Summer Plans for Quarantine!

As I type this more and more businesses and attractions are opening up again, but cases of infection are also on the rise in many states.  Most summer camps, if not all, are still cancelled, and as far as I know very few pools will be open at all.  Right now our plans are to keep staying home except for essential visits to the grocery store, but we are starting to socialize a little while keeping our distance. We aren't among the lucky few that have vacation homes that they can get away to and still isolate, nor do we have family living in any kind of vactiony type of place that we could visit.  So, for us this Summer will be staying at home, but we will make the most of it.  No empty days, right?

The day after the last day of school we got straight to work on our Summer plans.  Each year we've made a big poster board with all of our plans for the Summer.  We print off bucket lists, look up fun craft ideas, recipes we want to try, goals for each kid, camps they will go to, trips we will take, chores to work on, books to read, and movies to entertain.  This year was no different.  We spent a couple of hours figuring out what we wanted to do and could do at home.  We came up with seven camp ideas to do at home, set up a calendar of when we'd do them.  I will write posts about each camp we complete with instructions for the activities we did.  So far we are doing a cooking camp, a film camp, a creative writing camp, a technology camp, another week of travel camp, a sports camp, and we will participate in some of the online options offered through our school district.  We got a list of 100+ things to do this summer from Brooke Romney and glued that one, 100 ways to fight I'm Bored.  Laylah found a bucket list just for quarantine ideas from Art with Mrs. E here: Quarantine Bucket List .  We found a new book bingo by Mr Watts here:Book Bingo for summer reading, and we signed up for the local library summer reading program. The thing that took the longest was our "Pick-A-Stick" activity list.  We've done this one before and had the sticks all ready, each one with one end painted a color belonging to a type of activity, and the other end with a number.  We got the idea from Pam at Over the Big moon, 60 Days of summer. Each stick corresponds to an activity and when you pick that stick you get to do that activity.  We put in four silver special sticks to represent day trips we could safely take we time and good behavior warranted. Since we'd already done the suggested activities from Pam, this year we made our own list for the sticks. Here are the activities we came up with:

Orange: Recipes Blue: water activities

1.  Egg Drop Soup             37. Water balloon toss

2. pretzels 38. Sponge darts

3.  Crepe cake 39. Water balloon baseball

4.  Cupcake cake 40. Water balloon toss

5. Poutine 41. Frozen dinos

6.  Chili 42. Slip N Slide bowling

7.  Burgers 43. Water balloon egg race

8.  White chocolate blondies 44. Tinfoil River

9. Strawberry cakebox cookies 45. Sponge dodgeball
10.  Watermelon fries

11.  Fried pickles

Purple: Crafts Yellow: Themed weekends

12. Qtip painting 46. Rainbow

13.  Watergun painting 47. Lego Challenge

14.  Paper plate jellyfish 48. Beach

15.   Windchimes 49. Games

16.   Sewing project 50. Minute to Win it

17.  Tissue paper stained glass 51. Transformers

18.   Giant Bubbles 52. Stranger Things

19.  Playdough 53.  Pirates

20.   Rock painting 54. Mystery

21.   Bubble painting 55. Cars

22.  Coffee filter suncatchers 56. 4th of July

23. Paper bag puppets 57. Father’s Day

24. Knit/crochet something 58. Outdoors

   59. Art History

Green: Science/History 60. Travel to England

25. Geography Bee

26. Tinkercrates day Silver: Special events

27. Dancing rice 61. Drive in Movie

28. Rube Goldberg machine 62. Fossil Beach

29. Pendulum painting 63. Drive thru Safari

30. Inertia experiments 64. National Park

31. Grow gummy bears

32. Clay cartouche

33. Medieval chemistry 

34. US history timeline

35. Backyard Archeology

36. Colonial games

We wanted to make sure and not do too many things that we've done in the past, so instead of using one of the options for weekly schedules online we decided to come up with our own schedule.  You know the ones like "Make Something Monday", "Teaching Tuesday", "Water Wednesday", etc.  On the weeks we don't do camp we will follow a schedule with a similar idea but all our own.  We liked: Mystery Monday, where we can do something related to adventure, mystery, or spies.  Ideas are escape rooms, mystery books, scavenger hunts, and spy school.
Travel Tuesday, where we will pick a new country to learn about, make crafts and food from there, watch a movie or documentary about it, etc.
Weird Wednesday, this day is for science experiments, or aliens and monsters crafts, slime making, anything weird!
Thrilling Thursday, this could be anything exciting, water games, a new work out, a surprise outing, ghost stories, maybe even a scary movie!
Fossil Friday, I don't know about everyone, but my kids LOVE dinosaurs!  On Fridays we will make fossils, hunt for them, learn about Dinos, geology, archaeology, or really any kind of subject they want to learn from history.

We also came up with a chore chart for each kid.  We had a template we used last year from Crystal at Money Saving Mom, here : Weekly Cleaning Schedule .  Laylah decided it would be more motivational and fun if the kids could bid on chores every week instead of always doing the same ones.  So we filled in a complete list of chores that should be done daily, then weekly.  Each kid could start by bidding 10 points, whoever bid the lowest number of points would win the chore.  So if you weren't willing to do it at all then the other person automatically got 10 points for doing it. If you really wanted it you had to be smart and bid enough that it was still worth winning it.  So far both kids like the system and have completed the chores.  At the end of the summer we will add up all the points for rewards.

Since it was also the first weekend of Summer we decided to do a themed weekend-Carnival!  Connor got a Nintendo Switch carnival game as his big gift in his end of school goody basket.  He loves it!  We drew inspiration from the game and set up a few carnival games in the back yard.  We also did face painting and made fresh popcorn.  The kids enjoyed beanbag toss games, nerf fun target practice, a cup water gun race, fishing with magnets, ring toss, and a game of chance where you had three chances to pick a floating animal with the right color on the bottom.  There were lots of laughs and everyone, even the adults played the games.

We decided to keep the theme going by watching the new Dumbo movie on Disney+, and I made home made funnel cakes for dessert!  Funnel cakes are actually super easy.  All you need is Bisquick, flavored coffee creamer of your choice, an egg, and powered sugar.  I like using the vanilla creamer because it's more traditional, but you can use whatever flavor you like. Mix the Bisquick with the creamer and egg until it's the right consistency, kind of like slightly thinner pancake batter, just add a little at a time and make as much as you need for however many funnel cakes you want.  For a big batch of funnel cakes I used 2 cups of bisquick, about 1 cup of creamer and 1 egg. It made around 8 medium sized cakes. Heat vegetable oil in a large frying pan, about 1/2" deep.  Put the batter in a plastic bag and cut off one corner.  Drizzle the batter into the oil in a zigzag pattern, flip when the underside looks golden brown.  Take the funnel cake out of the oil and put on a paper towel, sprinkle with powdered sugar.  You can also put chocolate syrup or fresh strawberries on top.  Super easy, and super yummy!

Here's to the first week of Summer!  It's going to be a great one!

6th Grade Graduation!

My daughter, Laylah, graduated from 6th grade this last week.  Our school district has elementary school ending in sixth grade and middle school starts in 7th, so it was a big deal for the kids leaving elementary.  An end to an era.  She'd been at the same school since Kindergarten, so it was definitely an emotional experience, especially since she wasn't able to do many of the traditions kids have gotten to do in the past and that help make 6th grade what it is.  She didn't really get to be the big kid on campus, the senior.  All of the real 6th grade events were planned for the Spring, except the camp trip that happened in September.  We are so glad that she at least got to do that since this new crop of 6th graders will probably have to miss it if school is still remote in the Fall.  She did miss the faculty vs. 6th grade volleyball game, the 6th grade dance, the end of the year class parties, the 6th grade play in which she had a speaking part, the 6th grade award ceremony and the 6th grade graduation ceremony.  Frankly, it was really a bummer.  I realize it was definitely more disappointing for high school seniors to miss all of their events, but this was still hard.

Knowing she would miss out on so many of the things she'd so been looking forward to, I decided to do the best we could with what we had.  Luckily we had a lot of parents from school step up and help make this time as special as possible.  The first thing we did was plan a socially distanced 6th grade celebration.  Laylah invited three friends and we set up a fun evening for them in our backyard.  We put our patio chairs six feet apart, put the fire pit between them, and had them bring their own drinks and snacks.  I set up our table with different activities that the girls could take turns coming up and doing one at a time.  We put out blank pages for each girl to sign like yearbook pages, since we don't have yearbooks yet and don't know when we will get them. They can put these in the books later.  I also asked parents to send baby pictures of each girl, then I found similar stock pictures online and printed them all. I taped them all to a poster board and numbered them.  They had to guess which baby was which girl.  They had a ton of fun with it, and it's something that would have happened at the 6th grade dance.  We also made "Most  Likely to.." certificates for everyone.  They all got dressed up in what they would have worn to the dance and we made everyone a lei to wear.  Most of the time they just sat around the fire pit and talked, something they hadn't done in person in three months.  They all had a blast and I think it slightly made up for missing the real thing.

For graduation day I got planning the week ahead.  I had made binders for each year of elementary school with important projects, artwork, pictures, certificates, notes from teachers, etc.  I got them all out as well as the yearbooks for each year.  I also found the bins of kid artwork I've kept and pulled out a few funny ones. I found all of her school pictures and attached them to a ribbon with clips to hang on the wall. I used our roll of craft paper to make two banners with our dot markers, one said "Congratulations," and the other "Welcome Summer."  I didn't want to forget that it was also a special occasion for my third grade son.  He'd worked hard all year and should also be celebrated for the amazing job he did through this difficult time.  I made them each goodie baskets with some favorite candy and snacks, a new book, some kind of special toy or gift, their summer workbooks, and bubbles.  The night before the last day of school we put everything up.  We hung the pictures and artwork, set out the binders and yearbooks, and put the Congratulations banner up.  We also found a few balloons and hung them up.  When the kids got up in the morning we had a special breakfast of their choice, they got dressed up in their last day clothes, and we took our traditional last day of school pictures with the signs we've had since they were in pre-school. Then virtual school began.

The school organized a drive thru graduation pick up for the last day.  Laylah wrote a letter to her future High School senior self to be mailed by her teacher when the time comes.  They also got to see their teachers again and receive their graduation certificates and class t-shirts.  During virtual school they showed a video of collected photos parents had sent in ranging from Kindergarten through 6th grade.  They worked really hard to make sure every student got into the video. We were very lucky in that our PTA is very involved with the community and one mom planned a special graduation parade for the afternoon of the last day.  Parents and students decorated their cars with paint, balloons, streamers, and flowers, and the cars lined up to follow a route through their neighborhoods.  People came out to wave and cheer in support and some made thoughtful signs.  The parade ended at the school where the staff was out waving and cheering.  Over fifty cars participated, and it was amazing! It really made the kids feel special and like they hadn't missed out on so much after all.  I found my old high school graduation cap and Laylah sat in the front seat of our minivan.  She loved it!

When we got home the kids ran through our "Welcome Summer!" banner, played with the bubble machine, and had popsicles.  Then they got their goody baskets.  We ended the day with ice cream for dinner and a lemon cake with a 6 candle on top.  Not the healthiest dinner, but we did include lots of fruit!

Right now we don't know what the next school year will be like.  It seems likely that it will start off with remote learning, but we know how to handle that now.  We're experts.  And, we know we can still make it something memorable and special.  These kids are going to end up being among the most resilient, creative, strong, and independent generations in recent history.  The future will not look like the past, and they may not know what to expect, but they've got this.  Congratulations to all the graduates of 2020!  You're going to make this world a better place!

3, 2, 1...Blastoff!

This weekend we celebrated the first manned American space launch in nine years!  It was originally planned for Wednesday but got delayed for weather reasons until Saturday.  This gave us some time to get together some fun ideas to make our weekend all about Space!  I did a little research online, looked through our books and supplies, and we came up with a plan.  I think everyone learned something new and we all enjoyed watching the successful launch. Here is what we did:

Friday: We started our space themed weekend on Friday night with a movie night.  There are a lot of space related movies out there, but we wanted something with some real history and science, not crazy sci-fi, and definitely not alien horror.  We settled on watching Apollo 13 because it was free on Stars, and fit our criteria.  Another good option is The Right Stuff, but we couldn't find that one for free anywhere and it's over three hours long. We knew Apollo 13 would be exciting and have a happy ending where nobody got hurt, so that's what we went with.  The kids actually got really into it.  We didn't tell them anything ahead of time so they weren't sure if the astronauts made it home.  It also garnered a lot of questions about America's space program, the astronauts, and computers.

Saturday: On Saturday we started off reading some books about space and rockets.  We have a set of books called "Questions Kids Ask".  Each one explores different topics.  We read the one with questions about space. It was the perfect length to read together and both kids learned something new, or was reminded of facts they'd learned a while ago.  Next we found Connor's Smithsonian rocket set and put it together.  It uses baking soda and vinegar as the propulsion.  It was tricky to get everything to go together and not spill out, so our first two attempts did not work, but it was still fun to put it together!  We made plans to try again the next day because it was getting close to launch time.  I got the kids together in the family room to watch the coverage while Brandon made some popcorn.  Then we all got to watch the successful launch of the Dragon, including our bearded dragon.  We figured she'd appreciate the event.

We used cardboard tubes and inserts from stocking packages.

After watching  the launch the kids were inspired to make their own rockets out of toilet paper and paper towel tubes.  They made them to have the toilet paper tube be the capsule with the astronauts and the paper towel tube as the engine that falls away.  Connor loved doing this craft and spent most of the rest of the day putting his action heroes in the rocket and having  a grand time blasting off.

We used hot glue to make the cone for the top
then cut it to the right size

Hot glued the cone to the toilet paper tube.

Next I cut a hole for action figures to sit in the rocket.

We added triangle pieces to the bottom as the fins.
We used hot glue to put them on.

Connor painted everything white.

Everything is painted, next we added stickers.

We cute out orange flames for the bottom of each part and glued them in.

The completed rocket. Connor named it the Bat and the Wing.

C

They came apart after launch.

That evening we watched the National Geographic documentary Mars: Inside SpaceX about SpaceX and their mission to build a rocket that could go to Mars. It was on Disney+.  Even though it was a documentary the kids paid good attention and were interested in the process to build the Falcon Heavy and the launch it showed.  It helped them better understand the historic launch we'd witnessed that afternoon.  We ate my attempt at galaxy brownies during the movie.  They were very tasty if not exactly galaxy looking.  Having made homemade brownies several times I kind of winged it on the recipe, but I will definitely make them again since there were none left!

Galaxy Brownies:
Ingredients-
1 stick butter                    3 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa powder     1 tbsp Vanilla extract
3/4 cup flour                    3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt                       1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup chocolate chips
handful of colored chocolate chips
and star sprinkles to create the galaxy

Butter and flour a 8x8" pan and set oven to 350 degrees.  I used a round cake pan because it's the only one small enough that I could find, but square is probably better. Beat softened butter, eggs, sugar and vanilla until creamy.  In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients.  Add dry ingredients to the mixer slowly until incorporated.  Fold in chocolate chips. Pour into prepared pan. I used blue and white Frozen themed chocolate chips I had on hand, plus some red, purple, and pink melting chocolate wafers that I chopped up to sprinkle over the top of the batter. The idea was that they'd melt and create a swirly colorful galaxy on top of the baked brownies.  They didn't actually melt that well, but it still looked nice, and when I added the star sprinkles you could definitely tell what I was going for.  I baked them for 30 minutes and they came out fudgey and delicious.  They were still warm when we at them for dessert.
                 

Sunday: Sunday was a relaxed day with beautiful weather.  We didn't spend as much time on space adventures, but did have a great lesson on aerodynamics with paper airplanes.  The kids are supposed to design and create different models this week so that we can have a contest with them on Friday.  Categories will include most unusual, best looking, fastest, and farthest flyer.  We also decided to take advantage of the weather and have a Spring photoshoot for the kids.  Since school was cancelled they didn't get to take Spring pictures.  I didn't want them to miss a year, so we had our own.  They got a little dressed up, combed or curled hair, and we went for a walk to look for likely backgrounds.  There was a little whining about sun being in their eyes, but they mostly had fun picking their own poses and settings and we got a lot of good pictures using the portrait setting on my phone.

All in all it was a good weekend.  I think everyone will remember the launch, learned something about space exploration and the American Space Program,  and we have a yummy new brownie recipe!