Summer Fun #19: Marshmallow Sculptures

Simple, easy, fun. Good for a rainy or too hot day. Only need marshmallows and toothpicks. I'd suggest leaving the marshmallows out for a little while so they can become somewhat stale. We used fresh from the bag and our sculptures tended to sag a bit. If they were a tad harder, our sculptures probably wouldn't have fallen over so easily.  

Summer Fun #10: Paint with Sidewalk Chalk Paint

Using a cheese grater from the dollar store, I took our smallest pieces of chalk and grated them down to a powder then added water. When painting with the watery mixture, it didn't look like much chalk was on the pavement, but when it dried it looked great!

Summer Fun #17: Make something from Fairies Cookbook

We made Magic Bonbon Cookies. Super easy and they didn't taste to bad, actually they were pretty good! Due to copy write laws and blah blah blah, I won't post the recipe, but I highly recommend if you have a little girl who loves to help in the kitchen, get this book! Get it here from Amazon for only $12.27 or check it out of your local library.

Anyway, here are some pictures of what our cookies looked like:

 

 

YUM!

Free and cheap things for kids to do in June

Here are some free and cheap activities to kick off the summer!

• For $2 an activity, kids can to a verity of crafts at Michaels like making a father's day duck tape frame on June 15th, or making silly shells on June 22nd. For a full list check here
• Buy a Nicole Crafts tote at A.C. Moore and decorate it with Simply Spray for free. Details here
• Every Saturday in June Lowe's build and grow will be making Monsters U items, click the link for more details
• On June 6th, Home Depot will have a Despicable Me 2 workshop. Full listing here
• In you have a Bank of America or Merrill Lynch debit or credit card, take advantage of their Museums On Us program. Free admission to over 150 museums across the country. Click here to find a museum near you.
• Select Regal Cinemas will be hosting Summer Movie Express starting in June. For only $1 you can watch movies like The Three Stooges and Ice Age: Continental Drift every Tuesday and Wednesday at 10am. Full listing available here
• Every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday, Bass Pro Shops will offer a free craft for kids starting from noon-2pm on June 8th. Visit Bass Pro Shop for more details.
• Visit Petco on June 15th from noon-4pm. There will be a Meet and Greet where guests can interact with various reptiles. Pet parents can show off their reptiles in the Raddest Reptile Contest. There will also be fun reptile matchmaking games. Find your nearest Petco here

Hope you have a fun month!

Kids earn a free book

Barnes and Noble is offering kids in grades 1-6 a free book when they read 8 books this summer. Check here for all the details.

4th of July Strawberries

These were super easy to make, and my 5 and 7 year old really enjoyed doing this. It doesn't require many ingredients either. All you'll need is:

~Strawberries

~White melting chocolate

~Blue sugar (I made my own by adding a few drops of blue food coloring to about a cup of white sugar and then shook it like crazy)

*Rinse the starberries and dry them very well.

 *Next melt the chocolate in the mircowave according to the packaging instructions.

*Then dip the dry strwberries into the white chocolate and then gentle into the blue sugar.

*Place berry on wax paper to harden. 

NOTE: If you dip the chocolate covered strawberries into the blue sugar to hard then it will push all the chocolate off the tip of the strawberry. So instead of having red, white, and blue berries, they'll be red, white, blue, and red.



This blog post is linked to the following:

www.iheartnaptime.net

 www.craft-o-maniac.com
C.R.A.F.T.

Summer Fun 2012

Here is the northeast, kids stay in school longer than most other kids in the country. Mine are still in school for another three weeks, but that hasn't stopped us from making our Summer Fun list! All of the links on my list I found on Pinterest-love that site! This is what we plan to do for the summer of 2012:

Places To Go

~Local Farm

~Zoo

~Museum of Science

~Park

~Beach

~Sundae Monday (every Monday we visit a different ice cream place)

~Drive in

~Blueberry picking

~Local Kids Day

~4th of July Fireworks

~Town Picnic

~Bowling

~Acadia National Park

~Movies

~Out to Eat

Fun At Home

~Have a game day

~Movie Marathon

~Backyard picnic

~Bubble Fun by doing this and this

~Science Experiment: Dissolve egg shells

~Make Sponge Bombs and have a bucket toss

Things To Make and Eat

~Colorful Rainbow Cupcakes

~Homemade ice cream

~Unicorn poop cookies

~Fun rainbow  pudding pops

~"Hamburger" cookies

~Rainbow fruit pizza

~Chocolate sundae bowls 

~Campfire cones

~"Watermelon"  popsicles

~Homemade  rock candy

~Ice cream made in a Ziplock bag

~Chocolate dipped 4th of July strawberries

Crafts and other Fun Things to Make

~Make a jump rope from marker caps

~Easy Marshmallow  Shooters

~Make glow in the darkMt. Dew

~Have fun with Paper Plate Ring Toss

~Make and play with Sidewalk chalk paint

~Glow in the dark slim

~Flower crystals

 ~Use Water bottles to make Maracas

 ~Styrofoam print making

 ~Homemade lave lamps

 ~Have fun with Paper mache

 ~Toilet paper snake

 ~“Stained Glass” picture

 ~Pictures using black glue

 ~Rock crayon gems

 ~Hammered flower prints

~Drip paint flower pots

25 Nature Activities for Kids

Visit babble to discover 25 fun activities that will get you and your children outdoors and enjoying this great planet!

Holiday Scented Playdough

I have to admit that I've never made homemade playdough before. I have to say, I'm impressed! I thought it would come out greasy or grainy, but its just like the store bought stuff. Its also super easy to make. Since Christmas is next week, I wanted the playdough to smell like Christmas, so I made Peppermint Playdough and Gingerbread Playdough.

Peppermint Play-Dough

 (It really is pink, the pic is not the best)

What you'll need:

• 2 Cups Flour
• 1 Cup Iodine Salt
• 4 Teaspoons Cream of Tarter
• 4 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
• 2 Cups Water 
• 3 Teaspoons Peppermint Extract
• Few drops red food coloring

~Add peppermint extract and red food coloring to water. Measure flour, salt, cream of tartar and vegetable oil into a heavy, medium size sauce pan. Pour water mixture into dry ingredients, mix well.

~Cook over low heat, stir the mixture contentiously until it begins to thicken and pull away from the sides of the sauce pan.

~ Remove the mixture from the burner. Once the mixture is cool enough to handle, kneed until consistency of playdough. Store in a ziplock back up to a few weeks.

Gingerbread Play-Dough

What you'll need:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 4 tsp cream of tartar or alum
• 5 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 2 cups water
• 2 Tbsp. oil

~Combine the dry ingredients in a saucepan.  Add the water and oil and mix well.
~Cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture begins to thicken and pull away from the sides of the sauce pan.
~Remove the mixture from heat and knead when cooled enough to handle.  Store in a ziplock bag when cooled to keep from drying out.  

The Real Count Down to Christmas is ON!

Even though I've been counting down to Christmas since August! This is my absolute favorite time of the year! The thing I like the most has to be advent calenders. There are so many different ways out there to do advent calenders. This is the one we use that I made three years ago:

 

Here's a close up.

Each day has a little tag in it with a different activity to do. My kids love this so much that come January they are still asking me what the activity of the day is. This gives my family a way to do all the Christmas traditions we love and keeps us organized at the same time.

 A great craft blog that I love to read ( C.R.A.F.T. ) has rounded up a bunch of creative advent calenders. Check them out at Advent Calender Roundup #1, Advent Calender Roundup #2, and Advent Calender Roundup #3

Save Green, Go Green Wrapping Paper

We have two Christmas trees in my home (both fake!) The main tree is in the living room, decorated with all our keepsake ornaments. The second tree is upstairs and is decorated by the kids, with brightly colored plastic balls, snowflakes, and other little things. The second tree is the Kid tree, which they get to "play" with.They're always rearranging the ornaments, and that's OK. As long as they don't touch the tree in the living room!

Since Santa leaves all the presents under the living room tree, the Kid tree always looks a little sad. Last year we started to new tradition were Santa's elves leave 25 books, all about Christmas, under the Kid tree. (Every book was purchased at a book sale, not one costing more than .50 cents) Each night, leading up to Christmas, we open a book to read. My kids love it!

The only problems was it was getting costly to wrap 25 books. So I came up with an alternative to wrapping paper: paper grocery bags!

Even turned it into a craft project with the kids by painting and coloring the bags. Not only does wrapping the books in re-purposed grocery bags save me money, its also better for the planet.

10 Ideas for leftover Halloween candy

Now that Halloween is over do you find there is more candy in your home than one child could possibly eat? If so, I've come up with a few ideas on what to do with all that candy! 

1) Save some to use as stocking stuffers 

2) Save things like smarties and sweet tarts to use during the holidays to decorate gingerbread houses and cookies.
3) Add M&M's to a batch of sugar cookies
4) Add chopped up peanut butter cups to a batch of fudge brownies
5) Make an advent calender for the holidays. Each day, a different piece of candy.
6) Stick a fun size bar on every gift you give.
7) Bring it to your local fire/police station.
8) Participate in the Halloween Candy Buy Back (click here for more details)
9) Use any plain chocolate (think Hershey's bars) as a substitute for chocolate chips in your baking.
10) Check out Candy Experiments to find fun experiments to do with leftovers!

Apple Bags

This project was three years in the making! I had every intent to do this activity three years ago when I purchased all the supplies needed, but never got around to painting the tree. Year number two I finally found a tree template I liked, but it took me so long to paint the tree, apple season was over by the time I was done. FINALLY this year we made our apple bags.

What you need:

• Canvas bag, found at most craft stores
• Red, green, and brown fabric paint
• Template of a tree (there are a bunch out there or you could draw one free hand)
• Paint brush
• Trays for paint
• 1 apple, cut in half

Instructions:

1)Paint a tree with plain branches using the brown paint, let dry

 

2) Squirt red and green paint onto trays. Take apple half and dip into desired paint color. Make sure there is a ton of paint on the apple half so the paint will show on the bag.

3) Press paint cover apple half onto canvas bag. Let dry.

Make a memory box

My family has a bunch of Summer Fun! goals this year, and I want both my children to be able to remember this summer for years to come. We kicked off our summer with a fun and easy craft. Memory Boxes!

Supplies:
~Paper mache box (I paid $2.99 each at my local craft store)
~Temper paint in different colors
~Stickers, feathers, gems, and anything else you'd like to decorate your boxes.


We had to wait for the paint to dry overnight before we could decorate them. My kids loved this project. Now every time we do something from our list (like go see a movie) we can put our little treasures (like a movie stub) in the box.

At the end of the summer I will put together a little photo album of all our fun to go into their memory boxes.

Summer is HERE!!!!!

Today is the first day of summer, YEAH! I've been thinking of as many things my family can do this summer that are free or cheap, also as much indoor stuff as possible. I love summer, but the New England humidity is terrible and makes it tough to be outdoors sometimes. So far this is what I got:

1. Free Family Film Festival
2. Playgrounds. We have a ton in our area and we're going to try and visit a different one every week.
3. Kids Bowl Free
4. Concerts in the Park. Hosted by my local library (check your towns Parks & Recs Department to see in there is anything planned in your area)
   
5. The beach
6. Library! Just to play, read books, even has weekly story time! I LOVE the library!
7. McDonald's play-space, its free!
8. Mall play-spaces, also free
9. Nature walks at local parks
10. Factory tours
11. Bookstore story time (Barnes & Nobles and Boarders usually have a weekly story time)
    
12. Micheal's craft time
13. Lowes "Build and Grow"
14. Home Depot kids workshop
15. Bass Pro Shop Family Summer Camp
    

Gotta love free fun!

Offers free, or low cost, activities for kids. I think the best part is your kids can go and make a cute, fun art project and you don't have to worry about having all the supplies or cleaning up the mess! Check out all the upcoming activities here


Lowe's has "Build and Grow" clinics were your child can go and build all different kinds of things. Make the monster truck pictured above on Sat. June 26 at 10am. Make a ball and cup game on Sat. July 10 at 10am. You will need to register. Visit here for the the details.


Of course Home Depot has something just like Lowe's. Saturday, July 3, kids can make a periscope. On August 7, they can make a school bus pencil organizer. All the details are here.

More free summer fun

There are a ton of free family events happening at Bass Pro Shops. Every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday there's something going on. Check it all out here for exact times and activities.

Kids Bowl Free

Just another free summer fun activity! Find a participating bowling center near you and sign up. Kids can bowl 2 free games everyday for the entire summer. Rules and guild lines vary by bowling place, so make sure to read all the rules carefully. Check it all out here

Free Family Film Festival

Summer vacation is right around the corner! Oh, what to do during a hot summer when kids are crying "I'M BORED!" How about seeing a free movie? Visit this site to see if the Free Family Film Festival is offering free movies in your state.

Movies are rated G or PG and start at 10:00am every Tuesday and Wednesday during the festival. Tickets and seating are first-come, first-served and are limited to theater capacity. A few of the movie playing this summer include Daddy Day Care, Bee Movie, and Monsters V. Aliens.

Fun cupcakes!

Family Fun Magazine has to be my favorite magazine ever! I love all the children's activities and recipes they have. In one of the recent issues, there was a recipe in the back to make rainbow cupcakes. I honestly didn't think the color would take, or that the colors wouldn't blend together when cooked. But it worked great! This is also a great activity to help young children with counting because you will need quite a few drops of food coloring to achieve these bright colors.

Purple: 9 red & 6 blue drops
Blue: 12 drops
Green: 12 drops
Yellow: 12 drops
Orange: 12 yellow & 4 red drops
Red: 18 drops

All you need is a box of white cake mix made as the box says, then split it into six different bowls and add the right number of drops, bake, and viola! I can't look at these cupcakes without smiling.