In The Air Tonight

Hi All!

Alrighty.... I'm not trying to be redundant or anything but I was thinking about my last post and how it really bothered me. You know, the one about my In The Air Tonight unit?? The problem about that post that really got me was that since our family went on a road trip and did not fly anywhere, all my pictures were of my On The Road Again resource. That bugged me. For one thing, I'm a mama myself and I want/need to see these pages put into action so I know whether I'd want to purchase it or not.  SOOOOO... I had to do something about it right when we got home from our trip.

Enter child labor here.....

Don't you just love children? They are such great workers when you bribe them? Hehe.

I printed out pages of my In the Air Tonight  resource and took it out in the backyard where they were playing. I sat them down and told them that they were going to do a couple fun activities and that they were gonna smile pretty, dang it,  so that I can take a nice picture. When they saw the binder, they knew what it was since it looked similar to the On The Road Again unit. They were excited to work on it since they saw me creating the packet on my computer. My two older boys even gave me some wonderful ideas for the resource!



Here is my sweet Karis (3) holding up her pink binder! She loves pink!!

This is my Joshua (7). His binder is white. I think it looks so clean. :) See how happy he is? It's amazing how offering candy this unit makes them so happy. LOL
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This is what I did to organize the folder. I LOVE this because it really is LITTLE to NO PREP at all! And trust me, I NEED that in this season of my life!!!

All you need is a 3 ring binder, a dry erase marker, a paper clip, a die, a pencil/pen, and an old sock as the eraser. These are things that I'm sure you can find laying around the house. I told ya... LITTLE to NO PREP!! I wasn't lying friends!!! I did buy the zipper mesh pencil keeper at the dollar store. Karis got the purple one and I bought the boys a green one.  Then I put most pages in a sheet protector so that you can PRINT IT ONCE AND USE IT FOREVER!!!   Love that!

There are 2 different airplane themed word searches.

The mazes were a HIT in my road trip unit so I knew that I had to create more for this unit. There are 9 mazes total with 3 levels for each maze. Each level is listed on the top left hand corner of the page. See it there? Good. :)  I LOVE LOVE that if my kids made a mistake, they could just erase it because of the plastic sleeves.

"Ah Yessssss!!!" My Joshua is SO proud to complete level 1 and move onto the next level.

My kids LOVED this one! These games were created to keep them quiet on the plane. They can have fun WHILE staying quiet. No media needed. :)

First game.... Hold It! They took a deep breath in to see who could hold it the longest. My kids are *pretty* competitive so I was waiting to see who would pass out first before they lost. I'm serious here.

Still holding......

My son Joshua has some pretty big lungs so he won the gold. He was more than happy to write his name next to the gold medal. :)

Next game? The Stare Down! (Da- Da- DAHHHHHH!!!!)

Karis (3) though very sweet can give off some mean stares. It must be a girl thang. Yup, she went the longest without blinking.

Then it was Hand War...

After all was said and done, it was time for the closing ceremonies. You write the name of the winner in each podium and draw them in their medals. Here Joshua wrote his name a bit messy so he used the sock to erase and rewrite. Did I tell you how much I LOVE sheet protectors??? 

Here is Plingo! Get it? Plane Bingo? Yea... I just made that up on the fly. I know.. I'm pretty creative. Let me know if you need anything named. LOL. All you need is a pen/pencil, a paper clip, and some fingers.

My 3yr old felt so grown up because she was able to play this game. Because she just had to match the pictures, she was able to be included in this game.

So happy!!!

The One Minute Madness is probably one of my favorite parts of this packet. My boys helped me come up with some of the games. All you need is a die and a cute little patootie rolling it. You cannot borrow mine. Although cute, she can be very moody at times.

Shake-a, shake-a, THROW!!!

You can play the One Minute Madness 2 ways. If you don't have a die, no worries. Just pick what challenge you want to do or go in order. My kids loved rolling the die to see what challenge they had to take on. 

So #6 it is!

My boys competed with each other while Karis offered moral support. 

 SO cute! I love to see them working together...especially when they are having fun. :)

They were excited to play Mile High Match Up. They got pretty competitive here but I had to remind them... It's just a game folks!! I guess I can't blame them. Their parents are insanely kinda competitive, too. 

Here are the cards. I printed them on card stock for durability and so that you could not see through them. My kids laid them all out and took a good look at them to see where everything was. I gave them 10 seconds to work their photographic memory. 

Then they flipped all the cards over.

Of course, ladies first.

No match...

BUT look at that ADORABLE pout pout face! She *might* have made that face because the boys were cheering that she didn't get a match. No mercy, I tell ya! 

Joshua's next...

YES!!! Match!

Gotta show it!

Then Isaac...

He did his victory shake. But then Karis got sad. So they *might* have helped her out a bit.

YAY!!!! MATCH!!

 HAPPY HAPPY Girl!!!

I put all the cards in a little zippy and put it in the pencil zipper pouch.

I put the Making Words paper in the front pocket. There are 3 different pages.

Here is my Isaac doing one. I loved that he multiplied to find his points. Then he added them all up.  He was able to practice some math and spelling skills!!! YAY!!!!

This is Joshua (7). He chose to do the other Making Words page.

That smile alone makes him a winner in my book!!!

I love it when he finds new words within words. We talked about how larger words are just made up of smaller words.

I was actually impressed that Joshua decided to skip count to find his total points. YAY for math!!!

I didn't get to highlight every page in this resource but I'm sure you get the idea. I really do love this unit because my kids love it! They are my testers! I figure that if they're not having fun with it, then other kids won't. I was so delighted to see that this unit and my other one was KID TESTED and APPROVED!!!

Hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer. I begin back at work teaching a 2/3 combo in the first week of August. It's a crime!!!

Anyways, thanks for reading along and scrolling through tons of pictures!

Happy Travels Friends!!!

Blessings,

Easy Peasy Traveling with Kids

I know, I know.... the words "traveling with kids" and "easy" DO NOT belong in the same sentence.  If you've every traveled with kids, you know how hard and stressful it can be. Trying to plan the minutes, hours, days to keep them busy...packing snacks, candies, games, iPads, iPods, iPhone, movies, crayons, paper....Wow! I'm tired just thinking about it all. This is how we begin our vacation by traveling to our destination and that is how we end our vacation traveling home. Our vacations are book ended by stress. No wonder I usually need a vacation from my "vacation". Ha! Our family loves to vacation so this is why I needed to do something to create less stress during our travels.

Enter my "In The Air Tonight" resource. 

This unit was born out of necessity, desperation, creativity. Ha!   I combined some pages of this unit with my "On The Road Again" unit and packaged it all nice and neat and gave it to the kids the night before we left on our road trip from California to Wyoming.  We had two 8 hr driving days and this resource kept them busy for hours. HOURS! Seriously, friends! I'm talking NO MEDIA AT ALL!! Let me say that again. NOOOO ME.DI.A!! This is KID TESTED AND APPROVED y'all!!!  I knoooooow..... I was pretty shocked myself that it kept them THAT busy.

I know that I already blogged about my On The Road Again resource the other day but here is my new unit that I created for air travel. I pulled pages from this one and combined it all together for HOURS of quiet bliss FUN for the kids (AND parents!). It's called In The Air Tonight.  Oh, can't you just hear Phil Collins singing away? He would be so proud. SO proud right now. The best thing besides these travel units keeping the kids busy and engaged is that it is LITTLE to NO PREP! Yes, I have 3 kids and my life is BUSY!  I need something fast and stupid easy that pays high dividends. This is THAT "thing"! I'm a pastor's wife so I ain't lying either!

Here is a preview of my unit:

Like I said, I combined this unit with my On The Road Again  unit and had it all ready for my kids for our 16 day road trip. The picture you will see will show the title page with my Road Trip cover on it since we were not traveling  by air.

 Here is what I did.

First, I put most pages in a sheet protector so that it was easily erasable if they made a mistake and most importantly, it was reusable! :) I gave them a dry erase marker and they used a tissue (or their hands) as an eraser. I meant to have them bring an old sock as an eraser but forgot. A thing that I would do differently next time is that I would either attach the marker to their binder or get a smaller one and put it in the inside pockets. My older son had the smaller marker and was able to keep it in the pocket of the folder but my 7yr old kept losing his big marker ((pain!!!)). BUT it could be because he's 7, too. LOL. I also got their favorite snack and a fun book to read. Then I tied it all up with a nice bow and gave it to them the morning we were leaving. I didn't get a picture of their faces and it all packaged pretty because the morning was a *bit* crazy!

MY DISCLAIMER: Ok, I'm not the best photographer and the lighting wasn't always ideal so my pics aren't the best. I'm learning to take better pictures but until then, you'll have these. I DID want to give you an idea of what the unit looked like and felt that THAT was more important than my sub-par photography skills. So I'm just gonna apologize right now to all you amazing blogger/teachers/photographers out there. You may cringe a bit.

This is my 7 yr old holding his binder in the car. He was SO excited to get started on it. 

This was the FAVORITE game... Car-Bingo!  They wanted to play it ALL the time! At first, I called out the car colors. Then I needed a rest so I had the most brilliant idea! I had my 3 yr old call out the color of the cars (child labor at it's finest). GENIUS!!!! Seriously. Not only was this reinforcing her colors, but she was proud to be "Mommy's Little Helper" as managed her with my eyes closed. Ha! ;)

They started getting so good at it that I did a variation of the game. They had to get 2 rows to call out Car-Bingo. I would sometimes reward the winner with a small sweet treat and other times I would just say that they got to hold the title of  Car-Bingo Champion!

Well, my little Karis wanted to join in on all the fun, too. Being Mommy's Little Helper didn't earn her some treats so she wanted a chance to win some treats.  This was actually pretty awesome because it was also reinforcing her colors again. She doesn't know how to "read" yet, but because I had made the words into the colors it read, she was able to easily play right along. She decided to do dots instead of an X.

I mean, look at her. Just LOOK at her! How could I not give her a sweet treat just for being SO stinkin' adorable??!!

I told her she almost had Car-Bingo, in which she prematurely called out "CAR-BINGO!" Sorry pretty mama. You gotta play by the rules, no matter how cutie patootie you are! (YIKES!!! Please dismiss the dirty head rest. I'm a bit embarrassed..........ok, I'm over it now.)

Karis LOVED working on her Car-Bingo card and I loved that this was reinforcing her colors in a FUN and interactive way with her brothers. :)

Like I said, they played this A LOT! Each one won a lot of times. So I had to change it up...

They had to have 2 rows to win. That didn't stop them... so I changed it up AGAIN....

BLACKOUT! They had to cross the WHOLE card out. Yeah.... that's better. That took them MUCH longer. I know, I know.. I should win the Mommy Genius award! HAHA!!!

Then there were the mazes. This was awesome. Since they had dry erase markers, they were able to easily erase their mistakes. In both the In the Air Tonight and On The Road Again units, there are a total of 9 different mazes with 3 different levels for each maze. They were so encouraged and my Joshua (7yrs old) gained more confidence as he completed one level and moved onto the next one that was more difficult.

When we got to the campsite, their friends even wanted in on the fun so they decided to try some mazes, too.

My only requirement was NO PEEKING at the answer keys unless you are completely stuck!

Then there's the all time classic... Tic Tac Toe. Also, did you notice that my Joshua made a "J" on his License to Win page? I love it! :)

The Making Words page not only got their brain working in spelling and trying to find words within words, but an added bonus that I didn't realize was that it helped a bit with math. Joshua (7) added up all his points while Isaac (9) decided to multiply to get his total in each column. LOVE that there are learning opportunities everywhere!

This is from the Imagination Creation page. Joshua hadn't written anything about his picture yet, but this is what he came up with.  He saw mountains. PURPLE snow-capped mountains. OOOOKAAAAYYY. Maybe he was feeling a bit patriotic since it was close to the 4th of July...."Puuuurple mountains maaaajestyyy. Uuuupon a fruuuuited plaaane...."

And here we see Lily pads. I try to encourage my kids to use the WHOLE space when they color. I just think it looks nicer. :)

Okay, so here is how I put it all together. Again, I KNOW that this post is about my In The Air Tonight unit but remember, I combined it with my On The Road Again unit and used that cover since we were traveling by car. Hopefully this won't confuse you. :)

I printed out the pages and put it in a binder.

I put the pages in a sheet protector that could be reused over and over again or the ones that I felt that I wanted them to be able to erase if they had made a mistake. I stapled "My Vacation Journal" together and put it in the front pocket.

In the back pocket of the binder I put some loose pages... Making Words, Word Search, etc. You could certainly put these in sheet protectors as well but I just chose not to. I may do it next time.

There are many others that I didn't get a picture of but I think that you get the idea. These packets are FULL of fun and engaging activities that will keep your kid's eyes off of media for a bit. It really worked well for my family and I know that your kids will love them, too!

You can click on the pictures to take you to my TPT store.

Happy Travels Friends!

Blessings,