A Princess Tea Party

We have always had the kids' birthday parties somewhere away from home like a bounce house place, Chuck E. Cheese, etc.  We have a small house so accommodating a lot of kids can be challenging.  Besides, it is just a lot of work.

But this year Rachel wanted to have a party at home.  But not just any party.  She first wanted a tea party.  Then she said it had to be a princess party AND a tea party.  And there had to be lots of decorations to make it look like a royal castle.  There had to be real tea cups.  Girls should be able to get their nails painted.  And they would play games.  Princess games.  And she wanted everything to be pink and purple with a little bit of turquoise and white and gold for accent colors.

Umm...yeah.  This is why I'd rather just pay some party place to do all of this for me.  It's a lot of work.

Party City and Amazon are my friends.

We put balloons on the mailbox and a big birthday banner on the front window.

I bought some disposable party table cloths in pink and purple.  I cut them in half lengthwise and we hung up the strips on the ceiling and added some balloons.  Does it look like a royal ballroom?

I was going to put up another set of strips so there would be eight total but it was a booger trying to put these up with a ladder when the furniture was all in the way. 

Our kitchen usually has just a small round table for four.  But we needed more space at the royal feast so we put a 6 foot plastic table up and decorated it all up. 

Everyone came in their favorite princess dress.  While we waited for everyone to arrive at the castle, the princesses decorated their own princess crowns. I used these Gold Foil Paper Crowns from Amazon (affiliate link)

There were lots of colorful jewels and glue stick to add some bling to their crowns.

The girls really enjoyed the craft and they spent more time than I had planned getting their crowns to look just right.

The glue sticks worked ok.  The jewels stuck on and it was more or less mess-free but later some jewels started falling off if the girls hasn't used enough glue.  I wish we had used glue dots or something like that.

Next it was time for the tea party.  Rachel doesn't like tea though so I made an amazing Princess Punch with vanilla ice cream, cherry 7up, and cherry grape juice.  We had managed to talk Rachel out of using real tea cups because I didn't want to have to clean up any broken glass at the party so I found these really cute paper Tea Time Tea Party Cups at Amazon (affiliate link).  They came with tea party themed stickers so the girls could decorate their own tea cups.

Rachel didn't want a cake or even cupcakes for her party.  She wanted lemon cake pops dipped in white chocolate.  Yes, this girl knows what she wants!  Since not everyone likes lemon cake the way she does, I also made chocolate cake pops with sprinkles.

Since I couldn't get a candle to stick in a regular cake pop, I made an especially giant cake ball for the birthday princess.

There were also trays of cheese, crackers, ham, and turkey for the little princesses to make cracker sandwiches.  I found the little tiered tray on sale at Home Goods and the cute gold plates were from Hobby Lobby.

Rachel said there needed to be more sweets so I layered pink and purple jelly beans in a dish and added a little scoop.  I also used some big pretzel sticks and dunked one end in purple candy.  There were some chocolate caramel treats in the turquoise foil.

After we sang Happy Birthday and ate our royal snacks, the girls were able to get their nails painted and get some temporary tattoos.  

I had planned to give a little workshop on how to curtsy and do a princess wave then we would have a royal parade.  However, the girls just wanted to play with Rachel's dolls.

Rachel opened her presents.  She got dolls and craft kits - her favorite things!

Rachel decided to play piano for her friends.

At the end of the party, each princess got a fancy goody bag as they left the castle and headed to their own waiting chariot.

Once Rachel waved goodbye to her friends she danced around the front yard some then plopped down to admire some wood sorrel she found.  She's my little herbalist-in-training!

Happy birthday sweet princess!

Tapestry of Grace: Davinci's Polyhedrons

We are learning about Leonardo DaVinci in our studies of the Renaissance.  He made some of the first true illustrations of polyhedrons as illustrator in Luca Pacioli's book The Divine Proportion. 

So we had a brief review of geometry and particularly polyhedrons.  We watched a You Tube video on Divine Proportion and DaVinci's use of perspective in his art work.

I also found some fun paper templates for polyhedrons at Enchanted Learning.  I printed each one on different colored card stock.

The kids just cut them apart and glued the tabs together.  It was a fun hands-on way to see the different shapes and they were able to actually count the number of sides that each shape has.

Tapestry of Grace: The Age of Discovery and the Compass

We have been studying the Age of Discovery in Europe which began in the early 15th century with Portuguese explorers looking for a sea route to India.  They were hoping to find a sea route for the purpose of merchant trade because the land route had become overtaken and dangerous. 

The explorations to find a sea route to India began with Prince Henry the Navigator.  He developed a new ship called a caravel that was lighter, swifter, and more easy to navigate than the largest ships that had been used up until then.  Bartholomew Diaz was the first explorer to travel south along Africa's eastern coast and around the southern tip into the Indian Ocean.  Christopher Columbus, of course, tried to find a western route to India and ended up discovering America.  Vasco de Gama finally completed a sea journey to India via the southern tip of Africa in 1498.

The explorers all used various tools for navigation.  They used the stars, astrolabes, quadrants, and of course, a compass.  We pulled out one of our compasses and headed outside. 

I had the kids use the compass to navigate around the neighborhood.  Nicholas has his own compass and has taken classes on navigation so this was mostly an activity for Rachel.  She loved it and wants to keep my compass now.

Even after she had completed my navigation exercise, Rachel continued to walk around using the compass to help her determine the direction she was heading.  It was a fun way to bring the study of navigation to life!

After using the compass to explore the neighborhood, we decided to make our own compass.  It is really very simple.  You'll need a thin layer of cork, a needle, a bar magnet, and a bowl of water.

The kids slid the needle over the magnet about 50 times.  You have to do this in one direction.  Don't slide it back and forth.  Now your needle should be magnetized!

Put the magnet on top of the cork and place it in the water.  As long as it can spin freely, and not bump into the side of the bowl, the needle will turn to point North!

We talked about how compasses helped navigators throughout history but I also got to talk to her about the science of magnets!

Rachel was just amazed with this project.

I also posted this project on Kids Activities Blog several years ago when Nicholas studied these early explorers.  It's always a fun project!

Halloween Snacks

We had fun making Halloween themed snacks.  We started with my favorite - roasted pumpkin seeds!  These were left over from our pumpkin carvings but with just a little bit of work they turn into a wonderful fall snack.

We poured about a tablespoon of oil over them then mixed in a little brown sugar, salt, and pumpkin pie spice.  We roasted them in the oven at 250 for about 45 minutes.  The sugar caramelized and added a wonderful crunch to the pumpkin seeds.  It is so delicious!

For lunch we had Mummy Dogs.  They are even easier to make!  We used refrigerated crescent roll dough cut into strips and wrapped around hot dogs then baked according to the crescent roll package directions.  I stuck some peppercorn eyes in them to make them just a bit more mummy-riffic. 

As if we needed more sweets around here, we also made our traditional Halloween treat, Candy Bones.  We used mini marshmallows, white candy melts, and pretzel sticks.

The kids stuck a mini marshmallow on each end of a pretzel stick.  There may have been a few marshmallows sampled during this process.

They used forks to dunk their bones in the melted candy and then placed them on parchment paper to dry.

I like these Candy Bones because the saltiness of the pretzel tones down all the sweetness from the marshmallows and candy.  It's just the perfect combination!

Halloween Spooktacular at the American Girl Store

Rachel was excited to dress up in her Halloween costume this morning as we went to the Halloween Spooktacular at the American Girl store in Dallas.

We got there early and watched the line curve around the store.  It was fun looking at all the little girls in their cute costumes with American Girl dolls in hand.

Once inside, everyone got back into another line to make a Halloween craft.  Rachel was so disappointed when we finally got up to the craft station and discovered that in the interest of time, the store workers were making the craft for the kids and then just handing it to the kids.  Rachel loves crafts and she was obviously not happy with this craft experience.

But she also got to enter a drawing for a free American Girl doll and she got a free book and Halloween stickers.

We spent a little time looking around the store.  She enjoys looking at all of the dolls and learning about the historical times that some of the dolls are from.

Then we spent an hour or two just playing with all of the dolls and furniture in the store.  It's our favorite part of visiting the American Girl store!