DIY Mason Jar Night Light {with Water Beads!}

We love DIY projects in our home and the kids are no exception.  They decided to make their own night light using a mason jar, submersible lights, and water beads.  They turned out really cool!

We bought a small pack of 4 submersible lights in the floral department at Michael's craft store.  We also bought 2 packages of their Ashland water beads (purple and clear).  But the kids wanted more colors so we went to Hobby Lobby and bought their DecoBeads water beads.

The water beads start out as little bitty hard pellets.  Be careful if you pour them out.  These suckers can really roll....right off the table and all over the floor!

You soak the water beads in water and they will grow as they absorb the water.  In just an hour or so they had grown about 3 times their size and were starting to get squishy.  The kids loved just running their hands through the beads in the water.  It is a fun sensory experience for their sense of touch.

I did not like the Ashland purple beads because a lot of the color bled off into the water which means that the color will stain hands and anything the water touches!  This didn't happen with any of the other beads (see the blue ones in the picture).

We had lots of different colors of water beads soaking.  They were fun to play with as they grew in size.

The clear water beads were especially neat because sometimes they seemed to completely disappear in the water.  But Rachel loved putting her hands down in them to watch the neat effect it made on her hands.

Once the beads stopped growing in size, the kids started making their night lights.  They put some beads in a mason jar and added the submersible lights.

Once the jars were filled, they put the lids on them and took them to their rooms.  They are not very bright but they add a beautiful glow to their rooms at night.

Sandy Lake Homeschool Day

Sandy Lake Amusement Park is an old-fashioned park like Fun Fair Park in Baton Rouge where I grew up.  As a matter of fact they have many of the same rides that I grew up on!

I did not ride the Pretzel ride until our first time at Sandy Lake though.  It looked like a fun house to me so I went with Rachel who was then maybe 3 years old.  It was not a fun house.  It was a bumpy ride through a musty old building in the complete darkness.  Not fun for a little 3 year old.  Ever since then, Rachel has given me a hard time about how scary the Pretzel ride was for her.  Mama fail!

But this year she said she wanted to ride it again to conquer her fears.  I was excited that she was challenging herself but I just really didn't like the ride so I was disappointed that I had to ride it again.  But it was the very first thing we did when we got there. 

Rachel posed this Before picture of herself as she used to be so scared of the Pretzel ride.

But then she wanted me to take an After picture showing how spunky she was for doing the ride and how it wasn't scary to her at all.

Nicholas was off with friends to ride some of the bigger rides while Rachel and I rode the carousel several times in a row. 

We found Nicholas riding the spinning swings.  I love his smile!

Rachel and I headed back over to find more rides for her.  She hopped into this boat ride and was excited that she had it all to herself.  But another little girl wanted to ride the boats and there were no other seats available so Rachel let her ride along with her.  They talked most of the time with each other except when each of us moms called to them trying to get their picture together.

She is a little big for this flying fish ride but she thought they were so cute that she just had to take it for one spin.

My favorite ride from my childhood - the Paratrooper!  This ride was at Fun Fair Park and I just loved it.  Nicholas rode it several times by himself and I somehow convinced Rachel to ride it with me...I had to because I couldn't ride it myself and leave her standing around on the ground alone.  She rode it with me and did great!

Next we hit the paddle boats.  It's a bit of a workout because my kids like to go fast and it only runs on peddle power.  Nicholas and I paddled with the two sets of peddles while Rachel had it easy just riding along between us.

They came up with imaginary stories about us being superheroes trying to catch bad guys as we zipped around the little pond.  I love hearing their creativity come to life!

It was a very overcast day so I packed some disposable rain ponchos for us, just in case.  Well two drops of water fell from the sky and Rachel just couldn't wait to put her poncho on.  Silly girl!

She rode the pony around the track for a while but she seemed a little scared of it.  I'm not sure why because she has ridden ponies like this many times in the past.  Nicholas didn't like seeing the ponies tied up and being forced to walk around in a tight circle all day.

We took the train ride around the park before heading home.  It was another fun visit to Sandy Lake Amusement Park!

Happy Birthday Nicholas! {Party at Urban Air!}

Nicholas wanted to celebrate his 11th birthday at Urban Air Trampoline Park in Southlake.  It's a fun place with wall-to-wall trampolines, a foam pit, and a brand new Warrior Obstacle Course.  The kids wanted to try the obstacle course first!

Rachel insisted on wearing her red velvet Christmas dress to the party because she wanted to dress up for Nicholas' party.  It may have hindered a little on the obstacle course but it certainly didn't stop her.

Here's my boy doing a flip on the trampolines.  My heart skips a beat!

We told Rachel she could wear the party dress but pointed out that there would be lots of jumping around and she really should wear pants instead.  So what did she do?  She put pants on underneath her party dress!  But soon she realized that the dress was too much of a hinderance and fortunately Mommy had planned on that and had a change of clothes for her.

Nicholas loves trampolines!  He had so much fun!

There is even a Dodgeball court where teams face each other and throw balls trying to get the other team "out".   Nicholas enjoyed running across the center aisle teasing the other team to knock him out.

As much fun as he was having, there were several times that I caught Nicholas just sitting still for a few minutes.  I checked with him and he said his asthma made it hard to breathe if he bounced around too much.  That made me sad to see that he couldn't do everything he wanted to do because of a medical problem.

Everyone had worked up a good sweat so we took a break for cake!

Nicholas designed the cake himself and we had a Casa Linda Bakery make it for us.  He gave them a picture of what he wanted it to look like - sand with some greenery and rocks.  Then we found the little fighting guys to stick on it.  He said it is the best cake he's ever had!

Make a wish!  I personally wish for this young man to grow to be healthy and strong, to keep Jesus in his heart, find his passion in life, and fall in love with a Christ-loving girl.

There were lots of presents to open...

He loves everything Pokemon, Minecraft, and Halo Mega Blocks.

Back to the trampolines and dodgeball!

Rachel didn't really follow the rules of dodgeball but she had a lot of fun running all around the court!

Everyone had a great time and no one got hurt!  Happy Birthday sweet Nicholas!

Playing in the Rain

We don't get much rain in North Texas but this spring has been an exception.  Today we had a sudden heavy storm that came and went rather quickly but it caused some flash flooding.  The kids loved it!

They went out to play in the sprinkles at the end of the storm and found the big flow of water coming from down the street to the storm drain in front of our house.  Rachel put on her raincoat and rain hat and then stood right in the middle of the flow!

Then Nicholas joined her.  The grabbed some spare boards and made a small dam.  Nicholas brought out a styrofoam tray that we had contained some sliced fruit from the grocery store.  He walked down the street and put the tray in the water and they watched their "boat" sail down the waterway.

Of course they enjoyed it when the boat hit their dam.  I enjoy watching them process discovery learning of some basic principles of physics and not even realize that they are learning!

They played with their styrofoam boat for a while then sailed leaves and other sticks down the street.  Nicholas disappeared for a while and then I found him on the front step carving a boat. His ideas, creativity, and resourcefulness always amaze me!

In the meantime, Rachel was having a blast playing with a whirlpool that had accidentally formed on one side of the dam. It sucked things down into it and spit them out on the other side of the dam!  Take a look at this quick video clip:

I checked back on Rachel who had decided to try to dam up the storm drain!  Actually the purpose of this dam was simply to keep their boats safe from being sucked down the drain with the water flow.  Good thinking!

By now Nicholas had finished his boat and they sailed it down the street for a while.  So cool!

They worked on their dam some more.  It was no longer raining so Rachel took off her rain gear but it didn't really matter because she was halfway soaked from splashing in the water for fun!

One of my favorite times today was when Rachel asked me to pretend to come to her store and ask to see the "Splashing Machine".  Check it out in the video below.  She may not know the names for what she created but she learned a lot about levers, fulcrums, load, and effort today.

What a fun way to explore and learn about the world around them!

Stamps Teach Plus

My kids are strangely in love with collecting and trading Pokemon cards.  I don't know how this started except that they've seen other kids trading these cards but the whole thing seems completely pointless to me. 

So I decided to try to introduce them to collecting stamps instead in hopes that they might actually learn a few things while collecting.  I found this wonderful resource called Stamps Teach Plus.  There are downloadable lesson plans and worksheets about stamp collecting but what is really amazing is that when I signed them up for the program, they received all of this wonderful stamp collecting material pictured below...for free!

There are First Day Covers which are envelopes that have a stamp that is cancelled on the first day of issue for that stamp.  It's a commemorative keepsake for the day the stamp was first released.

There are challenges called StampVentures that get the kids to look through stamps for specific objects and they cover school subjects of Math, Science, Social Studies, Fine Arts, and Language Arts.  

There are also small StampVentures posters for each subject.  The one below challenges kids to look for stamps that represent countries where their ancestors were born.  I hope the kids enjoy these challenges and learn a little along the way.

There are colorful stickers for some stamp themes.

They each received several stamp albums for their collections.

More stamp related educational material - word searches, cross word puzzles, etc.  Love it!

There is also some introductory info to stamp collecting as well as a membership application to the American Philatelic Society.  I'm signing them both up...and I might just join myself so I can learn more too!

Some stamps and historical information.

Lots more First Day Covers!

A few colorful posters covering different stamp themes.  The Reptiles and Amphibians poster is Rachel's favorite.

There are also some small educational posters that go along 

And what is most fun is the giant pile of cancelled stamps they received to start their collections off right.  How cool is that?!

What a wonderful resource for introducing kids to stamp collecting!