Piwi Kids

Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Fathers' Day Card Alternative: A Treasure Map!

This year we are trying something new and giving Piwi Daddy a Map instead of a card! The map will be his guide to all the fun activities we have planned. The art work was a team effort: Mini Piwi drew the roads and our car on the map. Miss K added all the activities.

Last month we started talking about all the things we could do together for fathers day. The list got fairly long so we are going to be celebrating all weekend!

The list includes:

Visiting the Butterflies and Dinosaurs at the Houston Museum
Making Breakfast for Dad
Dessert at The Chocolate bar
Lunch at a Baja Grill
Visit the Pet shop with Butter the Basset
Present time!

Here's what we will be presenting to Piwi Dad at Breakfast on Saturday. The kids are excited already!

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Christmas at the beach

This year we took a short family vacation to Galveston to see the Festival of Lights. It was a great family time and the weather was amazing for winter (even for Texas). While it was snowing in Dallas, the Piwis played on the beach. They collected shells and watched the waves break with daddy. I was satisfied with taking pictures and watching that no one got too close to the water. I am not a fan of the ocean, but a tale about my ironic phobia can wait for another day.

We joined a local parish in their Christmas Masses, Miss K was excited to attend a Childrens' Mass with a live nativity. The church was packed!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Our rejoicing continues with the 12 days of Christmas!

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12 popular posts for 2012

Stocking up and saving $$$ for (not) back to school 2013

Shared at 1+1+1=1 tot school

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Mini Piwi's B'day week

It was a busy week....

We celebrated Mini Piwi's Birthday and she spent most of the week playing with her new toys.

Birthday cupcakes

Learning Resources Smart Snacks Alpha Pops

Thrilled with her new chair and sandwich making set

She did manage to fit some counting into her schedule with the Lady bug countdown puppet set we made together to go with '10 little ladybugs' by Melanie Gerth. The post about making the set is here

We also had a trial of ABC Mouse.com. Mini Piwi seemed to really like it.

I made the Christmas tot pack from 1+1+1=1 and one of the activities that Mini Piwi enjoyed was matching the shapes to the pictures of Christmas shapes....

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Painted Chicken

The gifts Mini Piwi loved!

Friday, November 23, 2012

Thanksgiving under the Sea

The week started off slowly. Miss K was getting her energy back from a week long bout of Bronchitis. Just as her temperature was dropping, Mini Piwi's was rising...at one point I had both of them leaning on me, asleep. Perry the cat came to sit on my lap and I dared not move except to reach for my e-reader. That was probably the sweetest moment of the week, my two 'babies' sleeping and cuddled up to me, a fuzzy friend and a book. In the quiet I even had the idea to create a planner for our advent activities...

When everyone was up, I got out a blank note book and together we made an 'Advent diary'. Amanda Bennet's Christmas Study Co-op on Face book begins on Nov 26. My theory goes...if we start AB Christmas and Truth in the Tinsel on Sun 25 and carry on until Three Kings Day (Jan 6) this would give us an Advent celebration of 45 days. One each day I made a basic list the activities each program suggested for us. I also hope to add in things we do or see or learn to make it a kind of keepsake.

Our printer wasn't cooperating so I just went old school and ruled up a 6 week calendar. The Piwis and I then worked together to add all the Feast days and the number of each Sunday in Advent.We also added Mini Piwi's birthday to the Calendar. Three years ago Mini Piwi was due to arrive on Christmas Day. She was born a few days early and was less than a week old when she had her first White Christmas in IL.

The Piwis decorated the first few pages with Santa and candy canes stickers. Little did they know that this was their first lesson...
I asked 'Is there something missing in these Christmas decorations?' Miss K looked puzzled at first and then I saw the light bulb over her head . 'Jesus!' she said. Mini Piwi of course copied her because she is the cutest little parrot. At this point Miss k began sticking in some candy canes upside down to make the J and wrote the rest of his name.

By Wednesday everyone was just left with a lingering cough. Mini Piwi still wasn't in the mood for anything but drawing and playing with our new set of Cuisinaire rods. Of course she still wanted to be involved with Miss K's lessons!

For Thanks giving we decided to eat out at Downtown Aquarium. We had been planning to go at some point and since we are moving out of the area this Month it was as good chance to go. It was definitely an experience the kids will remember. the aquarium on site is fairly small but still good for younger kids that aren't going to be staying for long visit. Personally I wasn't thrilled with the idea of a big beautiful white tiger being in a large glass cage but the kids sat there enthralled watching him. The highlight though was the restaurant's the humongous tank with giant fish and an eel that looked like he wanted to eat our food or us ( hard to know). It was like having Thanksgiving under the sea.

Spot the eel watching to see if any food gets dropped

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Our Faith & Fun fulled 2012 Advent Plan

It's hard to believe we are so close to the beginning of December! I have lots of ideas and this week has been the time to get started doing and not just pinning.

We are going to use two products so that both Piwi's have age appropriate activities. I anticipate a lot of crossover activities we can all do together though. It was this reason I chose this two awesome products:

For Mini Piwi's first Advent meditation we are using 'The Truth in the tinsel'

E-book and printables

From the TITT site: Spend December impressing God’s Word on your kids’ heart! You’ll get 24 days of Scripture reading, ornament crafts, talking points and extension activities. Plus fun printables and templates! Click here to view more details

I love that it was made for Preschoolers! I think it will be a perfect fit for Mini Piwi since it incorporates so many of her favourite things: Crafts, 'clues' to follow, angels, sheep, pictures of Baby Jesus (she was crazy about finding him in our picture books last year).

We are going are also joining the Amanda Bennet Christmas Co-op on Facebook

We got our copy of the Christmas Unit Study on sale for $6

From the Amanda Bennet website:
Christmas: a special time of rejoicing as we celebrate the birth of the Son of God, the Messiah. Learn what the world was like at the time of Christ's birth.
When so many material desires threaten to obscure the true meaning of Christmas, this study will help bring back into focus how the birth of a tiny baby changed the whole world!
The Christmas unit is in electronic format, meaning your children can work through the study interactively, clicking on the links in each lesson to further their own investigation. Each day's lesson plan has been written in two levels: Lower Level (elementary grades) and Upper Level (junior/senior high grades), enabling the whole family to learn together! Includes Christmas Note booking Pages. Christmas uses the Bible as its primary resource.

We will also be supplementing these activities with the Catholic Kids crafts at Catholic Icing

And of course there are all the things I keep finding on Pinterest!

Here are some pics of last year when we included a trip to see the lights at Gaylord Texan@Grapevine. It is so Crazy to thing that was only a year ago! We have moved twice since then!