Fab Fridays - URG

Well, as great as my intensions are to have something fun for my kids to do every Friday, sometimes it just doesn't work out!

2 Thursday ago I was taking my sweetheart to the airport and 15 minutes from the there my engine decided not to go any further. We've been having car problems for a little while but we thought we had them all resolved. Apparently not! My car is still being worked on and it looks like it will be another week before I get it back. So, as a result of this happening I was stuck in Vegas all day Friday making arrangements to get my car back to Bullhead City... 2 hours south of Vegas. But, my sister was home and took us to the airport! LOVE having family close by!

This last Friday wasn't a total bust, just not planned out very well. My kids argued a little about what we were going to do. So I decided we were going to complete a regular school day and then just work on existing projects they have going.

Melanie cut out an apron we had purchased fabric for a while ago. She also sewed some buttons on an applique piece she's finishing up.

Christian just made a couple little crafts we had laying around the house.

Both kids also made some cupcakes which turned out super cute!

Fab Fridays - Pretzels

WARNING! This post may get a little twisted!!!

We love pretzels and almost every time we go to the mall we go to Auntie Anne's and purchase one or two to share. I don't know how many times I've thought about making homemade pretzels and never took the time to do it. When I asked my kids what they wanted to do last Friday I was excited for them to say they wanted to make pretzels! I just have to say they were probably the best tasting pretzels of my life... NO JOKE! They were FABULOUS!

I found the recipe at Allrecipes.com. They were so good we're planning on making them again after church on Sunday, only this next time we'll make a double batch :)

But of course we weren't just going to make pretzels, we had to learn a little bit about them as well. Here are a few website we found along with our study and some notebooking pages I put together for the kids to do.

History of Pretzels

Wikipedia about Pretzels

Aunt Anne's Facts about Pretzels

Pretzel Notebooking Pages

Fab Fridays - Hoover Dam, Discovery Museum and Dinner Show

I grew up 10 minutes from Hoover Dam and spent lots of time down there as a kid. I can't tell you how many school and church field trips I took there while growing up. Since 9/11 lots has changed at the dam and because it became sort of a hassle to go because of security and such I hadn't taken my kids there since then. Well, I decided it was time and plus I wanted to see how the construction of the new Hoover Dam bypass was coming along.

Well, lots had changed since the good old days. When I was a kid a full tour was about $7 and this included going into the dam. Now just to park is $7 and then another $8 a person just to go into the visitors center. If you want the full tour (which includes a movie) you're going to pay $30 a pop!!! We only did the visitors center, but if we go again we'll park on the Arizona side and walk across the dam and just take pictures. That's doesn't cost anything. Anyway, there's also a free dam movie at the Hotel near by but we didn't have time to stop to see that this particular day. I do plan on taking the kids to see that another day or we'll just find something on Netflix to watch :)

There were a few interactive activities in the new Hoover Dam visitors center.

This is part of the memorial for those who lost their lives building the dam.

We also went to the Lied Discovery Children's Museum with my sister and her 5 kids. It's mostly for younger kids but my kids had a great time anyway. There were still lots of things to keep them interested.

Christian spent a lot of time making bubbles... he loved this!

Christian had also just finished writing a report about tornados so this was fun for him too!

My sister, Jenny, and her two oldest kids at the Discovery Museum

Melanie in the 80 mph wind... too much fun!

The last thing we did this day was go to the Tournament of the Kings show at the Excalibur Hotel. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures... very disappointed about that, ARG!! But it was very fun. It's a dinner show and we were served chicken, vegetables, roll, and potato wedges and we you don't get any utensils, so we ate with our hands... pretty fun. The kids had a great time!

This is WAY more than we would typically do in one day but we were in Vegas and we tried to fit in more than usual.

Fab Fridays

I've got 6 kids and only homeschool 2 of them now, which I have to admit is fabulous! I loved homeschooling all my kids but having so many of them and all at different levels and trying to get my older ones into good colleges put an enormous amount of stress on me and took a lot of my time. So who suffered in the meantime?... my younger kids, of course. And I'm one to carry around tons of guilt, loose sleep over it and hopefully make a new choice in the morning. Well, the new day comes along and all those same issue about working with the older kids flooded my day, but again!

I didn't completely ignore the younger kids, please don't get me wrong, we just didn't make time for the "fun stuff." I remember spending time doing all sorts of fun projects with my older kids when they were young. We usually had a 4 day school week so we could do projects or field trips on Fridays. Well, why should my younger kids not have those same great experiences? So, I've repented now for straying from those precious moments and am now having those same fun experiences with my younger kids.

But wait! Let me explain a few things first... I always invite my kids to cook with me in the kitchen, help with odd jobs around the house, we always are reading a book together and we spend time running errands together and of course we have school everyday... but, in my most humble opinion some of these things don't all together count as what we affectionately call our "Fab Fridays". In our family, Fridays have "planned" activities that the kids come up with on their own. They can but don't have to relate to what we are learning in school, but they usually do. Mom needs to know ahead of time what they are planning so I can come up with a short lesson to go along and create notebooking pages or lapbook elements to go along. Sometimes they are things the kids have been interested in or something we studied several years ago and they want to "do it again". Lastly, we add our adventures to a notebook we titled "Fab Fridays" (of course). We add photos and other things that relate to what we did for our activity. If what we did also has something to do with what we are studying we add a copy to that folder as well. So with all this said I'll share some of the things we've been up to lately and I plan on adding a new post every week about our "Fab Fridays."

*** I'll add the "Fab Fridays" to their own post so they can be linked to more easily :)