10 Favorite Posts of 2012

I am way, WAY late for this, but I had so much fun blogging this year that I didn't want to miss the opportunity to do a year- in- review post.  One reason this year was unusual was because my husband blessed my socks off during the summer by watching the kids while I blogged at coffee shops.  It was such a treat!

Here are some favorite posts that I've written on this blog and others this past year.  A big thank-you to all who read here and give me encouragement and to those who have let me post on their sites.  I have appreciated it so much!

American Flag T-Shirt Tutorial

DIY Raisins in the Car

Sharpie Tie Dye Tips

Post-It Flag Lion for Toddlers

I Spy Travel Treasure Bags

Playdoh and Colored Straws

Flowers on the Sticky Wall

Human Hangman with Paint

 

Watercolor Resist Collage

3 Projects with Melty Beads

Celebrating Our Free Play of 2012

My kids are always up to something- which of course, is wonderful and horrible ( for housekeeping) all at the same time.  :)  Here is a glimpse into M and G's creative play this past year.  I really enjoyed looking back through my pictures to find all of these.  It's so true that children really know how to have fun.

Lettuce Hats!

"Dyeing" string.  For days, the girls' favorite thing to do was to fill the kiddie pool with water, dissolve sidewalk chalk in it, and dip string in the colored water to "dye" it.  They had great plans for the colorful clothes they would make with their finished products.

Mattress Trampolines.  One afternoon after naps I heard a tremendous bouncing upstairs.  When I arrived in the girls' room I saw this scene.  They had stripped all of the covers off the top mattress and piled them below the bed.  Then they leaned the top mattress against the boxspring to make a kind of trampoline slide.  This arrangement allowed for jumping all the way down, rolling, and everything in between!

Shoe Buses.  Apparently, my enormous Crocs make perfect transport vehicles for little people.

Fishing in the Spinkler.  The drought the past couple of years has left lots of dead bamboo in our yard.  The girls grabbed this pole to use for a fishing rod.  

Smush Face.  This clear plastic sheet is actually a frame for children's artwork for display on the refrigerator.  (Very clever idea, by the way).  The girls though find it equally fun as a window for smushing their faces.  They love for me to take pictures of their poses and come running afterward to giggle at the results in the camera display.  

Pioneer Wagon.  I don't remember now what arrived in this large Amazon box.  But I do remember the fun the girls had using it and the packaging inside for a wagon.

Nativity Role Play.  The girls were very aware of the Nativity story for the month leading up to Christmas this year.  They were forever drawing manger scenes, cutting them out and dressing each other as characters in the story.  Here is a shepherd escaping to the bathroom.  

Free style Creations with leftover craft materials.  Such a fun, whimsical fellow he is.  I just love him!

What fun kinds of playing have your kids invented this year?  Please describe or give a link in the comments.  I know I would enjoy reading about them/ seeing pictures.

5 Lessons from the Mud Pit

Our poor backyard did not fare well in the drought here in Texas last summer. Most of the time these days,  it is a dust bowl with tiny bits of brown straw peeking up here and there.  When it rains, however, or when a little girl turns on the hose, we have a giant MUD PIT on our hands.

Cooking with Little Children

I'll admit- cooking with little ones seriously tries my patience.  The combination of too much going on all at once in my kitchen, countless dribbles, spills, recipes that sometimes don't turn out, and little tempers flaring when they feel the job allocations are unfair often makes me want to give up on the whole endeavor... for all time.

But of course there's so much that's great about cooking with children. I love the way it builds real life skills that they will draw upon later; all the educational multi-sensory experiences, and the fact that they enjoy it SO MUCH.

I have gradually been getting better in this area.  I'm learning some tricks along the way that make things run more smoothly, and of course when things go well I want to cook with them more frequently.

This morning we baked Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Cookies at the suggestion of my sister-in-law.  (There are some unique twists to the recipe that make it fun for little hands)

As we were working, I found our experience the usual combination of delightful and ugly.  It got me reflecting on what makes for good cooking experiences with M and G.  These are the thoughts I came up with:

1.  Bigger mixing bowls- easier for little hands to stir without spilling

2.  Starting with a clean kitchen to begin with.  Seems counter- intuitive because they are just going to mess it up anyway, but contributes to my feeling of peace and control.

3.  Feeling free to ask them to just watch for a while. Sometimes I forget how much they can enjoy that- what would be boring for me is magical alchemy to them-especially when I remember to talk about each step of what I am doing.

4.  Instructing them ahead of time to wait for instructions.  They are usually so excited to be involved that they are tempted to jump right in with their "help."  Of course, their unchecked impulses lead to aggravation 90% of the time. If I remind them ahead of time that there will be times when they will need to be patient, it's amazing how much differently they act.

5.  Thinking ahead of time of what tasks in the recipe will work for little hands.

6.   Assigning each child a station- a place to be so they don't crowd me or each other.

7.  Being creative about finding super simple tasks for them.  One of my favorites is asking G to go watch the cookies (or whatever) bake in the oven for me.  She takes the job very seriously and loves to watch the baked goods rise.  Or I may ask M to separate out the wet and dry ingredients for me on the counter so they're ready to go into two different bowls.

8.  Picking the right times.  If I'm short on time, if it really matters how it turns out, or if I'm not confident about the recipe for any reason, I won't usually allow help.

9.  Treating the clean-up time afterward as part of the cooking process, involving them in it when I can, but allowing them to watch me do it even when they can't contribute.  Sometimes I've felt tempted to just leave the mess and move on to something different for a while, coming back to clean after the girls are down for a nap, etc.  But I've been realizing that the habit is not good for me or them.  They need a realistic view of cooking (that it's not all play) and I need to keep on top of my cleaning so I'm not buried at nap time.

10.  Periodically announcing little "play breaks" for one or both of them.  Gives me a chance to regroup.

What works well for you in the kitchen with your children?  Have you discovered cooking tasks particularly well-suited for toddlers or preschoolers?  Please share!

Works for Me Wednesday

A Spoon Full of Sugar: 10 Fun Ways to "Tidy up the Nursery"

1.  Pretend to be "busy bees."  Buzz and fly around the room while you clean.

2.  Time Yourselves.  Keep track of the amount of time it takes from day to day.  See if you can beat your record.

3.  Make the clean playroom a surprise for Daddy when he gets home from work.  Say things like, "Won't he be happy?"  "He's going to LOVE seeing this clean floor!"

4.  Delegate and celebrate very small tasks.  "Jessie, the books are ALL picked up.  WONDERFUL!"

5.  Play dramatic, classical music.  Walz and pirouette around the room while you clean.  Try the music from Carmen or Tales from Vienna Woods.

6.  Set a timer.  At the end of five or ten minutes all toys on the floor will be food for the Garbage Monster (set in a basket, and not to be played with for the rest of the week)  But keep the game positive.  "Let's hurry; so he'll have NOTHING to eat!"

7.  Sing the Clean up song, or A Spoon Full of Sugar, or Whistle while You Work.

8.  Take a before and after picture.

9.  Plan clean-up for a time right before an activity you know your children will enjoy.  "Let's hurry and clean-up so we can do play-doh!"  Clean-up time right before naps has never worked well at our house.  :-)

10.  Dress up like proper maids and butlers, and pretend you are cleaning up after the messy children who live at this house.  "Can you believe they left their crayons all over the floor?  Tut, tut!"  I really think it would be fun to keep aprons, maids' caps, and bow ties in a special place for this purpose.

What do you find effective and fun for cleaning up with children around your home?

Things I Don't Do

I spend an awful lot of time on this blog writing about things I do in my home with my family. It occurred to me the other day that some people might get the impression that we do an awful lot. I think though that a stranger spending time in my house might be more struck by the things we don't do than with all our activities.

So...in the interest of honesty and openness, I decided to make a list of some of the surprising activities that don't go on in our home. Some of them are things I'm heartily ashamed of and hope to do better as time goes on, but there are other things in the list that I am content with. Their absence reflects our family values and I'm willing to risk criticism from others for the sake of the time, focus, and energy it buys me. There are also some items that lie somewhere in the middle

I've decided not to tell you which are which. You might be able to guess my feelings on a few, but something inside me makes me feel it is better not to tell. I think partly because it will give me the courage to be more open, but also because the purpose of this post is not to make you feel judged for what you decide is or is not important for your family. I would rather this post serve as a reminder that you don't HAVE to do everything the magazines and parenting books recommend. Also, I think it's nice to hear, just every once in a while, another voice admit they don't have it all together.

Some of the Things We Don't Do at our House:

1. Cook every night. We eat a lot of leftovers.

2. Spend time on holiday traditions that are not personally meaningful to us. It shocks a lot of people that we don't even put up a Christmas tree or set out Easter baskets.

3. Put away laundry right away. It often sits until it is a thoroughly wrinkled, schmushed blob.

4. Baby sign language.

5. Keep a well manicured lawn. In fact right now, because we are experiencing a drought our grass is crispy brown.

6. Bathe my children every day.

7. Keep up with the news.

8. Do many child enrichment activities outside the home. (Baby swim lessons, Kindermusic, library story times, etc)

9. Take great pains to avoid exposure to germs. We don't use a grocery cart seat cover, and I generally only disinfect very dirty things.

10. Keep up with all the latest child health studies.

11. Bake from scratch very frequently- Despite having a great bread machine and a mother who has taught me time and time again her secrets for wonderful pie crusts.

12. Sweep under my toddler's high chair after every meal - despite her less-than-neat habits.

13. Fold my children's dresser clothes. seriously. I hang up all of their dresses in the closet, but everything else ends up in the drawers exactly how I throw them.

14. Take my children to the doctor unless they are due for a check-up or are very, very sick.

Well, those are the things that come to mind...I know there are more. :-)

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday.

If you have the inclination, I think I would be really interested to hear some of the things you don't do in your home (whether deliberately or not). Please share them in the comments section to give us all comfort and food for thought!

Top Art Supplies for Empowering Real Fun

A friend once asked me which art supplies I considered the basics for a well-stocked kids closet.  I'm afraid I've taken my sweet time answering her (partly because I felt unqualified to answer; I'm a really bad minimalist-  my crafts closet is bursting at the seams!)   One of the many great comments on the recent post 13 Things Parents do that Inhibit Real Fun made me think though, that the time had come for me to do some thinking on my friend's question. 

The comment had to do with keeping  open-ended art supplies around instead of buying kids craft kits.  Such a good point!  The question is, what are the most helpful supplies to have around?   A person could spend their life savings impulse shopping at Michaels!  So...which things are likely to sit on the back shelf, and which things will inspire and empower creativity and fun?

I did some thinking about the supplies I use most in crafting with and for kids, and this is the list I came up with.

1.  Scissors!  Child and adult pairs.  My mother taught me to keep some scissors nice and to use others for rougher jobs (for example, cutting through anything sticky or grainy)

2.  Glue sticks.  I try to get the kind that have larger tops so they're not such a choking hazzard.

3.  String.

4.  Markers

5.  Crayons

6.  Tissue Paper- It seems like there are so many great ideas around the web for using tissue paper in kid's crafts these days!

7.  Hole punch.

8.  One inch fasteners- these metal brads are sharp- so not good for unsupervised kids, but they allow for so many creative projects with joints, dials, etc.

9.  Hole enforcer stickers- great for making little homemade books, etc

10.  Packing tape- one of my absolute favorites- cheap laminating!

11.  Washable Paint- just writing those words reminds me that I really should send the girls outside with an easel and several jars of paint the next time they are having a rough day.  I'm sure it will improve their spirits 100%!

12.  Popsicle sticks- the "backbone" for many a craft.

13.  Colored cardstock- construction paper is definitely cheaper, but it fades and rips so quickly.  I guess both are good to have around!

14.  Paper cutter- not for young children to use definitely, but I have been so glad I've had mine for dozens of little games, etc. I've made for my toddlers. 

Everybody does arts and crafts a little differently.  I'd love to hear what you would add to this list or swap out!