Phone App + Nature

 

Hi, I'm Jen! I blog over at plainvanillamom.com. I am a mom of four,  ages 11, 9, 7 & 8 months. The 11 & 9 year old are actually my "bonus kids" but we all have the same amount of fun! You can read about all of our goings on over at plainvanillamom.com. I post a lot about what we are doing with the babes because, well lets face it, he's my captive audience while everyone else in the family is off at school or work. My personal hobbies fall into two categories…baking & photography and you will find a bit of both on the blog as well. I'd love to have you stop by and say hi!

Have you ever heard of the app Leafsnap? I hadn't. My seven year old actually introduced me to it. He learned about it through his Uncle. I must admit I sometimes cringe when my child picks up his iPod, but this is an app that I can actually get behind.  If you are unfamiliar with leafsnap here's a little snippet from their website, if you want to learn more about it I recommend a visit there. 

Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, theUniversity of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. This free mobile app uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves.

There is so much I love about this app! Mr A has had so much fun with it already that I had to share.  If you have older kids like ours that like to explore and investigate I suspect this will be a hit.  It gets the kids outside connecting with nature, and learning about it all the while.

The idea is you take pictures of different leaves (against a white background please)

Then it scans the leafsnap database to find possible matches.

Scroll through the results and match your leaf specimens up. When you find what you believe to be the right match you can label your specimen and add it to your "collection". 

For every specimen you can click to read more about the type of tree that it is.  You can see different pictures of what the leaves and flowers of the tree look like, learn about what areas of the country it is native to, what the bark of the tree looks like, and so forth. 

My little botanist is looking forward to growing his leaf collection throughout the summer!

Oversize Paper Airplanes

Today with a fun post for you is my friend Jenn from Ambrosia Creative (the genius who created the design of my header and buttons)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oversize Paper Airplanes

On any given day, my boys are making and flying paper airplanes. Indoors or outdoors, it never gets old to them. To mix things up a bit, I thought it might be fun to experiment with oversize planes. While the learning curve to launch the plane was a bit steep for my 4 and 6-year-olds, this would be enjoyable for older kids and mom or dad.

You will need some large paper (we used sheets from this Crayola paper pad) and/or some lightweight poster-board. We kept our plane designs simple and first folded a traditional dart.

 This airplane gets awesome distance! Though if flying outdoors, any small gust of wind can blow it off track. And the second plane (instructions below) is a great outdoor trick flyer if folded from lightweight poster-board.

With the larger plane size, you may have to do some tweaking and adjustments like taping the nose so that the wings stay closer together, or folding the wings so that they slope upward. Allison has some other great ideas for flyers and that would also be fun to experiment with in a larger size. Happy flying!

Jenn 

Fort Friday!

It's Fort Friday once again! I hope you're ready for some Fort inspiration.

Here's a fort sent in from Ohio (love the tunnel entrance)

Our readers over at Dirt Under My Nails sent us their very cool outdoor backyard fort

The Superfantastic Beeders shared an outdoor fort they made from ropes and leaves from the ground!

 I wish I knew the original source of this fort (seen on Leather Dogs)

Pottery Barn has a Fort Bed right now!

Their Firehouse Bed is pretty cool too.

Summertime Schedules

We are leaving on a jet plane (to HAWAII!!) but I never want to leave you without inspiration so I've asked some bloggers to fill in for me while I'm gone. Up first is The Happy Family Movement!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

School is out and summer is HERE!! That means hot days filled with bike riding in the cul-de-sac, swimming at the pool, checking things off our summer bucket list, and nights filled with baseball games and more swimming!

As summer was approaching, I was SO excited. But I was also a little nervous. There always seems to be SO many things that need to be done (that comes with raising three kids and running multiple businesses, I suppose!). But I want to make sure we actually ENJOY our summer and take full advantage of it. Come August, we’ll have two kids in school full time and our littlest will be in preschool part time. But for the next 2 ½ months, they are ALL OURS!

In a moment of mom panic, I wrote down a little daily schedule. It’s nothing crazy, but hopefully it will help us keep on task this summer, getting stuff done and having fun! So far, it’s working well, but we’re only a week in. Here’s our summer schedule:

Morning:

Eat breakfast, do the dishes, clean the kitchen

Play outside/swimming lessons

Early lunch at 11:30 am

Afternoon:

Do chores: put away laundry, pick up the house

Reading time for Max & Ava/work on reading with Lia

Quiet time for the kids/prep dinner/answer email

Swimming!!

Cook dinner while the kids play in the backyard or in their rooms

Early dinner at 4:30 pm (with SO many baseball games, early meals just work better)

Evening:

Head to the baseball fields/go swimming/play in the cul-de-sac

Night:

Kids go to bed
We work!

 

How’s your summer going? What does your typical day look like? What are you doing to make sure you don’t let summer pass you by?

LEGO

Not only are we going on vacation we are also in the process of moving. (Yes a little crazy around here) which means finally finalizing my LEGO storage plans. I've come across a few new ideas that I liked since we shared last so I thought I'd pass them along!

Love this DIY portable LEGO tray by That's My Letter

Check out this organized wall from The Pennington Point!

A rolling cart may be a good solution - from Apartment Therapy

I still like the giant LEGO boxes. I think they're fun! from A Place for Everything

They've always had this LEGO workstation

Or this sorting box or sorting head where the small pieces end up at the bottom after you shake it up.

Have you seen any great LEGO storage solutions other than the ones we've seen?

To Do

Today we are celebrating Memorial day in the United States. Here at home we often think of those that gave and are giving their lives to protect us. So thank all of you who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who are currently giving of their lives. We can't thank you enough.

If you follow my Pinterest Board "To Do" you may have seen some of these. I love finding inspiration around the web and having a place to keep them all!

Delia Creates made a fun downloadable B-I-N-G-O Summer Chart - perfect for your Summer Bucket List (we'll share ours soon!)

 The Dating Divas has some Road Trip printables like this license plate game.

LEGO Quest has some great prompts for your kids to do with LEGOS!

Mer Mag is always SO inspirational. This Interlocking Cardboard Castle is no exception

Here is a fun huge house made out of boxes from Nessa Dee. This is fun to make AND play with

Fort Friday!

If you're new - here at All for the Boys we celebrate Fridays with some awesome fort inspiration from around the web. Whether made of sheets, cardboard, wood, or sticks, forts are a place we can go to transport our minds to wherever we want to go. You can play, dream, relax, or create in a fort. Everything is better in a fort!

Don't forget if you participate in Fort Friday (or make a fort any day of the week) and want to share email me at info@allfortheboys.com 

Let's start out this week with YOUR inspiration!

The boys over at Becoming Homegrown constructed a fort with lots of boxes and a vinyl shower curtain (which they personalized)

Some Fort Friday fans all the way from Ireland shared their awesome outdoor fort with us!

They have some great inspiration at Let the Children Play

Here's one from Peaceful Landscapes

A natural fort from Tree Inspired

Here's a hanging fort structure idea from ikatbag

Check out this amazing tent/fort in Norway from playscapes

Have a great weekend everyone! It's a long one for us!

Lawn Games

There's the usual lawn games - horshoes, mini golf, and croquet. If you spend a lot of time outdoors lawn games are a fun addition to your yard to keep little (and big) people busy and having fun. I found some fun DIY games and a few fun ones to buy if you'd like to add some fun to your backyard this summer.

DIY Shishkaball from This Old House

A DIY cornhole game from the DIY Network

Pipe ball also from This Old House

Ladderball from Lowes Creative Ideas

Giant bowling from Amazon

We are busy making our Summer Bucket List have you started yours yet?