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The Summary of Summer Weeks 1 and 2 Theme: Sealife, Beach, and Sand!
Sealife, Beach, and Sand Theme (Summer Weeks 1 and 2)
Here is a quick summary of all that we did for this 2 week theme!
*Checked out library books on sealife, and videos as well. The library is a great resource and a perfect summer field trip, we like the one on “C” street because the 3rd floor is a total kids oasis with toys and alphabet lessons everywhere, and the older one goes to the Teen room on floor 1!
*Grocery stores are perfect for looking at Seafood and purchasing to make dinners and snacks during this theme. We bought crab cakes, shrimp, and salmon.
*Read about Sealife. We read books, we looked online too.
*Cook it up! Take those seafood items and cook with the kids. One night we made shrimp and pineapple kabobs, crab cakes, salmon and shrimp alfredo!
*Watch Nemo, Shark Tale, A Dolphins Tale…and other sea related movies.
*I created a quiz for the kids to earn what our family calls Wii winnings and DS dollars. We don’t want them going willy nilly with video games, so they have to earn time to play. So they had to find answers to my Sea quiz and earn 2 hours of wii or ds to use during the week!
*One of my youngest is 4 years old, so instead of the quiz he made an alphabet book of the sea…each letter depicted a sea creature or items…S for shark, A for anemone…etc..
*Octodogs are great fun. Hotdogs sliced partway and boiled to make octopus…you then use ketchup for eyes. We laid them over a bed of macaroni and seashell pasta for lunch one day.
*Magnetic Fishing game. Use the back of the couch, and a $1 fishing pole from the dollar tree and some cheap treats to create a silly and fun game. My husband drew a picture of a tire, and a boot..so they didn’t always get a good “catch!”
*The zoo is a great field trip, with a touch pool, the otters..etc..
*Octopops. So you take a plastic cup, some juice and some gummy worms and tada..you freeze it then push out the juice that freezes with the gummy worms to make OCTOPOPS!
*Other snacks…Gummy sharks and bagels with blue frosting or you can dye cream cheese blue, Fishsticks and tuna sandwiches, goldfish crackers, blue jello, gummy fish, coral reef made up of pretzels and fresh fruit, swedish fish, and a sea drink where you take blue gatorade and ice cubes made with frozen gummy fish in them…so its the sea with icecube fish floating in it!
*Ultimate beach cupcakes…with little umbrellas and graham crackers for the sand!
*Rainbow fish story and Rainbow fish cupcakes made with M&M’s for their eyes and gills.
*Pet store to just look at fish or take home to name and feed etc..
*A beach trip was an awesome field trip…the Seaside Aquarium was great with touch pools and feeding the seals and playing in the sand. There is also Newport of course!
*Stamp art, take sponges cut into shapes of sea life and stamp with paint onto paper.
*Handprint octopus…use their hand print and paint and then add eyes to make a sea of octopus.
*Joes Crab shack can be spendy but it was a great place for a grand finale of fun and seafood! They even have an adult drink that is blue and a toy shark that drops red juice (blood) into the cup!
* I had the older kids make a presentation of what they learned about sea life and the beach and put it into presentation form and share with the grandparents.
So now you know what we did…It was great and the kids really got into it! I am looking forward to our next theme: Sports! I hope one of you benefits from our ideas and have as much fun as we did!
-Angela
Addisyn
So when we thought of doing a blog it was to keep up on addy’s growth. Now it’s a mix of that and the summer break and the things that the kids and I are doing to keep busy. So Addisyn, well she is 16 pounds now. A tiny little thing, 8 percent as far as weight is concerned at her last well baby visit. No teeth but no lack of drool. Starting to rock back and forth on her arms and legs, almost ready to crawl. She growls at us and doesn’t like to miss out on anything. She smiles easily at aj, laughs at Caleb and seems to tolerate Preston for the most part. She said hi for her first word and waves. She said more and mama and then came bye bye. She also says brothers….well more like buddaas…lol! This week I got a hi and a wave and a mama but more and more growling at us! She was cracking up yesterday over the sound of Velcro…it was pretty cute.
Thursday…theme sea life and beach and sand.
We are home today, relaxing. For lunch we ate our coral reef, pretzels and goldfish, and gummy sharks, and fresh fruit make up our colorful coral to go along with our theme this week!
Summer week one: Tuesday
We made octopus hotdogs for dinner and shark bagels for snack.
We went to the park and Caleb’s school for their summer reading night. We watched the movie pay it forward for a project we are doing this summer. It was a fun day.
Summer week one:Wednesday
Took the kids to the water fountain downtown Portland for some water play and some ice cream too! In the morning we went to the kids cooking corner so aj could take his cooking class and make some awesome brownies!
The boys worked on their presentation about sea life that is due Saturday.
Week one of summer: sea life, beach, and sand!
Monday: Today we went to the library and got our library cards, checked out new books, and signed up for summer reading programs for all four kids.
We made a box for our library books and our library cards and our reading sheets. For dinner we made shrimp and pineapple kabobs! The kids picked the prawns themselves from the seafood section at the store!
We made a bulletin board that shows the weeks schedule of events to help cure the never ending question of what are we doing today! We have a quiz of questions about different sea animals that they had to answer to earn video game time. To top off the day we watched finding Nemo for a relaxing afternoon movie after the days events at the library and shopping for seafood!
Last of all I challenged the kids with the following…Preston and Caleb need to work together on a PowerPoint about sea life and the Oregon coast to present to the grandparents at the beach this weekend. Aj since he is younger is making an alphabet book, with each letter representing something from the sea! Once completed they will win the challenge and $ 10 dollars. It works out well for us since they were going to get spending money at the beach anyways!
Summer 2012
I don’t know if it is all the years of teaching…or what? But I can’t just sit back and do nothing this summer. I have 4 kids and they all have strong opinions…yes even the youngest one! These strong opinions make for an interesting and adventurous summer. We are all involved in the planning of field trips and activities and even the types of foods we are going to try and make too! So here is what the Fowlks family is going to do..to keep busy, to not be BOOOORed out of our minds this summer of 2012!
Each week of summer we will have a theme. We will do activities that go along with the theme and snacks too! Yes we are going to stay busy! The first week is Sea life, Beach and sand. The next will be all about Sports! I will keep you posted on the rest of the upcoming themes. These 4 kiddos should be busy, busy, busy!
November 10, 2011
Our baby girls first photo shoot!
- “finally some pink!”
- A.J. and his baby sister
Addisyn Kathleen Fowlks
Today is exactly one month since our baby girl Addisyn Kathleen Fowlks was born! We couldn’t be happier and more exhausted! It has been quite a month let me tell you. Rich and I are sleep deprived but still have that giddy with love fulfillment that gets us by each day. That and caffeine of course! Addisyn is a name we had picked out before Avery Joseph (A.J.) came along. We originally hoped/thought he would be a girl! (hahaha) So when we found out the amazing news that we did it, we accomplished adding a girl to our world we new exactly what to name her! The spelling was a bit baffling of course. We had to get it just right. We didn’t want Addison because it says son at the end. We didn’t want Addysin because it says sin at the end. We went with Addisyn and for short Addy! Kathleen is her middle name, named after my mother.
Addisyn was born weighing 6 pounds 3 ounces. She is now (we think) 7 pounds. We will get an official number this coming Saturday at her weigh in! An unofficial weigh in of me on the scale with Addy and then without showed a 7 pound difference. She definitely looks bigger and rolls of chub are starting to appear on her arms and thighs and cheeks! She is still so tiny and fragile though.
Addisyn is not fond of her carseat or loud noises such as the van doors shutting. She loves the song “Do you know the muffin man.” She enjoys having her back rubbed. She is not in any way easy to burp. She has the brightest of blue eyes, but on occasion it looks like they may turn hazel. Her hair is a shade of brown with red tints to it. It looks like it may be curly just like dads!
We get asked a lot how the boys are doing with her. Great! A.J. needs more attention…but he says how much he loves her daily and wants to pet her head he says. He lets us know every sound she makes and believes that every time she cries its because she needs the binky. Caleb will talk to her and play with her and he likes to make fun of her facial expressions. Preston is always helping us, getting doors for us when we are walking with her, pushing the stroller, getting us diapers from the other room, and overall just trying to be a helper.
We love our Addisyn and we hope to get a little more sleep here in the next month and maybe figure out the best way to get a burp out of our little lady! She is a gassy girl that is for sure!
fowlksfivepointfive 