Preschool and Parties

So, Spencer started his first day of preschool a few weeks ago. He was very excited about it and also excited about the sun shining right in his face for this picture. He was even excited to put on his backpack just to walk right back in the door to meet one of his teachers (Me--I was assigned to kick off the first day).  I'm doing a home preschool with a few other moms in the neighborhood. It's pretty low key, but at least something fun for us to look forward to once a week for a few hours.

The letter of the day was "I" and so we thought ice cream made for a fun theme. My parents have the best homemade lemon ice cream recipe they snagged from someone years ago, so I wanted to try it out for myself. We were lucky enough to borrow their ice cream maker for the day and were all set with the rest of the ingredients. This lemon ice cream isn't too tart. It reminds me of Italian Gelato. Maybe because it has 4 cups of sugar in it. We pretty much skipped all the preschool welcome "stuff" and had to jump right in to the letter "I" and the two different sounds it makes. Then we talked about some fun facts about how ice cream got started. These are 2 of my favorite facts...

*Favorite Fact #1 Nancy Johnson (from New Jersey) was the woman who invented the ice cream maker (in 1841). Thank You, Nancy!

*Favorite Fact #2 In St. Louis, (1904) two vendors were parked next to each other -- a vendor selling waffles and a vendor selling ice cream. When the ice cream vendor ran out of cups, the waffle vendor offered some of his waffles. This is where we get our ice cream in a waffle cone!!! Some things were just meant to be.

Recipe for Lemon Ice Cream

2 Qt. Milk

1 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream

4 Cups Sugar

1 Cup Lemon Juice

1 1/2 tsp. Lemon Extract

Mix all ingredients together and place in ice cream maker. Place rock salt and ice cubes around the inner part of the machine. It takes about 45 min. to 1 hour to circulate and form. Makes 1 gallon. 

Here they are beginning the ice cream process.

The kids were very helpful putting the different ingredients in. We only had 1 milk spill and a few sugar sprinkles fall on to the table. They were more than happy to help clean those up with their little fingers. This picture is to show how they have become experts on the ice cream making machine and are so proud of their creation.

Enjoying their creamy creation... (Emma)

(Mya)

(Spencer)

(Tyler)

Because they weren't able to do fun toppings on their lemon ice cream, we did a fun craft instead with styrofoam balls, paint and pom-poms. I think they look almost edible!
So, preschool was on Thursday and then Friday we celebrated Spencer's 4th birthday. We sent out Transformer invitations thinking we'd do something along the lines of Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots, but slowly the theme turned to Star Wars and Darth Vader. 
I decided a Darth (also the name of our loser cruiser) cake was out of my expertise, so I opted for a good moon cake (not THAT kind of moon cake). Though I wouldn't consider myself a cake decorator, I still enjoy pretending that what I am working on will come out as a masterpiece. I think these mini-oreo cookies made for some great craters. The action figures below are from Jeff's childhood collection. Good Job Jan for hanging onto those babies. I probably would have gone through a cleaning streak and tossed them years ago! They were perfect for the party.
We started the party off with a fun craft. If you're looking for an easy mess free craft idea these nuudles work great! They're like the packing peanuts for packages, but they're colorful and when you dip them onto a damp sponge they'll stick together. The goal was to make spaceships, but instead they were making boats and baskets. I'm sure Darth might have liked to fly in a colorful basket.
After crafts, the boys were put through a Jedi training camp. They had to drink Jedi juice (kool-aid) and then they were presented with their Jedi headbands and light sabers. I have to admit, I've always called them life savers because that just what they sounded like to me. I have now learned after all these years of Star Wars in my life that the correct term is light saber. Jeff has plenty of other stories to tell about all the terms I confuse, but I think in all honesty this one was tricky for me to change. I never call swords sabers, they're just swords to me. I'm glad I could learn a new vocab. word, but I still think saver sounds better.

I think my favorite is Jedi Saryn in this picture.

Here's a closer look at this warrior space woman. Can you tell she's saying "cheese"?

Part of the camp (Jeff was in charge) was that they had to tackle an obstacle course and figure out how to use the force while using their light saber's blind folded.

When they were ready they each got to fight Darth. One of the little guys cried so I had to take the mask off for awhile. I do look pretty fearsome in this child sized suit. Jeff was supposed to do this, but in the end I took on the Darth role and headed towards the dark side.

We wrapped the party up with pizza, cake and gifts and bid our little Jedi friends a safe travel home.

Here's a little video clip of the training these young Jedi's went through.