All about Hearts & Love~2012

For Valentine's Day, we focused on love. The love of God and the love in our family 

and the world. 

We had a lot of fun!

Our library books for the week.

Ce Ce {20 months} sorting hearts by color. 

We made these heart-shaped crayons. The girls love using them!! 

You can see the tutorial here.

Ce Ce scooping conversation hearts.

One of our Bible Verses for the week.

Red Valentine's day homemade play dough.

Of course, the love of Jesus is the best love of all!

I put together this Valentine's Day play dough tray. I used an old chocolate candy tray, a heart-shaped cookie cutter and chocolate homemade play dough.
I modified this recipe by adding a couple packets of instant hot chocolate---it worked perfectly!

The girls LOVE this activity!!

The girls role played delivering the chocolates to the nursing home:)

I think it is time for us to make another visit to the nursing home.

I made a very special Valentine's Day dinner for my wonderful husband. 

We made heart-shaped cupcakes for our homeschool Valentine's party.

It was so simple-just insert a marble in the baking pan. 

I took the cupcakes and let the kids frost and decorate them at the party. 

It was a huge hit!

Some of the kids in our homeschool group. 

We really enjoyed the Valentine's Day party!

We made french toast with powdered sugar hearts on top:)

I made a potato into a heart stamp. 

The girls loved using the potato to stamp red, glittery hearts.

We have always used Baby Sign Language.
This craft shows how to say "I love you" in Sign Language.

Jesus loves you and so do I!
Blessings,
Aria:)

Melted Heart Crayons {Tutorial} for Valentine's Day!

I have always loved the shaped crayons on the market, but just could not ever justify the high price. I have seen these heart shaped crayons before and decided to give them a whirl in preparation for Valentine's Day!

 Step 1: Preheat oven to 275 degrees. I then pulled out our box of extra, loose, broken and mismatched crayons. I remembered melting crayons before and using the "cheap" brands. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!!  Use Crayola crayons for the best results.

I gave the cheap crayons to the baby to draw with:)

 Then, I remembered what a PAIN it is to peel all the wrappers off, so I enlisted Elle's help:)

We both figured there HAD to be a better way and decided to Google it:) 

We found this very helpful video that shows how to cut the labels off. 

Easy Peezy!

Step 2: Remove all the labels and break up the crayons into smaller pieces.

 Step 3: Separate the colors into bowls, however you would like. We just randomly selected:)

 Step 4: Spray your heart shaped pans with cooking spray liberally and place the broken crayon pieces into each heart.  

Step 5: Place in the preheated oven and cook 10-15 minutes until the crayons are 

all melted and gorgeous!

{Side note: We used a silicone baking pan and it is floppy, so we placed it on a round baking sheet before putting it into the oven for added support.} 

 While waiting for the crayons to cool off, the girls decorated their Valentine's Boxes for their card exchange for our upcoming Homeschool Party with over 40 other kids!

 Aren't they beautiful?! We love how well they turned out!

And, as you can see, they write really smoothly as well!

Now...it's YOUR turn! Go turn those old, broken crayons into something beautiful!

Have fun preparing for Valentine's Day! 

There are tons of other great craft ideas on Pinterest!

If you need more ideas, here is how we approached Valentine's Day 2011 in a godly fashion and here you can see all of the fun food ideas I used last year on Valentine's Day! If you want to try an awesome strawberry bread, check out our recipe here. If you want to make a really neat heart-shaped bird feeder, check out our blog post here.

Blessings,

Aria:)

~Our Art and Music Lessons~

Here is the wrap-up for our Art and Music lessons. 

We absolutely LOVED this unit study and wanted to share it with you!

In addition to our normal routine of math, science, language arts, phonics, history and social studies, we made extra time for lots of fun art projects!!!

Our theme was based upon Ephesians 2:10. 

What a wonderful message:)

Enjoy the photos of our art and music adventures.

 Mommy even got to make a few paintings. LOL.

 That's me on a beach somewhere....ahhhh!!!

 The 2 big girls (Elle and Em) with the necklaces they beaded. They also made bracelets and a necklace for Mommy:).

 Our books for our lessons.

 We had a wonderful time visiting our local Art Museum!!

 Elle and Ce Ce:).

 Elle building a sculpture out of pipe cleaners. {Mock-up of the Chihuly exhibit}.

 Em crafting her sculpture.

 This was a fun magnet thingy. All kinds of fun shapes and sizes to explore.

 Ce Ce saying and signing "giraffe." 

 Elle making a silly animal. You can combine different animal body parts to design your own creation!

Too cool!

 Em is so proud of her creation!

 Ce Ce had a wonderful time!!! 

She really tries hard to keep up with the "big girls."

 Ce Ce making a sculpture out of dishes.

 She thought the best part was knocking everything down and making a loud "crash!"

 Straw painting. Just put paint on a plate and then blow air through the straw to move the paint around the paper. Very neat!

 Uncovering "hidden messages." We wrote messages in white crayon on white hearts and the girls used watercolors to uncover them. 

 Making balloon designs with tissue paper. 

 We covered black paper with chalk and the girls "painted" with water. 

It was fun, but they were disappointed that the water dried and "went away."

 I love how silly and expressive Em is....most of the time:) LOL.

One of Elle's paintings. She LOVES using the new glitter paints we got!

Now...on to our music class.

It was Princess dress-up day for class. 

The girls thoroughly enjoyed it! 

So did Mommy:).

 Ce Ce LOVES playing the recorder!

 Maybe we could start a girl band:).

 I do a class based on Music and Movement.

Here, the girls are using the Rhythm Sticks to

"tap their toes til the music stops."

Elle is being a walrus.

 Em loves being a moose.

 Ce Ce LOVES music and always enjoys our music class!

 Time to twirl the ribbons!

Looking at these pictures just makes me HAPPY!

Homeschooling should be HAPPY!

Blessings,

Aria:)