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Children

Simple Family Activities

posted on : June 24, 2019 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

I was fondly remembering the other day when my kids were little and we did projects at the kitchen table. I used to save seed and flower catalogs that would come in the mail. Toy advertisements and even magazines came in handy. My kids would cut out the pictures and make collages from them. Frequently they would make stickers from the flowers or fruit pictures. Sometimes they would cut up church magazines to make stickers too. Then at church they would quietly sit and lick the stickers and make stories using the stickers. It was a simple family activity.

We made sticker glue using 1 tablespoon of any flavor of jello and 2 teaspoons of water. Then the kids would paint the back of the picture they cut out and we let them dry on cookie sheets. I put them in plastic bags and placed the bags in the church tote ready for Sunday. Cutting out the pictures from the magazines and applying the “glue” was one fun activity and then we got another activity out of it at church. The really fun part for them was that the stickers tasted good.

I used to save Christmas cards that we received too. When Christmas was over and I would gather up the cards and toss them in one of the Christmas decorations storage boxes. The following Christmas when I pulled out the decorations I would find the cards. My kids would use these cards to make Christmas scenes on construction paper. They would cut and paste and add glitter or whatever else they wanted to make a nice scene. It was always a simple but fun activity. I actually enjoyed reading the messages in the cards again.

We also made a lot of play dough. It was easy to make, and a lot cheaper and better than store bought. I would make it and give it to the kids to knead when it had cooled a little. I bought different cake decorating colors to make more than the basic primary colors. We made play dough for birthday parties, church activities and for school classes too. This was another simple family activity.

The recipe is really easy. Combine in a pan 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon Cream of Tartar, 1/4 cup salt. Add 1/2 cup water, 1/2 tablespoon oil. Stir over medium heat until too thick to stir. Add desired food coloring and knead a few minutes until color is evenly distributed. Cool completely before storing. I haven’t made play dough for many years but I remember this being the best recipe for the dough I have ever used.

Another simple but fun thing we did was make our own bubbles. Then it was fun to find different objects to blow the bubbles through. Kitchen gadgets, metal washers and soup cans with both ends removed worked well. The soup cans you need to swoosh through the air. Kids have lots of fun finding and trying different objects to see it they will work. To make the bubbles we combined 1/2 cup water, 4 tablespoons dish soap, and 1 1/2 tablespoons corn syrup.

What I liked about these projects is that we usually had all of these ingredients readily available at our house and they were inexpensive.  It only took a few minutes to make them but provided hours of family fun. My family liked these activities and maybe yours will too!

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/children/resources/type/family-fun-time?lang=eng&_r=1

Family,Lessons Learned

Work vs Family Fun

posted on : March 8, 2019 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

When my children were young there was always so much to do. I would wake up early to get kids ready for school or church, often after having been up several times during the night feeding a baby. I would work hard all day and late into the evening. There were always meals to fix, laundry to do and a house to clean. There was homework to supervise, children to bathe, as well as shopping to be done and music lessons to get kids to. During the spring and summer there was yard work and gardens to tend. During the fall there was canning and dehydrating fruit. I volunteered in the schools and there was church work to be done. I was always busy, busy, busy. Somehow I was self driven to try to do everything in my mind I thought I was supposed to do. Even when I was really tired it didn’t really occur to me that I didn’t have to do so much. I was a worker and work was what I did.

One day a few years ago I was talking with one of my daughters who told me she wasn’t sure she wanted to have children. She said it just seemed like a lot of work without any fun. She had watched me during the years and had seen all the work I did without really taking a lot of time for fun, and it seemed like drudgery to her. After talking with her for a while, I reassured her that she could make motherhood as fun as she wanted. This conversation left me feeling a little sad though. I felt sad that I had subtly conveyed the message that motherhood was all work and very little fun. I also started wondering about how much work is really needed to make a home run smoothly and how much is too much. Did I really need to do so much? I did do a lot of fun things with my kids. We had craft time, went to the pool and park several times a week during the summer and went to the movies often. We had halloween parties and celebrated birthdays with family parties and played board games. I read books with my children and we went to petting zoos and aviaries. But, even theses fun things were a lot of work because we often had not only my kids but half the neighborhood joining in. There were so many little fingers into the projects we did and getting anywhere with my crew took so much energy and work. I viewed having fun as work! And I was usually thinking ahead what needed to be done instead of being present and enjoying my family.

Now that my children are grown and gone I look at things a little differently. Perhaps I have learned to relax a little over the years. Maybe I see how fast the time has gone. Perhaps I have come to realize that work is important but that relationships need to be nurtured by doing enjoyable things together. Families do take a lot of work, even to have fun. But, having fun together is just as important as working together. Being together just for the pleasure of it without thinking about what still needs to be done. The kind of together that says I love you and I want to spend time with you. The kind of fun that says you are important to me. So, if I had another magic wand…

https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&_r=1&old=true

Children

Fifteen Minute Warning

posted on : February 26, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

When my kids were little and they were enjoying an activity, as it neared time to leave whatever we were doing, I would give a fifteen-minute warning and then a five-minute warning.  I found that if I suddenly said “well, it’s time to go home” I got tantrums and fighting because my kids needed time to transition.  They needed time to wrap their heads around the fact that they were going to have to leave something they were liking and having fun doing.  Now as adults they laugh at memories of being at the pool or park with me shouting “Fifteen-minute warning” and then again, “five-minute warning.”  It was kind of awkward for me to make a spectacle of myself shouting like that but the result was no tantrums and no fighting, and cooperative kids.