Creating a "Guide to my Hometown" book with your children

CMOTC mom Kathleen P. offers a great idea to make spring break (or any time) right here in Columbus a lot of fun! She suggests having your children create a "Guide to my Hometown" book full of the fun things you do that week. Thank you for this great idea Kathleen!

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As spring break draws near, it reminds me of how Columbus has so much to offer families. The March issue of Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine lists all the one-of-a-kind attractions our great city offers.

Yet for kids to understand how wonderful their city is it will take some reflection. Asking them to create a “Guide to my Hometown” is a great avenue for them to express their point of view of their corner of the world. The book can include what they love – their local parks, restaurants, museums and stores. This book can be part travel guide, scrapbook, or diary formats – including all three. Also listing what other places they would like to visit and why.

To Get Started:

• Make a list of all the places you would like to visit or things you would like to experience.


• Get a binder (3 ring) with clear plastic sheet protectors and tabs if they would like divide up the areas of interest.


• Gather some basic scrapbook supplies (i.e. markers, glue stick, tape, stickers, and paper for the binder/scrapbook).


• Ideas for some great items to collect are brochures and pictures of families/friends at the location.
  

Putting It All Together

At the end of the week (or throughout the week) set up a work space to organize their experiences. When making the book, add as much detail as they would like…dates, times, addresses. Make sure you let each page dry completely before putting your book together.

Ideas for the books:

• As a special feature, have them look into the history of one of the locations they visit.


• Try new restaurants, and add to the fun by having each family member “rate” the local establishment and tell what their favorite meal was. (For a dinner idea, try to duplicate the menu items.)

A few great places to visit:

• Parks and playgrounds offer a day of sun and fresh air (and are great for fun nature activities, like scavenger hunts - see some ideas here).
• Culture and Arts, this is where your budding artist can express themselves. Possibly copying their interpretation of classics at the art museum or being the author of their own storybook as a reflection of the Thurber House.
  
• Go on an African Safari or to the Outback at the zoo. Children can have fun pretending to be explorers, capturing photos and learning facts about the animals.
  
• Visit the North Market for a flavor of some fun cultural treats and support of local merchants.
  
• Go back in time, through the Progress exhibit, or schedule to build something cool as a family at the Gadgets Cafe at COSI.

Ideas for other books:

• Have them create books about their sporting events, or what is going on in their favorite sports during the summer or throughout the year.
  
  
• Create a favorite holiday tradition book, this one looks at the whole year and what children love most about family time together.

This can be the start of a great tradition of collecting memories of family trips that they will always cherish, as well as the time together with you.

Also, Groupon's special (until Thursday 3/17) is an 8" X 8" photobook from Shutterfly for only $10. These are great for spring break photos!

Enjoy!
Kathleen

Valentine's Day cards, crafts and recipes

The Family Fun website always has really neat ideas for all things holiday. If you are looking for ideas, here is a link to all their Valentine's Day ideas.

For Valentine Day's past, we have made the sweet shovel (we filled it with stickers, little raisin boxes and a couple chocolate kisses) and the sweet for the sweet - naturally for my oldest son's friends. Both were a huge success. These are just two, there are many more really cute Valentine card ideas on their site, click here to see them.

In addition to the card ideas, there are also a ton of fun recipes, games and party ideas, which are not only fun for doing at home but also provide great ideas for those room mothers out there who are planning their child's classroom party.

Do you have other great website resources for fun Valentine card, craft and recipe ideas? Please share by commenting below!

Amanda's Saving Money the Homemade Way - Homemade Hair Bows

With Christmas just around the corner, as does everyone, I have a list to fulfill but a very limited budget. I like to look for simple homemade ideas for gifts. I do some baking every year and this year, I found a really neat and easy gift I can make for the young girls on my list- such as my 3 young nieces. Every little girl loves hair bows! Before I even get started, let me tell you how completely NOT CRAFTY I am. I don't like crafts and I am not good at them. But, even I was able to easily learn how to make these bows and was surprised how easy they are!

Here is a picture of the first one I made:

I had never done these before but within a few minutes, I made this adorable bow! I will show you how to make 3 different but similar bows. They were really fun to make and I have two adorable little almost 4 year olds that were happy to model!

To get started:

Here is a sampling of the ribbon I bought:

I didn't pay more than a dollar for any single spool. I bought a lot more than this - this is just a few! I found some in the dollar bins at JoAnns as well as in the dollar section of Target. Dollar stores also have them sometimes.


You will also need:

• a few dowel rods (costs less than a dollar each)
• you can get thin or fatter depending on how big you want the curls in your ribbon. I also cut them in half.
• a few wooden clothespins
• plain hair clips (I found them in the homemade jewelry section at JoAnns - I got snap-shut clips and alligator clips)
• glue gun
• thin thread
  

To get started, wrap the ribbon around the dowel rods, held on with clothespins.


Place the ribbon covered dowels across a cookie sheet and put in a 200 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Take out of oven and unclip the pins and let ribbon slide off- it will be curled!

To Make the bows:

1) First I will show the process for a large clip, similar to the one shown above:

This bow, like the first, is a little thicker and bigger. After curling the ribbon, cut 6-8 pieces about the same length. Take a long piece of thread, folded in half and lay across the table. Lay the pieces of ribbon in the middle of thread as shown below:



Gather the string around the ribbon and tie tightly into a knot (Don't worry about the ribbon staying perfectly aligned- you can adjust it). Then just fluff and pull the ribbon around until it looks right!

To get the clip ready, lay out a piece of ribbon that will match the bow and put a strip of blue from the glue gone on it. Place the clip on top of the glue.

Put a little more glue on the clip and wrap the ribbon over it.

Put a dab of glue gun glue on the ribbon where it is tied together and attach to the clip! Allow to dry and it is done!

2) Here is a smaller version of the same style:

To make is smaller, just cut the pieces smaller and maybe use fewer pieces. (on the ribbon above, I used 8 pieces, for this one, I used 5). You tie it and attach it just the same way:

3) Long curly pony holder:

Cut 4 longer pieces of curled ribbon (approximately 6 inches or so)

Gather them together in the center and put a single stitch through it to hold them together in that spot.

After putting in the stitch, take a small piece of ribbon (an inch or less) and put glue from the glue gun on it. Wrap the small piece of ribbon around the middle of the bow and an elastic pony holder to attach them together and you are done! You may need to trim the ribbon a little to make it all the same length.

These bows are fun to do and easy and cheap! As I mentioned before, I didn't pay more than a dollar for a spool of ribbon- some were only 50 cents! I paid a total of about $20 for ALL supplies (the dowel rods and clips included!) and got enough supplies to make dozens of hair bows. This works out to be less than a dollar a bow. These would cost $5 or more for a single hair bow in any store.

Obviously, the options are endless. If you are good at tying bows, you could tie a bow with straight ribbon and glue to the clip. JoAnns also had a huge assortment of little flowers and such- all you would need to do would be glue those on a clip and be done. Definitely a low cost way to give a beautiful gift with a personal touch!

Happy holidays!

~Amanda

Kelly's Art Easel: Homemade Card Trees and Advent Calendars

For December, I thought it would be fun to give you some create ideas for displaying your cards and creating advent calendars... homemade, easy, fun for all ages and inexpensive!

Tomato Cage Card Trees:
This craft is so easy and so functional! A unique way to display your holiday cards this season. I saw this in Real Simple magazine a while back and then again in this year’s Family Fun magazine. There are many variations, but here’s mine:

Materials:

• scissors
• tin foil
• cardboard
• tomato cage
• ribbon
• Binder clips or mini clothes pins
  

Instructions:

Get a tomato cage from a garden supply store (or if you’re lucky like me, on garbage day from your neighbors!)

Turn the cage upside down so the part you stick in the ground is up.


Either duct tape (Family Fun instructions) the tips together, or I just tied a little ribbon around the points to hold them together, much like the top of a tepee.


I then cut star shape (out a cereal box) and wrapped it in tin foil to make it silver. I left a bit extra to make a “pocket” for the points of the top of the tomato cage to hold the start in place.

I bought mini clothes pins, but mini binder clips also work. Use this to pin the cards to make the “branches”.

Next up, Advent Calendars!

I LOVE advent calendars and want to challenge myself to make a different one each year and this year I found 2 great ideas to share…

Christmas Tree Advent Calendar: Countdown to Christmas!

Materials:

• Download template from Family Fun here.
• Construction paper
• Clothes pins
• Scissors
• Pipe cleaners
• Scotch tape
• Markers/crayons
  

Instructions:

Cut out template and trace onto paper (we didn’t have enough construction paper, so I had my kids color copy paper and I used that instead).

Cut out the “cones”, right now they’ll just be 1/3 of a circle.

Put a thin line of elmer’s glue on one side of the circle third.

Roll carefully into a cone and then use a clothes pin to hold the cone together until the cone dries.

Repeat this again with either 12 or 24 cones (depending on how long you want to countdown until Christmas).

Next, fold paper like an accordion and draw some stars. Cut them out and write on each one the days numbered, 1-24 etc.

Cut a piece of pipe cleaner into about 1-2 in. pieces and tape to the back of each star.

Once the cones are dry, remove the clothes pins and place the pipe cleaner end into the top hole of the cones.

Don’t forget to place some treats under each tree. Some ideas are candy, little toys, handmade coupons (good for a hug, 10 minutes of tv, etc.) and anything else you can fit!

I display my calendar on a serving tray, so I may move it off the table for mealtimes.

;) ENJOY!

Here’s one more easy idea, from Family Fun, for an advent calendar that uses photos of doors you cut from magazines! Click here for the instructions.

I hope you and your kids have fun making these projects AND enjoying them all month! Happy holidays!

~Kelly

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Check out Kelly's Etsy store here. Or you can find her on Facebook here.

Fun Kid Thanksgiving Appetizers and Treats

Family Fun Magazine always has a ton of great kid holiday ideas, no matter the season. For Thanksgiving, I love their ideas for treats and appetizers. So far, over the years, we have done three Turkey treats/appetizers (photos from Family Fun):

The fruit gobbler:
This is really easy and fun! My oldest son, at four, helped me make the skewers (I cut off the sharp ends after we put the cheese and grapes on since we had younger children - they still went into the melon fine).


Gobble me up:

Seriously cute and all healthy too, my kids like laying out the apple and orange segments as feathers.

Sweet T.O.M. turkeys:

The candy corn and cookies are easy for younger kids to put in to help with this fun treat. We made these when my son was three and though they weren't picture perfect, he had a blast.

My kids and their cousins all really loved these. They are fun to make with your kids and add some festive fun to your gathering, not to mention they are all very yummy to eat! There are a lot more ideas on their website - check them out - appetizers and desserts/treats. (The names of each treat shown above are hot linked to the recipe.)

As far as standard recipes, I've also made the apple pie party dip with cinnamon chips many times (for whatever occasion) and it has been a HUGE hit... often requested by people (for me to make).

In addition to these things, they also have great crafts, activity sheets and games for Thanksgiving.

If you are looking for some fun Thanksgiving themed kid appetizers or desserts, as well as fun kid activities for many ages, check out the Family Fun Thanksgiving area.

Kelly's Art Easel - Countdown to Thanksgiving Turkey Centerpiece

COUNTDOWN TO THANKSGIVING TURKEY CENTERPIECE

Create a memento of this holiday season, while appreciating with your kids everything they’re thankful for, with this fun centerpiece turkey.



Materials:

• Construction paper
• Cardboard
• 2 styrofoam balls *1 large (cantaloupe size) and 1 small (softball) size
• Scissors
• Elmer’s glue
• Orange pipe cleaner
• Popsicle (craft) sticks
  
  

Directions:

1) Stick a popsicle stick into the smaller of the stryofoam ball. Then stick the other end of the popsicle stick into the larger ball to form the body with the head toward the top.
2) Cut an orange pipe cleaner in half and bend it to look like a turkey foot. I cut a 2 inch piece off each end, formed a letter "V” and then wrapped it around the end to create the three “toes”.

3) Stick the ends into the bottom front of the ball to balance the body upright on the table.

4) Cut out eyes and glue (or glue on googly eyes).

5) To make the turkey’s beak, fold a piece of orange construction paper in half and draw a “tear” shape with the large part of the tear on the folded end. Cut out so the there's a folded beak that opens. Tape a small piece of orange pipe clear to the back and insert into the face of the turkey.

6) Don’t forget the “wattle” that red thingy that hangs from the beak!

7) Fold a piece of cardboard, draw a “wing” shape and cut it out so that you have 2 identical wings. Glue a craft stick to the back of the wings, leaving about an inch of the popsicle stick exposed.

8) Use these ends to insert into either side of the turkey’s body (large Styrofoam ball).

9) Next, fold the yellow, red, orange construction paper (so you can make several at once) and draw a “feather” shape. Cut out at least 25. If you only do one per day till thanksgiving that’s all you need, but feel free to add more! ;)

10) With a thin line, draw a line of glue on a popsicle stick and glue to each feather leaving about an inch of the stick out the bottom.

11) Every night, during dinner, as a family or take turns, write on a feather something that you’re thankful for and then insert into the tush of the turkey. (You can jump start your thankful turkey's feathers on the first night by asking each person at dinner to say something they are thankful for, so you start with multiple feathers instead of just one).

Then, for thanksgiving you have a great centerpiece and also talking piece (of thanks!) for the big feast!

Here are a couple other variations and other directions for this Countdown to Thanksgiving Turkey Centerpiece which I found here, here and here.

And here’s a super cute idea from another mom of twins that I just love: A popcorn turkey centerpiece!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

~ Kelly