“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson
Here's a fun and easy activity I stumbled upon while wasting hours of my precious life on Pinterest. Really, Pinterest is like crack for me. I'm just going to scroll through and pin a few more ideas, and then a few more, and then before I know it I've forgotten how to blink and it's two days later. AAAHH! Anyway, we used some of my old beads and cheap wire to make our own fancy bubble wands yesterday afternoon. Why would you make your own bubble wand when bubbles always come with a free, fully-functional wand you might ask? Good question. I don't know, but these are cute and it kept my little cherubs busy for a little while.
I cut a wire for each wand and let the girls choose and string their beads on. Okay- I made Retta's for her, but she had fun playing with the finished product! Then, leaving some wire at the top, I twisted it into either a circle or heart shapes. They don't work quite as well as the plastic wand included in the bubble stuff, but they are capable of making bubbles. It seems like maybe a thicker wire would have worked better. At the very least, they make fun fairy wands too!
** Disclaimer: Sometimes these projects aren't all fun and games for us. The girls look happy-ish in these pictures, but make no mistake, they were actually grumpy as all get out. Retta dumped the bubble stuff out of the dish several times, Rowan cried because she got a fuzzy caterpillar on her foot while she was engrossed in bead sorting, and then Retta smashed the plate on a rock...anyway, there was broken glass and tears and my pants were covered in bubble solution, but I'm sure someone somewhere might have fun making these. Just keepin' it real here on Wonder Parenting...you know, it's not all unicorns and rainbows here :)
I tried a genius idea from Pinterest yesterday while working on Valentine making with Rowan- take the roll from the middle of a toilet paper roll and crease it so that it bends in and makes a heart shape on the ends- then just dip it in paint and let your kid go crazy making heart stamps all over the place. We put glitter on the wet paint hearts to dress them up a bit. Rowan loved that we were stamping with something from the bathroom of course.
Maybe I just never grew up, but I LOVE making homemade play doh/ gak/ flubber/ slime and all variations on this theme with children. There is such instant gratification in mixing a few ingredients into a bowl, playing with food coloring, and seeing it transform into a malleable concoction. To pass yesterday's rainy afternoon, I decided with Halloween coming, it was obviously time to make some slime. I found a new recipe on Pinterest-here's the one we made yesterday, followed by two other cool slime recipes. Rowan played with her slime at the kitchen table for about an hour (AWESOME) and when we put it in the jar she insisted we keep playing with it--so we played hide and seek the jar of slime. When you find the jar of slime hidden in the house you have to act surprised and grossed out. See?! Endless, cheap entertainment!
Add
borax powder to 1 cup of water and stir to dissolve. Set aside. Pour
glue into a medium mixing bowl and add 1/2 C water. Add a few drops of
food coloring until desired color is reached and then stir to mix glue
solution until smooth. Pour the borax mixture into the glue mixture and
watch the solids start to form. Stir for a few moments and then use
your hands to gather the mass. The mixture will be very soft and wet.
Keep kneading until it firms up and feels dry. Discard excess liquid in
bowl. The more you knead and play with the slime the firmer it will
become. Store in a ziplock bag or air tight container and the slime
will keep indefinitely.
2. Cornstarch Goo
Another favorite slimy concoction we like to make is the cornstarch variety....it's simply cornstarch and water mixed together. All you do is pour a box of cornstarch into a mixing bowl, then add a cup of water give or take (depending on how dry it's seeming), and then a few drops of food coloring if you want it colored. Mix with your fingers until it becomes hard to mix. The best thing about cornstarch and water is that is both a liquid and a solid at the same time so when it's under pressure it will seem more solid (like when you roll it into a ball or whack it on the table) but as soon as you let it rest in your hands, it will become liquid again and drip off your hands back down into the bowl. It's pretty entrancing. One very important thing to note: DON'T EVER POUR IT DOWN YOUR SINK DRAIN...JUST THROW IT IN THE TRASH WHEN YOU'RE DONE. Here's a sort of awkward video of a man demonstrating this amazing goop to a weather lady on a morning news show if you want to see what it's like:
3. Glow in the Dark Slime
If you want to go the extra mile, you can make glow in the dark slime, which I'm sure will knock your kid's socks off. However, I don't know much about glow-in-the-dark paint so I can't vouch for it's safety, but it looks pretty fun. This one is on my to-do list.
Happy October! We are in full-on fall decorating mode at our house. This weekend we got together with my parents for a fall feast and some crafty time. Before we went to their house I googled "Halloween crafts" and this cute lantern project jumped out at me. Here's the link:
some old jars (baby food, or any size mason jar or recycled jar will do)
orange and white crepe paper or tissue paper
black construction paper
modge podge
paintbrushes
scissors
votive candles
Cut or tear crepe paper into small squares, and use modge podge and a paintbrush to adhere to the outside of your glass jar. Cut out pieces for the face from construction paper and use modge podge to affix to the jar as well. Let dry and place the votive candle inside. Turn out the lights and feel festive! More Halloween crafts and recipes are on their way!
Here's another simple but fun activity- take a glass jar, fill it about 3/4 full with birdseed and then add in 10 or so small objects from around the house. You may want to stir in the objects that you add to spread them around in the birdseed. Screw the lid on tight and voila, a toy! Rowan loves trying to search for all the objects she added to the jar. Ours has things like a thimble, a plastic butterfly barrette, a coin, a piece of sea glass-it's a good way to get rid of small odds and ends lying around. You could also make it with cool objects found in nature (acorn, special shells, a small feather, etc). Rowan likes to switch out the little pieces every now and then. My mother-in-law made one of these for my husband and his sister when they were younger, and she even wrote a list of the objects to find and taped it to the bottom of the jar. I see they sell these in toy stores now, but this is much easier and more fun!
Rowan's rock family: her, me, daddy, and some sort of Babushka-esqe figure
This is a really simple but fun project. I found this idea on the internet a while back and decided to start making Rowan her own set of rock people to play with outside. We are having fun making different characters- they live in a basket on the screen porch and she likes to take them outside and play with them in her sandbox, or build them little stick houses in our flower gardens. All you need are some smooth stones and a sharpie marker!
