Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Dip-Dyed Valentine Banner

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What do you do when you have a supply of pretty lace doily hearts?

Why, you learn to dip-dye of course!

This project was a little bit messy and a whole lot of fun. I love the subtle Valentine loveliness that came about as a result.

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Supplies Needed:

Lacy paper hearts
Liquid watercolor
Shallow pan
Clothespins
String or yarn

To prep this craft, I poured both water and liquid watercolor in our pan. I used about 1/3 red liquid watercolor to 2/3rds water.

Add more watercolor for a deeper red color. We wanted a pale pink. If you want red, do not add water.

I showed the girls how to clip a heart with a clothespin and how to dip the hearts. They went through heart after heart after heart.

Some of our hearts were completely dipped, others were half dipped. None of them looked the same.

The paper hearts soak up the watercolor really well, so don’t leave them in the water too long or they’ll start to fall apart!

We laid all of our hearts on newspaper to dry.

After a couple of hours they were fully dry and we were ready to make our banners.

We took string and ran it in one side of our hearts and out the other side.

I tied on the two end hearts so that our hearts wouldn’t fall off once we hung up the banner.

I love the pale pink color we achieved and we had tons of fun dip-dying. Our house is looking much more ready for Valentine’s Day!

How have you used these lacy paper hearts?

Around the World in 12 Dishes: Austria

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Ah Austria, such a beautiful country! The mountains, the history, the music…I may have taken more liberties with this project than usual, for one very important reason. My all-time favorite movie was set in Austria, The Sound of Music.

The Sound of Music was filmed on location in Austria, mainly Salzburg, and features many beautiful sequences of scenery. The hills were alive with beauty and we watched several clips from the movie to see views of the Alps as well as Salzburg.

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“Cream colored ponies & crisp apple strudel,
Door bells & sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles,
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favorite things.”

Crisp apple strudel, you caught that part didn’t you? Luckily our local grocery store makes very yummy apple strudel bites.

I’m usually quite comfortable in the kitchen, but I fear making pastry.

I wanted the girls to try apple strudel, but there was no way I was going to attempt that recipe. So we cheated… sort of.

Even if we lived in Austria we would be buying our strudel at a bakery. We ate our yummy strudel by watching a few more scenes of the movie, in particular the song “My Favorite Things.”

After we were done watching, it was time to craft.

I gathered markers, construction paper, glue sticks, and our supply of pictures cut from old magazines. I gave each girl a piece of paper in their favorite color, and wrote “These are a few of my favorite things” at the top. I wanted them to find pictures, draw pictures, or write the words of their favorite things.

They got to work finding pictures of flowers, cupcakes, pizza, and tomatoes.

They glued and glued filling up their pages.

Once they were done gluing, they started writing and drawing.

Their song would go a bit like this:

Roses and puppies and slices of pizza
Cupcakes and turtles and red, ripe tomatoes
Beautiful hearts and a long-necked giraffe
These are a few of our favorite things!

Did you enjoy our journey to Austria? Would you like to join along?

Welcome to “Around The World in 12 Dishes”. We will be taking you on a journey around the world, (loosely) following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, by cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited.
 
The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and maybe they see films about the world.. but let’s really bring it to life through food! Taste and smell don’t often get explored, we think this would be wonderfully fun and interesting for you and your children.
 
Not only is it an exciting and different way to learn about cultures, but cooking with children brings a host of benefits – from numeracy to science. How can you beat that?

Around the World in 12 Dishes

We had started our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK, and now are arriving in Athens, capital of Greece!

  • March 4 – First country was the UK
  • April 1 – The second country was Sweden
  • May 6 – The third country was Russia
  • June 3 – The fourth country was India
  • July 7 – The fifth country was Japan
  • August 5 – The sixth country was Australia
  • September 2 -The seventh country was French Polynesia
  • October 7 – The eighth country was Mexico
  • November 4 – The ninth country was Brazil
  • December 2 – The tenth country was Morocco
  • January 13 – The eleventh country was Greece
  • February 3 – The twelfth country is Austria

How to join the fun!

    • The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.
    • Cook a dish from Austria: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!
    • Typical dishes: Apfelstrudel, Wiener Schnitzel, Tafelspitz, Kaiserschmarrn, Sachertorte
    • Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish 🙂
    • Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.
    • Make a craft: you can make a country related craft with the kids [optional!]
    • Fun fact: The sewing machine was invented in 1818 by the Austrian Josef Madersperger.

10 Ways to Play This Weekend: Week 25

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  1. Have fun printmaking with paper hearts with Teach Preschool
  2. Make heart-shaped friendship bracelets with Make and Takes
  3. Do some Super Bowl math with Random Handprints
  4. Play Balloon Bop with Inner Child Learning
  5. Make ABC Valentines with Creative Family Fun
  6. Get messy with Rainbow Cloud Dough with 4 Little Piglets
  7. Read the 2013 Caldecott winner and honor books with MeMeTales
  8. Create at a self-serve Valentine card station with TinkerLab
  9. Write a letter to the President with 52 Brand New
  10. Learn about crystals with Fireflies and Mud Pies

How are you going to play this weekend?

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Polar Bear Masks

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As part of our Project Around the World, the girls and I have settled into the far northern part of Canada, up above the Arctic Circle.

We’ve been visiting polar bears, learning about their habitat, and learning all sorts of fun facts about them.

Like, did you know that polar bears bathe by rolling around in the snow? We didn’t!

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One of the projects we made were these fun polar bear masks. Then, the girls could pretend to be polar bears and roll around and bathe in pretend snow.

Supplies Needed:

Paper plates
White paint
Sponge
Egg carton sections
Black paint
Glue
Hole punch
Yarn

Before getting the girls started, I cut eye holes in each of the paper plates.

I gave each girl a sponge and some white paint and had them paint their paper plates. We used the sponges for texture. I didn’t want a smooth surface on the masks.

Once their paper plates were painted, they each painted one section of an egg carton white.

They then painted the round circle in the middle of their egg carton piece black.

Once everything was dry, we glued our egg carton pieces to our paper plates.

This made the snout of the bear.

I punched a couple of holes in the sides and ran a piece of yarn through the holes so that the masks would stay on their heads.

Now we’ve got a couple of friendly polar bears running around our house! What fun they’re having!

12 Candy-Free Valentines

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Every time Valentine’s Day rolls around, I feel like my kids have overdosed on sugar. The idea of non-candy Valentine’s sounds so appealing.

Our Halloween candy tends to last well into December, which leads to Christmas cookies, and candy in their stocking. By mid-January, I am so over candy and so over my girls’ assumption that we’ll always have candy in the house.

That’s what led me to search for some awesome Valentine ideas that contained absolutely no candy.

These are all perfect ideas for classroom Valentines or just a special little treat for your own kids.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

All is takes are some glow sticks to make these fun Lego Star Wars Valentines from Stitch/Craft.

You can find parachute man Valentines at Paging Supermom along with a free printable bag topper.

I have yet to meet a kid that didn’t like bubbles, that’s why these bubble Valentines from Domestic Charm are perfect.

These friendship bracelet Valentines from [dandee] are a great choice for older kids who like to get crafty.

If you’ve got car-obsessed kids, I bet they’d love giving these car Valentines from Yvonne Byatt’s Family Fun to their friends.

Shop the party aisle for supplies for these A-MAZE-ing Valentines from Crap I’ve Made.

One part Valentine, one part game. These I Spy Valentine cards from A Mom With a Lesson Plan look like super-fun!

These peg doll fairies from Curly Birds is another great option for your crafty kids.

Give your Valentines a fun tool for exploration with these magnifying glass Valentines from [dandee].

I love these “You Color My Heart” Valentines from A Mom With a Lesson Plan and think these may be a great choice for my Kindergartner to give her friends.

Homemade play dough and a heart cookie cutter is such a simple and fun idea from Buggy and Buddy.

Recycle all of your Crayon bits and pieces to make these fun Crayon heart Valentines from Whipperberry.

Do you have any candy-free Valentine ideas? I’m always on the lookout for more!