I Know the Scriptures are True

For our Family Home Evening and devotional theme this year, we decided to use the Primary theme, which is "I know the scriptures are true." We figured that there are so many great resources in the Friend, plus it's what they'd be learning about in Primary, so we should take advantage of that! Our nightly devotionals will take us through The Book of Mormon (although not reading every verse--we are reading some plus also using the picture stories). In addition, Sarah and U are reading The Book of Mormon together (a bonus being that Sarah is reading what her class in Primary is studying so they reinforce each other).

For our weekly home evenings, U and Me are taking one per month to introduce the theme for the month and to do a related activity and then we are having each of the kids teach one time per month as well. They are really excited about this. For our January lesson, we talked about Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem and travelling through the wilderness. We then built some boats to sail to the promised land.

Here a couple of them are sailing.

For Megan's home evening, she taught about following the footsteps of Jesus. We traced our feet and wrote what we would do to follow Jesus. (Matthew wanted both of his feet traced, which is why there are six feet.)

For Sarah's home evening, she taught about temples and about how our body is a temple, She had a fun activity where Megan and Matthew decided whether things were good and should go into our body (like healthy food, good music, etc) or bad and should go into the trash (like drugs, bad words, etc).

For Matthew's home evening, he and U put on some puppet shows about manners. They taught us good things to do, and things not to do. In case you're wondering, the animals always had good manners while the people did not.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Megan loves our Christmas tree. When we talked about Christmas beforehand, she talked about how excited she was to put up the tree. Once it got past Thanksgiving, that was all she could talk about. So when it came time to take the tree down, she was devastated. Like, had a huge meltdown devastated. I suggested that she draw a picture of the tree so she could remember it. She did and said it really helped her feel better. Here's her picture of the tree:

Matthew 5 year check up

Matthew had his five year check up this past week. He's doing great! We did have to convince him to talk to the doctor since initially Megan answered all the questions the doctor asked him while he buried his face in my side. We told him that she needed to hear how well he spoke which is absolutely true. (We also had to ask Megan to please not answer the questions for her brother--such a helpful big sister!)

He weighed in at 33 pounds (almost 4th percentile--the highest he's been!) and 40 3/4 inches (12th percentile which is also big for him).

Matthew's 5th Birthday Party

After having the reschedule several times for various reasons, Matthew was finally able to have his birthday party the 23rd of January. He had been looking forward to it for a long time and was glad it finally happened. His party had a space theme. Activities included making UFOs out of paper plates and glow-in-the-dark stickers, making balloon rockets, getting the rocket safely through the asteroid field (a version of pin the tail on the donkey that U created) and flying around chairs to a rocketship song (musical chairs). There was fruit, apple raspberry muffins and apple juice for refreshment.

Blowing up rocket balloons--some of the kids could blow the balloons super big!

Around he goes!

Megan putting her rocket in the asteroid field.

A straight on shot of the asteroid field--the orange area was where you wanted to fly to get through safely.

The wall decorations (and Sarah). It's the sun plus the planets through Jupiter. And a UFO, of course.

Blowing out the candle.

Dawson, Edward, Matthew and James.

James, Megan, Leah, Fayth and Dawson.

Legos from Edward.

Building kits from Leah and Dawson.

More Legos from Fayth and James.

A rousing game of duck, duck, goose while waiting for the parents to arrive.

And let's not forget Santa. Matthew really wanted Santa to come to his birthday party. In fact, his plan on Christmas Eve was to get up when Santa came so that he could invite him to his birthday party. Unfortunately, Matthew slept right through Santa's visit (and was quite disappointed on Christmas morning that he'd done so!). We were able to dispatch a birthday party invitation to Santa. While Santa wasn't able to make it, he did send a letter and a birthday candy cane.

Christmas card wall!

We love getting Christmas cards and letters from our family and friends during the Christmas season. We hang them on the wall to enjoy throughout the season.

Blocks!

We've really enjoyed playing with the magnetic blocks we got from Allison for Christmas. Here are a few creations.

Preschool: Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

For the last couple weeks of preschool, we have been studying "Another Celebrated Dancing Bear." It's about two bears in Russia. One is a dancer and the other wants to be so his friend teaches him. We learned about Russian geography and culture, looked at Russian architecture, listened to Russian music and watched Russian ballet. We talked about what an occupation is and what occupations they might like to have when they are older. We talked about hospitality and what it means to be a good friend. They acted out lots of words from the book, like "bowing" and "kicking." They cut out and glued the hours on a clock.

One of my favorite activities was when we learned about the states of matter by examining water as ice, liquid and steam--what happens when we pour it and how does it feel. We did an experiment where we put ice in different locations and then monitored how quickly it melted. Their hypothesis was that the ice on the counter would melt the fastest, then the one outside, then the one in the fridge and the ice in the freezer would melt the slowest. They were correct on all counts and had a lot of fun running to check on their ice at set intervals. The ice in water on the counter melted completely in under 30 minutes, the one on the counter on a plate melted in 2 hours. It took quite a bit longer for the one outside to completely melt as it was a fairly cold day. We didn't see any melting of the ice in the fridge until 8 hours, and even then it was very little (no wonder it takes so long for things to defrost in the fridge!). The ice in the freezer......well, it didn't melt one bit! Even a week later it was still just as much the same size as before. Maybe that's why we put water in the freezer to turn it into ice!

Megan and Matthew with states of matter.

With the ice cube that was outside. Matthew insisted on putting this under his bike wheel. Every time we checked on it, he spun the wheel to create a fan.

Close up of the ice--melting some, but still a lot of ice left.

Preschool: Katy and the Big Snow

We have enjoyed studying Katy and the Big Snow. We learned about what is takes to run a city; Megan and Matthew liked looking at the map of Geoppolis and locating different buildings like the library and the train station. We learned about service and how everyone doing their jobs helps things run smoothly. We looked at street signs (and Megan and Matthew have been pointing them out ever since!). We learned about directions. I've been amazed that they will look for the compass rose and point out the direction Katy is going. 

With the Katy they made.

Sometimes, made up activities are the best ones. Megan decided they should practice shoveling snow and so got sugar in a bowl (to be the snow) and carrots (to be the plow). Note: this activity may have involved some eating of the snow....

A New Year's Toast

We decided to celebrate the New Year with India. At 11:30 a.m. Seems like a great time--no late nights or grumpiness involved!

Other festivities included going to a soup party with a bunch of friends (so many yummy soups! and lots of good conversation) and watching the Times Square celebration at midnight New York time (can the New Year happen without that???).

With their New Year's poppers that they made.

Fully Mobile

It is official.  We are a fully mobile bike family now.  A neighbor boy got a new bike for Christmas and gave his old one to Matthew yesterday. Because of his balance bike, Matthew was able to ride really well, he just needed to learn to start and stop.  Today that is pretty well taken care of. I love those balance bikes.