Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Kid’s Co-op: Building Character

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It’s Friday and you know what that means? It’s time for the Kids Co-op! Link-up your favorite kid-related post and make sure and check out all the fun that has been linked up from other bloggers.

There was so much information shared last week from crafts to outdoor activities. There was also sensory play ideas, baby play ideas, book recommendations, kid-friendly recipes and more. Today, I’d like to share three posts with some wonderful ideas for positive character development.

JDaniel4’s Mom used a simple science experiment to talk about balancing your wants and those of others.
Now it’s time for you to share all the fun you’ve been having! Please join up and share your favorite post. (And, we’d love you forever if you’d link back to us!) Your link will show up on all of the hosts blogs. It’s time to link up, visit some new blogs, and have a lot of fun!

Get Crafty: Salt Dough Baseballs

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Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don’t care if I never get back.

We sang that song all day while we explored the game of baseball. Creative Family Daddy is a big baseball fan and it was fun for the girls to explore one of his interests.

We made cardboard baseball bats and read a few baseball books. Plus, we made these salt dough baseballs as a little gift for him.

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Salt dough is fun to work with and very easy to make. Here is the simple recipe we use:

Salt Dough

1 cup flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup warm water

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the water. Combine with a spoon or hands if needed. Knead the dough until it is soft and firm.

The salt dough is easy enough to make that I let the girls mix it all up themselves.

While they were kneading their dough, I read this delightful book by Elisha Cooper, Ballpark. The words whisk you away to a ballpark where you experience all the delights found at a baseball game.

Once we were fully immersed in the sights and sounds of a ball game, we got to work making our baseballs.

After the girls rolled out their dough to about a quarter-inch thick, they took one of our drinking glasses to cut out the round shape.

We then took a drinking straw to make the hole at the top.

We were planning on stringing ribbon through our baseballs so that Creative Family Daddy could hang them up.

We used toothpicks to add the extra details on the baseballs.

Then it was time to let them dry. You can leave them out to dry, but I’ve found that this never works well.

I put ours in my oven at the lowest temperature (250 degrees F) for a couple of hours. This did the trick.

If you try this project at home, I would recommend just putting your baseballs straight in the oven for a few hours.

When they were finally dry and hard, we got out the paint and painted our details. We used acrylic paint on our salt dough and it worked well.

Now Creative Family Daddy has a fun gift from the girls to hang at his office.

Have fun getting crafty with baseballs!

Make this a family adventure:

Cost: under $5 (for supplies you may not already have at home)
Planning time: around 10 minutes to gather your supplies and to clear a space for crafting
Ages: Preschool (age 3/4) and up.
Time needed: about 30 minutes for crafting with your salt dough and a 2-3 hour time span for drying in the oven. You’ll need another 15 minutes to finish up your craft after it’s dry.
Notes: The longest part of the process is the drying time. Give yourself enough time to let your baseballs dry properly.

Get Crafty: Square Monsters

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What do you get when you cross a simple shape with a lot of fun crafting supplies?

Square monsters, of course!

Our monsters were not too scary and very, very silly.

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.

For our craft set-up, I found a selection of odd and ends from our crafting supplies.

I set out googly eyes, puff balls, cut-up pieces of pipe cleaner, and some construction paper shapes left over from another project.

When the girls came to the table, they saw all the supplies and a fun example of a monster I had quickly put together.

I gave the girls some glue and stepped back.

This was a project that I knew they wouldn’t need help with, so I was able to observe their creativity at work.

They worked hard. They carefully chose their pieces and put together their monsters.

At one point, they decided that I had not set out enough materials, so they went to fetch the crayon box to add more details to their monsters.

I always love watching my girls create.

In the end, we had some fun monsters. The above monsters are Lizzie’s (age 5) and AJ’s monster is in the top picture.

This project doesn’t have to be limited to squares. You could make circle monsters, triangle monsters, or even heart monsters.

It’s the perfect project for young kids to work on independently and have fun with at the same time!

Exploring Japan: Haiku

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Before we made our Japanese Curry Rice for Around the World in 12 Dishes, we decided to learn about a new form of poetry – haiku.

Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. The short poems consist of 17 syllables (or characters in the traditional Japanese form). The syllables occur in a 5-7-5 pattern. Haiku poems do not rhyme. Most traditional poems focus on nature and are very descriptive.

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We chose the book If Not for the Cat by Jack Prelutsky for our example of haiku. The book consists of several haiku poems that describe different animals.

We had fun reading the poems and then guessing the animal it was describing.

What I loved about this book is that it was a great example of using just a few words to describe an animal. The girls could easily relate to the poems and were eager to try writing a few of their own.

I began by asking each girl to choose an animal. AJ (age 3) chose the cat and Lizzie (age 5) chose the butterfly.

We then helped each other come up with descriptive words and phrases to describe these animals.

Since the girls are still young, I helped them with the phrasing and formatting to fit within the 5-7-5 pattern.

If your child is already reading and writing, challenge them to write their own haiku in the 5-7-5 pattern.

Once we had our haiku written, I had the girls illustrate their poems. (You may notice that AJ asked me to draw her a couple of pictures that she colored in.)

AJ (age 3)

I catch all the mice
I paw the fluffy carpet
I also catch bugs
 

Lizzie (age 5)

I drink some nectar
From a colorful flower
I hatch from cocoons

Have you spent any time exploring Japan through food, crafts, or other activity. If you have, we’d love for you to link up to Around the World in 12 Dishes!