Rainy Day Activities.

My husband sent me these ideas from a website the other day when it was raining.  We ended up taping (with painter's tape) butcher paper to the floor and let the kids color away.  Thought I'd share this fun list with you...

1. Find the thimble (Hide the button) -  take turns hiding and finding the thimble or button

2. Kitchen Band - use only pots and pans to make music

3.  Arts and Crafts  -  Kids Craft Club

4. Make popcorn and watch a movie

5. Make an indoor fort using a blanket and a table or chair

6. Memory Game- put ten toys in a pillow case and see who can remember what's inside

7. See who can hop on one foot the longest

8. Musical chairs

9. Coloring

10. Build a huge castle out of blocks

11.  Clean your room or pick up all they toys

12.  Walk with a book on your head for 10 ft.

13.  Take the Math Quiz

14.  Have a tea party

15.  Guess what's in the bag - put object in a brown paper bag and take turns guessing the contents

16.   Read a book to your brother, sister, mother, dad, sitter....

17.  Make a racetrack with obstacles and drive your toy cars through it

18.  Have an indoor picnic

19. Draw food items on paper plates and color them

20.  Play a board game

21.   Run in place for 5 minutes

22.  Do 20 or more jumping jacks

23.  Touch you toes 25 times

24. Read a book

25.  Make homemade playdough (clay) and build something

26.  Make a glitter picture

27. Make paper dolls

28. Make cookies or cupcakes (get a adult to help)

29. Make a rain gauge

30.  Tell jokes

31.  Play kid safe online games

32.  Have a Congo line

33. Dance

34. Make forts or houses for your play solders or stuffed animals out of pillows and blankets

35.  Be a super hero, put on a cape made from a towel or blanket

36.  Sing- a-long to a CD, ipod  or the radio

37. Sing Row Row Row Your Boat,  and Are you Sleeping Brother John 5 items each

38. Draw a picture

39.  Pretend  you are an animal, make noise and walk like an animal, try being a monkey, elephant, horse, duck and ?

40. Find 10 things in your house that start with the letter  "P"

41.   Play penny hockey on a table

42.  Build a house out of cards

43.  Play Mother May I?

44. Play Simon Says

45. Put of a play about your favorite movie

46.  Make a paper chain

47.   Make paper airplanes

48.   Play geology games

49.  Play dress up

50.   Put together a puzzle

 

Campfire Smore Cones

The kids (and adults) looooved putting the cones together and they turned out delicious.  It's a fun (and much cleaner) take on regular smores.  This was my mom's great idea...from Pinterest.

Ingredients
Butterscotch chocolate chips
White chocolate chips
Milk chocolate chips
Coconut
Marshmallows
Nuts
Ice cream cones





You can add strawberry or other fruit slices or anything else that sounds good.



Directions
1.  Fill up cones with goodies of your choice.
 

2.  Wrap the cone and stuffings in tinfoil and put on the coals for a minute to get the ingredients hot enough to melt.


 

3.  Unwrap and enjoy!

Chores.

I thought about my kids' chores for a year before implementing them and we've been doing the system for almost a year with great success.  I and the kids have a daily chore chart-we love it (my kids are 3 and 4 now)!!  If you're looking to start family chores or looking for some fun ideas here's a step by step guide:

1.  Decide Daily Jobs.  

My kids:

clean their rooms

tidy the toy room

and do a mom's choice chore every day.

To remind them I:

googled pictures of the chores

printed them out

and put tape to kind of laminate them.

We then taped them inside a lower (so the kids can reach) kitchen cupboard on the left side (leaving room to change out the monthly calendar).

 

 

 We wondered what the kids (3 and 2 at the time) could possibly do for the extra chore...maybe weed?  But I have found that the kids can do so so much.  I now just look at what needs to be done.  Some ideas for chores for small kids:

weed

vacuum

sort, do, or put away laundry

wipe down blinds, couches, tables, etc.

unload the dishwasher

clean the bathrooms (they really can clean the bathrooms!)

 empty garbage

 

My daily chores (mine are different every day):

Mon-vacuum and mop all the floors

Tues-kitchen

Wed-bathroom

Thurs-bedroom

 Fri-laundry

Sat-tidy all

 I googled vintage pictures...this, like the kids', is taped above my monthly calendars to a kitchen cupboard.

 

2.  Print monthly calendar.  Click on the April below to go to the website I use to print out my calendars.  You can tell from the old pics, I used to have plain calendars until I found these cute ones.

3.  Decorate monthly calendar.  We go to the dollar store to get a ton of seasonal stickers for cheap.  The kids love doing this-it sets a fun tone for the month's jobs.

 

 

4.  Do chores.  After finishing their daily chores, the kids put a sticker (again from the Dollar Store) on their calendar day and get a coin to put in their piggy banks.  Annie painted and decorated and painted her piggy bank and I painted a monster truck bank for Apollo.

 

 5.  Spending Money.  After the kids have been collecting their money for awhile, we put their coins in a ziplock (after giving some money to our church that goes to helping people) and go to the dollar or thrift stores (or a normal store if their is something they want).  They learn they can spend their money on little things or save for a big toy.

 6.  Monthly Reward.  The kids weren't always excited about doing their chores every day or didn't always want to finish them in the morning.  We started giving them a monthly reward if they do their jobs every single day.  This month we decided as a family to go to Pump it Up (like a big bounce house with slides and activities) as a family if they do their jobs every day in April.  I googled and printed off a picture of a bounce house and put it by their calendars as a reminder.  They are so so excited.  This monthly reward is what makes the whole system go so smoothly.

The "why" behind it all.  I'm very thoughtful about motherhood (maybe it's the physics/chemistry teacher background).  I thought a lot about how I would implement chores in my house.  I knew this would set the tone for how the kids view money, working, and chores. So here are the reasons I set up the chores like I did:

-Rewards.  Some people reward their kids with tv, computer time, etc.  What ever we reward our kids with is what they look at as important or we make it desirable.  I really didn't want to reward my kids with candy, tv, computer time, etc.  I want them to desire an active lifestyle and things like family time. 

-Money.  I love that I can be at a store and the kids will be asking for things and they really have to think twice before they spend their money on it.  They take ownership.  They can be shortsighted (which is sometimes fine for the little ones) or they can save longer for something they really want.  They are also learning about money and counting.

-Calendar.  I tell them as they put their stickers on what the day and date is.  They are learning their numbers.  Sometimes we'll put extra stickers on special days (birthdays and holidays). 

-Some people reward their kids for every little job their kids do.  I chose to have a set list of jobs so it would stay consistent.  I didn't want to have to give them a coin or give them something every time they did a job because I knew I wouldn't have the time to follow through.  They get asked throughout the day to do extra jobs and are not rewarded.  They are part of a family and as part of a team, they need to do extra outside of their jobsto help out just because.

-Celebrate.  The kids take pride in doing their jobs and are thrilled when they finish.  We do high fives and celebrate.  Everything about this system is a celebration.

-Keeping it clean.  The kids' rooms and toy room are clean every day (it's the entrance to our home).

-No hassle.  We are an on the go family.   With a lot of things that fizzle out after the thrill of starting it, this system is super easy to carry out.

Christmas Ideas.

We have been enjoying Christmas cheer since just after Halloween.  I want to share some of what we've been up to so hopefully you can use some of these ideas for decorating or crafting.

We spent Thanksgiving at my parents' cabin.  Beautiful trees and snow-gets you in the Christmas mood.  We all went shopping for my parents' and sister's tree...in the outdoors-we cut them down ourselves.  The kids decorated them.  Look at how beautiful these yarn balls turned out.  Yarn wrapped around Styrofoam balls. 

 

 

 Stained Glass.  these are a buck each at Michael's.  The kids put the beads in and they melt in the oven.  They come with little red ties to hang.

 

 

 

Etched Ornaments.  These also come from Michael's.  They sell a bunch in a pack for a dollar.  They come with little tool and words like "Ho Ho Ho" and "Peace" and the kids scratch in glittery, metallic designs.

 

 

 

 Decorated mini stockings.  They have these felt little stockings at Michael's too for yes...you guessed it...a dollar.  Annie used confetti, Christmas puff balls, stickers, and eyeballs to decorate hers.  Apollo and Annie's mini stockings are now hung on the tree.

 

"Stained Glass" projects.  This is one of my favorite Christmas projects from Michael's ($1).  They look so pretty with the light shining through.

Here are my little elves.  To make the kits, the kids glued the foam shapes to the front of the clear plastic and glued colored tissue to the backs.  Afterwards, they went back to the front to decorate.

Here are the projects out to dry.

 Oh Christmas Tree.  This tree was made with an ice cream cone covered in frosting and m&m's.  Cute idea, Shannon!

 

Kid-Made Ornaments.

The kids have their own little fake tree where they got to go to the 99 cents only story and pick out beaded strings and tinsel. They picked out balls to take home to decorate. With all the different colors (they even chose the lights), it looks like Christmas threw up on the tree (yes, we've already decorated for Christmas). They loooooove it! Carleton and I also found some gorgeous ornaments for our real tree we're going to flock-can't wait to put it up but we don't want it to die before Christmas. We had red and silver and decided this year to have only white and silver. We found the most beautiful ornaments at the Dollar store-crazy huh. But seriously, they're better than the ones Martha Stewart is selling this year.

Looking for ornaments kids can make? Here are some using Christmas balls:

1. Paint. We used the kids paint that look like markers. I put washcloths in the kids' tins so they wouldn't roll around.

2. Glitter. Make a design or dots (easy for kids) and pour glitter over. I love these turkey roaster pans (I think that's what their called-never made a turkey) that catch all the messes-got it from the dollar store.

3. Glue. Apollo said this guy ran into a snowflake and it stuck to his mouth. How cute.

Here's one of Annie's ornaments.

4. Puff Paint.

Apollo said this is Santa. He said Santa will like this ornament the best because it's of himself.

This was probably Annie's (age 2) favorite to make. She beaded pipe cleaners. I fastened the ends for her to hang up.

Another idea. Clay. We just used some playdough the kids had. We left them out for a few days to dry. The kids molded a lot by hand and then we brought out cookie cutters. We put holes in the top while the clay was still moist so we could put ribbon through them and hang up when they dried.