this, but had to wait until 1st grade and was so excited to finally be old enough to start.  The first year is very fun for the boys. Just a lot of learning "common sense" things.  Like, if you're lost in the woods, don't keep wandering.  And working as a family to determine the fire escape route in your house.  Or learning the cub scout sign, handshake, motto and the Law of the Pack. 

In addition, to these types of things, they also have special events like tours of the emergency vehicles, the annual cake bake auction, and later in the year the pinewood derby and regatta races.  All super fun activities for the boys and their adult partner.    I know Rick is looking forward to the pinewood derby, but I think the cake bake was one he wasn't expecting for "boy scouts". 

This cake bake auction is just what it sounds like.  The boys have to design and bake a cake, decorate it with all things edible and then there is an auction amongst the parents and other members/businesses of the community.  It was quite a production.  All in all, there were approximately 17 cakes and there was $2100 dollars raised.  Not just twenty-one dollars, but twenty one HUNDRED dollars!  It was a lot of fun and Ethan and Rick did a great job on their cake, the race car.

The start... forming the chassis of the car

Making of the pieces and parts... the Tootsie-Roll Windows, the frosting, 

Frosting the cake and decorating



The Final Product

Complete with donut tires, crushed Oreo road with Good n Plenty center line, Tootsie Roll windows, M&M head lights, Hershey bar spoiler and green tinted coconut grass and #430 because it's their pack number.

 

They worked very hard on this car together and it might not have been the "prettiest" cake at the show, but it was one that Ethan helped a lot on and that was what mattered. And the effort paid off because he won 1st place for the Tiger Cub division. 

Great job, boys!!!

Get a Rag and a Towel, Please

This morning, my boys found out what happens when you make blow fishies on the windows in the house.  They thought they were doing me a favor by trying to quickly wipe the residual spit off the window with their hands; however, that was not my idea of an acceptable clean-up on this particular morning.  (Not to mention that my windows were in need of a cleaning anyway). 

So the boys were given a wonderful "Opportunity" (that was one of my most favorite words when I was working at Kimberly-Clark in my former life.... opportunity (with a sly little grin to accompany the word)). Anyway, I digress.  This morning, the boys had the experience of washing and drying the window that they so graciously did several blow fishies on, so we could see through it without looking through globs of spit! 

When you're up for another "opportunity" you just let me know... I've got plenty of them lurking in and around our house!!

Letter(s) of the Day - G and H

The Letter G

The letter of the day was G. After making the frogs for the letter the F, the kids were on a roll with crafts so we decided to make a GOAT for the letter G. The worksheets were not much of a hit for that day, but they did them and checked it off the list.

But they had fun making the goats from this website (now, Rick said they look more like cows (which I can't deny), but the website called them goats, so I went with it!)

In addition we did a Guessing Game with random things.  How many toothpicks did we have?  How many matchbox cars did we have in the bucket?  How many forks were in the drawer?  Etc.  It was fun to hear their guesses and we then got some counting practice in so that we knew who guessed closer.

The Letter H

The letter H was a fun one.  We did our worksheets.... and Trevor rattled off some things that started with the letter 'H'.... like hippo, house, and horse.

And then we went onto the fun activity for the day.  I was feeling rather brave that day (and I need some abstract artwork for our playroom/loft, so I decided that we were going to do Hand prints on a big piece of paper with paint in the basement.  Any time I mention painting, hands, mess" the boys are all for it!!    We did the hand prints and it turned out great, but then they went on to do other pieces of artwork.  We used fingers, popsicle sticks, and sponges.  They had a blast and it wasted away almost two hours of our morning. 

Here are the master pieces that I will put in larger frames - either in full or by cropping some of the pictures to fit in the frames that I buy.

The Hand Prints

Ethan's Abstract

Ethan's Soccer Field complete with goals, a center line and a black and white team

(can you tell we've been watching some of the World Cup lately?)

Trevor's Abstract - He called them Storms

Trevor's Sponge Painting

Letter of the Day - F

So I didn't realize it when the day began, but the letter F activity has been the most fun for me so far. 

We began the morning by painting a paper plate green and a paper plate blue before going down stairs for my work out.  This allowed for drying time before doing the actual craft.  (Now, I was very pleased with myself since I am normally the one that finds these fun things to do, but then realize that I needed to have the kids paint something and let it dry before we could actually do it - ugh.  But not this time.  I was ahead of the game it am so glad I was.) 

By the time I was done working out and done having the kids make their beds and get dressed, the plates were almost dry.  So we began with our normal worksheets.   Trevor was very happy that he already knew how to make an F since it was "just two lines, not three" compared to the E we did the previous day.

On the bottom of the page the question was a bit much for the boys.  It suggested that we write a letter to the local firemen thanking them for what they do and then send it.  Well, we weren't going to be doing that so we decided to make it all about the paint again and make Fingerprints. 

After the finger prints were done, the plates were dry and the craft could begin.  I found this cute FROG craft and spruced it up a bit by putting the frog on the blue plate, or water, and standing the frog up a bit by putting some broken popsicle sticks underneath it to make it more 3-dimensional on the water.  The kids had a blast with coloring, cutting (well, I cut Trevor's out), and making these paper plates magically turn into a frog.   And I have to admit, I think this is one of the cutest crafts we've done in awhile!

Ethan's Frog

Trevor's Frog

Froggy's Found Each Other

In addition, as I was searching for a frog craft, I came across a couple websites that are dedicated to paper plate/cup crafts.   I have put them on the left side bar under "craft things for kids".  Check it out... there are a lot of fun things you can make with paper plates and cups!

And finally, to conntinue with our Frog theme for the letter F, we had two books to read about frogs.  The first is a listen and follow along book called A Frog Thing, and the second is one of our favorites, Hermie and the Big Bully Croaker.

I hope letter G can be just as much fun.....

Letter of the Day - E

The letter E brought us an activity that is always a hit, no matter what time of year.  But before we got to the activity we had to do our worksheets.  No numbers or letter sounds today, just the worksheet and then our activities.  I know - slackers, right!?!   However, we had things to write about on the bottom of the sheet so that made it take a bit longer.   The activity on the bottom was "Write 11 things that make you excited."

Following the worksheets, we did our fun activity that the boys love.... coloring Eggs!!  No matter what time of year they love it.  Trevor, however, was a bit more interested in his snack rather than getting the eggs in the coloring this time ;o) 

In addition to our worksheets and the egg coloring, we decided to read a couple books later in the day that we had checked out from the library.  We had talked about elephants during the day so our book titled Pigs Make Me Sneeze  was a perfect fit. In addition, Ethan had mentioned that "ears" starts with the letter E.  PERFECT lead into our book called Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears.  And especially perfect since we are now back in the land of mosquitoes in Missouri.  But these were two great books that kept the kids' attention the entire time. 

Letter of the Day - D

To begin our D - Day we went through some flash cards of the alphabet. Of course, Ethan had no problem with them so we did it more for Trevor. But they were content doing their part. Trevor got to say the letter and Ethan got to say the sound the letter makes. Both of them then tried to come up with words that begin with that sound. Then it was on to the worksheet. Trevor actually wanted to do one of the capital Ds on his own and both had fun imagining about "What it would be like if dinosaurs were still alive". That was our question on the bottom of the page. The answers they gave were as follows:

Ethan - We would be eaten. They would destroy our house by walking through it.

Trevor - You would see big footsteps. They would roar really loud (followed by a loud dinosaur roar!!!)

After the worksheets were completed, it was time for our fun d-activity. Mom's idea today... a Dance competition. Here is a video of their dancing....

They thought their dancing was silly and giggled the whole time while watching the videos. They also collected some things that start with D in their bags : dogs, dinosaurs, drum, etc

Letter of the Day - C

The letter for Friday (we skipped on Thursday since we had Story Time at the library) was C. We wrote our letters, and drew things that started with the letter C (Ethan helped Trev a bit with that cat you see, but Trevor was all about decorating his own cake and putting the candles on). Once the worksheet was complete, the activity to go along with it was to Count the number of steps in and around your house. The boys counted and I tallied them on Trevor's paper. Ethan started tallying, but then stopped for some reason.

In addition, we continued our C activities on Saturday by baking a cake! The boys were having fun adding the ingredients and just as we started mixing a visitor showed up at our door.... our priest from church. Were we being bad? Did we need to repent for some reason?? Nah, we're angels. Ok, maybe I exaggerate a bit on that! But Father Philip was coming over to ask Rick if he could help with moving some stuff out of the current church after mass on Sunday. And then he proceeded to sit with us in the kitchen where the cake was being made, the kids were licking off the beaters, and I had crap everywhere on the counter! Guess he gets to see us in "real life"! It was a nice visit, but it sure did remind us that we are living in a small town!!

Letter of the Day - B

B is for ball, butterfly, banana, bed, bum-bum (that was one of Trevor's words). 

So, I wasn't sure how much they liked the Letter of the Day activity yesterday, but when they woke up this morning and asked, "When are we doing letter B, Mom?!?!"  I took that as a good thing.  And they asked several more times before we got to the activity time.  That made me excited to know they liked doing the Letter of the Day. 

Today was B.  Again we started with numbers.  This time Ethan had to go backwards from 20-1 and Trevor went from 1-20 a bit faster than he did yesterday.  Ethan was done in no time so we did an even and odd number pile.  Following that, he continued writing his numbers from where he left off yesterday. 

(once again a rotated picture that I can't fix)

Number cards were put in the bag and then we started on the B worksheets.  Trevor was very adamant that he wanted to make some on his own and I was all for that.  After making capital and lower case letters, it was on to drawing things that start with the letter B.  Trevor needed a bit of help with this, but he was still excited to see the pictures come to life as I helped him draw.  Here are the end results of the worksheets.

(the T on the top is for Trevor)

The "collect things in a bag" activity was once again a hit.  There were a lot more things that started with B in our collection of toys so they had no problems finding items.

Ethan's Bag included...

 Blue and Black marker

Blue and Black cars

 Ball

Bike

 Bumble Bee

Book

Block

Broccoli

Bell

Trevor's Bag included....

Blocks

Books

Bowling Ball

Black car

Bread

Bell

Bumble Bee

Bean Bags

Both are excited to show Daddy when he gets home, but I'll admit there are a few more items today compared to yesterday so we'll see how long it takes to put them away ;o)