Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Story Stones

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Inspiration struck the other day and I decided to add some story stones to our sunflower playhouse. I’ve seen examples of these all over the Internet and figured I could make my own.

I took my Sharpie outside one day and pilfered some rocks from the rock border around our playhouse.

While the girls were playing, I started drawing. I decided on a fairy tale theme since both girls love fairy tales. In case you can’t figure out what I drew, here’s the breakdown: fairy tale cottage, wolf, dragon, horse, princess, castle, forest, tower, rose, ogre (giant, or any other scary creature), boat, cave, beanstalk. I also added a Lizzie stone and an AJ stone after they were requested.

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I’m hoping these will serve as story-telling prompts or just ideas to set the girls off to a different world with pretend play. They can set the scene like the one above where Lizzie leaves her cottage and rides her horse through the forest where she encounters a dragon.

Or, there’s always this story: AJ climbs a beanstalk and encounters a scary giant. I can’t wait to see what stories the girls come up with

Go Outside

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This week, I decided to kick-start our creativity a bit when it comes to outside play.This is nothing mind-blowing, but it did add an element of surprise and fun to our day.

I grabbed an envelope, five index cards and our big box of crayons (only because I love drawing with crayons)! I added an outdoor activity to each index card.

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I added: blow bubbles, make mud pies, play hopscotch, go for a walk, and play in the sprinklers.They are all simple, but fun activities for us to do outside.

I put them all in the envelope until it was time to choose. I turned all the cards upside down and had Lizzie choose one for the day.

Today’s activity was “go for a walk.” She loved the surprise and looked forward to it all morning!

Our “Go Outside” cards definitely did the trick in getting us outside and playing.The possibilities are endless and I’m sure I’ll try this again if I feel we need a push to do something a little different.

Here are some other fun card ideas:

Go to the park
Have outdoor story time
Draw with sidewalk chalk
Have a water balloon fight
Go on a picnic
Go rock collecting
Throw Frisbees
Go for a bike ride
Jump rope
Play tag

Go outside and have fun!

On the Farm

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We’re having a bit of a low-key week this week.Last week completely got away from us and was much busier than I anticipated. We also did very little preschool-type activities and Lizzie let me know, in no uncertain terms, that she missed it.

So, this week, it’s all about the farm. Luckily, there are tons of already prepared materials out in blogland!

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Both girls love to play with these baby/parent farm animal cards I found at Counting Coconuts.The girls love looking at the pictures and matching them up. Their favorite way to play with them, though, is using them as a memory game. If you want your own set, you can find them here.

I didn’t need to do much, if anything, in setting up pretend play opportunities. Our barn, which is FULL of farm animals, has been getting a lot of mileage. It seems our house gets taken over regularly by “Super Cow,” a cow with a very loud moo who likes to terrorize the other farm animals!

I found these great images in the Farm Unit from Lawteedah. We’re using them with our felt board for storytelling, making pictures and just playing.We’re focusing on the animals on a farm and learning all sorts of little facts about them with just a little bit of letter writing practice thrown in as well.

I think this low-key week will be just what we need!

Our Sunflower Playhouse

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One of our ongoing projects this summer has been a sunflower playhouse.

We dug up one corner of our fenced-in backyard and planted both sunflower and bean plants. We then defined the area with a border of river rocks. The end goal is to have a fun and natural outdoor playhouse for the girls.

It’s not much to look at… yet. But, the sunflowers are getting bigger and bigger and now we’re starting to see flower buds.

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Most of the flowers are AJ’s height. But, at least one is almost Lizzie’s height!

If the sunflowers are exciting enough yet, we always have rocks to play with!

The walls of our playhouse are getting taller and taller everyday. I think I’m about as eager as the girls are to see the sunflowers start blooming. But, until then, we have plenty to play with and explore in that corner of our yard.

Pet Shop in a Box

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Since we were talking about dogs and cats last week, I thought it would be fun to put together a little pretend play kit for the girls.Pet Shop in a Box was created!

I searched through all of our toys and found little cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits.

I borrowed a few toys from our own pets, then looked through our play kitchen items for anything that might resemble pet food.

I also threw in our doctor’s kit as well. That way the girls could take care of any sick pet that came to their store.

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Notice the little bunny has a band-aid on her neck? Apparently she was quite injured when she visited the pet shop!

I also made a sign and several price tags. A few times we even got out a pile of quarters for a little money practice.So far, our pet shop has been a hit! Lizzie likes to play shopkeeper and AJ likes to be the resident veterinarian. Even though we’re no longer talking about dogs and cats, we still have the pet shop out. AJ asks for it every day! So, until the girls completely tire of it, it’s staying out!

Of course, our Pet Shop in a Box has some advantages for mommy as well. Everything is contained in one box and it’s easy to enforce the “pick up after yourself” rule. Watching the girls pretend and have fun has been a blast too!

If you want to make your own Pet Shop in a Box, you’re welcome to use the printables I made. You can find them here. Have fun!