Recently I made a Rainbow layer cake for my son’s birthday. I had a box of cake mix leftover and thought I would try making a cupcake version of this cake.
I made the White Cake Mix and then divided it into 4 bowls, I dyed each bowl and then scooped spoonfuls into muffins cups.
I baked for 15 minutes at 350. They kids loved them. Looking back, I wish I would have swirled the colors around a little bit with a toothpick.
I did not frost them, too messy and less sugar. If you make these, share your link in the comments please, I would love to see them!
Love this time of year! Who doesn’t, really? I think I write about it every year, unlike the other seasons. Just something about the Fall. It officially starts today, yay! Thought we would kick off the many, many Fall activities we will be doing this season, so excited! We started by doing a leaf study. I purchased this really cool kit from the Used Curriculum sale at my local Homeschool Convention.
The kit includes many samples of leafs, each in their own plastic sleeve and label. The Tree Finder book has every kind of tree you can find in North America, comes with illustrations and descriptions. The workbook, guides you through lessons on trees and all their parts. Yesterday I let the boys look through everything in the kit. We will start the lessons on Monday.
The next project we worked on was leaf rubbings as seen here on Pinterest, which is where I saw it. It is originally posted on this blog.
We collected leaves from around our neighborhood.
pretty leaves.
Then we taped the paper down to the table with masking tape. We used crayons that had the labels taken off so we could rub properly. I stressed to the boys the importance of holding the bottom of the paper tight once they placed their leaves under the it.
After the leaf rubbings we read 2 books about Fall. One is a family favorite about all seasons but it seems best for Fall it is called The Acorn and the Oak Tree. The other book, of course, was Clifford’s Leaf Season. All in all, this was a great start to celebrate my favorite season.
This year we are doing Adventures in My Fathers World, included in that is “I Can Do All Things” art lesson book. We did assignments out of there to start off our homeschool week. The lessons are good but it starts out with coloring and drawing and my boys were dying to paint something. So I headed over to Pinterest and searched for Kids Painting, got so many great results but one piqued my interest. It was a paper with swirls, dots, waves and stripes. I thought it would be a perfect, easy and fun lesson with the boys. The original post is here at Be a Fun Mum.
I set the table up while they were all on break. I usually have them share paint and brushes but that never turns out the way I imagine it can. This time, everyone got their own palette and a variety of brushes.
I asked them to watch me paint the different items and then told them they could make any kind of painting they wanted as long as they used dots, stripes, waves and swirls.
mommy’s sample
They liked being able to have freedom with their painting, I liked that they actually incorporated the items into their creations.
Oliver painting the Solar System
Preston creating a Robot
Adam’s is ocean waves, fish “and the red part is a force field” -lol
Samuel immediately mixes all his colors up and made this masterpiece
Recently I discovered another amazing blog! This one is called Meet the Dubiens. I have seen so many things on this blog that I want to do with my kids. Very inspiring!
Our first inspiration we did today. She mixed food coloring with shaving cream and used it as paint for her kids bath time.
We did not make it for bathtime, just craft time. I let them play at their little table and gave them some utensils.
I do wish I would have had primary colors, Oliver was mixing colors and discovering new colors, would have been more effective with primary colors.
We love centers! I used them throughout the past school year for all 3 boys. Some structured some as free-play. The boys are always happy to pull them out and play with them it is a guaranteed 30 minutes of constructive play.
For the Summer I reorganized them, rearranged and grouped different things together to get the boys geared up for summer indoor activities.
I put everything in one cabinet thanks to my sister who gave me a nice white cabinet. Thanks Tia!
Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards
Styrofoam shapes – Good for Math, Sorting and Building
10 Base T set – great for Math and Building
Random Tools (thanks Liv for the Magnifying glasses)
I am always looking for fun ideas the kids. They love experiments and art. This Summer, I signed us up for the Activities Challenge at education.com. They have a sortable list of activities for kids. Arts & Crafts, Science, Games and Summer Fun are just some of the categories listed. We have done a few of the activities and the kids have really enjoyed them.
The only step I added: I thinned my school glue down with a little water and let the kids apply it with a paintbrush. I only laid out the colors that matched the colored rice (that didn’t last long, lol). We ended up with a dolphin, a robot on a beach and a “fuzzy” robot.
Here in Colorado the rice only took about 2 hours to dry so we were able to do this activity in one day. The boys thought it so cool that is was colored rice. We invited a friend to join us.
Dyed Rice
Dyed Rice
the boys at work
applying some rice
This was fun and I recommend. We have a lot of rice left over so we will do it again. Might also use the rice inside an “I-SPY ” bottle. It’s pretty that is for sure!
I have such fond memories of watching my teacher use a felt board to tell a story. LOVED it so much. Gathering around her and finding a comfy spot to watch the story unfold.
Always wanted to get some to play with as a kid but never did, seemed like a teacher “exclusive” item.
I looked at my local Education store and they are so expensive I could not justify the cost.
However, now that I started to homeschool I went to my favorite consignment sale to find educational materials. Imagine how excited I was to find a Storyboard Felt set.
Nothing fancy, in fact it looks like it could be from when I was little, but it is in excellent shape. I bet they came from a former teacher. I practically let out a squeel like a 13 year old who sees Justin Bieber.
This has to be one of my best finds ever!
I let the 4 and 2 year old play with them and they loved it. The two year went through all the animals and tried to make their “sounds”. It was fun, now I need to come up with a story!
This year I was invited to a Valentine’s Card making get-together and had so much fun that I had one for the women in my family, that was also a blast.
When it came time to think about the kids Valentine’s cards this year, it was a no brainer that they would make homemade ones as well, I had all the supplies ready to go. In previous years, especially since they were in school, it was easy to just go pick up some pre-made ones. Now that we homeschool we do more homemade things then ever, we have the time and resources so why not? The boys made some for friends, some for family and some for their Sunday School teachers.
We used heart stickers, flowers stickers, scripture stickers, glittery stickers, puffy stickers, crayons, markers and stamps. We used card stock folded in half.
notice the "Text Me" on Yahoo… lol
All done! I got them all in the mail to Loveland to go through their “Valentine Re-mailing Program“. If you send them your pre-addressed, stamped envelope (I sent all in 1 big manila envelope), they stamp them with the Loveland PO postmark that includes a cute graphic and saying. This will be the programs 65th year.
Details on the Re-Mailing Program:
Deadline for delivery within the US in Feb. 9th, within Colorado is the 11th, you still have time Colorado peeps!
Put all your pre-addressed, stamped envelopes in a bigger envelope or small box and then mail it to:
My boys are crazy for Star Wars, they love it! I just picked up the box set of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi for them for Christmas. It was one of their lightning deals for only $22!
Recently, I came across a crafts section of the Star Wars website. They had a fun R2D2 craft made from felt. I had tons of foam squares so we pulled them out and the boys went to work…
R2D2 Craft
They used construction paper for his top part and colored it silver. They also used construction paper for his body. The rest was made from foam and they glued them onto a foam base. Elmers glue worked well.
They enjoyed it and I think they turned out really cute. Thanks Star Wars!
On a recent field trip to, we visited a new children’s garden play and discovery area. It has fantastic stations all around to encourage interactive play and learning. 2 stations caught my eye and more importantly, caught the boys eyes and kept ’em too!
Wood blocks, real wood blocks only they aren’t the kind we are all used to. These are more rustic and authentic and fun for boys. One set had big tree rings cut into chunks, the other set was Aspen tree trunks chopped into different thicknesses to stack. This gave me some great ideas for gifts and toys for my boys. The possibilities are endless.
Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards
applying some rice
