Test Yourself: Did your iPad Become Your Babysitter?

We’re all busy!

We all have things we need and want to do.

It’s not uncommon for busy parents to hire babysitters for those times when a date night is in order, or they simply want to sit and see what all their Facebook friends are doing, or cook dinner in peace.

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Parents, Do You Know How Important Creative Writing is For Your Kids?

The past two summers I have worked for an arts and culture organization the offers a diverse range of day camps.

I am currently the Director of Literary Camps, and I see the HUGE benefits of creative writing everyday!

There are benefits of creative writing that I believe parents may not be aware of.

The benefits of creative writing provide a longer lasting effect on children than formal writing (ie: essays).

 5 Benefits of Creative Writing for Children:

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A short (but powerful) break with wind chimes crafts

Colored Bamboo wind chimes

Don’t know about you, I could use some break. 

This post of yesterday – such comments are always taking me a bit off-balance.

Not that I’m very balanced lately. Balance is not interesting anyway.

So I did what I always do lately, created some new tech issues with the new parents site. Try it, that’s when you lean back in your chair and let other people fix what you ruined. That is great, take it from me! I’ve started doing it on purpose, see?

Wind chimes. I was leaning back thinking I need to relax, and suddenly heard the wind chimes from outside.

It was like someone heard my thoughts.

I’m already planning to make wind chimes with my kids for the last 8 years, So I’m sure it will happen very soon.

I collected for you some amazing ideas that you can  show your kids, and promise to do with them during the next weekend. This way I’ll  not be the only mom always making promises.

Pencils! Creative isn’t it? Did they mean to show boys and girls chimes? Probably not, in any case I’m not sure about the noise effect here, but it looks great, and not difficult to make.

When you finish your pasta, that’s a great use for the pasta bowl!

Look at these tin chimes, see this adorable kid with blue sunglasses 🙂 Looks like this is one picture that was carefully planned… Just Love it!

Not so crazy about the outcome in this case, but I just love the idea of using the paper eggs box for a mobile or wind chimes.

This made me laugh.  Suggest you do it with Coca Cola cans instead. With the kids, I mean.

You helped me relax now, thank you! Back to making some more programming mistakes. Take care all.

A winter giraffe

I started this blog 3 weeks ago, following an incident described in my post “The scary world of 12’s”, which was for me a moment of recognition that my closest circle don’t always supply answers to parenting surprises.

I am surprised and excited by the number of comments and new followers of my blog. I know that you are all very busy, and the fact that you are taking the time to read, and care enough to comment and share, is surprising for me and above my expectations.

I think I owe you a paper mache giraffe for that!

Giraffe

To those of you who are not familiar with paper mache yet:

There are endless paper mache sites / explanations.

Basically you need to prepare a paste made of glue and water in a bowl, stir it and use it with newspaper straps or mashed wet toilet paper.

Another attitude is to boil 4 cups of water, add to it a mix of 1 cup of flour with 2 cups of water and 2 spoons of salt: Cook it all on low fire for 4 minutes and let it cool.

Very fun to do with children, and an opportunity to discuss and demonstrate recycling.

If you use newspaper straps, you work with layers: The bigger the object is, the more layers you should put. (Let them dry between 3 – 4 layers and then continue). Another good suggestion is to make the external layer white, easier to decorate.

And last – you can use any kind of paint, but it’s recommended to seal it with varnish or an acrylic sealer.

I collected some ideas, there are endless of course.  

Note that these are various creative ideas of  various creative and talented people, none is mine:

These tins are created by people with disabilities:

See the fish that can also become a mobile: The base contains polystyrene balls. The eyes are small balls, the tail is a piece of cardboard placed in the ball by making a small cut with a knife or scissors.

Here’s the link to this creative designer’s blog

She also made these owls, you already know about my obsession with owls…

OK, I love dogs as well, don’t even remember where I found this dog, sorry:

Houses can be made of milk boxes. You can also cut open windows and doors in it.

Another great idea can be an animal money-box, you cut a hole for coins in a cardboard box, add to it cardboard legs, eyes, nose, tail and cover it with paper mache.

Don’t forget to share with me other great ideas please!