The windy days of March are a great time to fly a kite! To decide if it is windy enough, ask your family some questions: Do you feel anything blowing on you face? Are your clothes moving around? What about any tress or bushes – what are they doing? Are they still or are they moving around? If you do not have a kite at home, you can make your own. The PBS website at Read more
Plastic Easter eggs make great learning tools for young children. In addition to using them to identify colors, if your young ones are just learning the letters of the alphabet, print an upper-case letter on one piece of an egg and a lower-case on the other piece. Mix all the pieces up and then help children find the matching pairs. Another fun idea is to put a letter on one piece of an egg and Read more
Play a game of dinosaur tag today. Whoever is ‘it’ has must scrunch up their arms insides their shirt to make their arms short like a T-rex and try to tag the others. And bonus points for making T-rex noises as you run around! The variations on this game are endless. Whoever is ‘it’ could pretend to be an elephant and try to catch others with one arm swinging like an elephant’s trunk or ‘it’ Read more
Make your own snow globes today by grabbing an empty jar, such as a baby food jar, a mason jar or even an empty peanut butter jar. Fill it with anything sparkly you have – tiny beads, small plastic spangles, or glitter are all great ideas to use. Add water to the jar, tighten the lid securely, and have fun shaking the jar to watch all the glitzy stuff swirl around. You can also glue Read more
Today is National Tell a Fairy Tale Day so celebrate by sharing fairy tales with your family. Tell a familiar story, such as one about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Rumpelstiltskin or make up one of your own. Family members can also pick their favorite fairy tale and retell it as if they were the main character. What would they do differently? Would it still take place in the same setting, such as Read more
Create a “move jar” today for your family. Fill it with slips of paper that you have written phrases (or drawings for little ones who cannot read) of movements such as hopping on one foot, walking like an elephant, or doing a mummy walk. Children can take turns picking a slip for the whole family to act out.
To make an indoor snowball letter game for young children: Write out the letters of the alphabet on paper and then tape it to a wall or door in your home. Give your children crumpled up pieces of scrap paper to be ‘snowballs’ that they throw at the letter when you call it out. For an additional twist on this game, tape pictures you have torn out of old magazines of items and have your Read more
National Random Acts of Kindness Day is today so try to do something totally unexpected to be nice to someone today. Maybe you can make a special care package for someone or make them a simple card to say, “Thinking of You.” You could also drop off donations of food and other items to local food banks, homeless shelters, or animal shelters. Random acts of kindness do not require money though. Just saying “Hello” to Read more
Valentine’s Day is this month! Turn your child’s handprint into a Valentine card by folding a piece of paper in half and tracing the child’s hand along the fold. Next, cut it out, except for the part that is on the fold line. When you open the hand, it becomes a heart made of two hands! Kids can practice their best handwriting by writing a personalized message on their palms or you can glue the Read more
Play a little indoor bowling today. Challenge your family to come up with creative things around the house to use for the bowling pins and balls. Think lightweight blocks, plastic cups, plastic bowls, stuffed animals, and so on.
