Summer World Travel: Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Sorry for not posting sooner!  We're already heading into our 5th week of the summer 'World Travel'  from Focus on the Family.  You can see my previous posts on it, here.

My first post had flags which I've been using with my kids to color each day.  They also look for the country on the map, find the flag that corresponds and then use that as their 'color key' to color their own map.  I have not been following the itinerary as laid out page by page that focus on the family has, mostly because my kids are still so young and don't remember too much about the countries from the previous time we did this, so I'm doing it page by page as in the passports.  First page I did was actually page 7... South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia.  Since I watched a variety of Youtube videos with the kids, I thought that maybe I'd help you all out by posting links to the videos and recipes I used to help enhance the experience with each country.  So, without further adieu, here is an 'itinerary' of what we have done with the links to go with them.  I hope you enjoy them and find them useful in your own journey with your kiddos.

Ethiopia - July 4

Colored the flag and stamp

Went outside and carried water in an obstacle course on our heads.  M's stayed pretty full, Bram lost most of his, and A spilled some and proceeded to carry it next to her tummy.  We figured this would not be enough water for us, and we would need much more for an entire day.
Prayed for clean water and easier ways to carry it for the people.

Ethiopia - July 5

I attempted making Almond Sweetmeat (Kashata Ya Lozi).  Didn't work as I messed up the syrup (no listing as to how much water, so I found another syrup recipe and followed that, not realizing I needed to cook it much longer and probably should have halved the water as well)  3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup water (probably should have been less), tiny amount cinnamon and nutmeg, cooked until thick and sticky, then added 1 2/3 cup almond flour (or ground almond meal) and spread in a buttered 8x8 dish until cooled.  Broken up and served.  I ended up not cooking the syrup long enough.  It tastes good, and the gooey centre will work well with ice cream.

Listened to national anthem "Wodefit Gesgeshi, WiddInnat Ityopp'ya'

Made crafts from things we normally trash.  Kids made toys of varying types.

Prayed for the people to have enough rain, water, and food.

 

South Africa - July 6

Made beetroot crepes for breakfast
Watched a videos of the language here and here
Watched the anthem called "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"
Kids talked in gibberish to each other.

South Africa - July 7

made Bobotie and South African Yellow Rice for lunch. 
Set up a time to have someone over for lunch.  Ended up on a different day.
Prayed for SAfrica to have enough food and to remember that all people are made in God's image, no matter their culture.

Zimbabwe - July 8

Made a cookie recipe from Zimbabwe
Kids colored their flags and stamps.
listened to the national anthem, known as Kalibusiswe Ilizwe leZimbabwe
played Tsoro Yematatu on paper
watched a video of Victoria falls
 
Zimbabwe - July 9

looked at the balancing rocks here and here.

Prayed for the people.  We did not build anything with rocks ourselves as we were gone that day.

I hope that some of my own research can help you with the things you wish to do with your own families.  Probably for another year, though... as I posted these late yet again.  It really is a lot of fun!  I highly recommend this for even homeschooling as family activities.  My daughter asks me every day which country we are visiting next.  :)

Until next week!  God Bless.

Summer World Travel: Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea

Hello again, and welcome here!  Are you travelling with us around the world with Focus on the Family?  If not, why not join in?  It is fun, and can be as simple as just following the itinerary they have themselves, or as complex as you wish to make it.  I decided to post the links to recipes and youtube videos that I am using with my own kids, as well as the maps and printables I made to go with the 'program' myself.  You can view those by clicking the links below.

Time for a Summer Adventure!
Summer World Travel: Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe

And so, our second week had us visiting Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.  Here are the links to the videos and things that we did.

Australia - July 11

made 'porridge', but had no bananas to go on, so used apple cinnamon

made aussie meat pies

did the listed activity, but not with clay

kids colored flags, stamps, and found Australia on the map

Australia - July 12

watched a video about Uluru

watched national anthem 'Australia Fair'
did the activity on the book
Prayed for Australia
Supper - made banana lassies and hamburgers with 'the lot'.

New Zealand - July 13

colored stamp and flag after finding NZ on the map

watched a video of Milford sound
made a paper 'earthquake' diorama
supper was beer battered fish n chips

New Zealand - July 14

played the game Mu torere outside.

prayed for the people
watched national anthem God Defend New Zealand / Aotearoa.

Papua New Guinea - July 15

did the day one language activity

watched national anthem Apange and another version.
watched culturalfestival sing sing video
watched a vid ofthe mall in their capital
vid of landiungin airport

July 16 - made and ate Coconut Kau Kau

July 18 - did the second day activity and prayer a bit later than we'd have liked.

Enjoy your journey!  And God Bless!

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="">