family crafts

6 Fun Family Crafts and Activities for Family Day

Family Day is around the corner and we are thankful for this day to celebrate our families and spend quality time together!

This February set some time aside this Family day to do some fun crafts and activities to bring your family even closer together. How often do you have everyone at the table to create a family masterpiece?

1. Go to a "Make your Own" Pottery store and make a family plate with handprints or names.

handprint pottery

2. Trace the hands of everyone in your family to make a poster, family tree, hand flowers or mural for your house.

family day craft ideas

3. Play "My Favourites" with your kids. Write out questions and go around the table asking and answering questions about your family's favourite colours, animals, foods, movies, books. You'll be surprised at what you learn about each other! After you have the answers, older kids can create a Family word search with everyone's names and favourite things! Or print off a family word search and help kids recognize the words.

4. Plan and prepare and family dinner together! Everyone gets to choose a dish or a course and every pitches in to help make it (if you plan ahead, you can also all shop for ingredients too)! Be sure to check out our family-friendly meals and ideas for cooking with kids when you are looking for suggestions!

family day ideas

5. Family Dance Party! Take turns showing off your best dance moves and teaching them to the other family members. Let each person pick their favourite song and put on a performance. This is a great way to stay active together and have some laughs. Create a memorable moment by teaching your kids how to slow dance- they can even watch mommy and daddy!

6. Get outside and have fun; take a hike, make a snowman together, or hit the tobaggan hills! Need some new ideas? Here are some fun ways to have family time in the snow!

Happy Family Day!

Posted by Mom of Boys on 02/03/2013 - 14:49

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Lego and Literacy: Combine books and creative building

lego and literacy

Lego and Literacy, can you think of a better combination for a family literacy activity?

A mom friend of mine recently mentioned her local library has started a little program with this theme and I thought it was brilliant! Since then, our family has started regular after-dinner evenings of “Lego & Literacy”. It’s super simple and so much fun for all ages (even Daddy gets into it!).

All you need is a Book and some Lego blocks (giant infant size Mega Blok type blocks or medium Lego Duplo size or regular small size Lego depending on your kids ages and stages).

Start by reading a book, any type or age or style of book, as a family together. Picture books are great as they help with ideas for images.

After you’d read the book together, open up the Lego and start to build anything from the story. Anything at all, you’ll be amazed the variances in what every person took from the book as an idea.

For children that need to be sparked for creativity, mention “ideas” indirectly as you read the book. Make suggestions for potential ideas. Like “Oh, what a large bear that is in the story” or “Look at all the food on that dinner table, what types of food do you see there?”. This will help your child confidently come up with his own ideas (ie: to create a bear or a pizza or a table…) for his own creations.

For the pictures shown above, our family read our momstown / Scholastic February book of the month called The Very Hungry Bear. Tons of ideas came from the cute story of a polar bear and a grizzly bear pair.

My son made a polar bear and a tree while eldest daughter really focused on making a blue fish (what the hungry bear likes to eat). My youngest daughter who loves to make lego duplo towers connected her tower to the book by calling it a tall tree that the bear climbed (which he did). Mommy made an igloo and Daddy make a fork and fishing lure. I was surprised how every person takes something different from the book.

My favourite part about “Lego and Literacy” is it’s an unplugged time with my family, downtime without the TV on and an easy wind-down activity in the evening. Or course, tying anything to a book makes me happy too.

Try “Lego & Literacy” with your kids and see where it takes you!

Posted by momstown mama on 01/27/2013 - 15:16

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Make Your Own Lowly Worm

Richard Scarry was a favourite author of mine when I was a child, and I was delighted to hear that a children's television show based on his books, Busytown Mysteries, was going to be produced and aired on Kids' CBC. I was even more delighted when my two year old nephew fell in love with both the books and the television show.

Lowly Worm was and is my favourite Busytown character too. When I was young, I was intrigued by his apple car, and I loved trying to spot him on the pages of the books. As an adult, I appreciate that he both reflects and inspires kids' creativity: he becomes a much needed skipping rope in a story, and a child later uses a skipping rope in real life to mark an imaginary shoreline.

To indulge our mutual love of Lowly Worm, I created a cuddly and posable Lowly Worm stuffy. This project would be a bit tricky for a preschooler, but could easily be completed by slightly older kids with just a bit of assistance. For parents, it is an easy and quick craft to make, especially if you choose to use fabric glue instead of sewing him together.

To make your own cuddly and flexible Lowly Worm you will need:

a large piece of cream or tan coloured felt (at least 9' by 12' inches)
pieces of dark green, red, light blue, felt
small scraps of yellow, white and black felt
two pipecleaners
a small amount of polyfill stuffing
a needle and various colours of thread, or fabric glue
pins (if sewing)
a pencil and paper
a black permanent marker (optional)

1. Make a paper pattern for Lowly's body by drawing a long, skinny "bubble L" on the fold of a piece of paper ("L" is for Lowly Worm). Cut out. This will form the basis for Lowly's body:

Pin pattern to cream felt, and cut out:

2. Create the pattern for Lowly's shoe by drawing a short, squat, bubble "L" onto the fold of a piece of paper. Cut out and open:

Pin pattern onto red felt, and cut shoe out.

3. Pin red shoe to the bottom of Lowly's body. Glue or whipstitch shoe to body.

4. Cut out rectangular strips of green, blue, and white felt. Each strip should be as wide as Lowly's open body. The green piece (Lowly's pant) should be the longest, followed by a shorter blue strip (his shirt), and a narrow white strip (his collar). Pin each piece onto Lowly's body, and whipstitch or glue into place.

5. Cut out a two round eyes from white felt, and two slightly smaller circles from black felt for pupils. Glue or stitch black felt on top of white felt. Fold Lowly's body together, right sides facing out, and glue or stitch an eye to each side of Lowly's face:

Use a pencil to sketch a smile onto either side of Lowly's face. Use a chain stitch and black embroidery thread to embroider mouth, or simply trace over the pencil line with black permananent marker.

6. Sandwich two pipecleaners between the sides of Lowly's body. Trim pipecleaners so that they are equal length to the length from the bottom of Lowly's shoe to the top of his neck. Pin body together.

7. Blanket stitch Lowly's body closed, adding small amounts of fiberfill stuffing as you go. If using glue instead of stitching, add the stuffing when you add the pipecleaners, and glue body together. You may need to pin or hold the body in place for a few minutes while the glue dries.

8. Create Lowly's bowtie by cutting a small rectangle out of red felt. Pinch rectangle together in centre to form a bow shape:

Create a band for the bow by cutting a small strip of red felt, and wrapping it around the centre of the bow. Stitch or glue band into place, and then stitch or glue the bow to Lowly's body just underneath his chin.

9. Create Lowly's hat. Cut out a narrow rectangular strip of yellow felt for his hand band, and two bell shapes from green felt to form the hat itself:

Place the two green hat pieces on top of one another, right sides facing, and glue or stitch around the top and side edges, leaving the bottom open. Turn hat right side out, and glue or stitch yellow felt around the lower mid section of the hat to create the hat band. Place hat on to Lowly's head, and if desired, secure with a few stitches or a bit of glue.

10. You're finished! Bend, explore, and imagine what your Lowly Worm can be. "L" is for Lowly Worm:

"C" is for creativity:

And "T" is for telephone. Here is an example of Lowly doing what he does best; becoming something else:

Posted by momstown Teach on 08/04/2012 - 19:08

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Canada Day Deely-Bopper Headband

Today we had a pre Canada Day get-together at the park. In order to get everyone in the spirit, I made these fun Canada Day Deely-Bopper headbands this morning before our playdate. You can easily make a pair for yourself with just a few minutes, and a few easy to find items.

Here's what you need to make your own Canada Day Deely-Bopper Headband:

a white or red headband
red or white craft foam
two red or white pipe-cleaners
glue (ideally a glue gun)
scissors
a dowel, skewer, pencil, or pen to wind the pipecleaners around

1. Draw or trace four maple leaf shapes onto a sheet of red or white craft foam (I drew one stencil by hand on a piece of paper, cut it out, and traced it onto the foam, but you could use a cookie cutter, an image you have found online, or even a real maple leaf as your template)

2. Cut out maple leaf shapes. Glue a pipecleaner towards the bottom centre of one maple leaf. Repeat with a second maple leaf and pipe-cleaner. I used heavy duty craft glue to make it child friendly, but a glue gun would be quicker.

Glue third and fourth maple leaves on top of the first and second. Each pipe-cleaner should now be sandwiched between two foam maple leaves.

3. Once glue has dried, wrap each pipe-cleaner multiple times around a dowel. Leave approximately 10 cms at the end of each pipe-cleaner unwrapped.

4. Pull pipe-cleaners off the dowels, keeping the corkscrew shape intact. Wrap the untwisted portion of one pipecleaner a few times around the headband. Make sure the end of the pipe-cleaner is on top of the headband, so that it doesn't poke or scratch the wearer's head. If desired, secure pipecleaner to headband with a dab of glue.

Repeat with second pipe-cleaner.

5. Show off your patriotic pride!

Posted by momstown Teach on 06/28/2012 - 23:13

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50 Activities to do with your Preschooler this Summer

50 ideas

I can hardly believe that it is already June, and the end of another school year is just around the corner. Last summer, in order to make sure our family made the most of every day of our time off (and to save our sanity on those summer days that fell somewhere short of halycon) we came up with a "bucket list" of fun activities to try and complete. Many were simple, free, and the sort of things we would have done anyway, but being able to consult the list when we needed an idea was helpful, and crossing each item off was rewarding. It was neat to see at the end how many items on our list we had actually managed to accomplish, and to have a reminder of all of the fun we had.

Our preschool summer bucket list was such a hit last year that we decided to make another one this year. Here is our list of the top 50 activities we hope to have fun with this summer. While I will be spending the majority of time with toddlers and preschoolers, most of these activities could easily be enjoyed by older kids as well. Tomorrow, I will print off the the list and set A and C to work decorating it:

Camp outside in the backyard
Have a picnic breakfast
Take a surprise trip to a mystery destination
Take a family picture a week
Watch a fireworks display
See a play or concert outside
Go berry picking
Have three virtual vacation theme nights where we prepare and eat food from another country, and enjoy activities such as reading a story and listening to music from that country, playing games from that country, or learning a few words of the language spoken there
Have a mini-Olympics day
Paint outside
Go on a hike
Run through a sprinkler
Try two new fruits, and two new vegetables
Make sun prints
Make a solar oven, and try and cook in it
Throw rocks into the river
Buy a treat from a food truck
Visit two libraries we have not been to before
Make a sandcastle
Roll down a hill
Leave an anonymous treat on a neighbour’s porch
Have a campfire
Watch a parade
Bake a pie
Invite someone new over to play
Ride a roller coaster
Spend an afternoon lying in the grass and reading books
Make nature rubbings
Paint rocks and make rock creatures
Make jam
Play catch outside
Go on a flashlight walk around the neighbourhood
Visit a fair
Mail a postcard to a friend
Make (and wear!) crazy sunglasses
Make giant bubbles
Walk along a log
Learn to say “hello” and “thank you” in two new languages
Learn the names of two kinds of trees
Lie outside on a blanket and look at the stars. Read about the constellations and try to find them.
Have a wacky hair day
Participate in one community service project as a family
Leave a favourite kids’ book in a public place (e.g. a park bench) with a note for the finder to keep and enjoy it
Make campfire bananas or campfire apples (or both)
Trace our shadows with sidewalk chalk and colour them in
Make popsicles
Paint with ice cubes
Build a fort outside
Make a kite, and try to fly it
Visit four new playgrounds, at least one of which has a merry-go-round

I'll be popping by throughout the summer to share some of these activities as we complete them, If you have a summer bucket list, or you do any of the activities on our list, I would love to hear about them as well. Feel free to leave a comment below, or share with us on facebook or twitter. Happy Summer!

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Posted by momstown Teach on 06/04/2012 - 22:32

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