I’ve been doing lots of blog reading this week…so I’ve got lots of fun stuff for your holiday weekend! Happy Independence Day!

CRAFTS

Carousel Art Supply Organizer at Homeschool Creations

4th of July Coloring Pages at Make and Takes

PURPOSEFUL PARENTING

To Infinity and Beyond by Erin at The MOB Society

Proverbs 25:28 Printable from Mama Jenn {totally printing this for Lydia…and me!}

Bible Verse Visuals for Seeds of Worships CDS at Bible Story Printables {remember how much we love Seeds?!}

Pen Pals at Homeschool Creations

HOME{SCHOOL}

Getting Organized & Planning Ahead and How Do I Teach My Child To Read from 1+1+1=1 {scares and inspires me at the same time!}

BOOKS, MOVIES & MUSIC

The Smallish Library from Sarah Jane Studios {see photo above!}

A Good Night Book Walk at Teach Mama {tried this tonight!}

MOVIN’ & SHAKIN’

GeoCaching at 30Days {totally doing this!}

YUMMY STUFF

Kids, Salads & Meal Plans from Healthy Meals for Healthy Kids

S’mores on a Stick from Whimsical Creations {perfect ending to our 2 Weeks of Summer Camp!}

linked to Saturday Stumbles at ItsCome2This

When Leigh and I were discussing doing a Summer Camp theme I told her I wanted to make ice cream in the ground. I knew I had heard of this and was going to try it. I looked it up online and could not find it anywhere! That’s when I remembered…it wasn’t ICE CREAM in the ground…it was jell-o in the ground. Jell-o, ice cream—whatever! (I still can’t find the jell-o in the ground recipe, but I KNOW my mom did it at camp one year!)

However, I know of another fun way to make ice cream. Not in the ground. Not with an ice cream maker. Just a few basic ingredients:

4 quart sized plastic zip bags
4 gallon sized plastic zip bags
2 cups half & half
2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups salt (rock salt is suggested but if you use regular salt, just use a little less)
1/2 c sugar
ice
gloves (for your sensitive kiddos!)

Instructions:

1. Whisk sugar, cream, half & half and vanilla together.

2. Pour 1 cup of liquid into each quart sized bag.

3. Put sealed quart sized bag inside gallon bag. Add ice–enough to fill gallon bag about halfway. Add salt.

4. Shake the bags for about 5-10 minutes. Asa was our muscle man and did 2 at a time. Lydia used gloves to keep her hands warm!

5. Grab a spoon and eat out of the bag!

This was so fun! I love making food in unconventional ways. This would be so fun to make on a hot day…bring the bags outside, shake ‘em up and eat it all on the porch!

Thanks so much for coming to our 2 Weeks of Summer Camp! Hope you had a great time! Don’t forget to write!

Hiking is a huge part of summer camp!  I remember hiking every day it didn’t rain… and I loved every minute of it!  We currently live in central Virginia, and we are only an hour or two away from some fabulous hiking trails that I can’t wait to explore.  I also grew up in a pretty rural area with a lot of forests and a lot of time to explore them.  But how do you share that experience with a 4 year old and a 2 year old in a fully developed urban/suburban area?

Hike your city’s parks!

Armed with our sit-upons and some creative hiking ideas, and accompanied by a friend, we visited a park in Richmond, VA that we typically don’t get to visit.  It’s a lovely park that’s a bit further away from our house than our regular park - and because we don’t typically go there, it was fresh and new!

About a hundred feet in to our hike, we were greeted with a fabulous bridge…

…that took us deeper into a little forest.  It is wonderful how cities can carve out pieces of land in the middle of all the development so people can still escape to the woods if they’d like.

There were so many things to explore in our little city park adventure that we didn’t even have to pull out any creative ideas for our hike.  They boys were fascinated by everything we encountered and asked plenty of questions without any prompts!

The little creek that the bridge crossed was easily accessible from the other side of the bridge, so we had to go visit the creek and have some fun…

There were several downed trees along the way – so the boys got a quick lesson on the rings of a tree…

…And there were these tree identifying signs along the way that helped us know what we were seeing.  I love that – I can tell what an oak tree and a pine tree is, but that’s about it.

The paved sidewalk ended, and we chose a dirt track that I thought would take us around the park in a big circle – and we ran into the creek again!  This time, we got to hop over rocks to cross the creek.  It was easy to forget that my boys had never done that before – they talked about the creek for the rest of the day!

The trail wandered along the side of the creek for a bit, and we hopped over a couple downed trees until we got back to another paved track…

…that brought us back to the beginning of our hike again.

Another bonus to hiking a city park?  The playground awaits you at the end!