Homeschool Lent activities

Last year we all enjoyed some great activities leading up to Easter in celebration of Lent. It was a highlight of our homeschool year for sure and I plan on doing some of the same activities as we did last year plus some new ones. There is an abundance of information on the Internet that has given me all these ideas so I can't claim them for my own. So here we go, our plans for Lent:

We will do this again, it's called "praying hands". I've just got to find a dairy free recipe for this year.

We will also make crosses to hang on the mantel, you can see the ones from last year here. 

These were a hit and we will make them again for sure, just dairy free. See them here. 

Something new I plan on doing is having the kids make a banner. They will use these printable letters. Thank you Martha Stewart! And they will make a banner that looks like this. However, I will have the kids chose a name of God to print out like we did last year, similar to this but using the format from above.

I'm going to have Camden and whoever else wants to make this:

 And this:

You can read about these activities and their meanings here.

And I thought Anna may enjoy this, so I printed one for her.

I can't wait to do this and talk about the last supper. This is the one I'm most looking forward to! I've got it all printed and ready to go.

We have done this for the past couple years and will continue it as long as the kids show interest, we have at a least a few more years with Anna. :)

And last but not least we will check out library books about Easter and I'm hoping to find this book there because it looks really neat and comes recommended by a friend.

I think that will keep us busy in addition to all the other homeschool work we have to keep up on. I sure love this time of year!

Reverse Lent?

What is Lent anyways? According to google, "Lent is a special time of prayer, penance, sacrifice and good works in preparation of the celebration of Easter." Lent sort of snuck up on me this year, usually I know far ahead of time when it's coming and what I'm going to give up for 40 days. In the past couple of years I have felt a personal conviction to celebrate Lent by giving up facebook for 40 days and it's been a great experience. This year, on ash Wednesday (the day Lent began), I mentioned to Michael that it was the beginning of Lent and that I wasn't feeling any convictions in particular and wondering if I should even take part in Lent this year. Afterall, we are not even Catholic. I love the idea though, and really wanted to incorporate something into the next 40 days leading up to Easter. We talked about some things that maybe we could do as a couple or as a family in celebration of Lent but we soon got distracted by the days events and no decision had been made when we crawled into bed that night. We started discussing it again before we fell asleep and my husband came up with a great idea, something we can do together for the next 40 days to draw us closer to the Lord and keep our focus on Him. We decided that instead of taking something away for 40 days we would be intentional about adding something in that is purposeful and meaningful where prayer would be our focus. I guess you could call it a reverse Lent (since we are not taking something away but instead adding something in) but it still brings about the same outcome. So we have made a commitment to pray together every night a specific blessing over our children for the next 40 days. 40 days=40 blessings. We have come up with virtues that we want our kids to possess and those are the ones we are praying over them. On Ash Wednesday we prayed a blessing of peace over them, that they would be peaceful people and that during the trials of life they would experirence a peace that passes their own understanding. We also prayed that they would spread peace to others. Night #2 we prayed a blessing of Love over them, that they will love others deeply- friends, family, each other, future spouses, etc... And most importantly that they will Love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. We are taking turns coming up with the blessing and then we pray together. I had an idea this morning to take this a step further and that is to write down the one word blessing each night on a piece of paper (times three), in both my writing and in Michael's, and when we are done we will frame them and give them to our kids showing that we prayed those 40 blessings over them. I can't wait to see the finished the product! So do you practice Lent? If so, what do you do?

iPhone photos

I hardly ever download my iphone photos to my desktop, but when I do they always bring back a flood of great memories and make me giggle too. So here's a little story about Korri and her iPhone photos...

Camden made this invention out of the plasma car, it seats more than one now. He was testing with bricks before he used real people.

 Our styling Camden, great outfit huh! I love our Thursday morning homeschool dates at Starbucks!

 It's not that often, actually hardly ever, when I get glammed up. This was the night of Michael's Christmas Party.

 I don't like pet stores for this reason. I fell head over heals in love with this guy. He was so sweet and so soft. He is a dalmadoodle. I want one, one just like him.

 I love this cloud formation, how beautiful!

 This picture cracks me up. On Thanksgiving we gave Pepper some turkey and drippings. He fell asleep shortly after and I do believe he was in a tryptophan coma. It was hillarious.

 We did some homeschooling at Dunkin Donuts, a great atmosphere and yummy too!

 My beloved and me.

 The leaves changing for the Fall.

 Doing the Tebow and Zoolights.

 My legs after a great run.

 Anna gets a special treat sometimes after school, her choice- an icee. Daddy started it, I had nothing to do with it.

 After cooking dinner one night, I noticed this on my stovetop. See the happy face?

 We harvested our oranges, they were so yummy!

 An instagram photo, a fun app on the iPhone.

 The kids playing Legos together.

 Camden and his BFF

 Pepper joined us for a trip to the park.

 My study in print! This was an accomplishment.

 In homeschool one day I asked Camden to tear a picture out of a magazine and then he had to write descriptive sentences about it. This was his first choice. LOL

 I have no idea where this came from, I assume one of my kids did this. A little creepy for a Lego guy if you ask me.

 Walking the track, I love a good workout.

 My sexy date for Valentines day, eating sushi at our favorite place.

hike with mom

I love hanging out with my kids, I can honestly say they are a pleasure to be around. And I love that they seem to have a pretty good time with mommy dearest-ME! Today we went on a hike, more like an exploring of the desert. It was beautiful outside and I treasured every minute we were there. I snapped these pictures on my iPhone.

At the park with dad!

These pictures warm my heart, I just love it when my husband plays with our kids. He's such a good daddy, our kids are so blessed and so am I.