Feeding the Ducks

An activity that my kids have enjoyed doing in the passed is going to the park to feed the ducks.  We decided to do that this morning.

 Of course, there were plenty of geese getting in on the action too.

We stopped at the bread outlet and got a cheap loaf of bread and enjoyed a little time at the park.  

Summer Vacation

We are getting ready for my little sister's wedding and vacation so I am not sure how much I will be posting the next couple of weeks, but you can bet we will be having fun.  :)

Birthday Party

Today our activity was going to the boy's cousins birthday party!  Here is a picture of the boys enjoying their dragon cupcakes.  My sister-in-law always plans cute and fun parties.

Easy Origami for Kids

My husband is really good at origami. I have mentioned his blog before.  The kids naturally see him folding and want to give it a shot so today they did some folding.  My 5 year old stuck to an easier project, folding these origami mice.  Then he drew faces on them.

 My older son had seen an origami rocket book of his dad's and wanted to try one out so his dad showed him what to do to fold a rocket.

 Here is the book the rocket came from.  There are some other projects in it as well.

Gilgal Sculpture Garden

If you live around Salt Lake City Gigal Sculpture Garden is a fun, quirky little garden to go look around.  It is free.  We went this morning and were the only ones there enjoying the unique sculptures.  It is kind of hidden.  Here is the website where you can find the address and some other information.

Melting Crayons in the Sun

Today we melted crayons in the sun.  We took our broken, worn down crayons and put them in different shaped cookie cutters on a cookie sheet wrapped in aluminum foil.  The only thing we had to do after that was stick them in the sun.  The boys got a kick out of seeing them as they melted in the sun.

 Here is my oldest with a black letter V.

 He had a good time using it to color.

Racing Pom Pom Balls

Today we did some pom pom racing.  I found the idea here.  I just used one piece of tape for them to try and keep their pom pom on as they went.  They thought it was a lot of fun.  My little guy had a hard time getting his going very far or as fast as his older brothers.  I suggested he try without the straw and so  the other two tried it that way too.  Then they decided to make their own paths with the tape. All you need is straws, pom poms, and tape.  

Trio Blocks

Over the passed several years now we have collected several Trio Block sets and my kids love them.  I don't get them out every day though because they tend to over take my house when I do.  :)  My oldest was begging to be able to bring them out and play with them today.  Little did he know I had plans to bring them out anyway. My youngest had fun building a tower.  The other two attempting to build things on their own.  My five year old needed lots of assistance, but my seven year old can do a good majority of the sets without help or very little help.

 This is the set my five year old wanted to build.  He and his little brother had a blast playing with the dragons together.

 My oldest built this pteranadon by himself and had a good time flying it around.

He also built this little police station on his own.

We will soon be very busy around here, but I hope to be able to continue to post the fun Summer activities we are doing.

Dissolving Rocks

 Last night I made these "rocks" so that they would be hard and we could dissolve them today.  I found the instructions here. They are super easy to make you just need baking soda, water, and food coloring.  I didn't measure anything just mixed and stirred.  I did it myself so I could surprise the boys with putting little plastic toys inside.  Mine are not overly pretty, good thing they didn't care!

 This afternoon to dissolve them we just poured white vinegar over the rocks.  It of course made them foam and fizzle and dissolved the baking soda.  My boys got a big kick out of it and an even bigger kick when they realized their were surprises inside!

Today is also 7-11 so we walked down to the 7-11 near our house and got ourselves a free slurpee!

Yesterday we pulled out our Hexbugs and had fun playing with those.  I like to pull out toys that we don't use every day for activities once in a while.  They love to do it and it is a good chance to play with the toys that we don't get out everyday.

If it seems like I am keeping things low-key and simple this year it is because I am!  I am also trying to do things that are free or cost very little.  I hope they are still interesting to read about because we have been having fun with what we've done already.

Giant Ice Cube Fun

Last night I filled a large plastic bowl full of water and added some plastic animals to it and stuck it in the freezer so we could have some giant ice cube fun today!

We took a variety of tools for Dad's tool box.  I explained how they worked and let the boys pick out which tool they thought would work best for chipping away the ice.

 Here they are with their picks on which tool would work the best.

 Then they got to test the tool they picked.  After that they got to take turns using all the tools.

 They loved doing this activity and trying out the different tools.  The chisel worked real well, but the thing they like doing the most was using the hammer by itself to chip the ice away.

We were able to chip all the ice away and free their little plastic animals.  They really enjoyed doing this activity.  I have a feeling we will be doing it again sometime.

Parade Fun!

Last week I kept things relative low-key.  We did several coloring pages and activities centered around the 4th of July that I found on Education.com.  I thought it might be on the lame side, but I kids thought it was great, lucky me!  On Thursday we went to our little city's parade.  My kids LOVED that!

 On Friday one of the boy's aunts from out of town was here visiting and I was getting ready for us to leave town so we didn't do anything extra aside from playing with her and packing.

As a result of being out of town (and not planning a head on my part) today we just visited different websites that have online books.  They enjoyed doing that and it didn't require any extra planning on my part.   Here is a link that lists several good places to go for online reading and story telling.

Now I have to get myself in gear so I have plans for the rest of the week.  My oldest makes sure I have plans and isn't very happy with me when I don't.  

Books, Helicopters, Field Trips, Angry Birds, and Celebration Lanterns!

Last Monday my two older boys made up their own stories and drew pictures for each page.

 On Tuesday we made Mini 'Copters out of an egg carton.  I found the idea here.  My boys have had a great time playing with those.

 On Wednesday we ventured out to an Aerospace Museum not too far from us that is FREE!  Yay.  I love when we can get out and all enjoy ourselves at no cost.  They loved looking at all the different airplanes.

 On Thursday we made these Angry Bird Crafts.  They were too hard for my boys to put together by themselves, but they enjoyed coloring them and playing with them.  You can find those here.

 Today we made paper lanterns which I called Celebration Lanterns since we used blue and red crayons to draw on white paper to celebrate Independence Day coming up in a couple of days.

Painting on Bread, Drawing an Om Nom, and Writing Books

Here are some things we have done in the passed week.

We painted on bread  and boy did the kids have a great time doing it.  I found the idea here.  All you need is bread, milk, food coloring, and a paintbrush.

 We cut ours into dinosaur shapes since we have a fun sandwich cutter with that shape.  You could use any kind of cookie cutter.  The idea we found used flower shapes.

The boys also did an umbrella craft which I found here.

 We also learned how to draw Om Nom from the game "Cut the Rope".  The funny thing is that we do not have a device with the game on it, but the boys have played it on extended relatives Kindles and at Barnes and Noble on their Nooks and they love it.  I got a picture of the older boys with theirs.

 Today the older two wrote books.  My oldest actually wrote two books, but the second one was a wordless book about dinosaurs.  They spent a long time writing, drawing, and coloring in their books.  They both used characters from their favorite Mo Willems books (Gerald, Piggie, and the Pigeon) and I guess since they just had learned to draw Om Nom they wanted to practice more since he was in both of their books as well.