10 Ways to Make Today Magical

Happy Monday!

Sorry to be MIA for so long again.  Let’s see if I can do better this month!  🙂 

Here are a few ways to make some memories with your kiddos this week…..

1.  Head outside to enjoy the spring weather for some simple, old fashioned fun together.  Blow bubbles (the photo above is from about 8 years ago when the local paper caught me playing with Jack and Victoria in the front yard).  Fly kites. Toss the frisbee.  There’s a reason those things have lasted so many generations.  They’re just fun!

2. Paint some walking sticks.  Head out to the woods and found some good specimens, and then bring them home and decorate them.

3. Play magic eight ball radio.  This silly game is something my husband and our sixteen year-old, Victoria, came up with on their way to play practice together last month.  All they do is ask the radio a question (How is opening night going to go?  Should the family go to Sioux Falls tomorrow?  How is Alex going to act at the restaurant?) and then press “seek” on the radio.  The first line or sentence that someone says or sings after it finds a station is the answer.  Sometimes they have to press seek a few times to get a proper answer. The answers tend to be pretty funny, and our whole family was laughing when they taught us how to play last week.  🙂

4.  Make some yarn eggs together.  We first did this craft when my Annalee was a preschooler.  She’s now fifteen!  Here are the instructions.

5.  Do some dice drawing!  Here’s a free printable to play this fun art game, or you could make up your own together.

6.  Go for a walk in the rain (or after the rain) and go puddle stomping together.

7.  Make some Ivory soap clouds in the microwave and then paint them.  Here are the easy instructions and the science behind what happens.

8.  Do some chalk art around the house and yard together.  Parents magazine says:

Walk around outside your home with a piece or two of chalk and look for interesting patterns — eyes in knots of wood, oddly shaped cracks in the sidewalk or driveway, a nail hole in the wall — that can be turned into a little picture with a few quick strokes. Let your imagination lead you; chalk isn’t permanent. Take a photo for yourself, then leave your art for someone else to find.

9.  Do a photo shoot together.  Kids of all ages love to pose for photos, and then you can play with filters and photo apps to perfect the shots.  This is also one of my kids’ favorite ways to make memories with each other.  My big kids are always getting the little ones to pose for them.  🙂

Photo by Jack (age 9), edited by Anna (age 12)

Photo of Fiona (age 3) by Anna (age 14)

10.  Make some DIY cardboard box kits!  I absolutely love this idea from Inner Child Fun.  Head over for the easy instructions.

And with that, chickadees, I’m off to try to catch up on the next 150 things I’m behind on!  Have a magical week!

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Talk Like a Pirate!

Arrr!  How could I nearly let International Talk Like a Pirate Day slip by without posting about it!  Tsk!

Never fear.  I’ve assembled a few pirate goodies for you to take part with your wee pirates with what’s left of the day.

You can check out the Magical Childhood archives to help your kids choose their pirate names.

You can find sunken treasure at National Geographic education.

You can make Jack Sparrow’s tricorne hat cookies.  Any cookie stuffed with peanut butter cups is a winner in my book!

You can find pirate crafts and activities at DLTK-kids.

You can make quick and easy (adorable!) newspaper swords, bandana pirate skirts and more at alphamom.

You can find activities for junior pirates (even a pirate curriculum!) at talk like a pirate day (the main site is not always child-friendly).

Lastly, you can have fun with the kids translating text (poetry, news items, homework!) into pirate speak at the english to pirate translator.

And for fun for the grown-ups, be sure to change your Facebook language to pirate for the day!

Here’s how:

1. Click the Gear icon at the top of the Facebook page and select Account Settings.
2. The account settings page opens and the language setting is the last one in the list.
3. Click the Edit link next to it. The Choose Primary drop-down list appears.
4. Click the drop-down list and click on Pirate English.

And with that, me hearties, I’m off to t’ play with me sprogs!

Have a swashbucklin’ day!

 

Newspaper Acting!

Here’s a fun little activity my girls and I made up yesterday.  Newspaper acting!

I grabbed a copy of our local newspaper and a few junk mail flyers and challenged them to read lines in all different types of voices.  For instance, Victoria read a sentence about a basketball game as if it were an ad for a horror movie.  Anna read a sentence about a city council meeting as if it were heartbreaking news.  I read a sentence about a budget proposal with terrible rage.  🙂

Want to play along?  Just grab some really boring or random reading materials like newspapers, ads and magazines.  Even homework pages would work!

Here’s some suggested voices and styles:

• As if it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever read
• Like an action movie preview
• In the voice of an evil genius
• With great rage
• As if you’re heartbroken
• With a strong, funny accent
• As if it’s a children’s book for very young kids
• As if you’re super excited
• With terrible sorrow
• As if it’s a line in a romance movie
• Like you’re terribly scared

We had so much fun doing this!  We were all laughing like crazy and the girls have asked repeatedly to do some more. 

Happy Thursday!

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!

10 Ways to Make Today Magical

Happy Tuesday!

We’re less than 6 days away from meeting our little one and I’m feeling awfully tired these days.  So today’s list of ways to make the day magical is courtesy of Pinterest!  🙂

These are all crafts and activities that I’ve pinned to my boards lately.  Click on the photos to visit the sites…

1.  Marshmallow shooters/pom pom poppers

2.  Power drills and pumpkins (eek! love the idea but with CLOSE supervision!)  🙂

3.  Angry birds in the back yard

4.  Cave of stars via cardboard box and Christmas lights

5.  Lawn Jenga

6.  Homemade cough drops and cough drop lollipops (honey based)

7.  Wand tutorial (we made these and loved it!)

8.  Scratch-off pumpkins (black spray paint, then scratch your design)

9.  Teacher Tom’s fabulous, kid-friendly version of crayon melting art

10. Quick epsom salt geode egg shells

Hopefully I’ll get a post or two in before our new babe arrives, but otherwise I’ll be sure to arrange for some pictures to be posted ASAP when we meet her.

Have a magical week!

 

Five Fun Things

There’s been so much fun stuff catching my eye on the web lately.  Here’s some favorites you might like….

1.  Things I want to teach my children everyday:  Steph from Modern Parents Messy Kids has a great post and free printable at Bloom…

2.  Dress-up wings, courtesy of Little Eco Footprints…

3.  And dinosaur wings, courtesy of I’m Feeling Crafty…

4.  We made our own pool noodle race track yesterday after being inspired by Home Spun Threads.  Alex loved shooting marbles down it but it turns out that one of our nutty cats had as much fun “wrestling” it when we weren’t looking and shredded it! 

5.  Lastly, recycled robots (think metallic Mr. Potato Heads) from Family Fun…

And with that, I’m off to tackle a to-do list as long as the city phone book.  (Yes, magical moments are on the list!)

Wish me luck!

~Alicia

 

 

 

 

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!

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.  🙂

Firefly Magic

Here’s a great educational activity to do with groups of kids, especially at night.  Have each child bring a flashlight.  Explain to the kids that fireflies use their lights to communicate with each other, and that they look for the other fireflies who are flashing the same patterns.  Give each child a pattern to flash with his or her flashlight, and have them try to find the person with the matching code.

And for a fun firefly craft, check out this wonderful lantern you can make to go along with “The Very Lonely Firefly” over at The Long Thread!

Grape Expectations

Looking for a way to have some goofy fun with your kids?  Here’s a totally silly activity we did with friends on vacation one year.

We bought a bunch of grapes and handed out Sharpie markers, then altered the grapes to make little people, bugs, messages, you name it.  After that, we wandered around town and left the grapes in surprising places.

We left a little bulls-eye grape in an outdoor ashtray, a little “bless you” grape on a park bench, a row of “The Grapeful Dead” grapes and so on.

It was utterly ridiculous and grape fun!