Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Beach Ball Fun

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So, what do you get when you combine a beach ball with a swing set? A whole lot of fun, that’s what!
It all started with a challenge: Can you swing while holding a beach ball between your legs?
Why of course!
After proving what incredible beach ball holding abilities we had, we moved on to other fun.How about beach ball kicking while swinging? No pictures, since this involved Mom tossing the beach ball at little legs while they were swinging. I missed more often than not, but boy was it fun!

We also tried rolling the beach ball under the swinging children, which again got lots and lots of giggles, especially when the little legs managed to bop the beach ball. (And in case you were wondering, yes, we were very safe. Two hands held on to the chains at all times and nobody actually stood in the way of swinging children!)

Impromptu fun… is there anything better?

Nature Scavenger Hunt, sort of

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We were feeling a bit cooped up one day last week. The girls were driving each other (and me) crazy and honestly, we were all bored.The evening promised to be more of the same since my hubby had an after-work work activity to go to. This just wouldn’t do!

I had our summer bucket list on my mind and nature scavenger hunts were particularly appealing. The only problem, time. We needed out of the house and fast! I most certainly didn’t want to take the time to prep a scavenger hunt.So, we did the next best thing. After packing up a quick picnic dinner, we piled in the car to one of our local parks and declared ourselves treasure hunters. We were going to go hunting for nature treasures.

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All the gold and diamonds in the world could not compare with all the cool sticks we found. We don’t have any mature trees in our yard, so we’re not playing with sticks on a daily basis. But, the park we chose was full of fun sticks. We found long ones, short ones, thick ones, crooked ones and skinny ones. We even made a small collection to take back home. You’ve got to have sticks to play with, right?

I even tried my best to get the girls to pose in front of this stone chimney, but apparently they weren’t quite into the idea of posing… there were treasures to find!

Paper Princess

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Princess week is coming to a close. So to end it, we made our own paper princesses.

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We were completely inspired by the book, The The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven. It’s a well-loved book in our personal collection and one of the many that showed up in our book basket this week.

The book tells the story of a simple paper princess. She was lovingly drawn and cut out only to blow away in a strong wind. She travels through the wind and loves to see the world. Soon, she realizes that she misses her little girl and searches long and hard to find her again.So, of course, after reading this, I couldn’t think of any better art project than making our own paper princesses.

I took some card stock and my Sharpie and drew princesses in the same shape as the one in the book. Then, I let the girls draw and decorate to their heart’s content.

They worked hard because after all, their princesses needed to be pretty. I loved the creativity coming from Lizzie. She decided her princess needed to wear rainbow socks and a golden dress!

So, here they are, our version of The Paper Princess… and our new favorite toy!

Making Princess Wands

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This week our book basket is filled with books about princesses, but not your typical princess. You won’t find Cinderella, Belle or Arial in there. Not that there’s anything wrong with those lovely ladies, but we tend to read about them a lot.

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No, we needed to branch out a bit with our princesses, so our books are all about your not-so-very-ordinary princesses. Those gals with spunk who don’t mind getting a bit dirty. While searching for all those fun books (which I will share in a later post), we ran across this book, A Princess Cookbook: Simple Recipes for Kids by Sarah L. Schuette.

The recipes are easy, written in a step-by-step fashion with pictures of every step.  There is no actual cooking involved, just assembling and my 4-year-old had no problem completing an entire recipe herself. As you can see above, Lizzie decided to make Magic Wands.

All you need are large pretzel rods, pre-made frosting and colored-sugar sprinkles. She carefully spread the icing on the ends of her wand.

Then came the sprinkles…. lots and lots of sprinkles!All in all, this was a very satisfying project. We made a yummy snack and Lizzie had the satisfaction of “cooking” something all by herself.

AJ did join in with lots of Mommy help, but she wasn’t nearly as interested in the project. Licking the frosting off the pretzel was much more her style!

Yummy, yummy!

Suncatchers

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It’s a sunny day, the kids are freshly bathed after a mud pie baking session, and you need to cook dinner.So what do you do?

Grab a bucket of tissue paper scraps, a roll of contact paper, and some painter’s tape. It’s time to make suncatchers!

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The process was easy.I taped up a couple of squares of contact paper to our patio window and told the girls to cover all the sticky bits with the tissue paper.

After that, they started working.

They were quite deliberate at times and others times they just started randomly sticking tissue paper. This was one of those projects that needed very little supervision, so I got to sit back and enjoy watching the process. (Oh, and cook dinner too!)

Once they were finished, I covered their handiwork with another square of contact paper. and we hung them back up on the window.

The results were quite colorful and very pretty! And now we still have a bucket full of tissue paper… I need to think of some more craft projects!

P.S. You can find another fun version of this at Mamma May I Blog… tissue paper fish!