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!

Bear Hugs 23-26 - God sent the Savior

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
Bear Hug 17 - Valentine's Day
Bear Hug 18 - Crossing the Red Sea
Bear Hug 19 - God is in Charge
Bear Hug 20 & 21 - God is in Charge

Bear Hug 22 - Happy Birthday

 

I'm putting the remainder of the bear hugs in one grouping.

 

Bear Hug 23 told us the story of John the Baptist.  Our verse was John 1:29 "Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world".  We learned about how John ate locusts and wild honey, how he baptised people in the water and had many many people come to him to repent of their sins and be baptised, and how he baptised Jesus, even though He had not sinned, and God sent a dove and said "This is my son whom I love".

 

I did my best to lead this lesson into the resurrection story, and we proceeded to make resurrection buns together.  I did this before handbook time, and I was grateful for the help from my mom and Jen gave me by baking them and cleaning up!

 

Bear Hug 24 brought the story of the fish!  Mark 1:17 says "'Come, Follow me,' Jesus said 'and I will make you fishers of men.'"  This was the memory verse for the week.  The story was the well known story of how Peter, Andrew, James, and John had fished all night and caught nothing.  Then Jesus came along and told them to throw their nets on the other side of the boats.  After doing so, the nets were so full of fish, they had to drag them ashore!

 

So, for fun we made a 'fishing pond'.  I used a blue blanket, put down a bunch of fish reused from previous lessons (which are reused from a previous year as well.  The laminating keeps these things for a long time).  I recommend a better magnet than I had.  Mine wanted to pick them up, but the way it was shaped made the fish fall off afterwards as the paper clip wasn't big enough.  Using juice tops would have been better as they are bigger.  Either way, this is a simple activity and the kids enjoy it.

 

 

For the craft, I decided to make something a little different from what was suggested in the book.  A mini fishing pond!

You will need my printable (link here and at the bottom), empty/washed applesauce/fruit containers, toothpicks, blue tissue paper squares, and some string.  You will also need a tiny hole punch (think of the ones you use for brads in scrapbooking), and glue.

Start by punching a tiny hole in the rim of the fruit cups.

Next, take your fish, cut them out but leave them attached at the mouths (they will be double sided when finished).  Add glue to both fish on the wrong sides, stick your string in so that it sticks out by the mouth/fold, and fold it together so it is double sided and looks like the fish is hanging on the string.  (note, the fish images are from the Awana Cubbies craft cd.  I just shrunk them and flipped them to make them work for this craft.)

Next, glue the other end of the string onto the fatter end of the toothpick.  Voila!  Fishing poles!

Make sure you cut out all of your circle verses for the bottom of the ponds.  Give each leader a bag of blue tissue paper squares, glue sticks, and it is a good idea to have one finished 'pond' to show the leaders and clubbers before they head off to handbook time. 

Here is a pic of all the stuff ready for the craft bags.

What each child will be receiving.

And the kids will be in charge of glueing the verse on the bottom of their pond, and the blue tissue paper on the 'bowl' portion to look like water.  The fishing pole fits into the little hole you punched out of the rim and can be set there when the kids are not 'fishing'.

This craft offered up a lot of fun!  The kids were fishing for a good long time.  If you wish, you can always print the coloring page offered in the Cubbies handbook as well.  Might be good for the kids to color while waiting for glue or a leader to help them.

For a link to the fishy printable, click here.

Bear Hug 25 - This week's verse was Mark 4:41"'Who is this?  Even the wind and the waves obey Him!'".  The story is of Jesus calming the storm.  We did a lot of actions to go with the verse (think of 'blowing' for wind and waving your arms for waves.  Helped them to remember the verse as well).    The craft ended up being the one that was in the book already.  We made little paper boats on a stick that they could move along on the waves.  If you have the time, you could make a little cardboard boat for the kids to sit in and play.

Bear Hug 26 - This was the last week of Awana, except for Awards night.  I cannot believe how fast the time flew by!  This week's verse was John 1:29 again ("Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world") and the core truth, God sent the Savior.  I kept things pretty much to the book this week.  We did a review of the last three weeks, and I brought a bag of toys and printed papers with things on them that were to remind us of the stories we'd heard this month: a dove, a picture with honey and locusts, a fish (from our fishing game), a net (also used as a visual in BH24 lesson time), a lamb plush, and a picture of a boat.  The kids came up and took an item from the bag.  I would then describe the part of the story (if they were unable to remember... and most of them remembered really well!).  I enjoy the review lessons, and the kids seem to enjoy them as well!  Lots more interaction.

Anyway, I really wanted to give each Cubbie their own little gift as a thank you for coming each week.  I had planned on making bags for their books for next year (I'd do Sparks bags in red for those going into Sparks, and Cubbie bags in blue for those that would be returning next year)... but I never got around to going to the fabric store to pick anything up.  So, I went to the local dollar store and nabbed a bunch of things that I thought would make a neat little gift.

My shopping trip went well!  Baggies, erasers, pencils, notepads, googly eyes, and foam dragonflies for $17 for 20 kids.

I put some magnetic tape on the backs of the foam dragonflies and taped two googly eyes onto each (this is a craft for the kids to do at home) with some gem stickers I had in my craft supplies and one sticker each of Cubbie, Luvie, and Katie.  I made some gift tags that I taped onto the bags when I was done, and even tried to color coordinate them with the group room colors as they matched our craft bag tags as well.

To be honest, assembling these little baggies took a lot longer than I anticipated!  I think next time I will omit the craft, and just do the stickers.  I'm sure the kids will enjoy it, though.  My kids sure were hoping for extras that they could have.

That's all for the Awana Cubbies Series.  I may do a post on how to organize the Cubbies closet... but I've got to properly reorganize mine again (haha... that's what I get for just putting things in quick as I can so as to get my kids home and to bed).  I hope you enjoyed this little series as much as I enjoyed making it! 

If you want, I've set up a Facebook page for our church Awana group.  You can see it here, or search for CFC Awana.  You can also visit my Cubbies pinterest board.  Feel free to check it out.

Cardboard Play

Today I decided to finally go ahead and make that project I promised the kids I'd make a month ago.  What happened a month ago to spark interest in a new 'project'?  Well, we went to Ikea, you see... and...

 

It all went downhill from there.  ;)

 

At Ikea, the kids love playing in the kids rooms and with the toys they have set out there.  One such toy that was up on the shelf (not available to be played with, but very visible) was a cardboard market.  This one, actually.

And me, being the frugal mom that I am, said "Hmm.  I can make that.  We've got lots of cardboard from our previous Ikea purchases that would work".  And my kids heard me, and got all excited, and I wished I never said it out loud.

Well, only kinda wished it.  You see, if I say it out loud, there is a much higher chance of me doing it, whereas if I keep it to myself, the likelihood of it ever happening remains at less than 10%.

So, since my husband was taking out the recycling yesterday, I made sure to nab the cardboard I needed for this project, and today (with a lot of prompting from my kids, and in between working on making lasagna and taking care of a cranky baby), we turned this...

 

...into this!

 

I'm thrilled, actually!  And I took a few photos of the process which I will share with you here!

We needed two boxes from Ikea's bookshelves.  Those were the sides.  The inner cardboard pieces were great for the roof, counter, and extra cover ups for the front and back.  Then we needed three diaper boxes (which we always have plenty of) and duct tape.

First I cut the 'tabs' off of the three diaper boxes and duct taped them together.  You can configure them however you like.  All three open to one side, two on the bottom open on one side, whatever you think would make for a great display/storage.  Once done, cover up the exposed 'bottoms' of the diaper boxes on both sides with extra cardboard.  This just looks nicer.

Don't worry about the top or the sides yet.

Next I drew my 'roof' angles on both sides of the two long and skinny boxes.  Make sure to remove any damaged corners this way.

Duct tape these to the sides of your diaper boxes.  I make a loop with my duct tape so it is like a double sided piece of tape and do it that way. 

Once that is done, I took more cardboard and made a 'counter', taping it to the top of the diaper boxes.  I made little shelves for inside and outside, found a small box (probably for hardware or something) that was perfect to 'hang' from the top of the diaper boxes for 'condiments' or whatever the kids wanted, and went all out in decorating it.  Also made the roof with the extra cardboard pieces.  Cut two pieces slightly longer than the whole width of the market stall, lay them on the floor flat with their long lengths together and tape them, then turn that tape to the underside and tape them to the roof.  (sorry, I forgot to take pictures at that point).

Voila!  The kids were thrilled to play market with this.  I made a little sign and hung it with string and sticky hooks so the kids can flip it.  Made some little shelves and a 'mail bag' of sorts as well using boxes that were too perfect to pass up.  I might take time to decorate it with stripes of paint yet.  Or I may buy some fun colored duct tape and use that instead.  Never know.  ;)

See?  Cardboard is soooo much fun!  Although, you probably already knew that.  ;)

Last month I also made this shelf for my daughter out of diapers and wipes boxes, some 'mack tack' paper (picked up for 50cents at LW when it was going out of business), and hello kitty duct tape I found at the dollar store.  It has been great for storing her 18" dolls and things.  She loves it, and so do I since it was cheap and it is solving a storage issue for her.  :)

Diaper boxes... who knew?

Oh, and they are FANTASTIC for kids clothing storage.  If you have a dry enough storage area, of course.  They stack so nicely and are a great size.  I have all my kids clothes that they are growing into or out of in these boxes. 

So... I'd love to see your cardboard creations!  Let me know what sorts of things you make out of boxes in the comments!  <3 p="">

Easter is coming!

Hello everyone!  He is Risen (He is Risen indeed)!

I will not be posting my usual weekly Cubbies post as I don't have much to put here about the actual bear hug 23 this week.  I stuck pretty 'by the book' except for one little thing...

Resurrection Buns!

Since Good Friday and Easter are fast approaching, I really wanted to make something special with the Cubbies that would help them visualize a little more about the Resurrection of Christ.  Every year for the last three years I have done Resurrection Buns with my own kiddos.  I even made a video this year for you all!  You can see it below.

 

 

 

The kids love this!  They were asking to do it early this year (which is why we have this video done already).  So, I bought my ingredients and got them ready for Awana today... and we did this with the Cubbies! 

 

They certainly enjoyed them!  And they did so well, too!  I am so thankful my mom and a friend were able to join our group to help us wrap the dough and bake them while we did our handbook time.  It certainly made things run a lot smoother.  A tip if you wish to do this with your group... make sure to write the kids names down on the parchment paper before putting their specific bun above their name.  You can see exactly whose is whose then!  It works great!

 

I didn't even need to worry about washing the dishes in the kitchen!  My mom and my friend were lifesavers!

 

Anyway, in addition to these, I was hoping to do some other fun things with my kids this year to help solidify what Easter is all about in our house.  I do love chocolate bunnies and colored eggs, but they get a lot of that stuff from their grandparents, so I'd like to do something different.  So, I've been looking up Resurrection Eggs as well!

 

I've kept so many of the little plastic eggs around my house (put them all in a box as I planned to craft with them.  Instead, we made Easter Egg hunts for some friends of ours and thus used up a bunch of them, which I actually preferred to a wreath as I initially thought of doing).  Therefore, I want to use them this year to make an egg hunt with my kiddos again... only this time they will be hunting for the real meaning of Easter.  I found all sorts of cute ideas I could use.  Here are a few of my favorites.

 

 

Resurrection Eggs Ideas with Printables at teachingheart.net- with eggs you can color and match up.  A bit of fun crafting for the kids in this one that I'd love to do in addition to another of these that use the plastic eggs.

 

 

Benjamin's Box Resurrection Eggs at thelifeinbloom.com - I love that they have a little mini story book that you can make to go with, and that it uses a Benjamin's Box book.  I don't have this book, but it is still really nice!

 

 

Homemade Resurrection Eggs Printable at thissimplehome.com - For this one you collect things around your home to put into the eggs that go with Bible verses listed.

 

 

Resurrection Eggs at therealhousewife.com - Similar to the one above where you make or collect things from around your home that coordinate with verses.  Some of these are slightly different, though, and make for some great ideas in addition to the one above.

 

You can see some of the other ideas for things I like on my Spring/Easter pinterest page.

 

Hope you all have fun this Easter.  I love your comments, and would love to hear about what you like to do for Easter with your littles (or even if you don't have littles, that is fine, too!  We all enjoy Easter!).

God Bless!



Cubbies Bear Hug 22 - Happy Birthday!

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
Bear Hug 17 - Valentine's Day
Bear Hug 18 - Crossing the Red Sea
Bear Hug 19 - God is in Charge

Bear Hug 20 & 21 - God is in Charge

 

This week was the review week for the 'God is in Charge' unit.  It was also the last week where Cubbie and friends were talking about Timothy's birthday!  And so, we celebrated all our birthdays together!  Hooray!

 

I had a lot of fun putting this all together!  I made a bunch of stuff for the birthday party.  Some of it we never used as I bought some things instead, but I'll post it at the end anyway for anyone who wants to use it for their own Cubbies party (not for resale.  I do not own the rights to the Awana clipart).

 

First, I made an extra large birthday card by folding white paperboard in half, printing and cutting out some of the black and white clipart images, and gluing them into place.

The kids were each to sign their names (or we would for them if they didn't know how) on the inside of the card as they came in.

I also made a party table centerpiece.  This was fun.  I just took the one image, made it as large as I could for a regular sheet of cardstock, and then made one flipped.  Also made 'Happy Birthday' images times two for two strips.  The Cubbie and friends pictures were going to be used as extras for decoration that are not necessarily for the birthday party.  Didn't want to waste paper.

Step one - print your sheets on cardstock.

Step two - glue the two Cubbie Bear's together.

Step three - Cut out Cubbie, then cut slits in the top of both the 'Happy Birthday' strips, and the bottom of the Cubbie bear about 1inch long.

Step 4 - Slip the birthday strips into the slits on the Cubbie picture so that they make a circle.  Done!  Take it apart to store flat.   (I want to laminate this to make it last longer).


Next thing I made were cupcake toppers... because cupcakes are so much nicer for serving kids than cake is.  Easy... no cutting!  And the toppers were such a huge hit!

Here they are!  I printed enough for 25.

Step 1 - First you need to print one sheet on cardstock, and then the mirrored sheet on regular paper (so it will fold around the toothpick easier).  Glue the two sheets together lightly with a glue stick.

Step 2 - Now you can rather easily cut out each topper, and it is already double sided!

 See?  And the edges are even!

Step 3 - Now we open the bottom...

 ... add a bunch of glue...

 ... put in the toothpick...

... and press down.  Doesn't Katie Collie look lovely?  So simple for on the cupcakes, too.  Just push in the bottom of the toothpick.

One down, 24 to go.

The kids loved these!  They were asking for their favorite characters when they saw all the cupcakes.  And I heard a few of the kids exclaim 'this is the best birthday party EVER' when they opened the door to this room.

I couldn't resist decorating!  The tissue paper flowers were some I made for my daughter's birthday.  I kept them around in case I wanted to use them again, which has been great!  The table cover, plates, and napkins I found at a Dollar Tree.  Made for easy cleanup.  Cupcake wrappers also from a dollar store.

Doesn't Cubbie look thrilled to be surrounded by friends and cupcakes?  :)

 

I used my go-to vanilla cupcake/cake recipe called Butter Sponge.  It is so tasty!  The icing recipe I use is different from the one I have listed there, though.  You can find it in the first bit of this video of Disney Princess Cupcakes, here.  I only needed 1/2 the recipe to ice 24 cupcakes as seen above.

 

The birthday party was a big hit!  The kids loved it!  The hats were fun, although they kept coming apart (Dollar store hats... what can I say).  And the party blowers were so much fun (no noise version).  They each got some popcorn in some reusable cups with lids that most of the kids took home.  We also had some really small cups (4 oz, probably) that we used to serve water to the kids (no juice needed... lots of sugar here already).

 

 

And now, just for fun, here are a few things I made for the party!  Feel free to use them for your own Cubbies Birthday Party celebration!

 

For the invite below, using the print image program do 4 to one sheet of paper.  The line is blank for you to put the date in yourself.

 

 

Below I have two versions of the birthday party hat I designed using a blank template I got online (I can no longer find the original, but there are a lot of blank templates you can find online through google or pinterest).  The first version is one the kids can color themselves as a coming in craft.  The second is one you can whip up before Club night and put together at home.  Print on cardstock.

If you want to download the pdf file for the cupcake toppers and the table centerpiece, you can get the free download below!

Free Download for cupcake toppers and table centerpiece
Free Download for the party hats and invites

Enjoy!  Please let me know if you used these files or found this post useful!  I love making these things and hope to make more available in the future!  God Bless!

NOTE:  All images of Cubbie and Friends are Trademarked Awana.  You can find them at awana.org.  None of these things may be sold or reproduced for sale in any way.  For personal/club use only.  Thank you.