I put together an activity calendar of different things you can easily do with your kids at home during the month of April. Every day has a different theme: Soul Sunday (a focus on our spirits and hearts), Musical Monday, Creation Tuesday (arts and crafts!), Wild Wednesday (games and physical activities), Thinking Thursday (reading, studying, writing), Field Trip Friday (virtual field trips all over the world!), and STEM Saturday. I hope this helps you to have fun with your kiddos during this crazy time in our lives. 🙂
Stay safe everyone, if nothing else just hold on to your babies a little tighter and try to connect with them every day. Relationships with those we love are priceless.
Alright guys, this crazy flu season has started. And who knows how long we will be taking important and necessary precautions to keep our families and friends protected from the corona virus.
With that being said, socialization should not be neglected. Social interaction is good for our minds and our souls, ensuring that we are a part of a community of people who care about us.
Can socialization take place during isolation? YES! It may will look differently than large playdates and parties. But it can and should happen!
Here is a list of 10 things that you can do to socialize during isolation
1.Download a video chatting app- Google Hangout, Marco Polo, Skype, and Facetime are just a few of the options available. Check in with family- especially those who are sick, elderly, or anyone who could use a quick video showing that you care!
2. Use that video app to play a board game with friends from the safety of isolation! Everyone playing will need a copy of the board game at their homes, and you or your child will need to move the game markers of their friends. Encourage your child to use good sportsmanship etiquette. 🙂
3. You can also use your video app to read a favorite story; perform a talent; or put on a puppet show for a friend or family member.
4. You can even play toys with friends remotely- just grab your pile of My Little Ponies, Barbies, cars, etc- set up your video app and play from a distance! Kids can still chat with their friends and you can have a few minutes to sanitize the door knobs or wash your face masks. If a video app isn’t an option you can always use your speaker phone!
5. Start a story chain with a friend digitally. Everyone takes a turn adding a sentence to the story. This could be done via video chat, a text thread, or email.
6. Write a Pen Pal! If you don’t know WHO to write, check out the website Pen Pals Schools. They are offering their pen pal site for free during the CoVID Pandemic.
7. Do a 6 foot service project for someone in your family or community… more info and ideas to come in a future post. Get out and serve, just stay 6 feet away from people!
8. Take advantage of phone calls and texting- a simple way to check in with friends. This would be great not only for your kids who miss their friends, but for you as well! And a great way to teach the basics of phone call etiquette.
9. Plan a neighborhood picnic- everyone stays six feet away or eats in their own yard! Of course sharing food isn’t the best option, but it would be fun to yell a cheerful greeting to your neighbors! Your kids could even design their own megaphones for the occasion.
10. sidewalk chalk tic tac toe with a neighbor! Just remember after you make your mark on the driveway to run back at least 6 feet before your neighbor takes their turn.
For those families stuck at home during the corona virus, you may be getting emails from your child’s teacher about various school assignments that you need to complete. I thought I would share a simple way that you and your child can track those assignments to ensure that everything is getting finished.
Stay safe, and remember that learning can be fun! Break up the monotony of school work by taking breaks between each assignment, or roll dice to see what assignment to do next (my daughter’s favorite).
Corona Virus got your family down? Print this fun game to play with your family. Some of the activities are related to being healthy and some are just plain fun!
Download the game and both sets of cards, Players will complete the activity or answer the question depending on the color of the space they land on. You may need to reuse cards so make sure you have a discard pile for both blue and green cards!
You will need game markers and all three printables to play. Some activities require additional supplies, like access to soap/water and paper/pencil.
If you know me at all, you know how obsessed I am with planners. I can’t really explain why other than there is something about organizing my crazy, all-over-the-place thoughts and ideas on to cute paper. With cute pens. And cute stickers. 🙂
I have used planners for soooo many years, and wanted to share some of the things I learned. First, disc bound planners are my absolute FAV. You can easily take out and add new pages. Gone are the days of feeling bad because you “ruined” a planner page with bad handwriting or you added all the wrong dates. You can just take out what you don’t like and put new pages in. Or if you decide you want to reorganize your pages in a new order it is NO PROBLEM.
But my favorite thing is that it completely folds in half. I LOVE that I can write notes in my planner without taking up too much room.
There are tons of different disc bound systems- with the most popular being the Happy Planner. I started out my disc bound journey wanting a half size, so I opted for the Martha Stewart planner from Staples.
Metal discs are a MUST- they help make the pages glide easier. Staples has silver and gold discs that hold up very well. I have also ordered a set of the Rose Gold discs from Levenger- they are gorgeous but super pricey, so it’s smart to wait for a sale.
The brand of hole punch you use will make a difference as well. I researched and found that the Levenger punch has the biggest hole, allowing pages to glide more smoothly. I use my hole punch all the time to add my own printed planner pages.
If you do plan on printing your own pages, I recommend buying a heavier stock of paper. I use a 32lb weight paper (regular copy paper is only 20lb). It will not only be more sturdy, but I have found writing on the paper seems more effortless and the ink just glides. I know it sounds corny but I love the difference!
Here is a sample page I created to track the books I want to read during the year. I write the titles on each book, and then color it in after I have read it. That way I can see what I read as well. Feel free to download and put it in your own planner!
I hope these tips help, I may do a second post with more printables! I love planning!!!!!
Our Come Follow Me curriculum is continually changing as we work to finding what’s best for our little family. I want to keep it engaging yet relevant to the gospel centered topics. I had the idea to put together a little box that gave us a little preview of the month. As a family we will sit down together and go through the box, brainstorming what each object might be teaching us.
Here is what we have in our March Preview Box:
March 4-10: bandaids- to show that Christ can heal us
March 11-17: backpack- when filled with heavy things that represent our struggles, we can discuss how Christ can help us carry our burdens
March 18-24: flower kit, seeds, or flower pot- to review the parable of the Sower and talk about making our homes have “good ground”.
March 25-31: Swedish fish- talk about the miracle of Christ feeding 5,000 with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish
I know this will be a fun, inexpensive way to get our families excited about March’s Come Follow Me curriculum. It will also get their brains thinking about our Savior and all the ways He demonstrates His love for us.
With the new How to Train Your Dragon 3 movie coming out tomorrow, I thought I would share my daughter’s Halloween costume from last year. We saw the movie preview and she decided that she wanted to be a light fury for Halloween. Of course they weren’t available in stores yet. So going on just the clips of the movie trailer we came up with this costume:
We custom ordered the light fury hat from The Crotchet Display on Etsy. She is wonderful to work with and we couldn’t love the hat any more!
I took a pair of wings and traced a template for the light fury wings. The added sparkle on the wings was just glitter hair spray. Super simple! We also used some white tulle on the wings to give it some extra dimension.
We couldn’t resist dressing up our dog as Toothless. Every light fury needs their night fury!
When the dog got tired of the costume we put it on our favorite stuffed cheetah. 🙂
My daughter has been a dragon the past 4 years for Halloween- needless to say we are big fans at our house.
Ivory Bloom has her amazing journaling pages and interview pages up and ready to go! I am in LOVE with the interview pages- I send out a monthly email to relatives with some of the questions and enjoy reading their responses.
Click on the image below to download this amazing printable pack.
Let me know if there is anything you would like to see added to our curriculum plans! Are you looking for more young children, teen, or multifamily activities?
Can you believe it’s already February? We are excited to share with you our free printables for this month. I know our family has really enjoyed the family history questions that Anna at IvoryBloom has created, so if you haven’t had a chance to use them I strongly recommend it!
I will be completely honest- our Come Follow Me has NOT gone as planned. Like at all. We missed two whole weeks due to sickness, soccer, an over abundance of missing schoolwork that we needed to catch up on, and to be honest a little discouragement. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed that I had to do everything, so like any productive person I ended up doing nothing. (insert face palm)
I have learned to let go of all the good materials and tidbits of bible information and lay hold of what’s best for my family. So are we going to memorize the map of Joseph’s pilgrimage to Bethlehem? We didn’t even look at the map! But that’s OK, because we are focusing on what our family NEEDS. Our current plan is to do the scripture reading, look for similarities with Buddhism (we are a mixed faith family), draw family history stories, and take advantage of Anna‘s fun activities that she plans. That’s all we can handle right now, but it is what our family needs.
My daughter has decided that she wants to get her personal progress award by the end of the year (she is a beehive and they are doing away with the program in 2020) and we have some executive functioning skills that are important for our family right now. Moral of this long winded story- PLEASE do not think you have to do it all. Acknowledge what your family needs and follow that path. Is it more important for your family to know the political history of the bible or the parables of Jesus or simply how to serve others? It is not for any of us outsiders to decide what your family needs, only you. If you are doing what your family needs then pat yourself on the back because you are implementing this program as it is intended. 🙂
On that note, I created a little dice game that would be a good review for January lessons. Or if you skipped a week or two, you can quickly learn about the scriptures that you missed. Click here to download.
I used these dice on Amazon, but you could assign each question a number and then roll regular dice to see what question to answer.
