A Craft a Day in April

I've felt a bit like I lost my crafting mojo lately among all the dishes and laundry, and I was inspired by Jean over at the Artful Parent to plan an activity a day for the month of April*.  Jean's ideas all sounded like such fun and just what I needed great way to really re-engage with the kids after a long winter.  Admittedly, we may well not complete every activity on the expected day or even finish quite all of them this month, but we'll have a good time trying! (image via mesh2)

1 - Pop-up birthday cards for Daddio
2 - Fingerprint bunnies
3 - Paper birds
*
6 - Bunny craft
7 - Pecking hens
8 - Potato print chicks
9 - Jellybean necklace
10 - Springtime crayon resist
*
13 - Kids' address book
14 - Stationery set for Daisy
15 - Ribbon hair bows
16 - Folding letters
17 - Tissue paper flower pictures
*
20 - Rain gauge
21 - Garden craft
22 - Playdough nests
23 - T-rex sponge prints
24 - Felt flowers
*
27 - Tissue overlay flowers
28 - Splatter dino eggs
29 - Make pretzels
30 - Chirpy chick drawings

*except for the weekend, since that's our time with daddio and he has his own crafty plans!

What are your plans for April?

Signs of Spring

We're feeling much, much better, and thank you all so much for your kind comments and emails.  The week of recovery gave us a little extra bit of quiet time and some much-needed peace.

Friday, though, the weather was so lovely and the kids so stir-crazy that after lunch we packed up and headed to the mountains for an early-Spring hike and a search for the earliest signs of Spring that we could spy.  The children sought them out and I snapped a photo (with better planning there might've been a journal and some colored pencils, but this was so last-minute that we forgot the doggie's leash!)

First, we found a trail with plenty of big trees and blue sky.  (for locals, we went up to Elk Meadow in Evergreen and parked at the trailhead across from the dog park)

We found baby trees...

...and new daisies.

A cocoon waiting for warmer weather....

...and a centipede sunning herself on a very, very big rock.

My find was the oozy sap on a Ponderosa Pine (if you look back at the first photo you can see Daisy checking for the telltale butterscotch scent...yummy!).

And, of course, what is Spring without new sandals, already scuffed-up and dirty from a good, two-mile hike? (taken at one mile per hour!)

How is your family enjoying the change of season?

Clothespins + Buttons = Cute Clips

I use clothespins for everything.  I'm still working off a shoeboxfull that came with our vintage fifties ranch so I haven't had to buy any for a long, long time.  That said, I was getting a little tired of the old, not so cute ones so we decided to pretty some up with buttons snatched from our button jar.

The children made pretty button stacks and I glued them together and attached them to the clothespins (since I was using my very favorite, but patently child-unfriendly E-6000 adhesive).  I helped Daisy lay out the others and glued them for her.  I've since added magnets to the back and they're doing good work holding up our school schedules and grocery lists on the fridge, while others are sorting papers for me on my desk and we made a few more to use as bag clips in the kitchen.

What do you use clothespins for?

Favorite Things: Gears! Gears! Gears!

We have plenty of toys, but in our rearranging and decluttering I've found that there are just a few that we really couldn't do without.  Right at the top of this list is our set of gears.

The pieces are big enough that the littlest kiddio in our house doesn't risk choking, simple enough that our three-year-old can manipulate them easily, and versatile enough that the six-year-old and her thirty-something parents can build some really cool stuff out of them.
 

Like our little walking robot?  His arms rotate as he scoots along, lights flash, and his eyeballs wave in the air thanks to the little battery-powered unit (it was so popular that we had to pick up an extra set so everyone could make their gears go).  These pieces are from the Gears! Gears! Gears! Lights and Action Building Set, but there are a variety of fun ones to choose from (the crazy monkey set is next on Scout's list!)


What's the favorite plaything in your house? 

Have Fun with an Indoor Treasure Hunt!

We're looking forward to another windy, snowy day tomorrow after a few lovely ones in a row. The kids' energy has just been building and building and we're going to need something to burn a good bit of it off if we're going to be stuck inside all afternoon. How about an indoor treasure hunt?

It can be as simple or complex as you like, and is a piece of cake to put together before you sit down for a few minutes of peace while the children seek out their prize. 

Directions:

Gather scraps of paper, post-its, or index cards.  On each card, write a clue to guide the child to the next clue.  Here are some we've used:

easy:

Where you put your clothes when they're dirty.
Every day letters and packages arrive here!  Are there any for you?
Every Spring we plant spinach and carrots here...

harder:

Yo, ho ho!  [they're to look in the Playmobil pirate set]
Every Wednesday something arrives here.... [the milk box on the front porch]
This makes something go around to play music. [the record player]

For non-readers you can draw a picture if you want them do do it independently (like my silly toaster?).  Sometimes I make these a bit more cryptic than the obvious toaster, like a skull and crossbones for the pirate set, or ice cubes for the freezer.  The tougher the clues the longer it takes! 

On the back of each card write the location where you should hide the clue.  It makes it infinitely easier than trying to work backwards.

I like to leave a little something at the end of the hunt.  One day it was leftover birthday cupcakes, another it was a note telling the kids to bundle up so we could play outside and earn ourselves a cup of cocoa!


What do you do to keep everyone entertained for a day of indoor play?

Salt Dough Conversation Hearts for Valentine's Day

I love those little sugary conversation hearts that you find at Valentine's Day -- they're sweet and tasty (in a delightfully chalky way) and bring me right back to childhood. We made giant ones out of home-mixed playdough.

Best Homemade Playdough

1 c flour
1/4 c salt
2 tsp cream of tartar
2 Tbsp oil
1 c water
food coloring
1 tsp vanilla or peppermint extract (optional)

Stir ingredients together in a medium-sized saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly for 2-3 minutes until the dough comes together. Dump it out on the counter and knead for a minute until shiny, smooth, and resilient.

We let it cool until we could handle it, then rolled it out and cut it with heart-shaped cutters. The letters are tiny stamps ... which led to lots of fun stamping with our whole collection. Creativity abounds!

(get it? 'bee' cool? heh heh)

Ten (more) Surefire Ways to Occupy Your Toddler

A couple of months ago I shared a list of some of my favorite activities for keeping toddlers occupied for a bit when you need to cook dinner, check your email, or (goodness me!) take a break on the couch for a few minutes.  Well, it was such a hit that I thought I'd better share a few more of my standards.  I'll be sharing ideas for preschoolers and older kids in the next few weeks, so check back!

1. Set up a game of kitchen-ball with a laundry basket and a selection of small balls (crumpled paper balls are great, or tennis balls, wiffle balls, large bouncy balls, even beanbags work--nothing that could be a choking hazard, depending on the age of your child!)  Have your child try to toss the balls in from a short distance.  They'll usually wind up chasing the balls around as they bounce away so it lasts longer than you'd think!  Alternately, lay a paper grocery sack on it's side and have the child roll the balls into the bag. 
2. Get out a muffin tin (one with six holes works well) and provide your toddler with an assortment of small, safe things to "sort" (duplo legos, large bouncy balls, plastic links).  Admittedly, it's possible that little sorting will actually occur, but the process of filling and emptying the compartments is just so satisfying!
   
3. Supply your child with a feather or lambswool duster and send them to town cleaning any horizontal surface they come across.  I can't guarantee that they'll do a decent job, but is that really the point?
4. Tape or tie an empty cardboard mailing tube at an incline to two legs of a table or through one arm of a chair and atop the other arm and have your child send big bouncy balls, matchbox cars, etc through the chute.
5. Cut a fairly large slit in the top of a shoebox to make a "mailbox".  Provide your child with a deck of playing cards or collection of old hotel key-cards, ID cards, etc (that's the mail!).  Show him or her how to drop the cards through the slot one at a time, then dump them out and do it again. 
6. Provide a dishpan with a bit of water, a little sponge, and a collection of spoons (teaspoons, tablespoons, serving spoons, baby spoons, etc) for your little one to wash and sort.  You may want to set this up on a towel in the kitchen to contain the mess!
7. Once the spoon wash-and-sort gets old, put the spoons away and add more water, a few small floating tub toys and a little kitchen strainer.  Show your child how to dip the strainer in like a net to catch the little toys and lay them out on the towel to dry.  
8. Rustle up an old wallet and fill it with hotel key-cards, old ID cards, coupons clipped from the Sunday paper, and money-sized bits of construction paper.  Watch your child empty the wallet, organize the contents, put everything back in, then start again.  Alternately, fill a small purse with little animal figures, old cards, coupons, old keys, etc. 
   
9. Cut a tunnel-shaped opening in the side of a shoebox to make a matchbox car garage.  Show your child how to drive little cars in, then open the lid to find them again!
10. Set up a basket or shelf with a collection of small, empty food containers (i.e. jello or rice pilaf boxes, yogurt cups, butter boxes).  Have your child "shop" by filling a grocery bag with whatever's on her "list" (the one in her head, anyway!), then put the groceries back and try again.

What are your tricks for keeping the under-3 set occupied when you need a few minutes? 

Ten Surefire Ways to Entertain a Toddler for Half an Hour (or more!) When You Only Have Ten Minutes

Some days you feel like supermommy, ready to be engaged, read books, listen to inane stories, play school, and babies, and restaurant... but all too often you just need a few minutes to check your email, chill out on the couch with a magazine, or get dinner started. Here's a list of things that will entertain your little one(s) when you just need a few minutes. The best part? These activities take just a few minutes to set up and use things you probably already have on hand.  So be supermommy and still get stuff done!

1.  Draw a shape or letter outline on a sheet of paper.  Give your child a sheet of stickers and have him fill the outline in.  Stickers are great for strengthening the pincer grasp and muscles your kid will need for cutting with scissors and holding a pencil properly.
2. Set him up with poker chips and a piggy bank or box with a slit cut in the top of it.  Have him sort the poker chips by color then slip them into the slot one by one.  
3. Find a small plastic basket or shoebox and tie a string to it creating a wagon or sled.  Your child can round up his favorite stuffed animals or treasures and pull them around the house.  You can also make this into a train with the addition of more boxes or baskets in the line 
4. Line the kitchen chairs up and throw a blanket over them to create a tunnel.  Once your child gets tired of crawling back and forth, have him bring a pillow and blanket in and pretend to camp in the tunnel.
5. Collect two gallon-sized ziploc bags.  In one bag, combine 1 cup water, several drops food color, and a scant 1/4 cup oil.  Seal, then tape it shut.  Place in larger bag, seal, and tape it shut.  Show your child how the colors don't mix together and the oil floats on top.  This shouldn't leak, thanks to your good taping job, but I wouldn't let your kid play with this on the carpet :)
6. Get another gallon-sized ziploc bag. Put a good squirt of tempera paint in along with a little water (maybe 4 parts paint to one part water).  Seal and tape, then place the bag flat on the table or floor.  Show your child how he can trace pictures on the bag and smooth it out to start again.
7. Hopefully you still have some gallon ziploc bags.  Fill one with shaving cream (I'm talking something like Barbasol here, not shaving 'gel') and add a few drops of food color, either a single color or a few drops of two primary colors to blend.  Seal and tape, then have your child mix it all together by manipulating the bag with his hands.  Once he's done mixing, snip a corner off of the bag and show your kid how to squirt it out onto the table (or bathtub if you're feeling less inclined to clean up!), then smooth it out and draw pictures with his finger.  When he's done give him a towel to wipe it all up.  (image via prestomart.com)
8. Gather an collection of small, washable things (e.g. coins if your child won't put them in his mouth, toy cars, plastic animal figures, rocks, etc), a dishpan of warm water, old toothbrush, bar of soap, and towel.  Set up a station for your little one to rub the toothbrush across the bar of soap, scrub his items, then rinse them and set them out to dry.  
9. Collect a couple of bowls, a funnel, and some measuring cups, plus 1-2 colors of dried beans.  Lay out a large fluffy towel (keeps the beans from bouncing away when they're inevitably spilled and dropped).  Have your child transfer the beans from one bowl to another using measuring cups.  Show him how a larger cup holds more beans and how the funnel works.  Optionally, provide your child with an empty plastic water bottle to fill with beans using the funnel.  When it's about half full put the lid on and have your child shake it and roll it around on the floor.
10. Set your child up with a sponge and a sink full of soapy water to wash his plastic dishes, cups, and utensils.  Have him rinse them and lay them out on a towel or in a dishrack to dry.  This may be a bit of a mess, but hey, it's the easiest mess to clean up ever!!

Have fun!

Nine Ideas to Keep your Summer Movin' Slow

I swore it wouldn't happen, but here I sit. Summer is half-over. School starts in less than six weeks and we've barely accomplished anything on my 'things to do this summer while the kids are little and fun' list. I'm sure my extended roadtrip (and the extended recovery time) contributed, as will our upcoming trips into the mountains (this weekend) and to California (next week), not to mention the heat that's been hanging around and sapping my energy. I'm definitely planning to squeeze a few more things in before fall sneaks up. Here's what I'm committed to:

• Spend plenty of time at the sprayground (basically a squirty fountain for kids to run around in). It's a nice choice with the baby since mommies don't have to get in, and it runs a ton of energy off on a day when it's otherwise too hot to run.
• Hit Lakeside, our local vintage amusement park. Our kids are too little for Six Flags (and I'm not looking forward to a time that they're old enough!), but this sweet little place is a nice spot for families, with a carousel, little train around the lake, and the "wild chipmunk" roller coaster. They have big rides too, but I think we'll stick to the bumper cars for now.
  
• Make up a big batch of bubble solution and some DIY bubble wands. Adrienne at Baby Toolkit posted a bubble recipe and has inspired me to hit the Target dollar section for some cheap wands rather than always doing it myself. I'll use the time I save to make Betz White's super foamerator!
• More shady picnics. We've done this a few times at a creek near our house, usually accompanied by a walk (daddio and me)/bike ride (the big kids) and it's always a hit, but I must broaden my horizons.
• Go berry picking and make more jam. We usually do this in June, but late frosts quashed the early strawberry harvest. We still have red and gold raspberries to go, though, and the August berries are definitely good, even if they're not nearly as tiny and sweet as the June crop. This is a great activity for even the littlest kids, who can 'help' by keeping the berry basket from overflowing...
• Make some of Marie's "wet water sponge toys" at Make and Takes. I've seen other patterns for these around lately, but I've had my eye on her tutorial since last fall!
  
• Head to the high country for day hikes. You may be surprised to learn that Denver isn't actually in the mountains and that it gets to be pretty hot here. It's dry, which is nice, but still--hot! We're fortunate to be able to take advantage of a ton of hiking opportunities and even a year-round glacier within an hour's drive. Rather than sweating it out, I should really pack a picnic and head for the hills.
• Visit Belleview Park. It's a lovely park south of Denver which sports a clean wading stream for children, a little train ($1), and a pretty decent petting zoo ($1). Again, any opportunity to run some energy off and some good water play where I don't have to get too wet sounds great.
• Invite friends over to sip limeade and play in our cool, shady backyard. I really got off to a good start on this one (a few playdates and a couple of families over for dinner on the grill), but with the roadtrip, well, my good intentions have fallen off (sorry friends!) and my kids are missing their buddies!

I actually have managed to knock a few things off of our list, like swimming at the pool a lot, taking a roadtrip to visit family, doing farm things, eating a lot of fruit, and just trying to chill out a bit. Oh, and at the top of my list as we planted our garden this spring was to keep some little old bottles I've collected filled with the kids' flower pickings.

What's on your list for the rest of the summer?

ribbon activities: links

The blog Unplug Your Kids posted a couple of fun ribbon bookmark ideas, one a wide ribbon with sequins and buttons glued on, the other woven with pipecleaners and ribbon, with beads on the end. (Josie, 5 has been into the weaving idea but most weaving projects are a little too big for her, so this will be a fun one to try!)


Also, Let's Explore posted about some ribbon collages her girls did. Very cute and interesting to see the approach each child took (and I liked her little ribbon caddy :)

more button, tissue paper, and crepe flowers for mother's day! : links

We've had so much fun making tissue paper flowers over the past few days that we've been looking for something to fill our bouquet out a bit!

Plum Pudding came up with a super-creative idea for some gorgeous button and cardboard flowers.






One More Moore has a nice tutorial for making a bouquet of simple button flowers a lot like these --->
Theirs add felt leaves to fill the bouquet out a bit. I can't wait to try these first two ideas...and hopefully deplete my button collection a little bit.

Two Straight Lines has a tutorial for a very simple crepe paper flower bouquet displayed in a paper-covered can. It's very cute and the 'vase' is a great canvas to decorate for an additional gift for your favorite mother. Martha Stewart also has a pattern for some GIANT crepe paper flowers for all the paper you'll have left over! It's odd...Martha Stewart also had a big article and templates for making old-fashioned crepe paper lilies, roses, and other flowers in her weddings magazine the summer I was married (2001), but I can't find any reference to it online. Crepe is very moldable and stretchy and you (probably not small children, but you!) can create some very realistic flowers with it.

Finally, I really like Klutz's Tissue Paper Flowers book for patterns to create specific types of flowers. They also have great suggestions for other types of paper to use (we like waxed paper lilies!) and it comes with a passel of tissue paper to get you started. I've had it for years and have yet to run through the whole thing.

Happy Mother's day, and happy crafting!

May Day!

As a kid I always looked forward to celebrating the first of May with may baskets. My mom and I would make a simple cone by rolling up a sheet of paper, staple on a little handle, then fill it with lilacs (oh how I love lilacs!) or whatever sweet spring blossoms we could round up. She'd take me around to friends' houses where we would leave the baskets (anonymously) looped over their door handle, ring the bell and RUN! I'm hoping not to forget this fun tradition (again) this year and have a little May Day celebration with friends. This year we (oddly) don't have much blooming yet other than tulips which are too special to pick, so we'll probably fill our baskets with flowers from the patterns in the Tissue Paper Flowers book from Klutz.

If you're planning to celebrate this year, hop over to Skip to My Lou and pick up Cindy's lovely pattern for a may basket and tag to cut out and embellish. If you're feeling a bit more motivated and need more ideas, see what she and her kids did last year.

Stamping with potatoes and cookie cutters: craft project

My previously underappreciated husband just got back from a ten-day business trip (and not a moment too soon!), but while he was gone we really tried to keep ourselves busy. Yesterday's project was to use up some shriveled, sprouty potatoes I magically discovered under the sink. I remembered cutting stamps out of potatoes as a kid, but use of a paring knife is way beyond something even I would let the kids in on. Enter our collection of tiny cookie cutters. They're just about 1 to 1 1/2 inches long and I've never known quite what to do with them since they're just too tiny for cookies.

materials:
a big potato (like a baking-size russet)
small cookie cutters
tempera paint or a stamp pad
paper to stamp

activity:
Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch (more or less) circles. Have the kid place the little cookie cutter on the potato and push down to cut the stamp out (you may have to help push down and make sure they put it "sharp" side toward the potato). Dip the cut out potato part into paint or ink up on a stamp pad and stamp. We also used the cookie cutters and leftover potato outlines as stamps, which made for an interesting discussion on negative space, and it was fun to use the cookie cutter to make a contrasting outline around the stamp. Josie also had fun stamping a few things and then using markers to draw an elaborate scene while Jasper got busy stamping himself.

Mommy: This was so easy, and the cleanup was a piece of cake (particularly since they needed a bath anyway!).

Josie (5): Um, I give it a ten. Stamps are fun, but my stamps are funner.

Jasper (2.5): It be good. I like makin' da rainbow with da big circle (he used a circle cookie cutter to make rings on the paper and, uh, on the side of his head.)