'Twas the night before school

The first day of school is one of those events that brings great anticipation. Kids get a new teacher, new clothes, new supplies, new friends. But I've been homeschooling since my daughter started Kindergarten 2 years ago, and feel a bit bad that she misses out on the excitement. This year I tried to think of something that could make the first day of school feel more like a first day of school to my kids. So, last sunday night as I was finishing preparations on our school room, I thought "I should just wrap everything up like Christmas! It's always fun to unwrap things." Unfortunately, I only had very cheap leftover Christmas wrapping from last year, and only a bit of it, but I made some piles, wrapped up their new books, and stuffed their backpacks.

The kids thought it was a lot of fun. I think we'll make it a first day of school tradition, but next year I'll be more secretive about the things I'm collecting during the summer for the next year. In addition to workbooks, I had bought bananagrams and some smencils and some new

nonfiction books to go along with what we'll be studying this year, so there were some surprises, and they just had fun. Maybe I'll even do a back to school tree. Hmmmm. That may be too much work. Still, something to think about.

And I think even if you don't homeschool that it might be a fun tradition to start. You could wrap up some cute pencils and slip them in their backpacks as a surprise, or wrap up their food in their lunch box. Maybe you could wrap up their toothbrush or spoon at breakfast. It could always be a funny joke "What will mom wrap up next year?" Maybe I'll do that for birthdays. I can imagine my daughter laughing as she opens her drawer on her birthday only to find her crazy mom has wrapped up all her underwear. HA.

Nickel Clean Up

HI! I'm supposed to be a contributor to this blog, but Erin has been doing a great job all by herself, and she has so many good ideas. But I now have something to share and a few minutes to jot it down for you.

When every flat surface in the house looks like this:

(This photo barely gives a hint at the disaster that we call home.)

Then it's time for nickel clean up. We write each child's name at the top of a piece of paper. We work very quickly and I call out jobs for each child to do. "Andrew- socks, hamper." "Jack- crayons, drawer." There's no time for extra words. They are working quickly to get to the next job. Each job means a nickel for them. They put a tick mark under their name for each job they complete. Each tick mark means a nickel for them when I pay out after the house is clean.

(They were using code names today)

What would have taken me two hours to accomplish alone, takes us 15 minutes, and only costs me a few dollars. Today, they each earned $1.25. It is worth every penny.

I save nickel clean up for days when the house is really bad. For day to day picking up and cleaning, it's the usual nagging. A variation on nickel clean up is jelly bean clean up. We just replace the reward with some little treat. They like that too.

(Ah, a clean house. For a few minutes at least...)

School Bus Rice Krispy Treats

I wanted to make a cute back to school treat, but couldn't find anything I liked. I thought the school bus idea was cute, but had only seen it with a twinkie, and that just seemed gross to me. So, I decided to try it with Rice Krispies treats.

I started by making a double batch of the recipe found on the side of the Rice Krispies box and pressing it into a 9x13 glass pan. I wanted it to be thick, and it didn't look like it would fit at first, but it did. After I let the treats cool, I cut them into 16 rectangles, took a few out at a time, put them on their sides, and cut a little out of each one to make the bus. I bought the betty crocker dark chocolate brownie topper to help with decorating. I also bought the plastic screw on decorating tips so I could have a thin line. That stuff dries pretty hard, which I was not aware of, but it worked well because it was thick and I didn't have to make my own frosting.

After trial and error and fingers in frosting, I discovered the following order works best for avoiding messing up the windows:

1 - put on the wheels - I used the mini fudge stripes that come in 100 calorie packs for the wheels, and used toothpicks and the frosting to try and get them to stay on. Later when the icing had dried, I found I could take out the toothpicks and they would stay. Maybe mini oreos would have worked better. I don't know. I might try something different next time.

2 - put on the lights - I cut a red and a yellow jelly belly in half to make the lights and secured them with frosting. I tried pushing them into the treat the first couple of times, but that didn't work too well.

(Don't worry, I made her wash her hands twice with soap before continuing to help)

3 - draw the front window and put in the bear driver - We cut the legs off of some mini teddy grahams for the driver and attached with frosting.

4 - draw all the other windows and black lines on the sides

Voila! School buses for sharing. At first we tried putting bears in all the windows as well, but my daughter got tired of cutting off the legs of the bears and we decided it was easier to just have an empty school bus. We found that we could do about 8 at a time assembly line style.

When we were done, I let the kids create their own masterpieces with the cut out leftovers of rice krispies treats and some candy and frosting.

Back to School YW survival kit

When I was in the Young Women's organization of our church many years ago, I created a back to school survival kit to give the girls before they started school. We put all the items in a pencil case and with the candy included a picture of Christ, about the size of a pass along card, with a magnet on the back to hang in their school lockers. We also attached a note. Here's the note (and then you can also see what was in the kit):

Back To School Survival Kit

Included in this kit are some things to help remind you how to make this a successful year:

M&M’s - Be a Member Missionary!

Pencil - You are writing the story of your life daily

Now & Laters - the decisions you make will effect you now and later

Eraser - Sometimes you will make mistakes

Purell - just remember the cleansing principle of repentance

Smarties - Study hard!

Life Savers - prayer can be a life saver when you need help!

Gum - Stick to your principles even when things get hard

Lollipop - Rely on the Holy Ghost to help you lick the opposition

100 grand-remember your great worth

Hershey Kisses - you are greatly loved!

Snickers - It’s important to laugh at yourself sometimes

The picture of our Savior is to hang in your locker so that you always remember who you are and why you are here. You can be a great influence for good in the lives of others through your example of righteous living. We hope all of you have a great school year! We love you!

Love,

Your YW Leaders

It did end up being a lot of candy I guess, but you can simplify and just choose a few things you think will mean most to your girls.

Back to School Primary singing time

I lead the music for the children at church, and this year I did a back to school music time. I started by asking the kids to raise their hands if they were starting school soon, and if they wanted to play pretend with me. I told them I was going to pretend to be the teacher and they could be my students. I pulled out my teacher glasses, pointer, and bell. I told them that whenever I rang my bell, they were supposed to sit up straight and fold their arms. We practiced that several times, and I asked them to really slouch before I rang the bell, and they thought that was fun. Next I pulled out a backpack that I had filled with school supplies. I invited up a child to pull something out of the bag, and then we would sing a song with an activity that went along with the school supply. Here's what I had:

erasers - we "erased" a word in the song. We sang "follow the prophet" and were silent whenever we were supposed to sing "prophet"

glue sticks - we glued first our legs together, and then our arms to our sides, so that we had to hold really still while we sang "come follow me"

crayons - the children only sang when I held up the color they were wearing. I put three different colors on each card and held up the cards as we sang "He sent his son"

ruler - we measured how well the children sang. They were given a grade for their reverence while singing, how beautifully they sang, and how well they said the words while we sang "Beautiful Savior"

calculator - we counted how many times we said the word "faith" while singing the song "Faith"

magnifying glass - they watched me closely and copied me perfectly while we sang "I belong to the church of Jesus Christ", so if I put my hand on my head or lifted my leg, they followed

pencil - we "wrote" our own songs, singing "fun to do", or "if you're happy and you know it"

scissors - I "cut out" the kids who were too wiggly while singing "The Holy Ghost". I tapped them on the head if I saw them move and then they would sit down

sharpener - we "sharpened" our song by clearly enunciating each word for "I know my Savior loves me"

Between each song the kids slouched in their chairs and I rang the bell and called up another child to pick an item. The kids had a lot of fun with it the first week, and we only got through 3 items, so I can still use it for 1 or 2 more weeks.

(added - Today I threw some tape into the backpack also and told the kids that I had taped their mouth shut and they had to just hum the song. Fortunately, they weren't too silly with it.)

Articles of Faith incentive

This summer we encouraged our children (mostly Maren and Joshua, but Christopher wanted his name up there too) to memorize the articles of faith. I found some ice cream pictures on the internet and cut them out. Each time they memorize one, they get an ice cream scoop, and when they're finished, they get to go out with mommy or daddy to get any kind of ice cream or sundae they want.

Building a Happy Home

Well we finished our warm fuzzy jar, went to Gatti-Town and had a great time. Then we needed another incentive to treat each other kindly. So, we our now building a happy home. I built a simple house out of legos, took off 60 pieces and put them in a container. Now whenever the kids do something that helps build someone up, they put on a brick. If they do something that tears someone down, they take off a brick. Hopefully it won't take us as long to build our happy home as it did to fill our warm fuzzy jar.

"I'm the thief!" (aka Kids' Book Club part 2)

Joshua chose a Cam Jansen book for his turn at our summer kids' book club. Specifically, he chose "Cam Jansen: the mystery of the stolen corn popper" in which the kids' are shopping for back to school supplies and someone keeps stealing shopping bags. For his meeting, we did some fun mystery type games. We started by splitting into two groups and doing a mystery vocabulary contest. I put words such as "alibi" and "victim" up on the board, read a definition aloud, and teams took turns coming up with which word fit the definition. If they missed it, the other team had a chance to get it.

Next we played a memory game. We practiced using our photographic memories like Cam. I put out a tray with several items, they studied it, said "click" and then closed their eyes while I removed a few objects. Then they would open their eyes and write down (or draw a picture) of what they thought was missing. We did this several times and I added more objects each time to make it harder.

While we were finishing that game, Joshua went upstairs and dressed in a funny costume.

I had set out a green binky's shopping bag (like in the book) on the counter. He ran into the kitchen, yelled "I'm the thief!", grabbed the bag, and ran back upstairs and hid it in Maren's room. I then told the kids they were all witnesses to a crime and asked if they could remember what the thief was wearing, what he said, what he did, etc. . .

Under the green shopping bag I had put a clue, which asked a question about the book. When they answered the question, I opened the clue and it told us a "department" of the store to search next, like the shoe department, school supplies department, baby department, etc . . . The clues led us to my daughter's room where the shopping bag was hidden.

In the bag were treat bags filled with "Binky's surprise bags" (from the book) filled with green candies. I also served green food, like grapes, celery, kiwi, and honeydew. It was a fun book club.