Ford-ology: disney

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Disney's The Lion Guard Scavenger Hunt.

One of our favorite activities is an early morning visit to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU's Provo Campus.

Both kids absolutely love looking at all the taxidermy animals and even though sometimes it feels as if we sprint through the whole museum, we always learn something new or notice a new animal we didn't catch the previous visit. This week we decided to turn our trip into a Preschool Scavenger Hunt. The museum has a display full of scavenger hunt sheets for every age as well as tons of Museum information. The scavenger hunt sheet was exactly the type of hunt we were looking for, and can manage at 2 and 4 years old. As we walked around searching for scavenger hunt animals, Hunter pointed out several characters he noticed were familiar from Disney Jr.'s The Lion Guard. "Bunga is a Honeybadger mom!" "Fuli is a Cheetah!" "Pumbaa is a Warthog!"

The excitement in his eyes as he recognized the types of animals that are in his favorite show made the trip even better. Like EVERY household in America with toddler children, Disney Jr. is a pretty big deal in our home and right now one of our favorites is The Lion Guard. The Lion Guard is Disney's The Lion King's continuance of Simba's son, Kion, and his adventures as the leader of the Pride Land's Lion Guard. It's a great kid show with adventures, fun songs and learning. Disney sure knows how to deliver when it comes to entertaining and teaching toddlers.
On the drive home Hunter said, "Mom, next time we go to The Bean Museum can we find all the Lion Guard animals?" I thought, what a great idea buddy! So I started thinking how I could make our next trip to the museum a little more Disney. Using inspiration from the great scavenger hunt sheet The Bean Museum gave us, I created a Lion Guard Scavenger Hunt.

My kids absolutely love it! It was created specifically for the animals I knew we could find in our local museum but I'm excited to also use it at our trip to the Zoo later this month. Since my children are 2 and 4 years old, I kept the scavenger hunt simple by using photos of each animal so that they could recognize them in the museum. I added their names for information and the type of animal each character is so that older kids, learning to read, could try to find the animals by type.

A trick we use in our house is to put printables that we love, and plan to use over and over, into a page protector sheet. This way we can mark off the animals we find during our scavenger hunt and then wipe it off to use again. All you need is a page protector, dry erase marker and eraser!

You can download the FREE printable HERE.
Be sure to PIN the Scavenger Hunt and share it with your friends! Leave a comment if you use the hunt! We'd love to hear how and where you hunted for The Lion Guard. Happy Hunting.

*Disclaimer: I do not own the images in the Scavanger Hunt. All images were found on lion guard.wikia.com Disney's The Lion Guard is property of Disney.*

Friday, June 27, 2014

TWO Infinity And Beyond.

Our little Hunter Boy turned TWO on Sunday. Can you believe I have a TWO year old? It's been such a fun, busy, emotional, trying and wonderful two years.
I was so excited to plan Hunter's party! Despite the nay-sayers; "He's too young", "He'll never remember it", or "You're crazy", I went ahead and planned a party for my two year old. I Invited 12 TWO YEAR olds and their parents, spent hours prepping, went over my budget (just a little) and had the time of my life doing it all. (Definitely the Student Government coming out in me) I found most of my ideas on Pinterest and had tons of help from my hubby, neighbors Tristin & Julia and sister and brother-in-law.
The party went by so quickly with few casualties and tears, lots of laughing and lots of fun. That's a successful toddler party if you ask me.
Now, here are ALL the photos you have all been waiting for. (Don't forget to PIN your favorite images) -Full List of Supply/Decorations/Printable's at end of post- _________________
Decorations For the entry I used the idea of walking into "Andy's Room". -I used cardboard boxes and labeled them with some of the boxes we see when Andy's moving/headed to college. -I also printed out signs that were found in Andy's room in the original Toy Story. -LOTS of Balloons also - Two Year olds go NUTS over Balloons.

Tables -I borrowed two tables and twelve chairs from the nursery (perfect size for two year olds). -I set up table cloths in "Woody's" colors. -The Plates/Napkins, centerpieces and confetti were Toy Story themed. -I Put a badge and party popper on each plate and each child had an apple juice as well. (these were supposed to be labeled "Lightyear Fuel" but I ran out of time)

Food Tables This area was known as "Woody & Friends Saloon" -Pizza Bites - Pizza Planet Bits -French Fries - Potato Head Spuds -Fruit - Sunnyside Fruits -Check Mix - Cowboy Trail Mix -Red Licorice - Jesse's Lassos -Bullseye's Watering hole - Drinks

I opted for Cupcakes since I was hosting a handful of two year olds.

I used printable's I found on Pinterest and taped them to toothpicks.

Activities -Etch's Coloring Station. (The MOST GENIUS idea for Two year olds) Printed coloring pages I found online and bought a box of crayons. -Pin The Tail on Bullseye. (not so successful with two year olds) Printed from DisneyFamily.com -Photo Booth I found the printables on Pinterest. I made the photo backdrop from a pale blue table cloth. My husband made the sign and I cut out the clouds. (The life sized Woody/Buzz my hubby drew on cardboard boxes. They were some of my favorite accessories. We could have spent $20+ EACH on life sized cutouts from the store and the best part were these were personalized to be TWO year old sized.) -Rex's Dino Stomp (or Cake Walk) Cut out green paper in the shape of a Dino footprint and we did a cake walk and the number called got a Dumb-Dumb. At the end I made sure each kid had a sucker.