Movie Week - Recap

Here is another recap for you of my Theme Weeks.  Mainly because I wanted to take my kids to see Cars 2 in the theater, I made this week Movie Week!  So obviously, my husband and I took the kids to see Cars 2, which was a treat in itself since usually I am taking the kids by myself.  But we went on the 4th, so Holiday for Hubby!

The next activity was to have a "Drive-In" movie.  This idea came from Family Fun as well...probably going to get tired of saying that!  There actually is a local Drive-In by me, but I wanted the kids to have it at home.  So, I gathered up some boxes, hot glued some paper plates to the sides for wheels, and let the kids decorate their "cars" till their heart's content!  Each one came up with their own type of car and seemed to enjoy making them...well my daughter lost interest at one point, so I helped finish hers for her.  I actually found a box that already had an end cutout, so the oldest wouldn't get uncomfortable sitting in his box.

We had a Jeep, Mack the Truck from the movie Cars, a fully decorated convertible, and whatever my daughter made.

After everything dried, we took them down in our basement (where our main TV is), put some pillows in the cars for comfort, and took a seat in the cars.  I attached a food "tray" to each "car" with binder clips and gave them a cup of popcorn, cup of another food (cheese/crackers, sandwich, pizza rolls), and a juice pouch.  We watched the movie Tangled and I made sure to turn up the sound system nice an loud so they felt like they were watching a movie at a theater.

Isn't this just the cutest thing you have ever seen?!

My little punky made it in her car for most of the movie, but she joined me on the couch at the end.

A movie week couldn't be complete without actually making one, right?  So while we were at the beach, we made a couple music videos.  I put a couple songs on my phone, held it up by the camera, and basically followed the kids around while they did crazy stuff.  Not quite as organized as I would have preferred...I wanted them to plan out what they were going to do and then lip sync to the music...but they had fun.  The oldest didn't want me to post the videos publicly, so I can't post them here.  He had fun doing it, but I don't think he wants any chance of his friends seeing it...at 11 years old, gotta respect that.

Next week will be Nature Week...I have a separate post with the ideas I have for that.  Until then, thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Patriotic Week - Recap

Ok I am now in the third week of theme weeks and I am finally getting a post up about it!  I will see if I can be any better about giving you advanced week info...knowing my luck, they will all probably be recaps like this one!  Oh well...I can only do so much.  


So the first two weeks were Patriotic Week in honor of the 4th of July.  The first week actually had the last day of school in there, so it was kind of a partial week.  I think that the kids have been enjoying the theme weeks and I have enjoyed having activities and such to do with them (planned out in advance) so we aren't always doing the same stuff.  Now we are still hitting the beach, playgrounds, etc, but we are getting the theme stuff in there too!


The first week, the kids (mine and a neighbors that I watch 2 days a week) made some very cute patriotic decorations.  The idea for them came from the Family Fun Website...pretty much everything I do comes from there!!  Totally love that site and magazine! 

They don't make a ton of noise when the wind blows, but they do jingle a little bit!

Then I had them make Star and Stripes T-shirts.  This was a huge hit!  

I kind of wish I would have made one for myself, they turned out so good!  

The last project we did was to make a Flag Dessert.  We made two...one for my family and one for the neighbors.  The kids were pretty proud of it.  They cut all of the strawberries and everything!

We did some other stuff too, but nothing noteworthy...tried to talk about the US, the flag, etc and got some books from the library.  I meant to teach them the Star Spangled Banner, but kind of forgot!  

One project, in addition to the theme weeks, that I have the kids doing throughout the whole summer is trying to look around us to find letters.  Not letters on a sign...that would be too easy...but letters that are formed by a tree, a lamp post, a handrail, etc.  My goal is to find every letter by the end of summer and then print out the letters of there name as a room decoration.  We are doing pretty good so far...here is an example of what one looks like:

A recap of the current movie week is coming up!  Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!