Oodles of Ways to Have Fun With Pumpkins!

Want to have a little pumpkin fun besides the usual jack-o-lanterns? 

Here’s a whole slew of fun ways to decorate and play with these fantastic orange veggies...

Lowe’s suggests using hardware to make all sorts of whimsical, wonderful little pumpkin creations.

Oasis Accents tells how to make glittered pumpkins.

The Magic Onions posted the delightful idea of letting kids pound nails in and then string yarn on their creations.

The Preschool Toolbox made sweet little pumpkin boats.

The Swede Records featured some gorgeous melted crayon pumpkins.

Sweet Paul made this lovely little pumpkin diorama.

Country Living has a whole slideshow of fun ideas, including using stencils, decals, paint with painter’s tape, and more.

And for a few more ideas, check out my round-up of 35 Ways to use pumpkins for crafts, entertaining, education and more.

What’s your favorite way to use pumpkins? 

…Besides in pie, of course! 

 

Marble Mice!

Here’s a fun little printable craft from The Toymaker — Marble Mice!  Just print out the pattern on cardstock, cut out, and add a large marble inside. 

The Toymaker says…

These Marble Mice are fun to make and roll around on your desk. Cats love them!

What fun!

 

 

10 Ways to Play With Your Kids Today

Photo by Victoria Bayer

Is summer slipping away as fast for you as it is for us?  Here’s a few easy ways to take advantage of the end of July with your kiddos this week…

1. Grab some boats (or make some simple floating ones with bark or paper) and spread out a tarp, shower curtain or plastic tablecloth in the yard.  Drizzle water on it with the hose and sit right smack in the middle of it — getting cool, floating boats, making little island getaways, you name it.
2. Have a photo shoot outside.  Be sure to let the kids take your picture too!
3. Shoot some hoops — even if that means tossing balled up socks into a bowl on the coffee table because it’s 115 degrees outside.
4. Go on a sprinkler walk.  Head to an area of town where people have their sprinklers going and sidewalks that go through them, and try to walk through as many sprinklers to cool down as possible.
5. Make some real fruit slushies.  Toss frozen fruit like strawberries in the blender with some water and sugar to taste.  Blend like crazy and enjoy.  Make it extra fun by playing chef with a big variety of frozen fruit choices.
6. Freeze lots of ice cube trays and muffin tins full of colored water and then put all your multi-colored ice treasures in a big bowl.  Head out to the kiddie pool and grab some buckets of water to melt and color mix like crazy.
7. Take blocks of ice to the top of a grassy hill and go ice blocking.  Here’s more info on this activity that’s on our bucket list this year!
8. Make mud pies.
9. Play balloon volleyball.
10. Go camping.  Can’t do that?  Camp in the back yard.  Can’t do that?  Camp in the living room.

And yes, I know it’s winter for some of you!  I think a lot of these are still options.  If not, please do something fabulous and then come back and tell us about it. 

 

Build Your Wild Self!

The New York Zoos and Aquarium and the Wildlife Conservation Society have created a fabulously fun site!

Build Your Wild Self lets kids build themselves with all sorts of animal parts, while learning about animals along the way.

Customize your creation with your own hair, eyes and features, and then add elephant ears, monarch wings and so on, or create random funny characters.  You can even create your friends and family as wacky animals!

Fun!

Painted Soap Clouds

Remember when I recommended microwaving a half a bar of Ivory soap as a way to make the day magical a couple of months ago? 

We took it a step farther and had the most fun! 

We microwaved the soap for about 30 seconds (set your microwave for about a minute and just stop it when the soap stops expanding) and watched it puff up.

Then I gave the kids muffin tins filled with colored water (we used water and food coloring but you could also use liquid watercolors) and eyedroppers. 

They had so much fun! 

I highly recommend it!

Easy Puffy Paint!

I’ve seen recipes for homemade puffy paint many times over the years, but I never took the time to make it with the kids until today.

What a shame I waited this long!

The kids had a blast and developed lots of ways to use it.

Even Harry Potter crests and pendants!

 

The original instructions were to mix one tablespoon self-rising flour, one tablespoon salt, food coloring and enough water to make a paste, once for each color.

Since I made up little cups for four different children (life is too short to listen to “Mom, Alex mixed all the colors into brown!” and “Hey!  Victoria used all the red up!” all day!), I soon realized that it made much more sense to just mix up:

• One part self rising flour
• One part salt
• Enough water to make a paste

and THEN divide it into muffin tins or ice cube trays and add food coloring!

Either way, all you do is give the kids Q-tips or paint brushes and instruct them to dab it on cardboard.

We used recycled Priority Mail boxes for our canvases, cut into small squares.  You want a nice sturdy canvas.

When the picture is finished, microwave it for about 10 seconds (we did 5 second intervals and occasionally needed longer for really thick and wet paintings).

All four kids had a blast using this stuff and they used it off and on the whole day and into the night.

What’s Your Pirate Name?

The kids and I got a fun pirate book recently and inside was a chart to help you find your pirate name.  Unfortunately, their chart left us a bit flat (9 out of 10 names were for boy pirates, for instance!) so we came up with our own pirate name generator.

To find your pirate name:

Pick 3 numbers, each one ranging  from 1-10 (you can use the same number more than once).

If you’d like a boy pirate name, pick a number between 1-5 for the last number.

If you’d like a girl pirate name, choose a number between 6 and 10 for the last  number.

Then find the word that corresponds from each list:

First word:

1. Big
2. Long
3. Blue
4. Jolly
5. Red
6. Cold
7. Green
8. One
9. Black
10. Stump

Second word:

1. Eye
2. Boot
3. Belly
4. Bottom
5. Leg
6. Ear
7. Mouth
8. Tooth
9. Lip
10. Foot

Third word:

1. Bob
2. Willy
3. Bart
4. Bill
5. Kid
6. Ann
7. Bonny
8. Bess
9. Gert
10. Sue

For instance, if your child chose 147, She’d be Big Boot Bonny.  752 would be Green Leg Willy.  333 would be Blue Belly Bart.  And so on.

Feel free to make up your own lists too!

I’m So Glad I Hadn’t Cleaned the Bathroom…

It’s spring, and that means one thing is guaranteed at my house.

Muddy children.

Luckily, they clean up pretty easy.  And so do bathrooms. 

Want to have some fun with the mud with your kiddos?  Here’s 10 ways to play with it…

1. Make mud pies.
2. Paint with it on the driveway or sidewalk.
3. Squish your toes in it.
4. Make seed bombs.
5. Make mud sculptures, marbles, etc. and let them dry in the sun.
   
6. Make mud art.
7. Drive toy trucks and cars through it.
8. Write in it with sticks or your fingers.
9. Jump in it.  Watch out!
10. Totally make a mess in it.  Yes, grown ups too. 
    

Oh and clean up?  That’s what sprinklers and water balloons are for!

Happy Friday!

Art Dolls!

I am currently quite under the weather, thanks to the roughly walnut-sized being in my mid-section who (according to my nifty week-by-week pregnancy app) last week celebrated the milestone of losing his or her tail.

Since morning (and afternoon and evening) sickness is generally regarded as a very good sign, I’m quite happy to feel so miserable.

Just the same, I’m less than productive these days.  And oh my goodness, is that an understatement!

So I’m swiping this craft from the Magical Childhood web site, where I posted it several years ago.

We have made many more art dolls since this post and it’s continued to be a fabulous way to get creative and to use up art supplies and odds and ends from the recycling bins.

I’m thinking I need to get out a big box of supplies and set things up for a new batch tomorrow, as a matter of fact…

 

Art Dolls

I learned about art dolls recently and decided to try making some with the kids today. I gathered a bunch of materials and showed them some Flickr pictures of a lot of different styles and them let them loose. They loved making them!

Our ground rules were

• There were no rules on what the dolls looked like–people, animals, no arms, 8 arms, anything goes.
• They could use any broken objects they could find, items they owned, or craft items that I put in the big bowl for the project. Otherwise they had to ask permission before using stuff.
• They had to finish one doll before making another.

There were basically no rules, though, which was part of the fun.

Here are some pictures of a few of the finished creations…

Jack (who is morally opposed to looking normal in a photograph):

Anna:

And Victoria with two of hers:

They had so much fun and are still creating!

Happy Friday!

Snow Day!

We got a wee bit of snow around these parts recently.

I used the opportunity to have a bit of snow fun at the dining room table.

I had my faithful assistant, Victoria, go get bowls full of fresh snow and fill an under-the-bed storage container with it.

Then I put it on the table with an assortment of little cars and a bulldozer for Alex to do a version of Lonni’s shaving cream snow plow idea from the silly assignment day.

He plowed for a while but his hands got too cold, so we moved on.

First I packed down the snow and gave him a big paintbrush, a jar of water (right in the tub, so spills wouldn’t matter) and some watercolor paints.  He painted the snow for a bit, but it was a bit tricky.  So we moved on.

I put out a muffin tin of water and added primary colors to three of them, and then we made all different colors in the cups.  I gave Jack, Victoria and Alex all pipettes (like tiny medicine droppers, I get them in bulk from a science surplus store for science and art fun!) and they squeezed colors to their hearts’ contents.

It was a colorful, artistic, crazy bunch of fun.

Even I got into the act!

I  highly recommend it next time you have a bit of the white stuff to deal with.  If you don’t have any snow, try mixing up anything white in a similar container and dropping colored water on it.  Dry rice, pale sand, shaving cream… Lots of things would be fun to experiment with!

In my book, any activity that involves pipettes and colored water is a good idea.