We are going to do a digital Christmas card this year again! It’s just easier and it simplifies our Christmas.
This year we welcome a little girl named Emily. 7 lbs even and 20 inches long. We love her so much!
Merry Christmas!!
Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:
This is the 2015 Christmas video from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called “A Savior is Born”.
I’m just being completely honest. I love General Conference so much but it is a lot different with little kids. My husband and I try so hard to pay attention but our kids are so distracting. To make things worst, Sunday afternoon session of General Conference is one of the hardest to stay awake. It’s the last session and it’s during nap time.
How do you stay awake and alert while watching general conference?!
Holy cow you guys! I fell off the face of the planet. Sorry about that. It’s been really busy traveling, taking lots of pictures for my calling and helping my husband edit his dissertations. I’m just trying to keep up with my kids, cleaning and laundry. There really is a time and a season for everything.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… Ecclesiates 3:1
I wish I have more time to post on here but it’s just not my first priority. I’ll do the best I can because I have a lot of pictures to share with you all.
I recently participated in the a photography competition in Utah. We had to take pictures of 10 different categories and submit our best 30 pictures within 48 hours. It really pushed me to my limits and helped me advance my skills in photography.
One of my most proud category came from “Architecture.” We traveled to Park City to take picture of this historic barn.
This blog just celebrated our 5th anniversary because we started this blog right after we got married and we just celebrated our 5th anniversary! Over the last 5 years, we’ve posted almost 200 times. It has never been super consistent but I blog in the seasons of life when I can. Thanks for sticking by!
If you want a more consistent update follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maybohubbard
I was called and set apart a couple of weeks ago to be a Church Service Missionary Photographer of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What does this mean? Well basically… take pictures where ever I go and submit them to be used in Church media. So you’ll see me and my kiddies with a camera all the time. Some people from create.lds.org recruited me back in October at LDS Tech conference. Before that I was struggling to figure out where in the world to take my photography hobby… I felt like this is the best way for me to learn more about photography, officially start a real photography business and share my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the same time!! I’m going to need all my friend’s help to fulfill this calling! Yes, I really do get to wear this name tag…
Our friend took the boys rock climbing! I think climbing is just built into these little boys. Micah who’s 3, loved it. After a few tries, he got 3/4 of the way up the wall.
They even had little harnesses for little toddlers for Quentin.
However, this is how Quentin felt about climbing the wall. “Don’t make me do this!!” He was a little tired and hungry.
We had a blast! So grateful for our friend who took us climbing!
Speaking of climbing mountains, I enjoy this great inspiring message by President Eyring about climbing mountains and “Gaining Power to Overcome Challenges in Life.”
Hey Friends! This is a picture of the Mt. Timpanogos Utah Temple by Jason Carlton from Utah. I shared my testimony about LDS temples today on his blog Temples and Testimony.
Thank you Jason for running such a blog!
You can share your testimony about LDS Temples his blog too! Click here.
Update 2/22/2015: OK we did it today!! I’m going to try to post an update later with some extra notes and add a few spaces on the game board cause we kept on landing on blank spaces… so I started making them sing a song even if they landed on a blank space. I think the biggest problem is that the older boys got “too excited” and couldn’t calm down. The older boys thought it was “awesome” and the older girls thought it was “dumb”. *sigh* but I still think it’d be an awesome FHE game cause it wouldn’t matter if you land on a bunch of blank spots during FHE…. it’s just that time is pressed for singing time.
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Ok… I ventured into researching about Minecraft so I could better understand the youth in my ward.
I made this super simple print, play and sing Minecraft Theme Singing Time or FHE Game with the 2015 Sharing Time Manual Songs. This is meant for older kids in primary because the younger kids probably don’t know what Minecraft is.
While I understand it’s not the most spiritual game, I tried super super hard to include gospel principles and gospel related things in it. I think it can be counted as a “wholesome recreational activity!”
Well… I’ll let you know how it goes! Tell me how it goes for you if you use it! 🙂
I didn’t make it all by myself. I had help from these sources below:
Credits
Characters (You can create more characters here): http://minecraft.novaskin.me/
Salt Lake Temple Minecraft Picture: http://mrashermarad.blogspot.com/2012/09/minecraft-memes-cool-ideas-and-xbox-360.html
Game board: Lost Steve @ http://pixelpapercraft.com/papercraft/4fe7006162f7d5552c000095/board-game-lost-steve
DOWNLOAD PDF FILE HERE: Senior Primary Minecraft Board Game for Singing Time PDF
DOWNLOAD WORD FILE HERE: Senior Primary Minecraft Board Game for Singing Time WORD FILE
My awesome friend at Feather Flight blogs was willing to help me out with this year’s Valentines Day card. I realized most of my friends are not UofU fans so it would just be not nice for me to give you a UofU valentine. So here you go… you get to pick your valentine: A, B or C?
Happy Valentine’s Day!
This is an easy “Fill in the Blank” review game for the song He Sent His Son which is the current theme song of the month in the 2015 Sharing Time Manual.
Instructions: Print, fill in the blank and sing!
Senior Primary can use a marker to fill in the blank with words.
Junior Primary can use a marker to draw pictures to fill in the blank with pictures.
For sunbeams you can ask them “What picture would represent [this word]?” and then help them draw it.
Laminate and use dry erase marker for multiple uses or just write on the paper with a pen or marker for one time use.
ENJOY!
Download pdf here: He Sent His Son Review Game
Download word file here: He Sent His Son Review Game
Or Jpeg files below:
My oldest son, Micah, is now 3 years and 5 months old. He is starting to sound out words and reading short words! I’m seriously so proud of him. My goal is to teach him how to read before he goes into Kindergarten. I’ve been teaching my son how to read ever since he was interested in letters which was well before he was 18 months old. I definitely think this is from Dallin’s genes cause I have never been interested in reading very much at all.
I broke it down to three easy steps. I’m writing this down so I can teach my next kid how to read but may be it’ll help someone else too.
After talking to my mom friends, I really think phonics is the way to begin teaching kids how to read.
First book, my neighbor suggested Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has a really boring introduction of instructions for the parents, but once we started the lessons my son seriously took the book and blossomed. Everyday you only do one lesson and it last about 20 minutes. Everything is outlined for you so I didn’t even have to plan anything. It gives you the order to teach the letter sounds, starting with the more obvious sounds like M and S and A then moving towards more complicated sounds like silent E’s… ect. Three reasons why I love the book is 1) it’s super easy for me 2) it teaches kids how to read and not just memorize the words 3) It makes reading into a game.
Another friend suggested the Three Owl’s Reading Method which unfortunately is out of press and I can’t find a copy anywhere. Micah loves these little books!!! This is more of a Montessori approach to teaching kids how to read. The first sounds that it teaches kids are the vowels sounds: a, e, ee, i, o, oo, u. Since it’s out of print, may be I’ll recreate the books and put them online. Dr. Hulda Clark who created the reading system died back in 2009. I’ll email the publisher to find out what I can do. Micah loves Owl’s Eyes more than Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because they come in little colorful books his size.
The third resource I’ve used to help my child learn how to read is Hooked on Phonics Ipad App. While I’m not a huge fan of their curriculum (mostly their story books are weird), I love love the letter sounds songs and the games they made for their app. Micah loves this app!
Of course, I don’t believe in forcing children to learn how to read but it’s been so fun for Micah that he’s forcing me to teach him how to read!
Now I’m not an expert at this but my younger son, Quentin is 18 months… I started asking him “What sound does M make?” and he replies with “mmmmmmm”. So I truly believe that when a child starts imitating animal sounds they can totally start learning letter sounds too! 🙂
I’ll end with my favorite scripture in Doctrine and Covenants:
D&C 88:118 …seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.
What tips and tricks do you have to teach kids how to read?
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