Mini Man's Hot Wheels Party

Usually, if we do a birthday party we throw a joint one for Big Buddy and Mini Man. Their birthdays are just two weeks apart and they have many mutual friends. This year, however, we decided to have separate celebrations. Big Buddy had a Nerf Party and Mini Man wanted a car party. I found it interesting that even though the boys have had several joint parties Mini Man kept referring to this as his First party. Big Buddy is natural leader and has a pretty intense presence; Mini Man tends to just go with the flow. It's only been in the last couple years we've noticed that we have to make an effort to make sure Mini Man's opinions are heard. Tracks and cars are Mini Man's favorite toys but because Big Buddy doesn't have much interest in them (and Mini Man prefers people, especially his older brother, over any toy) he doesn't play them too often. For his birthday we wanted to make sure all his track dreams came true.

Jeremy spent the night before covering our schoolroom and sitting room completely in tracks. I also added some simple orange, blue, and black decorations to make everything look extra festive. Other than cars and tracks we didn't have any set games or activities for the party. The boys went back-and-forth between racing on the tracks and going crazy in our basement playroom.

I kept the food simple: pizza, baby carrots, grapes, and mixed berries. The cake also didn't require much work, I bought a pre-made one from a local grocery store and then made a track out of fruit roll-ups.

We sent all the kids home with a bag full of cars, tracks, and some fruit roll-ups. It was fun watching Mini Man get to share his passion with all of his friends. I couldn't help but smile and feel blessed during the party. I'm so proud to call Mini Man my son - he is compassionate, gregarious, smart, and funny. I'm also so thankful for his friends. That they are boys whose parents are also training them up to love and serve the Lord. I'm excited to see them walk through this growing up journey together - to watch iron to sharpen iron.

PS. The boys' joint birthday parties: ocean, knights, and dinosaurs.

Comments

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Joyfully Weary

Search This Blog