Busy Creating: Cardboard Ornaments

Are you trying to get last minute stuff done and you need something to keep your kids busy?  Me too.

We're at my parent's and we don't have our car, so most of the time, we are at the house.  Looking for things besides video games and TV to keep the kids busy can be a challenge, especially when all of my craft stuff is not here.

Do you have lots of cardboard boxes from your online orders, scissors, glue, and hopefully pompoms (scraps of paper are a great substitute).

Ask your kids what shapes they want to decorate and cut them out (don't shoot yourself in the foot and offer to do a reindeer).  Let your kids color or paint them (however- use marker if you want to leave them unattended).

Put some glue in a recycled container and put the pompoms in a bowl.  They can dip the pompoms in the glue and attach them themselves with almost no mess.

Let the glue dry and hang them on the tree.

So now, if the baby crawls in and knocks down the tree, I won't have to be as worried about her breaking an ornament ;)

Busy Travelling: License Plates and learning States

This week, my kids and I have been reading "If I were Alive During the American Revoution".  We have been talking about wars, the pledge of allegiance, the thirteen original colonies, and more.  Given that we are driving across the country to Massachusetts, I thought it would be fun to do a license plate game.  On the way here, we tried to remember the plates we saw, but kept losing track.  I wanted to print out little license plates for the kids to fill in, but my printer is still at my parent's house.

We have been chosing paint colors for our house and one day, I was staring at the color strip and was like these are perfect sized for a license plate game.  I took 7 color shade strips for each of my kids' favorite colors, cut them in half horizontally, and glued them to the back of a CEREAL BOX!

For the big kids, I wrote the full names of the states:

For the little kids, I just wrote the two letter state abbreviation.  Each of the thirteen colonies has a star over the top, we are trying to see if we can see each one.  Also, I attached a pen to each board so they can check them off:



I hope this makes the 17+ hours in the car more fun for the kids- wish me luck!

**POST EDIT on July 11, 2011- I was rushing to post this because of course, I was finishing the project last minute before the drive, and I wanted to post photos of the before product, because after the drive, they would be all colored and crossed out.  I realized that the two letter abbreviations for Kansas (should be KS) and Kentucky (should be KY) were written incorrectly on the two letter abbreviation charts.  I corrected them for my kids- corrected photo unavailable because the kids HAD A BLAST with these in the car.  I apologize, and yes, I AM quite certain I am smarter than a fifth grade, just busier and more scatterbrained.  This was such an awesome thing to have in the car, the kids didn't want to go to bed because they were afraid they'd miss something, in fact, they are still in the car, and we have been able to cross off a few more since our trip.  This is HIGHLY recommended for a trip in the car if you are taking one!!!

A real fake fake Christmas tree

This year, I wanted to do a book themed advent calendar.  I wanted to have a book wrapped for every day of the month of December, with an activity taped inside.  I have the books, however, I never got around to wrapping them.  I feel bad, my son's class must have been talking about advent calendars at school because he keeps asking me if he can open the window for 1 and see if there's chocolate inside.  For today, we read Moostletoe and decorated our tree.

Moostletoe couldn't have been more perfect for us for many reasons for Day 1.  First of all, when you live in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas, you don't get the luxury of buying a real tree or cutting down your own.  One of the first things people warn you about before you move to Japan is if you plan on spending Christmas here, you should bring a fake tree.  You can buy a fake one here, they are just quite expensive.  I am not a fake tree kind of person, there is just something so wrong with it to me.  This is our first year staying in Japan for Christmas and I had faith we would actually find a real tree, since last year I lucked out and our Costco had them.

Yesterday, I went to Costco with high hopes of getting a real tree, and this year I was even going to splurge for the real wreath.  Well, much to my dismay, they aren't getting real trees this year and the 2 foot tall ones at Ikea are sold out.  I still can't bring myself to buy a fake tree, so I came up with a better idea, if we are going to have a fake tree, why not have a real fake fake tree.

Can I just say "what can't you do with cardboard"?  My kids were worried that Santa wouldn't come if we had a cardboard tree, but I reassured him that he comes to all houses with children in them.  Do you know the last two years, one of my kids has knocked down my parent's tree completely to the ground, at least I don't have to worry about that this year.

Here it is in the light:

Christmas is all about the kids and this tree will be all about the kids, all the ornaments we put on it are going to be homemade.

It came out pretty good, don't you think? Oh and the Super Mario Brothers Star on the top sealed the deal for the two older boys.

Car related activities

One of my sons LOVES toy cars.  These are a few examples of what I find around my house everyday (who needs toy garages, my couch functions not only as a place to sit, but a parking lot):

It was an easy decision last spring to make one of our monthly topics of study cars.  In fact, that month is this month. Unfortunately, with how sick I've been, I ended up enrolling him in the montessori preschool that both his brothers went to.  He is only there half a day, so he still participates in the few activities I've been able to muster up the strength to do with them.  Luckily, Nathaniel isn't that bothered that I haven't delved into the topic as much as I had planned to.  Here are a few things that we've done related to cars.

We bought model cars this summer for the kids to work on with their dad:

We built a car wash out of a cardboard box.  This is something I've had on my mind for a while.  For Owen's birthday, he picked out a plastic matchbox carwash.  The thing has never been properly put together and the pieces are always falling off.  This one we made from all recycled materials, so if it falls apart, I could care less about throwing it away.  This was a project I had Nathaniel work on with his dad on his day off on Monday.  The middle two "twisting brushes" are vitamin jars hot glue gunned onto the bottom of the box (I realized that because they are child-proof, they always twist).  Then, we hot glued some furry sponges around them.  The water is a cut up gift bag from one of the kids' birthday parties, hot glued to the side.

In action:

Next, we made some cupcakes in the shapes of cars.

My brother gave me this pan to thank me for letting him stay here last week:

Admittedly, I thought it was awesome, so did Owen, but I NEVER thought I'd get them to come out.  Look at this:

I had some energy today, not enough for a cake from scratch, but we did have a box of funfetti cake and Hazel has been begging me to make cake.  So, with the help of Nathaniel, we made the batter and baked the cakes.  Of course, I was worried about what to decorate them with so that you could still tell they were cars, and I did not have the energy or patience to do different colors of icing and carefully put it on in the right places.  I just made a vanilla glaze, set up two bowls, like below, and poured icing on top.

The results (they sort of looked like they'd been through a snow storm:

Owen wanted no one to eat them and me to refrigerate them until June for his bday party.  I convinced him I could make more and they finally got to enjoy them, he still wanted to me to turn out the lights and sing Happy Birthday to him.  His favorite thing to do since we got the pan is ask everyone which car they want for his party.

Here they are with tonight's selections:

Train table makeover

Look what has become of our train table:



I decided it was time for a new look, there were a few things that I didn't like about the table, including that it became a storage unit. In this picture, you can see the side handles are low and stuff falls right off the table under them (like marbles or cars), defeating the point of keeping small things off the floor. Also, the surface was quite slippery.



First thing, we cut some cardboard into strips tall enough to fit inside the edges of the table, to cover the handle holds and to give us some creative edge (we painted them black). I didn't use a ruler, figured it wouldn't be up for long anyways, plus we have sooo much cardboard ready to use, if I messed up, there was plenty more waiting to be used.



Then, a lot of hot glue gun sticks and four rolls of felt later, voila:





A surface easy to drive on, not slippery, and easy to remove and put something else on when we change our mind on what we are playing with. I have already cut out pictures of gas stations, etc. from our car magazines for the next change. Total cost: 400 yen ($4.00) and one big blister on my finger from being burned by the hot glue gun.

Cardboard "Cupid's cottage" playhouse

This has been in the works for three months!!!!!!! First, it was an idea to be a GIANT walkin ginerbread house. We got the paint in December, but finally did the painting in January, which made us decide to make it a Cupid's Cottage instead. Three weeks later, I finally got up the courage to assemble it myself, my husband's the engineer, not me. Since we are talking about measuring with school, Nathaniel was more than willing to use the tape measure, ruler, and try out the level (okay that was after I cut out the windows and installed the second floor- with the kids jumping on me, and putting the house to the test before it was done, I had to move quickly).

Here we are before the roof:


Assembled:


Painting decorations:


Finished:


Wallpapered- we used scrapbook paper, what's the point of it collecting dust waiting to be put into a scrapbook I don't have time for? I love the ABC border, it's like a classroom.


Playing in the pool:


Do you like the cupid windsock on top? I told the kids this would be for the webkinz, but it seems much more sized and built for the anpanman stuffeds we have, don't you agree?


They've got mail. The kids have been making valentine's for each other all week, I knew they'd love this mailbox, thank you dollar bin at Target!


Enjoying a nice time by the fire: