Time for a Summer Adventure!

School is almost out, and summer is finally here!  Hooray!

I am super excited to tell you guys about something I'm going to be doing with my family this summer.  Focus on the Family does a Summer Adventure each year, and we will be joining in again this year!  Hooray!  You can feel free to join in anytime at this link. 

Three years ago my family did a very similar Adventure.  I took pictures and catalogued everything, and am making a scrapbook.  Still.  I haven't been spending as much time on it as I could (oops).  I'll have to post the pictures later.  When it's done.  Which might be awhile.  But I digress...

This year I decided to do a few extras, and I made some sheets to print for my kiddos to color to go along with each of the countries.  Focus on the Family has some info sheets for each country (there are 27 in the program) and a passport with some 'stamps' each child can color and glue into place as you visit each country.  There is a large map to print and put up as a poster, as well as markers you can use to track your progress.  I decided to add Germany and Austria to our countries this year (no stamps though, unfortunately) as the missionary my son has been praying for is in Germany, and a friend of ours lives in Austria.  So, I added the flags.  Didn't create info sheets for them, though.  I may try to do so yet, (but probably not).

One thing that I noticed however is that this year, since the sheets are more detailed, there was a lot more info for the USA than other countries (as this is based there) and that is the 'final destination'.  I decided to create a sheet similar to the other countries for the USA for those of us that do not live there, and then turned the USA sheet into a Canadian version for all my Canadian followers.  You can download them at the links below.

 Download here.

Download here.

 

 

I also made sheets of flags for the kids to color.  We did this one by one three years ago, and it was a pain.  So this year, I found all the flags and put them all on sheets for a single time printout.  I like cutting them out so the kids only have the one flag on the day that we are doing that country.  And if you are lucky enough to have a world map with all the flags pictured, you can get the kids to search for the flag and the country name before coloring it.  :)

 

Note... I got all the flags from YesColoring.  They have lots of free downloads for coloring pages for kids.  I used these and put them together on four pages for printing.  Much simpler.

 

 Download here.

 Download here.

 Download here.

 Download here.

And, since we are from Canada and Canada day is coming as well, I thought it would be nice to grab the provincial flags from YesColoring as well.  I managed to put those with the Canada flag on two pages.  You could just print the Canadian flag itself for the purposes of this program, but since we've done this before I figured the kids would probably like something a little bit extra.  :)

 Download here.



Download here.

And there you have it!  I hope these downloads help anyone wanting to join our family on our tour of the world.  :)  I think I'll be trying to make some meals/foods from each country as well.  I did a few of them last time.  A meal plan would be in order, however. 

Let me know in the comments if you plan to do this (or something similar) with your family this summer.  Or maybe you have other fun summer plans you would like to share!  I'd love to hear about them!

Have a great summer, and God Bless!

Cubbies BH 17 - Happy Valentines Day

Hello again. 
Welcome to a series I'm doing on Awana Cubbies!  I hope you enjoy your time here.  If you'd like, you can visit my previous posts, or dive right in!

Introduction
How I started down the Appleseed Trail
Bear Hugs 3-6:  God is Creator
Bear Hugs 7-10:  God's Word is Truth
Extra Cubbies Fun - Gingerbread Nativities
Bear Hugs 11-14 - God is Faithful
Bear Hug 15 - Story of Abraham
Bear Hug 16 - God is Mighty

This week we continued to look at the plagues of Egypt, and we made things for Valentines day!

I mostly stuck to the book (although... strangely, I forgot the lesson book this week.  Good reason to always practice your material so you know what you are doing anyway!  I almost panicked, then remembered that I knew this stuff... and things would be just fine.  And you know what?  They were!).  The coloring page provided was what we used for handbook time... but we made crafts for the parents during coming in and leaving times.

Although, I wanted to mod podge them... so most kids didn't get to bring theirs home that day.  :(

Anyway, here are some pics of what I did with my daughter at home, which was my starting point for the Cubbies craft.

I had a couple of ideas.  My daughter has really small hands (she is two, after all) so the two handed 'heart' idea worked fine for her.  However, most of my cubbies have larger hands that would not work doing something like that, so I wanted to see what would work for one hand.  The heart in the hand idea was cute, too (pinterest to the rescue).  However, due to time constraints, I didn't do the hearts.  We did a basic handprint with the cute little hand poem underneath.  I also made them so they would be in a 'landscape' orientation as it just looked nicer with a hanging rope than the portrait version would.

I did not have enough gem stickers to do this with the cubbies either.  Would have been so nice.  Ah well.  If I'd have had time to pick some up from the dollar store, it would have been a nice touch. 

Nice thing about Valentine's day and Cubbies is that they really go 'hand in hand'.  After all, our key verse is 'God loved us and sent His son, 1John 4:10'.  Perfect for Valentine's day.  There are really so many things you could do with your Cubbies as a craft!

 
I did love this one.  If you wanted to do this, you'd just need larger paper.  I was using 5.7 matt boards I had on hand already.  It was great, because they look fantastic (these were from a framing shop that I used to work at.  She had a bunch there that she wanted to use for arts and crafts but never had the time, so she gave me a stack.  Thanks, Aunty P).  Otherwise you can get canvases from the dollar store for projects like this... they run at 3 for $1. 

Anyway... the way we did it to decrease mess was this.  I painted the kids hands using a brush and pressed it on the board, then immediately we wiped their hands using baby wipes, and then they washed up in the nearby bathroom.  I wrote their name on the paper poem that I had pre cut, and we glued that down right away next to their handprint.  Have the yarn or string/ribbon hotglued on the matts before you start as well.  Makes the whole thing easier.  Then, when they were dry, I mod podged over the whole thing to help protect it.

Here is the poem.  I cannot take credit for this as I found it online somewhere.  Sorry, I do not remember the source (and I saw it on multiple sites, so I'm not sure where it originated from)

You may get discouraged

Because I am so small

And always leave my fingerprints

On furniture and walls

But every day I’m growing –

I’ll be grown some day

And all those tiny handprints

Will surely fade away

So here’s a little handprint

Just so you can recall

Exactly how my fingers looked

When I was very small

 

Love:                                           .

Happy Valentine's Day

2016

I also wanted to make a little Valentine for each of my Cubbies.  I didn't want to do sugary treats... but pencils are nice!  And the dollar store had packs of 10 for $1.25, so I grabbed two packs and got to work using some of my scrapbook paper and making my own printable.

 

 Here is the file in case you want to print 20 out yourself.  (best if you can print it without using margins on your printer.  I was able to do so with my gimp program printing through gimp itself)

Don't forget your leaders!  Give them each a little something special as well, to thank them for their dedication in coming each week.  We couldn't have Awana without them!
I used a printable on pinterest for wrapping a chocolate bar.  There are literally hundreds of free ones out there that you can get!  I used the white one from here.  It is very cute.  I just resized it and printed 6 to a page to use with a pack of Kit Kat bars.  These ones had white chocolate, which I thought was super neat!

I hope you all had a great Valentine's day.