2012 Presidential Election – Ballot for kids
Today, the United States of America chooses its next President. At our house, it means mock elections. We’ve been studying about the electoral process these last couple of weeks, the different parties, and the Electoral College. Today is the big day. The boys will go to the ‘polls’, ‘cast their vote’ and spent the evening tracking election results on a map we’ve printed out.
While we’ve talked about all of the elections that can happen on the General Election Day (voting for Senators and Congressmen, local elections and State/County Constitutional amendments, etc.) we are focusing primarily on the Presidential candidates today.
(this ballot was created as a sample ballot from how the ballots were presented in our county. No favoritism is implied)
Feel free to print off this ballot for your kids and allow them to participate in one of the most fundamental rights and privileges we have as American citizens – the right to vote.
PS. For a little help on the Electoral College – here’s a very helpful video.
It all started so innocently. Russ and I were in bed, watching television, and he was surfing on his laptop.
Then I hear, “Honey, you need to see this.”
He showed me a website of the Stan Lee Comicon that was coming to Dallas that weekend. I was just about ready to blow him off with a “yeah, hon, that’s great, now let me get back to Food Network Star because Alton is on it!”
Then I saw what he was trying to get me to see. Patrick Stewart. No, make that Sir Patrick Stewart. He was coming to Dallas. To DALLAS. We live near Dallas. We could go, and we could meet him, and we could shake his hand and say thanks, and tell him all about how he was about to be an integral part of our children’s education (he’s a brilliant Shaksperian actor, and we’re about to delve into some of those), and how he’s just so awesome..and.and…
PATRICK STEWART! Even Russ was excited – I could tell.
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Make Your Own Ressurection Egg Devotional Activity for Easter and Lent!
One of my favorite activities to do with my boys when they were younger was actually during our Church groups playtime. We’d all gather at the park for our weekly outtings, and gather the children together, pass around each one of the trinkets and one of the Mom’s would explain the Resurrection Story. It was a great way to introduce children to the story of Christ’s sacrifice for us, with something tangible that they could see, hold and feel while they were listening to the story
For us, invariably, pieces get lost over time, regardless of how diligent we are to put them away. When Jacque came out with this little Resurrection Egg printable – it made perfect sense! If one piece gets lost or torn – just print off another one!
Directions on how to use this activity – print off the egg sheet onto cardstock – you can easy have a printer/quick copy place do it for you. Then have them laminate the sheet. Cut out each of the eggs, and insert them into a set of plastic easter eggs. You can store these in an egg carton if you wish (make sure it’s clean and dry if you’re recycling one, and store a folded copy of the scripture references in the top, then have the kids paint and decorate the egg carton on the outside!
Alternatively, you can use this as a board activity for your Sunday School group.
You can begin this activity on the 2nd Sunday before Easter, or just do it in one sitting a few days before Easter. I plan on having my 12yo present it this year each day as part of our extended devotional leading up to and through Holy Week. This will give him a chance to share his knowledge in his own words and begin to grow his faith by sharing with others.
Crafts, Tricks and Treats for St. Patrick’s Day
I’m over at the Sweet Shoppe Designs blog today sharing some ideas to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!
I hope you’ll join me!
And here’s one sweet, easy craft you can do that I found this morning! It’s just darling!
From the blog: The Crafting Chicks
The Lenten Cross – A Devotional for Easter
** NOTE: Unfortunately, Jacque no longer sells this kit at LilyPad. I cannot share the file as it is not my creation and it wouldn’t be right for me to share. But you can see the photos and create something like it for yourself.
Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten Season – a season of reflection, devotion, and for some, sacrifice, as we ponder on the sacrifice God made for those whom He loves so dearly. It is the holiest season for Christianity. I wanted to do a devotion for Lent that is much like the Jesse Tree for Christmas, and had a hard time finding more than the Resurrection Egg activity – which we will definitely do.
Then Jacque Larsen showed me a devotional piece she was working on (much like her Jesse Tree craft), and wham – this is it! it follows the Messianic prophecies through the Old Testament and matches each with its fulfillment in the Crucifixion narrative.
Lenten Cross
click on image to purchase kit
These are small activity cards to use along with your devotion (scriptures are also found in the kit), that take you on a walk, day by day, through the Lenten season, preparing your heart for what the season really means. When you finish each day’s devotional – you then build a cross on a wall, a piece of poster board or other area that works for you.
Each day, we’ll pull the new card, read the scripture, talk about the references and symbolism, and the boys will add it to the cross. In the middle, you can put a picture or symbol or verse of special meaning for you. The image in the middle of mine is a crown of thorns from another of Jacque’s paper kits – it fit perfectly with the theme.
I really look forward to completing this activity with the boys. Today’s Ash Wednesday entry was a great way to introduce Lent to Aiden in a more meaningful way than some craft activities, and to give Connor some depth to his new faith.
And I want to encourage you – if you’re reading this 2 days into Lent, 5 days into Lent, or even 30 days into Lent, this is one of those crafts that’s easy to jump into and prepare – even if you only talk about the symbolism until the point you can catch up, and then start where you can. Or prepare it now for next year’s Lenten Season.
Instructions: (how I completed this craft)
- Purchase Lenten Cross – it is $3 (this is a digital file that you will receive up on purchase, that you just download to your computer) You can print it from any word processing program, photo editing program or even something like Paint.
- Print out the 2 8.5×11 sheets of paper at an office supply store
- Wrote the scripture references on the back of the cards
- Have office supply store laminate the sheets
- Cut out
- Mount on poster board, wall or other medium. We happened to use tacky dough for mounting posters, etc.
Cost:
- Products $3
- Supplies $6 for printing and laminating
- And about 15 min to cut out and make our references. All-in-all a pretty easy project that has so much more meaning!
You might also be interested in our Ash Wednesday craft:
Get Your Handwriting Made Into a Font!!!
If you are interested in turning your handwriting into a font, I have the services for you!
It’s as simple as submitting a handwriting sample, and getting an awesome font delievered within 48 hours to use in scrapbooking, letters, promotions, etc!
Aiden & Grandpa
Aiden finally got to have his own 1:1 time with Dad later in the afternoon to go out and show off his sling shot skills:
See what I can do?
Some advice
WOW! That really worked, Grandpa!
These are moments I treasure watching the boys with their grandparents, learning from them, making memories with them, and seeing all of our parents showering the boys with unconditional love and watching the boys radiate in that love. It’s a wonderful gift from God that we can still have these kinds of moments.
….and all I got was this eyepatch!
The old joke – Mom and Dad went to ____ and all I got was this crummy t-shirt?
We lived it this week, sort of. I took the boys for their first eye exam last week. Neither have shown any reason to need to get their eyes checked earlier – no squinting, no issues reading, no light sensitivity. Little did we know…
Both boys loved seeing how ‘alien’ they looked with these:
Connor got an all-clear…
Aiden, however, was diagnosed with Amblyopia (not to be confused by strabismus which is the crossing of one or both eyes). It is basically a deficiency in how his eye focuses, and then how the brain reads those images that it gets back. It is typically referred to as ‘lazy eye’, but it is just an anomaly where his eye has no physical reason why it cannot focus, it just doesn’t. The optometrist said he’s too old to expect good results (typically, an eye matures around the age of 8 or 9), but that we should patch him – just get a play patch from the toy section. That’s all we got from her. Oh..and the fact that his eyeglass prescription would make him look like a cyclops, so be prepared. (yes, a slight bit of hyperbole there, but it is just about all we got from her). When I would ask questions, she wasn’t forthcoming with more than, it’s just him, he’ll learn to live with it.
He had to have his eyes dilated, which was an experience in itself. The boy does NOT like knowing pain is coming, and she started out saying, “I have to put these water drops in your eyes and it’s going to hurt.” Yep – that was a smart move. She couldn’t have known that about him, but it’s not necessarily something you want to say to a little one to prepare them for what’s coming. It took both of us holding him down to get the drops in, and he was really mad at me the rest of the day.
We got an eyepatch for him from the pharmacy and had him wear it all weekend. By Sunday, I was ready to tackle this thing that was effecting my boy. I read and read and researched, and just wasn’t happy with the information that was given to me by the optometrist, when I was reading that there was more hope online. So on Monday, I spent a couple of hours on the phone between insurance companies and trying to find a pediatric opthamologist, and we had an appointment on Wednesday!
He was happy to get to look like a pirate. We’d been looking at different patch options, and he really did just want to stay with a plain patch because the rest looked so baby-ish. No Spiderman, no Batman, but the camo did intrigue him.
What a difference that appointment made! Dr. Davis of Pediatric Opthamology was wonderful with him, didn’t ask a lot of questions, didn’t make him look at teeny tiny letters ad nauseum, had some fun photos for Aiden to focus on while he did the exam. At one point, he said, wow…the boy has a lot of astigmatism. Turns out..it was wicked, all right. He has different variations of it in different areas of his eyes, making it really hard to find where the refractory points are to get a good indication of how bad the amblyopia really was and how to correct it. So Aiden had to be dilated again, but this time with a child’s prescription of medication, and the Dr. was quick as lightening. After more exam, and letting Aiden take control of the machine to adjust the focus points, Dr. Davis pronounced that yes, he does have amblyopia, but it wasn’t the worst case he’s ever seen, and he could be corrected to 20/40 from his 20/100, and that just wearing proper glasses would be therapy enough, he felt. We’d come see him in three months to see if there was any improvement, and if there wasn’t much, we’d start patching therapy. If we wanted to go ahead and patch a bit each day, he wouldn’t tell us not to, but he really feels the glasses will be enough.
So we went right out to Lenscrafters to get his glasses – and tada! The first thing he said when he put them on, with a HUGE grin on his face – I CAN SEE!
(and as we told everyone – that’s not a bad haircut, that’s a decent haircut on a boy with a bazillion cowlicks that never lets his hair lay the same way twice).
Isn’t he just the cutest thing ever? He picked out these glasses, himself. You can’t even tell he has a strong prescription in one eye! I’m so grateful God gave us the opportunity to seek out a second opinion and find out how to help him better. We’re looking at patching for one hour each afternoon to give him a little eye exercise, but will wait til the exam in April to go forward with anything more once we find out how he’s progressed.
So – the moral of this story is nothing, really. Get a second opinion. Sure, we could have taken the boys in for eye exams earlier, and we might have caught this earlier and begun treatment earlier. But Dr. Davis said this may not have cropped up until the last year or two. Not being in a traditional classroom setting, we wouldn’t have seen him squinting to read the blackboard, and because he showed no other signs like not being able to read street signs when he was driving, he wasn’t tripping over things as if he had no depth perception, and he was doing fine in school, and reads really well, nor did he ever express to us that he was having problems seeing, there was nothing to signal that there was an issue. And sure, I do wish we’d gone in earlier, in hindsight. But it wouldn’t have ‘cured’ him – it would have just given him a little more treatment time. For now, we rejoice that it wasn’t worse, thank God for the intervention and trust that treatment will improve Aiden’s eyesight, and never rely on a megamart optometrist, again, for something significant 🙂
Happy Hanukkah – the Dreidel Game
Happy Hanukkah!
Tonight, at sundown, begins the 8 days of celebration called Hanukkah, for those of the Jewish faith. Our family finds ourselves connected closely with the faith, seeing our Christianity as an extension of the Jewish faith, and one way we teach our children about the Jewish faith is to participate in observances to help them embrace it.
Hanukkah (or Chanukah) is a celebration of the Festival of Lights, a symbol of rededication and miracles.
From Judaism 101:
After years of oppression by the Greek Government, two groups of Jewish people banded together to revolt against the oppression by this government (which had placed a Hellenistic priest in their temple (a non-Jew being in charge of the temple), forbid the practice of the Jewish faith, and required a pig to be sacrificed on the altar (non-kosher). (…read more HERE)
“According to tradition as recorded in the Talmud, at the time of the rededication, there was very little oil left that had not been defiled by the Greeks. Oil was needed for themenorah (candelabrum) in the Temple, which was supposed to burn throughout the night every night. There was only enough oil to burn for one day, yet miraculously, it burned for eight days, the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. An eight day festival was declared to commemorate this miracle. Note that the holiday commemorates the miracle of the oil, not the military victory: Jews do not glorify war.”
You can read more here: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/default_cdo/jewish/Hanukkah.htm
One of the observations of Hanukkah is the Lighting of the Menorah and readings that come with it, as well as a dreidel game for the children. A dreidel is a top with 4 sides, each side with a different Hebrew letter representing the phrase: A Miracle Happened Here.
The Dreidel Game
Using markers (chocolates, raisins, beads or use a point system if you don’t want to use actual objects), place 2 markers per player in the middle
Spin the dreidel
- nun – do nothing
- gimel – take everything
- hay – take half
- shin – put one in
If you want to print your own Dreidel – or use one as a wrapping box this week – Heather Roselli @ Sweet Shoppe Designs has this great printable:
Here is a simple printable from Enchanted Learning .
Typical treats for Hanukkah would include Latkes, Donuts and Applesauce
Looking for a unique Teacher gift idea?
It’s the time of the year when people begin getting twitchy and nervous about what kinds of gifts to give their children’s teachers. You know they probably will smile and say thank you, but one more I ♥ the Teacher coffee mug or Apple for the Teacher plaque might just send them over the edge.
Here is a really unique gift for all of the teachers you need to buy from – all for around $10-15 dollars, depending on if you buy a print or a cursive font service for them. They’ll be able to use their own font on newsletters, handouts and letters home to parents, or for their own personal scrapbooking!
Somewhat Muddled Musings 