Rainbow Theme Party

Every year the Bovee Family puts on a program to end their school year.  Friends and family are invited to join in the fun, and it's always a fun and stretching time for the children.  They work really hard to put something special together to share, and this year was a real test for them.  It proved to be a year of growth and steps forward for them.  We are so proud of their accomplishments!

An outside celebration is so difficult with not knowing what the weather will be until it happens.  With this party though, it wouldn't have been so bad if it had rained (a little).  Thankfully, it stayed dry, the sun shined and the wind wasn't too overpowering.  Would have liked it to have been still at times, so signs didn't blow over and stage curtains didn't blow so much, but we worked with it and it all turned out just fine. So, here are the details of the lovely day we had yesterday! 

This was our invitation for this year.  We dressed colorfully and went to a park, then had these pictures printed on cards.  The program information was printed on other paper and glued inside the card once we figured out when we would be done with school and when the party could be.  It's also a nice keepsake for guests to have pictures of our family.

 Since this was a school program, art projects from the second half of school were used in the party decor.  This canvas was done with help using canvas, paper, a photograph, and crayons.  It turned out to be a memorable piece that will some day hang on the wall.

 Christi's parents always like to do something special for the children at every program.  This year they made the rainbow balloon arch by the umbrella table and brought their large rainbow kite with balloons hanging from it.  The kite floated with the wind under its flaps during the day and made for a great welcome tool to the party!  I guess we did need that wind to keep it flying, so without the wind we wouldn't have had this wonderful addition. 

Painted clay pots with lollipops can work at a garden party, rainbow party, or be creative and add them to a bug party with plastic bugs amongst the flowers.  It's an inexpensive way to add decoration and fun.

 A tutorial on how to make this amazing rainbow cake pop stand can be found here.  The children helped with this by painting it and spraying it with glitter.  Adding the colors to the cake pops made the rainbow pop right out.  It was our favorite addition to the food table!

 These are dipped oreos, decorated with mini M&Ms and tiny pieces of marshmallows.  These oreos were the birthday cake edition so they were different colors inside adding to the rainbow fun.

 Clouds in the sky punch.  I was hoping to have every food labeled with weather names, but we ran out of time for that.  I thought this punch looked like a lovely display of clouds in a blue sky.  It sure is fun to have so many colors be a part of a food table. 

 The rainbow banner hanging from the top is made from a sweater that was found at Goodwill.  I cut the strips of colors from the sweater then laced them together with ribbon and thread.  The clouds are made from batting and simply tied and glued together.  Was a simple addition to the background and brought out the theme nicely. 

 I really wanted to make the inside rainbowish, but with using natural juices to give the color.  I tried and didn't succeed like I would have liked to, so I did add a little bit of food coloring to each layer to give it a little color but not too much. 

 On to the program!  The children each memorized a chapter in Genesis to retell the story of Noah.  They did a fabulous job.  We included some rain from Josiah spraying the hose and even had an emergency broadcast system announcing a flood warning for the whole world.  The children enjoyed adding the extra touches.  We ended with a big rainbow the children had painted, that they held up while Jonathon read the final account of the sign of the rainbow.  Before passing out party favors, they sang the song that we all put together about Noah and the rainbow.  It was added with entertainment by the little brother going in and out of the curtain.  Every family needs a little brother who steals the show.  He has much to learn about school programs.  : )

   

 Do you see the spray coming from the left?  Good thing everybody got their umbrellas up in time. 

The children tie dyed their own shirts.  Don't they look great?!  You can see a tutorial of how they did them at the Bovee's Family Blog.

 The party favor goodies complete with cookies and a chime, sun catcher that the children made.

 A little croquet fun for the children.

 Rainbow lollipops and fun with friends!

Big thanks to Casie for her help with the oreos and letting me borrow a few things.  Is always fun to work together and enjoy our celebrations together with our families.

 Another big thanks to Grandpa Dan and Grandma Deborah for bringing the fun, balloon extras and us borrow many items for food and drinks.  Borrowing from friends and family definitely helps keep costs low for wonderful celebrations!

 And a super big, huge thank you to my children who did a fabulous job working their brains at memorizing the Scripture, doing lovely art projects to add to the fun, giving us their ideas for the song and getting another school year over with so we can enjoy the spring and summer that's ahead.  CeLeBrating another year down is bittersweet.  Benaiah will be having big parts in the program one of these days, and I'll wish for these years back.  But they are also getting more fun as the children can do more and offer their own ideas for decorations and program material.  They have already asked about what next year's will be about.  Hmmmm, that's a good question.  : )

Cooking Class/Party

We try to get together with homeschoolers from our church every so often for a time of fellowship and learning for the children.  This month we did a cooking class that was packed full of fun and food!  Since it was to be more educational than party like, we included activity tables that filled the time with extra learning and fun.  I will include what all the children made at the end of the post.  The meal was delicious and enjoyed by all!

 "Anyone Can Cook" is the theme from the movie Ratatouille.  We wanted them all to know that cooking isn't just for the moms in their lives.  I believe and hope they all learned something helpful that encouraged them to help out in the kitchen when they can.  This sign was used with the language table.  They had to see how many words they could make from the phrase.  I believe one of the older kids came up with 16.  

  

 This is our preschool/baby group, minus a few smaller babies.  They had great fun making major messes.  : )  The preschool age got to wear aprons along with all the older kids.  They spent most of their time playing after they did their prepared projects.  A big thanks to Carie from Jacksprat for helping make the aprons for everybody.  They added just the perfect touch to our class!   Thank you Carie!
 

 Decorating cookies with colored frosting, sprinkles and lots of mess.  They turned out beautifully and were so yummy!

 Here they filled celery sticks with peanut butter and were supposed to save them as appetizers for the whole group, but I believe some of them ate their appetizer a little early.  : )
This was also our free time table.  We had worksheets such as crossword puzzles, word searches, etc that all had to do with cooking and what the children had learned throughout the day.
Each activity table had a basket in the center that was filled with fruits and veggies.  Out of the center of the produce was a dowel rod with a small chalkboard on the end that said what activity that table was going to be.  It was cute and a fun way to decorate and still be useful.

 The appetizers that the preschoolers and babies made.  We've got some talented little chefs at our church.  : )

 Ahead of time, we let all the students know that we would be having a No Bake Cookie Contest.  We also let some adults enter, but most of the entrants were children.  This proved to be a very fun part of the class and got them cooking in the kitchen before hand.

 One of the groups made meatballs.  They all got their hands in it and formed the balls, and boy were they tastey. 

 This group did several things.  Here they are making fruit kabobs, which was our other appetizer.  Our meal didn't end up getting finished until about 2:00, so we all needed a little snack to get us by until the food was ready.

 The older group made homemade italian dressing and homemade noodles.  The process of noodle making is very long and time consuming, but they were delicious! 

 And I believe they had a good time doing it!  Yes, even the one boy!  : )

                                     

They ran the clumps of dough through this dough flattener (I'm sure there is a more technical term for it). 

 Then hung all the flat strips of dough onto racks.  What a process!  Thanks to a lady from the church who so willingly volunteered to come help teach the children this!  It truly was a blessing to have her there helping them, helping clean up and making my job a little easier!  Thank you Colleen!

 After the dough is dry (in our case it wasn't dry enough since we didn't have time to wait around), they ran the flat pieces through another gadget that turns it into spaghetti like noodles.  Look at that table full of noodles. 

 Back to the group that made several things.  They made the best garlic bread I have ever tasted!  Do you see all the little books by them and in their hands?  Those are the recipe books that the children carried around with them to use as they made their foods.  Each child received one, and it was full of every recipe they made during the day, with space for them to write recipes they found in cookbooks that were provided for them to look through as they had time.

At the art table they were allowed to decorate them with markers and crayons and different shapes and colors of pasta noodles.  Was very fun for them!

 

 Can't have a cooking class without dipping pretzels.  One of my favorite things to do with the children and with all the sprinkles of every color and shape, it made for some very yummy looking pretzel rods.  Look at all those girls in their aprons.  Was so much fun!

 This table was our health and science table.  The paper bags were labeled taste and smell.  In the smell bags were some cut up jelly beans that the kids had to smell to figure out what flavor it was.  In the taste bags were jelly beans for them to taste.  In the end they had to figure out which sense was stronger, their taste or smell.  It was quite unanimous that taste was stronger.  They also had another taste activity at this table where we put two foods together such as grapes and cheese, bananas and cinnamon, chocolate and peanut butter, and pretzel and cream cheese.  With their eyes closed, they had to figure out which two foods they were eating.  They also learned how their sense of sight can also be helpful in taste since grape flavor is usually purple, orange flavor is orange, lemon is yellow, etc.  This was a fun learning table.

After the meal we had the children make their own ice cream.  It is best to do this with just a couple children at a time.  It got a little chaotic with so many.  We put the ingredients for ice cream in a pint sized zip lock baggie and sealed it shut.  In a gallon size baggie, we put some ice, then the pint sized baggie, more ice and rock salt.  We had the children partner up and take turns sloshing the ingredients around in the bag.  I think some of them did it a little too rough, because their bags broke open causing some loss of ice cream.  : (  But most of them were able to accomplish the job and enjoyed some ice cream with M&Ms from the math table and apple crisp that one of the groups made. 

 After the meal, it was time for clean up.  The children were ready for some down time after the full morning and afternoon.  We put in Ratatouille which is a perfect movie to show at a cooking party.  I think it is one of the better children's movies as it really does teach quite a bit about the kitchen.  They all seemed to enjoy it! 

Oh, we can't forget about the Cookie Contest.  These were our three judges (Hey, how did Casie slip in as a judge?   There were 4 but one was helping with the babies).  They had cookies that felt dry, moist, tasted like veggies, and like coffee, but the winner was a gooey, chocolate, cookie with coconut in it.  Congratulations to the winner who received a gift card to Applebees for doing such a great job in the kitchen. 

Our day was quite long, and if we do it again, we would definitely shorten things up a bit and not have so much going on.  But the children definitely had a day of school, fun and learning moments with their friends in our make shift classroom.  Thanks to everyone who participated and helped make this day a CeLeBration in the kitchen! 

Foods that were made:

Homemade Noodles -for the meal we added organic spaghetti sauce to the pasta
Homemade Meatballs
Parmesan Garlic Bread
Salad (tomatoes, red onions and croutons) with Homemade Italian Dressing
Decorated Sugar Cookies
Dipped Pretzel Rods
Celery Sticks and Peanut Butter
Apple Crisp in the Crock Pot
Homemade Ice Cream
Fruit Kabobs