Sweet Shoppe Birthday

We give our oldest daughter a $100 budget for her birthday party each year.  Wanting to stretch her budget, she decided to have a theme that would allow her to shop the clearance sales after Valentine's Day.  The theme she landed on was a sugar-loaded Sweet Shoppe.  She knew that she would save money on the candy that would serve as decorations as well as goody-bag fillers.  The day after Valentine's Day, we hit Wal*Mart and bought lots of candy.  Then we struck gold at Target.  Their Valentine's partyware was pink, red, teal, green, orange and yellow striped.  We got a table cloth, napkins, and plates.  We filled in the gaps with plain cups, balloons, and less-expensive candy.  This is what we did:Activities: Pin the Lolly on the Pop (the girls decorated their lollies before the game), Make Your Own Candy Necklace (Valentine's deal), Decorate a Cupcake (the cupcakes were placed on a stand for later), Guess How Many Gumdrops in the Jar, Sweet Shoppe Bingo (with gummy bear markers)
Goody Bags: Prefilled with bracelets, candy flavored lip balm, toothbrushes, and bouncy balls.  As they left, girls (and moms) could fill their bags with candy.

School Express

 I love the idea of thematic units, especially with homeschooling.  It is fun to pick a topic and take off with it.  It works well with learners of various abilities because everyone can study the same topic while each learner takes away their own little bit.  Our family uses one set of curriculum for language arts and math and studies almost everything else thematically.  One of my favorite websites has become School Express.  If you sign up for their free newsletter, they will email a link each week for a thematic unit.  I have received units on topics such as beavers, climate, and Christmas.  Each packet is about 20 pages long and includes word searches, info pages, spelling sheets, and coloring pages.  We use the packets for bonus activities - long car rides, waiting for appointments, sitting at restaurants, etc.  The website also has thousands of other free resources and pages to print for your children.  For a small annual fee, you can gain access to many other units and activities on the site.