Jackson (and Mommy's) last day of Joy School

Jackson has successfully finished his preschool years. He had a fun year learning his ABC's, 123's, and making lots of cute crafts. Here he is on his last and final day as a preschooler. Goodness! That boys is full of spit and vinegar! Of course, with a little sprinkling of sweetness and sugar on the side... :)

Jackson and all of his siblings participated in 2 years of Joy School. The moms of all the kids would take turns hosting Joy School at their house once or twice a week throughout the school year. That means that I (ME, the Mama) have also successfully completed 8 YEARS of Joy School! (Yay me!) It is a bittersweet moment to say goodbye to those years - the years when kids were still babies. These kids are all growing up on me. Too fast, I say. 'Stop growing up' has been our motto around here for the last several months. But since there is nothing I can do to slow time or force them to stay young we will instead look to the looming future...

Jackson looks forward to starting kindergarten this fall and is in for quite a surprise... ALL DAY kindergarten! None of our other kids experienced a full day of school during their first year in public school. Another school in our area has had huge success with their trial of an all day kindergarten program and now our school has decided to follow their example. I'm sure there will be a Jackson update at the start of the school year. We cross our fingers and toes to get a loving, patient teacher for our squirrely boy!

For now, Jackson is happy to run wild in the backyard and soak up the long days of summer with all his backyard pals.

Jackson gets ready for Easter

Here are a couple of great FHE ideas for your family at Easter time. We did made these "Easter Symbol Baskets" last year in YW and Jackson made one this week at Joy School. The idea behind the basket is this: 12 days of Easter instead of the 12 days of Christmas. Our family will have enough attention span to do one a day for 12 days. You families with older kids will be able to do this activity in one sitting.

This activity should help your family focus on the true meaning of the season. We love to hunt for Easter eggs, eat lots of chocolate Easter candy, and make a traditional Easter basket for the kids. But we never want to lose sight of what the season is really all about.

The short kid-friendly Easter story at the left was perfect for our almost 5 year old boy. He was totally listening the first time I read it to him. He read right along with me the second time and got a huge kick out of reading the pictures.

EASTER SYMBOL BASKET

Supplies:
1. 12 plastic eggs
2. items to fill eggs
-sacrament cup
-3 dimes
-knotted twine
- chunk of hand soap
- square of red fabric
- small nail
- sponge
- crushed rocks
- strip of white cloth
- small flat stone
- bay leaf (we used a small piece of fake greenery)
3. sharpee (or cute scrapbooking stickers) for writing numbers on eggs
4. dollar store basket
5. printed scripture references cut into strips.
6. cute Easter grass or moss to put in the bottom of your basket

Assembly Directions:
Put coordinating scripture references and symbols into each egg - printing the symbol number on each egg as you go. Place all eggs into basket. Display until 12 days before Easter.

EASTER SYMBOLS

1. Matthew 26:26-27,39 (sacrament cup)

2. Matthew 26: 14-15 (3 dimes) [This fulfilled the prophecy in Zechariah 11:12-14.]

3. Matthew 27:1-2 (knotted twine)

4. Matthew 27:15, 17, 21, 24-26 (chunk of hand soap)

5. Matthew 27:28-30 or Mark 15:16-17 (square of red fabric)

6. Matthew 27:31-32 (small nail)

7. Matthew 27:48 (sponge)

8. Matthew 27:50-51, 54 (crushed rocks)

9. Matthew 27:57-60 (strip of white cloth)

10. Matthew 27:60, 62-66 (a small, flat stone)

11. Mark 16:1, 2-6 (bay leaf)

12. Matthew 28:5-6 (empty)

the end of the joy school year is here

Jackson had a great year of preschool/joyschool with his friends. These kids were his schoolmates. It was such a treat for him to go to a different friend's house each week to learn and play!

Jackson really did learn some things. He can recognize several letters and numbers and can even write a few on his own already. None of our other kids took an interest in letters and numbers like Jackson at this age. He has one more year at home before kindergarten. He'll be ready when that day finally arrives!

Look at these cute kids! Don't they look like a boatload of fun just waiting to happen? There is so much energy inside each one of these little people and each with a distinct and different personality. We had so much fun together this year - it's hard to say goodbye. (Not too sad... they'll see each other every Sunday at church!)

Thank you Joy School friends (and moms for all your hard work, time, and patience)! It was a great year!

Joy School Halloween Party!

The week of Halloween we did a Halloween Party for the preschool kids. They all came in costume - so excited to show off their stuff! We had a Star Wars Clone Trooper, Batman, Spiderman, a Robot, Dalmation, and James the Train come to the party! (Jackson loves to "read" this picture and tell whoever will listen all the names of the characters that came to his house for Halloween.)

After a quick group picture we hopped into the car (I use the word "hopped" very loosely... it took us about 15 minutes to first strap in 6 car seats and then each kid, one at a time - whew! That was some work! But made the drive over and back so much fun!) and headed over to the Pumpkin Patch. (You cannot see Jackson's head, but he was in there too; in the center back seat.)


We took a tour through a "Spooky Train" that was all decked out like a haunted house. Then headed over to check out all the different kinds of pumpkins. There were big ones, and small ones, and funky ones...

Then there was one that was the biggest one we'd ever seen! That thing was almost 4 feet tall!!

We had each kid pose for an individual shot - they are sooo cute!


Everyone got to pick out their own baby pumpkin and then we headed back to our house for a sugary celebration. When we got home we dove right in to our treats. First they had to sort out the candies by type, then frost the cookies, and decorate with any fun candies they wanted.
It was a very quiet celebration as they all took their time licking off the frosting and tasting every kind of candy.
What a great way to kick off the Halloween weekend!

Preschool has begun!

Jackson started his first year of preschool this month! We're doing the same thing we've done with all the kids - a mom/child co-op style preschool. Each mom will take a turn hosting preschool at their house 2 days for one week.

He's been asking for ages for his turn to go to school. "Mommy? I go Joy School?" Finally it is his turn! The year began at our house with 4 boys and 2 girls. It is going to be a great year. Each one of these kids has a great personality and loves to have fun. We'll focus mostly on playtime with some ABC's thrown in there and hopefully they'll learn to sit still for a few minutes at a time.

Here are some pictures from their first day. Do they look excited or what?! Note Jackson's Googah even made it into the picture. (Hopefully he'll learn to let go of that thing by the end of the school year!)

Joy School End-of-the-Year Par-tay

It was a great year for Joy School. Lizzie had a great time learning with her 2 friends Preston and Sarah. They worked all year on writing their names, learning their numbers, shapes, colors and letters. They are ready for KINDERGARTEN!

We celebrated at the park with an ice cream party and lots of playtime. Benny was our special guest this week and the younger siblings (Ashlynn and Jackson) got to join us as well. We were a lively bunch eating ice cream in the freakishly cold, overcast, slightly sprinkling rain weather.

Enjoy a slideshow of our last fun day together.

Mother's Day Goodies

In years past, Jeremy has gone completely overboard with his Mother's Day Breakfast creations. Click here to see my "plate" from last year. While his intentions are great, (he just wants to spoil me and give me love through food - which I totally get - we are food people) I simply could never eat ALL THAT FOOD! I requested one entree for breakfast this year - STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. For breakfast. I was shocked at his self restraint. He made only strawberry shortcake and cinnamon rolls. It was the best Mother's Day breakfast ever (besides the video taping the whole thing - there wasn't an ounce of make-up on my face and my hair was soaked from my shower 2 minutes before). Check it out - it was on a real plate this time! Fresh strawberries, chocolate syrup and chocolate shavings for garnish. What a guy to remember the presentation. And there were 2 beautiful roses to boot. Gorgeous!

The kids presented their homemade cards and there were more roses waiting downstairs. My toes were beautified the day before at my Mother's Day pedicure. Aren't they so lovely?

Lizzie was proud of her Mother's Day gifts we made at Joy School a few days before. We made homemade freezer jam from Robb's home grown Green Gage Plums. Yes, GREEN JAM. It is quite tasty and all the moms and grammas loved getting a homemade treat from Lizzie.


Thanks to my family and sweet husband for a fabulous Mother's Day. I felt so loved and special.

Joy School Zoo Trip 2009

"Run, run, as fast as you can..."

"You can't catch me,
I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

It was Fairy Tale week at Joy School. That meant that I got to rummage through our book collection to see what fairy tales I had on hand that we could read at story time. Our kids got several Gingerbread Man books for Christmas last year and I that story would be perfect. We could read it, act it out and even do some baking - my favorite! The kids don't mind rolling up their sleeves and frosting cookies either.

Here was the book we read:
and on the back it had a recipe for gingerbread cookies - what a novel idea!
We rolled out some dough,

cut out some gingerbread man shapes,

and then popped those guys into the oven. We waited until they were done to see if they'd jump out of the oven and run out the front door. Luckily they did not because we had all of these lovely decorations to put on top of them!

Those were some happy frosting cookie decorating kids!

And here's how they turned out.

Don't worry, they tasted a lot better than they looked! I make a killer cream cheese frosting.

It was fun to have the house smell a bit like Christmas again. The magic of fairy tales mixed with the aroma of Christmas was a good combination.

Pet Store here we come!

Today was a big adventure day for Joy School. We've been studying ocean life and the letter S this week. And today was the day we got to go to the store and check out some of those animals in person - er... fish!

These kids loved checking out the fish and all the other animals in the store. It was like watching a pin ball game the way they bounced back and forth between the displays. And Jackson was there too, which made things even more interesting. (Mmm-hm. You know what he's like.) My favorite part of the outing was when walking out the door the kids all spied the "cookies" by the register. They all begged and begged for one of these most beautifully iced cookies until the lady told them, "Those are not for kids. They are for DOGS!" Whew! That curbed their interest instantly!

"P" is for puppets!

We did the letter P this week for Joy School. Lizzie, Preston and Sarah had a blast making puppets, playing playdough, and playing outside. The yarn hair got a little out of control with the puppets, but they loved them all the same. It was fun playing prince and princesses - until the girls wanted kisses of course.

Here was our letter P menu for snack time:
popcorn
pudding
pretzles
pickles
pineapple
pears
peanut butter

Christmas craft idea for next year

We had some fun decorating "Christmas Trees" for Joy School at our Christmas Party.


Here's what you need:
1. sugar ice cream cones
2. green frosting
3. sprinkles
4. anything else you can think of to trim your trees!


The kids thought it was great. And so did I! There was nothing to cook ahead of time. I debated making sugar cookies or buying the ones from the bakery. I saw this idea and was immediately sold! It was quick and easy and the kids got to eat them when they were finished. These trees would also look cool next to a gingerbread house.

Tuck this idea away for next year. It's a keeper!