Tag Archives: free things to do

Crafts for Kids: Snowball Snowmen

6 Dec

Yesterday’s post was a recipe for Chocolate Chip Butterballs, oftentimes known as Chocolate Chip Snowballs. It was a recipe that the kids could help out with, by rolling the batter or even by doing some of the measuring of the ingredients or by dumping in the ENTIRE BAG of chocolate chips for the batter. When I bake with my kids I try to find at least one thing for each of the three of them to do.

For today’s kid’s activities, I thought I’d capitalize on the “snowball” aspect of these cookies. Last year another mom, Theresa and I ran the “Brown Baggers” book club for our daughters’ second grade classes. It was a group that met during lunch and recess once a month to hear a story and do a craft related to that story.

This is a great story that leads to endless hours of building "snowmen" inside your home!

We used to alternate planning the activities, each taking a month. One of the months the book that my friend chose was called “Snowballs” by Lois Ehlert. You can find it here on Amazon.com if you’d like to purchase it. (And no, in case you are wondering, I have no connection to Amazon.com at all.) I had actually not seen the book before, but she had it at her house, her kids loved it and it was perfect for the season. She came up with a simple, fun activity for the kids to do to go along with it and they loved it. That’s the activity I’m sharing with you today.

Alexandra and her friend Graycee recently made some snowmen at our house, reminiscent of the ones in "Snowballs."

The storyline in the book will encourage your children to find ordinary objects around your house to turn their “snowballs” into snowmen. They can use paper plates for their snowballs or you can cut white circles (or if they’re old enough, they can.) Some of the items you might want to provide for them for decorations (depending on their ages for choking hazards): buttons, popping corn, stickers, pom poms, sunflower seeds, scraps of paper, rubber stamps and inks, pipe cleaners, feathers, artificial flower petals bottle caps…the possibilities are endless! Your children can make a snowman or woman or an entire snow family, depending on how long you want them to be crafting.

The second graders that we worked with had tons of fun with this story and the super-easy snowman craft that went with it. I hope your children will too! And thanks again to Theresa, for coming up with this activity last year!

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Crafts for Kids: Thumbprint Art

2 Dec

Yesterday I posted my first “Your Tray or Mine? Cookie Tray Recipe of the Day” and it was for Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies.

I mentioned several ways your kids could help out with the cookie baking if you wanted them to. But, I figure that all that cookie rolling and thumbprinting might get kids into the mood for…..thumbprint art!

Many of you know that for eleven years, until this past August 2011 I was a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator, teaching adults and kids how to work with stamps and inks for paper crafting. In fact, in 2004 and 2005 I was one o the top 100 demonstrators in the country! It was a job I loved very much and it combined a lot of the things I love, including teaching and kids. This project today reminds me of my SU days!

A fun thing for kids to do with ink is to use their fingerprints to turn them into drawings. I actually own a whole book about it: Ed Emberley’s Fingerprint Drawing Book and it’s a book I’ve had since I was little.

This is the Ed Emberley book I have at my house.

You can find Ed Emberley’s book as well as several of his others, here on Amazon.com if you’re interested in buying it for your kids.

The cool thing about it is that besides teaching the basics of thumbprint art, it also has seasonal and holiday thumbprint art pages as well! It gives kids hours of fun thumbprint art to keep them busy. I also find with my kids, once you get them going, their own innate creativity keeps them going on their own for hours (which gives you time to mix up more cookie batter!)

a Christmas page from Ed Emberley's book

If you don't want to do Christmas thumbprint art, you can do winter instead!

My personal recommendations when choosing ink pads is: be sure to use water-based ink (if you see Pigment Ink, think PERMANENT INK!!) Water-based ink washes off easily with soap and water or with baby wipes. I also always recommend using a paper tablecloth (Chinette makes them and you can reuse them as long as they’re dry and not ripped too badly.) Paper absorbs the ink that gets on the table, where plastic doesn’t and once it gets on the plastic tablecloth it stays wet and gets on arms, elbows, clothes etc.

Dress for mess when your kids work with ink, and the kids could even wear an apron if you’re nervous about clothing.

You can have your kids make scenes using their fingerprints or they can make Christmas cards, pictures for family members, teachers, friends, etc. My daughter Alex could make an entire book of her artwork. For her everything is made into a book. Your kids could do that as well, make a book, write a story to go along with their fingerprint characters.

Well there you have it, my first cookie and crafts double feature for you! What do you think??

I bet you’re wondering what I will come up with next, right?!

Just wait and see…

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Big Announcement for December Cookie and Craft Lovers

30 Nov

December is coming!

Christmas is coming!!!

Holidays are coming!!!!

Family is coming!!!!!

Stressed yet? Don’t be!

This time of year can either be really awful or really special. For most of us, myself included, it’s a little bit of both. I love to bake and I’m always so proud of my cookies for my trays, but it’s hard to find time to carve out to make them all when you have little kids running around. Therefore, many of the recipes I will be posting will be recipes your kids can help you with (aka rolled cookies) so that it keeps them occupied when you’re baking and it cuts your prep time in half. No, all the rolled cookies may not be exactly the same size or shape, but really does that matter? (And if it does, just kind of re-roll them a little bit when you take them to put them on the tray. I’ve done that!)

However, so often you don’t just want them to be occupied, but you want what they are doing to be something they enjoy too, something meaningful for them. Therefore, I’m going to alternate my recipe postings with seasonal activities for the kids as well. They will be things like crafts, special stories to read, gifts to make, things like that which often coordinate somehow with the cookie recipes I’m posting (okay, once a teacher, always a teacher, clearly!) Some of the crafts will be things I’ve done with my kids in the past or things they’ve done at school and brought home that I loved, or even gifts I’ve received that were handmade that I loved. Times are tight for all of us, so any handmade gifts they can make is one less thing we need to buy! The stories I post are just the ones we have at our house, but my kid always love when I pull out the seasonal stories each December. (I always wish I did that every season, but I don’t ever think of it any other time of year!)

So are you ready? If so, be sure to check out the first recipe on December 1! The coordinating book and craft will be featured on December 2! And no…no hints!

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Life lessons learned from Halloween

1 Nov

I just uploaded some pictures of my kids from Halloween onto my personal Facebook page. As I looked at the pictures, I was feeling so proud of the girls, I just had to share.

Here is the one particular picture I uploaded that got me thinking…

This year's costumes: a dancer, a doctor and a Face Book

The reason this picture got me thinking is this:  it may sound terrible, but we won’t go out and buy Halloween costumes. We outright refuse. Our reason is that our kids all take dance and have for ten years, eight years and five years, respectively. That means we have A TON of costumes in our basement, very beautiful but very expensive costumes. We average about six costumes per dance year, one year I think we had eight or nine. We also have costumes from dress-up clothes (we have several of the princess costumes) and costumes that people have handed down to us (and no we don’t have a costume bin, if you read my prior post about our bins!) Basically our basement could be a costume shop itself. So a few years ago, we decided that we would no longer spend money in the fall on costumes. They had to be whatever they could be with whatever we already had down there. One year my oldest daughter, Caroline, made her jazz costume into a poodle skirt. Last year, Elizabeth was a ballerina in a gorgeous dress combined with the bright blue Airbender mask and matching blue swords, an interesting combination, but she liked it, while Alex was something different every Halloween party or event we went to. Each time, she’d just pick something off the hook down there and put it on.

Halloween 2010 an Airbender Ballerina, a witch and a blue jay

This year, Caroline decided she didn’t want to wear something we had, and in all fairness to her, a lot of what we have down there no longer fits her since it was already hers in the past. She’d already done the witch costume a couple of times, and nothing from dance this year appealed to her. But, she didn’t ask for something new. She didn’t even tell us she wasn’t wearing something we had. She went on- line, Googled “Homemade Halloween Costumes,” saw the Face Book costume on a website that came up, and she was off and running. Between her and Don, they got the materials they needed and he helped her make the costume. I loved it!

She wore the costume to the “Lock In” at dance earlier this month and she was absolutely beaming when she came home with “Most Creative” out of all the costumes there. I was nervous that she might not want to wear her costume, being that it was homemade, (and I have to admit that although we stay strong on this, I was in fact, feeling guilty) but she brought it and won. I was so proud of her!

Times are hard and we tell our kids all the time that they will be older and remember these days when people were losing their houses and their jobs, when restaurants and stores were closing and empty, and I know that some day they will be telling their kids, “My parents wouldn’t buy us costumes for Halloween,” but hopefully when they do, there will be some good memories and life lessons learned, attached to that sentence.

Trick or Treat!


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What’s the mystery?

11 Oct

For as long as I can remember, at least since my oldest was a preschooler, we have been taking the kids on Mystery Rides. I don’t even know how it started, I just know we’ve always done it.

A Mystery Ride is exactly what it sounds like. We are taking the kids somewhere and to them, it’s a mystery because we don’t tell them where they are going. We let them guess, but we never tell them if they’ve guessed correctly or not; they don’t know until we arrive at our final destination. As the kids have gotten older, they’ve gotten better at asking their questions when they are making their guesses: Is it inside or outside, is it a place we have gone before or not? Sometimes to throw them off we’ll make them bring a sweatshirt and wear socks and sneakers (as if we’re going to an outside destination) when really we might be going to a movie or a museum. We’ll let them throw in a movie in the van, usually reserved for rides of 45 minutes or more, when really we’re going indoor mini-golfing up the street. It’s as fun for us throwing them off as it is for them to guess.

For us, creating a sense of mystery for the kids makes what might be a somewhat ordinary activity (like a movie or out for ice cream) that much more exciting. It makes a mountain out of a mole hill, as they say, and for us that’s important since with a big family we often can’t afford to do some of the huge attractions we wish we could do. Going out to eat or to the movies is not something we do often, so the excitement in itself of actually going is made that much bigger by the mystery that surrounds it. Sometimes we laugh too, because their guesses are bigger than the actual destination, like the time my youngest daughter guessed that we were going to Disney when in actuality they were going to a baseball game with their dad. She was pretty sure it was a trip to Disney though, despite the fact that 1) I wasn’t going and 2) there was no luggage.

Some of the Mystery Rides we have done in the past include: movies, out for ice cream or out to eat, beach at night, letterboxing-which in itself is a mystery because you go to a different place each time, indoor mini golfing, Bass Pro Shops in Massachusetts, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, the drive in movies, museums like the Providence Children’s Museum, a show like Disney on Ice, a basketball game at a local college, etc.

One of the funniest Mystery Ride moments we had recently was when we took the kids to the pre-screening of A Dolphin Tale on a Tuesday night, a school night. We had stopped to pick up some out-of-state friends who were in town visiting, so that was the first part of the mystery. Then, we headed into the city, to a different theater than we would normally go to. We were nearing the place where all of the “on ice” shows tend to be. My second daughter started guessing, shouting from the back seat, “Toy Story On Ice, Princesses on Ice, Disney on Ice!” Each time, we’d say no, and finally she said, “Something On Ice, Anything at all On Ice??”  Despite the fact that nothing was on ice that night, they were so thrilled when we arrived at the IMAX theater, and they loved A Dolphin Tale, which was in 3D.

A Dolphin Tale was a great Mystery Ride!


Yesterday’s Mystery Ride was apple picking at Steere Orchards in Greenville, RI. We live about five minutes from a couple of local orchards but to be different we chose this one, about 20 minutes from away. We hadn’t been apple picking as a family in years. It was a warm day for October, almost 90 degrees and the orchard had advertised hay rides and free music along with samplings of their foods. We rounded everyone up and got them to get their sunglasses, sneakers and a bottle of water each. We told them it was outside and to a place none of us had ever been before. It was such a fun day, one we’ll remember for years to come. The added bit of mystery made it that much better!

We took the hay ride first before we picked our apples.

Daddy and his daughters

The girls and I loved the little store at the orchard and they loved the old-fashioned scale. I'm pretty sure though, that none of the bags of apples near it have the right amount of apples in them any more!

Me and my girls

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Saying Goodbye to Summer

2 Oct

Today is October 1, and this week the weather is supposed to turn into typical fall weather. We’re in the midst of work and school routines with soccer, dance and Girl Scouts in there too. As I look around my house, I see the typical transitional things happening, like the basket of bathing suits in the hallway, leaving the bedroom closet to make way for cooler-weather wear and the laundry basket of tank tops and sleeveless dresses ready to go up into the attic.

I realized today though, it was time to take down our Summer Vacation sign. I hated to see it go.

Our Summer Vacation sign ended up being so much more than I originally intended it to be!

On the last day of school in June, my youngest daughter, Alex, was still a half-day kindergartener. I wanted her return home on the last day to be special, just like I do for her sisters at the end of the full day. I wracked my brain for something special for her to do while we waited for all of them to be together at the end of the day for the full-fledged celebration. I came up with an idea: I would write out a banner for her to color and we’d hang it up to surprise her sisters when they got home.

At first I just wrote out Happy Summer Vacation and left it at that. Then I decided that she and I would think of all the things we like to do over the summer and I’d write them all over the banner to fill it up a bit more. So that’s what we did and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon together.

We put the sign up on the wall and I kind of thought that once the other girls got home and the banner had been seen, that would be it. Little did I know how big a part the Summer Vacation banner would play into our summer and how sad I’d be today when I finally took it down.

We began marking the banner with little star stickers each time we did one of the things on there and it became a sort of bucket list. The girls would take turns placing the stars. They also began adding things that either I’d forgotten or things we were adding to our summer plans. People would see our sign and talk about it when they visited, the kids would share with them the different summer experiences they’d had. One cousin was so happy to see themselves listed on the banner since we visit them at the end of each summer, and our other cousins were thrilled to be on there as well, since they visit us each summer.

We found too, that even though there were things we thought we’d do, they didn’t all get done, but at the end of the summer we discussed how although we’d missed some of the things on our list, other things replaced them that were just as good, or better.

In the end, this was one of our best summers ever. Our kids are at great ages to be going places, doing things, and enjoying time together. In addition to all of the “usuals,” we got a dog, we went camping; we really did do some extra-special things this summer.

I’m so glad that I have this sign, which I’ll keep in our memory box, so that we can one day look back at our Summer Vacation 2011 banner and remember it all.

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