To Do In This Town

Valentine’s Day is such a fun time to celebrate people we love, just because we love them. One of our favorite ways to celebrate is to make and give away “heart” gifts. Here is what we are making this year.

“Thumb-body Loves You” Cards:
These are easy to make, highly personal and darling.
You’ll need:
A Blank Card or piece of paper
colored stamp ink
thin lined markers or sharpies
wet wipes

Step 1. Write your message across the top of the card. Ours will say “3 Thumb-bodies in Nebraska, Love YOU!”
Step 2. One at a time have your kiddos stick their thumb in the ink color of their choice and press it down on the card. Remember to space them far enough apart that they can decorate them without hurting the next print.

Step 3. Wash the child’s thumb you printed with the wet wipes!

Step 4:  We usually read a Valentine book while wait for our projects to dry. After the card is dry, let the kids decorate their thumb-print person. I do remind mine not to over do the decorating, we usually do a face and little hands and feet and some hair.

Step 5: Have each child write or dictate a message on the inside of the card. Include a cute photo and send some Valentine happiness to friends and family far away.

A HomeMade Heart Pillow

These are new for us this year so I can only offer a few ideas I have before we tackle this project.

1.  I think we’ll make ours a lot smaller, so the finished heart is 6 inches across.  I’m thinking we could give two or three as a little decorative set.  They would be cheaper and a lot easier to sew.

2.  If we do make the bigger ones, we’ll machine sew them and then just close the stuffing hole with hand stitching (we’ll still hand stitch the bow on, I can see my girls wanting to hand stitch other decorations like smaller hearts as well).

If you don’t have time to make a little love gift, here are some great LOCAL places to buy one.   Remember, a gift card for a sweet treat is even sweeter if it comes with a little homemade gift card inviting the recipient to join you on a “date” to enjoy the treat together!

Great Local “Sweet Treats”

Le Cupcake

Butterfly Bakery

Ivanna Cone

Great Local Gift Shops

Kreative Greetings

Avant Card

Great Local Photographers (this is my favorite kind of treat!)

Ashley Nicole Photo

Joyful Photography

Sullivan Photography

Hope you have a fun week thinking about and planning ways to celebrate the people you love in this great town!

The dusting of snow this week thrilled my girls. While we didn’t make an actual snowman, it renewed their hopes of snowman and sledding yet this winter. All the snow talk made their teacher mamma really curious about the science of snow. We had a fun time learning, we hope you enjoy it too.

How is snow made?
We read this article, which I thought did a fantastic job of explaining the concept without losing the girls in the details.  It also has lots of fun extension ideas.

Then, we watched this video. It has a lot of information and was made by students, I love the idea of kids learning from other kids!

How Snow Is Formed-A Short Video

Once we had a basic idea of how snow was made, we decided to do a few projects with snow.

Marshmallow SnowFlakes: You’ll need toothpicks and small and large marshmallows. If you are worried about the toothpicks, you could use pieces of pipe cleaner as well.

Choose a large marshmallow to serve as the center (the small molecule that starts it all) of your snowflake. Attach 5 toothpicks from the sides of it. From there use your imagination to make as many patterns as you can by adding the small marshmallows onto the toothpicks. You can add a few marshmallows or just one, you can leave spaces, you can connect the ends, your imagination is the only limit to the possibilities. We loved making lots of different patterns and remembering that each snowflake is a unique design.

Snowy Water: We wanted to know how much water is in a snowflake. We scooped snow into a measuring cup and recorded our starting measurement. Then we all made a prediction about how much water the snow would turn into. We let ours melt naturally and checked often. As it began to melt, we did some changing of our predictions. If you want it to move along faster, you can either set the snow in a warm spot or heat it slowly on a stove. Be sure to record your final measurement, and check if your predictions were correct or not.

Winter is the Warmest Season!
No, you didn’t read that wrong, we found this darling book by Lauren Stringer at the library last week and have so enjoyed it. We read the story many times over. Then we made a list of all the things that changed in the story. (This went really well with the changing from snow to water experiment.) After we made our list, we brainstormed a few more things that could change from the cool of summer to the warmth of winter. Then we picked our favorite reason why winter is the warmest season and drew an illustration to match it.

We hope you have a great week in this great town!

Happy 2012! We hope this new year is full of great learning and wonderful memories for your family. This week while we work on helping our house and laundry recover from birthday and Christmas season we plan to start two new projects to help us focus on gratitude and purposeful living this year.

2012 Jar: I saw the idea for this on pintrest, but decided to make ours out of a recycled coffee container. We will decoupage the container with fun paper and then use large, black stickers to label it 2012. Then we’ll cut a slit in the top of the can. From that point on anyone can jot down something worth remembering and drop it in the can. My hope is that it will be filled with lessons learned, friends made, accomplishments achieved, new dreams, as well as pictures and momentous from the year. Next year at our annual “family movie and game marathon” on New Year’s Eve, we can open the jar and have a fun way to celebrate the year. I am hoping that this new practice will encourage and inspire us to think about the year all it’s new opportunities and challenges so that we don’t waste any of it!

Tree of Gifts: We made a thankful tree this year and Thanksgiving and loved the project. My thought now is that I would love to create a year long tree that we can use to track the gifts our family receives, gifts of health, family, friends, learning, opportunity, accomplishment, and on and on the list goes. I hope that by stopping to write them and then display them we will live aware and grateful of just how blessed we are. I got a box shaped like a present at a local craft store. We’ll paint the box and lid in fun colors and then glue the lid to the side so it looks like the box is open. Next we’ll gather branches from outside. I anticipate that as the tree fills up we’ll need to add branches throughout the year. Once they are gathered, the branches can be secured inside the box with play dough or clay. Finally I’ll cut circles from fun colors of paper, use a paper punch to put a hole in the top and place them inside the box.. We’ll use the tree as a centerpiece on the kitchen table and then keep it stored on my desk when it needs to be moved. Anyone can write something they are thankful for or a special gift they receive and tie it on the tree anytime. I hope as our tree grows so will our gratitude and our desire to live content and giving lives.

Here are a few thoughts on helping kids set goals for the New Year.

I hope you and your family have a truly happy New Year in this great town!

It’s almost Christmas! I thought it would fun this week to share some Christmas games. These are fun to play anytime. They’re especially nice if you are looking to break the ice at a family gathering or keep kids happy while the meal is cleaned up and you wait to open gifts. We hope you enjoy them and have a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Freeze Dance:
This is so easy. Simply play your favorite Christmas music really loudly and have everyone dance their hearts out. When the music stops, dancers freeze in position. You can play as many times as you like changing music and “freezers” whenever you want. This is a great one for grandparents to watch and enjoy as well as for getting lots of craziness out.

Christmas Relay:
Take a cube of any kind, I used a wooden letter cube from a toy block set we have, and attach a Christmas themed sticker to all the faces. Make sure they are all different. Players line up in teams and a designated roller rolls the dice. The first people on each team must move from their line to the other end of the playing area and back moving in the way of the sticker rolled (a camel might go up and down on all fours, a bell would sway back and forth, a wreath would roll, an angel would fly….) A round is over after the whole team moves that way. Keep rolling and racing until you make it through all the possibilities or until you’re too tired to keep going!

Stocking Stuffer:
This game is a bit quieter and works well to play in pairs. Each pair needs a stocking, I just cut a paper lunch sack in that shape, and something to stuff it with. You can use anything small. I did tissue paper but you could do cotton balls or Christmas themed craft pom-poms, or marshmallows! The object is to see which pair can stuff the most of the item into the stocking without ripping it in a designated amount of time. If you need more of a challenge blindfold one person and have the other hold the stocking still and use their voice to coach their teammate to get it filled.

Christmas Stories:
It’s always fun to keep a stash of favorite Christmas stories on hand to read and enjoy together. This is one of our favorites this year.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas in this town or wherever you are celebrating!

Christmas is such a fun time of year. It’s busy with giving and going with family and friends and fun. It is the perfect time of year to experience a great story as learn a bit of festive history along the way. We have lots and lots of favorite Christmas stories and activities, but this year we found a new story that was literally full of fun activities that were easy to do at home as well as a sweet story about a pioneer family and their celebration in the 1840’s.  We hope your family can enjoy it as well.

The Story: A Pioneer Christmas by Barbara Greenwood

The Activity: We tried nearly all the activities in the book, but our favorite was our very own version of “Aunty, Aunty over the Shanty.” We don’t have a shanty and we didn’t want to have to wear winter gear, so we set up the game in our garage. We used a hook on the wall as one side and a ladder as the other. In between we hung and old bed sheet using string. We decided to use Styrofoam balls for snowballs. I gave a few quick reminders about being careful to run around the ladder and then we played and played. We decided that the person who caught the ball would be the one to run and tag the other team since we were playing in a smaller place. Be creative with where and how you play as you enjoy this early American tradition!

The Craft: Again, we tried almost all of them but our favorite was the old fashioned popcorn chain. We made ours with popcorn and cranberries. I did use a needle and thread but it you don’t have needles you could use a toothpick. If you need to protect little fingers you can put band aids on them. It does work better if you leave the thread attached to the spool until you are done and then cut it off and knot it. As we made ours we talked about ways the family in the book was the same and different from ours as well as ways the Christmas was the same and different then and now. It was a fun conversation about family and celebration and we had a lovely piece to add to our tree. (Do be careful where you put it as babies and pets may not be so careful with your creation!)

We hope that you can take a break for the seasonal business to enjoy a Christmas story and a fun project or two with your family this week.

Not Enough Beds! by Lisa Bullard.  The very title of this book brings to mind pieces of the Christmas story, and famous lines like “no room in the inn.” However, this is a whole different take on not enough room. It is a delightful story that is illustrated in a fun, engaging way that grabs the attention and the imagination as more and more people come for Christmas. We read the books many times, chatted out the illustrations, remembered what it’s like at Grandma’s house when we all show up and laughed about where we’ll all sleep this year at my aunt’s house. Then, my very creative girls decided to make up some games to go with the book. I love this! Any time kids are making connections between a book and their real life, good things are happening. They are learning to see reading as fun and useful, they are learning to see reading as a catalyst for imagination and play and they are learning that reading has all kinds of valued and purpose in their life. Here is how we enjoyed the book. We hope you love it too.

Musical Pillows:

This game is a lot like musical chairs. You lay pillows in a circle, one less pillow than people playing. Then you turn on a Christmas CD and walk in a circle around the pillows until the music stops. When it stops, you rush to lay on a pillow. The person with no pillow is out. Keep playing until you have a winner. Don’t be surprised when the kids want to invite friends and family to play too as this really is a “the more the merrier kind of game!”

I’ll sleep in the….:

This game is pure silliness. The girls decided it would be fun to try sleeping in funny places. We put our alphabet flashcards in a fun Christmas bag and took turns drawing out a letter. Once you draw the letter, you find a place in the house that starts with that letter and try sleeping there “b, bathtub” “l, laundry” “u, under the chair”! (They ended up putting their stuffed animals in lots of the places and then having daddy draw a card and guess the sleeping spot, if he found all the animals he got ice cream!)

An Extension: We did enjoy this book many times over. Then we talked about while it is fun, it would not be fun to have no where to go for Christmas. If there really weren’t enough beds, it wouldn’t be quite so fun any more. From there we did read the actual Christmas story and talked about ways we could share the love of Christmas in our community. We kept with the theme of enough beds and decided to help out the  People’s City Mission. They have some great things going on for Christmas, check out the Starry Nights Gala coming us this weekend,  as well as year long opportunities to get involved. We hope you’ll check them out too!

Have a great week and a great beginning to the Christmas season in this town.