Holiday activity for the kidlets

At the end of last year's holiday season, I looked guiltily at all of the cards we accumulated: Throwing them into the recycling bin only does so much for the environment...

So, I started ripping the front cover off of the more decorative cards and stashed them in a large envelope. I'm not sure exactly what I had in mind but I found a use for them.

One afternoon while I was killing time in Target (I had an appt nearby and had an hour to while away), I was cruising the scrapbooking aisle and it hit me -- a great project for my four year old who loves glue, stickers and all things artsy.

I had construction paper at home and envelopes. I grabbed a decorative punch set of a snowflake and a tree, glue sticks, some holiday stickers and glitter glue. You can also go to a place like Paper Source and buy plain cards and envelopes if you don't have them on hand and don't want to use construction paper for the cards.

After school, I cleared the kitchen table and laid out all of the goods. My job was cutting the cards to fit into the envelopes. At the top of each card, I wrote "Happy Holidays from the ---- family: Husband, My name, Daughter's name. My daughter's job was to decorate and decorate she did. I had to remind her a few times not to use all of the goodies on just one card but overall, I let her just go with it. I did ask her to sign her name to each card before decorating just because it's nice to have the artist's signature on a piece (=

After I stuffed the cards into envelopes, I wrote, "made with love by Daughter" at the bottom, under the mail to address.

The cards don't work for everyone but they make great holiday cards for teachers, babysitters and friends that see your child often (and don't need/care about a card with a picture or require more formal cards for whatever reason) and it's a great activity to fill an afternoon or 3. We had a great time making the cards and my daughter was immensely proud of her work.

I'm still ordering regular cards for the bulk of my list since it would take 10 years for my daughter to make enough cards for my list and a child-made card isn't appropriate for everyone but in a couple of days, I plan to bring out the supplies again and we'll make more. The first batch is in the mail!

Coloring Pages

Misc

http://www.freshcoloring.com/

http://www.everythingpreschool.com/coloringpages/

Sprout (this one is pretty lame really)

Sesame Street

Alphabet

http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/mabcposter.html

http://cathycreatif.free.fr/modeles.php?param=modeles/alphabets_et_chiffres/alphabets/animaux

Hello Kitty

Mr Potatohead

French Language

http://www.kidsrcrafty.com/les_lettres.htm (make sure you pick landscape for printing)

http://www.circletimekids.com/WorldLibrary/countries/France/coloringbooks/

http://www.coloring-page.biz/thumbnails-80-page-2.html

Rain, Rain, Go Away

I know what you're thinking, "It's June. And it was gorgeous today!" That's true but as I live in the beautiful state of Oregon, I must always be prepared for rain.

With a toddler, that means activities galore! I prefer to limit Daughter's television consumption to when I absolutely need to buy myself 5 minutes, or when we've had 2-3 consecutive snow days and I do not want to go outside for the umpteenth time.

Here are a couple of things I'm squirreling away for a rainy day:

The "I'm not bored anymore" Jar. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't buy one of these. Not when there are so many opportunities to make one (or more) of my own! Grab a box, an empty jar, anything that will hold a bunch of goodies. Throughout the year, collect little knick knacks and stash them in the jar for later. When people send you cute cards, keep the side with the artwork. Look at things with the eyes of a child; if it's sparkly, cute or fuzzy, add it! Throw in some of those buttons you saved for the jacket you gave to charity 3 years ago. Tiny ribbons and little satin flowers or bits of lace can be added. Beads, googly eyes, fuzzy pompoms, stickers, pipe cleaners all add to the fun. You may or may not want to buy a few items to compliment the items you randomly come across.

Depending on the age of the child and / or how much supervision you want to provide, you can add some child-safe craft scissors, a glue stick and a metallic marker or puffy paints. I'm currently working on two: A holiday jar and an every day jar.
Coloring! Always a fun activity. If you're like me, there are some areas of the house that are "safe" for regular markers and crayons and there are others, where I'm just not willing to risk my walls, carpet or furniture. Overall, Daughter is well-behaved and I don't worry about her going crazy on my walls or furniture but, she's TWO, which means, all bets are off and I have to be prepared for anything. Knock on wood, nothing has happened yet. One of my all-time favorite products (great to bring to restaurants & Grandma's house too) is Crayola Color Wonder products. For regular markers and crayons, here's a website with a bunch of coloring pages to print out. Some of them are completely lame but others are pretty good. When printing, use the Print Preview & Page Setup functions to make sure the picture is sized properly and you aren't printing out extra pages or headers & footers.

FYI: You can print directly on the Color Wonder paper if you'd rather buy the drawing pad instead of the kits each time (one only needs so many sets of Color Wonder pens).


Other things to keep The Toddler happy on a rainy day: Baking cookies or cupcakes, Beads and more beads (at two, sorting colors, occasionally stringing them, etc) and playing chase around the dining room table (hey, I need some exercise on a rainy day too!).

An oven for a tot!

Daughter has a kitchen set, one that I found at Company Kids a while back, but I found a kind of fun, much less expensive alternative while surfing this evening.

A cardboard box plus a few doodads and you can put together your own play oven!

Here's Martha Stewart's version


Here's another, based on the above version:

Crayons

Besides being a wife, I'm also a mom. I have a small child and she's a pretty big focal point in my life.

Last night we were coloring, while waiting for Husband to come home from picking up the takeout (roasted chicken for him and Salad Nicoise for me -- Daughter shares what she chooses off our plates). I noticed an abundance of broken crayons in her stash. This is no surprise given that she went through a stage where peeling the paper from crayons, then breaking them into small pieces gave her more pleasure than drawing. Nevertheless, I noticed she won't use these tiny gems and they aren't really useful for me to draw with either.

Being a bit of an eco-nut and a little frugal, throwing them away without offering them new life, isn't an option.

I started thinking about melting them into "new" crayons and figured my next best step would be a little Google. The idea of using muffin tins didn't thrill me (boring shape and hello, I cook food in them) and neither did a muddy mess of colors blending together. I found two sites that appealed to me for various reasons:
Chica and Jo
and
Make and Takes

If you don't bother to read the comment section, take care not to microwave the crayons as suggested in the 2nd link. Apparently it can lead to problems. No, I haven't tried it but there's no reason to risk destroying an expensive piece of kitchen equipment when there are other options. An exercise in a little patience is good for all of us.

The first site provides ideas for keeping the colors separate and better shapes than a muffin tin provides. The second provides time and temperature information for cooking, which I appreciate. I found temperature / time information on other sites but many of them suggested higher temperatures and longer times. I figure, why use a higher temp than I need, especially when dealing with wax.

Recycling crayons seems like a great idea for elementary school teachers, if they aren't already doing something like it. Given the scarcity of supplies teachers experience with these days and the abundance of broken crayons they probably end up with, recycling crayons fixes two problems IMO. If I were a teacher doing this project, I'd probably invest in some cheap muffin tins for this. True, the shapes aren't as exciting but teachers have access to a lot more crayons than most of us and really, how much time do they want to spend on this project? Sometimes practicality wins over fancy. Same reason I usually wear flats or tennies when going to the grocery store instead of a fabulous pair of Christian Louboutins or Giuseppe Zanottis.

This also might be a fun project for older kids. I don't feel comfortable yet with hot crafts around my daughter but as she becomes more predictable and has a better understanding of safety, spooning melted crayon into molds could be 15 minutes of entertainment one afternoon. Or less, depending on how little time it takes her to move on to the next big thing...

Update:

I made my first batch of triangle crayons the other day. A couple of notes...

*Don't put the silicone ice cube molds from Ikea in the oven. I thought it would be an easy shortcut since I have silicone cooking pans but they are not the same and the ice cube molds started to smoke. Thankfully, I caught it before there was any damage.

*Different brands of crayons turn out different end product. Crayola works the best, melting quickly and turning out a product that does not leave color on little fingers. Some brands don't melt at all, or at least not in a way that worked easily. I suppose grating would aid in the melting but that takes more time than it's worth for most people.

*Daughter LOVED the triangle shape. Day 3 of hours of play; much more interest than she's ever shown in regular crayons. ...Must.resist.temptation.to.melt.all.crayons...