Crafty Kids

I have a folder for craft ideas for the week. This keeps the girls busy while I am trying to organize dinner or just have some quiet time.

Start with a regular letter size file folder.
Fold it in half so the tabs line up:



Make a sharp crease so it will not go back to the original fold. I use a popsicle sticck.
Fold it in half, lining up the fold at the bottom of the tabs, as shown:
 

Crease it sharply and then open flat.

Fold up the bottom section so that the bottom is at your desired pocket height:

Ta Da.  Now you have a handy folder for putting your crafts.

Now all you have to do is decorate your folder with stamps and/or decorative paper, and labels.

It has sections for four crafts at a time. We never seem to complete more than two during the week anyway. I print out the craft with the materials needed at the top so that when I fold and place them in the folder those show at the top. This way I can see easily when I am shopping and can grab anything extra we may need.

I also have another in my purse for coupons, receipts and the list of generally forgotten groceries that never seem to make the list when I go shopping on Sunday.

School, Lunches and Being Green

I pack three separate “meals” for M on a daily basis during the week.  She spends her breakfast at the neighbors, has snack time during a recess, and of course the lunch box.  So how do I stop the plastic baggie monster?  I am not willing to put in a bunch of money on containers for a seven-year old that has not proven herself responsible enough to bring home containers, with the exception of her lunch box containers.  What is a mom to do to help save the planet? 

First, the good.  Her lunchbox never has a plastic baggie.  She has three sandwich containers that get rotated out throughout the week.  She has two snack containers for carrots and crackers.  Of course the loveliness of bananas and apples is that they come in their own container.  Lunch containers ALWAYS make it back home.  This meal is a no brainer.

Breakfast.  Breakfast varies from week to week.  Zbars are my favorite of her choices.  Easy peasy.  Throw a pre-wrapped bar into her backpack.  Trash is thrown away, and we are not out a container.   Bagels with cream cheese and strawberries and breakfast sandwiches  fit nicely into a sandwich container.  This container inevitably has to be picked up that afternoon at the neighbor’s house.  Not the most convenient but at least we still have our containers.

This brings us to snack, the most difficult of our meals.  I buy a variety of snack foods in bulk at our local Spouts market:  sesame sticks, oriental mix, vegetable chips, banana chips, corn nuts, yogurt raisins and pretzels.  The initial purchase is pretty green.  I take my own bags every time.  The divvying out becomes not so green.  Snack baggies.  We easily could go through a package of 50 every 2 weeks.  I have sent her with containers.  They get left on the playground and are never seen again.  This is not very green either. 

I wanted something that she could shove in her pocket when she was done to ensure its safe return home.  Something that she could easily eat her snacks from.  Something that would seal, so nothing crumbled in the bottom of her backpack.   Something I could put apple slices in and would not leak juice onto everything.  I needed a baggie. 

Looking online I found pretty much what I wanted:  Reusable snack and sandwich bags.  I was, however, unwilling to pay 8 dollars a back for a snack bag which would, more likely than not, get left on the playground.  Hello tutorials and let’s see if I can make these puppies.  I did not want to get too extravagant until M proved herself reliable.  I found this baggie tutorial from Heidi over on Dabbled (dot) org.  Best of all they do not cost much and are easy to make.

Sprout o rific

My girls have a set routine for bedtime. Four things they must do. These things should take about 5 minutes and they can drag on for about 20 to 30 minutes. Get on your pajamas, brush your hair, brush your teeth and wash your face. Last night for example it took them 15 minutes just to do the brush your teeth parts. Arguments and playing with the bathroom door were the predominant stalling tactic played.

After these four things are accomplished they snuggle down in our bed and watch a show on the Good Night Show on Sprout. Sprout is the local cable children’s PBS station. We have enjoyed some fine programming throughout the years from Sprout on the Good Night Show( this is a time slot not an actual show). The standard fare is on in the morning: Sesame Street, Barney and Thomas. In the evenings they have had some great shows that we miss. Piggly Winks, Sagwa and Dragon Tales. The show lineup changes frequently enough that the girls do not get bored. But I digress.

In the evening line up between shows they have a short for crafts. This one came just in time for summer shoes.

Recycled Treasure Box

Materials:

• 1 shoebox, with lid
•  Ribbon
• Scraps such as magazines, fabric, beads, wrapping paper, etc.
• Crayons
• Pencil
• All-purpose white glue
• Safety scissors 

1. Take the lid off the shoebox and poke two holes through the lid about four inches apart.

2. Take some ribbon and thread the two ribbon ends through the holes so that they poke out of the underside of the box lid.

3. Tie a knot and then flip the box lid over. The ribbon is now a handle for the treasure box.

4. Use your imagination to decorate the treasure box with leftover scraps, like cut-out magazine pictures, bits of fabric, beads, or anything else you can find around the house.

5. Now you have your very own recycled treasure box!

I will post the girls as soon as they are finished decorating.

Those Darn Plastic Easter Eggs

We do not do Easter baskets in the traditional sense of the word. The Easter bunny knows my intense dislike of freely dispensing candy to my little ones. He brings them awesome summer stuff in their baskets: bubbles, badminton racquets, flip flops, sunglasses, bug boxes, word searches and coloring books. Do not get me wrong there is nothing wrong with a good chocolate Easter bunny, but that is the only candy they receive in our house Easter morning.


So how do we have a shopping bag of those darn plastic Easter eggs? And the even bigger question, what to do with them?

Originally garnered from Grandma and Grandpa’s house full of candy, hubby and I hid them one last time for fun: empty. The girls had a blast seeing who could find the most, who found the purple ones and who found the big ones. OK now what?

Give me some glue, some buttons, pipe cleaners and we will have fun before they will eventually be recycled. Do those eggs have a recycle number?

The obvious craft was to make musical shakers. We filled some with rice, some with beans, and some with orzo to make different sounds. When we had found the sounds we liked, I super glued them together so as not to have to vacuum the insides later. This got rid of seven eggs. Fifty-three to go.

Stephanie at http://www.playinghouseinmaryland.blogspot.com/ had some great ideas. My favorite was the Capital and lowercase letter matching game. Put a capital letter on the top of the egg and the lower case letter on the bottom of the egg and mix them up. Match away. She has some beautiful stickers on hers. Knowing B and how long they would last I used a sharpie to write on ours. There goes another twenty-six.

M is learning fractions so, a spin on that one was doing numbers on the tops and bottoms. She matched them up and told us the fraction. This was fun as she could mix and match to make an innumerate amount of combinations. Nine more down.

http://www.creativityinprogress.com/ had the most adorable idea: Plastic Easter Egg Tea Cups. Two girls plus an infinite quantity of dolls equals a lot of tea parties. Buttons are tacky glued to round end of the egg. Decorate as desired. We used left over stickers from our Paas box and sharpie markers. We only made 5 each so we still 3 left over.

3 Easter eggs. Perfect for storing those mini hair clips in the girls “pretty box.”

They always seem to fall to the bottom of their box and get tangled in the ponytail holders.