Silk flower hair clips

It’s been a while since I’ve done something crafty with my daughter.  About a month ago at the farmer’s market, a teenager was selling her handmade silk flower hair clips, and to support a local, budding artisan, we purchased one of these flower clips for our daughter.  She wanted us to buy one for every [...]

Inertia

A couple of days ago, my kid would not stop asking me why the word stop has the letter “p” in it, and he totally meant it in that existential sort of way.  I mean, really?  How am I supposed to answer that with any degree of satisfaction?  My two year old is deep in [...]

Crummy chair to funky chair

This dilapidated antique chair made me stop literally in my tracks. I was at a furniture consignment store, and there this was, hiding behind a thick layer of dust and frayed cloth. Heart! Nobody puts Baby in the corner. A quick bit of haggling, and this beater chair was coming home with me. The kids [...]

That’s not snot!

WIth all the sick, boogery kids around and this being Halloween week, I thought it would be a great time to make some fake snot with the kids.  My kindergartener and I had this long conversation about mucus which is how this even came up.  One “Science Night” many moons ago, I hosted the booger [...]

Fun with Newton’s Laws of Motion

Part of my day job description has me developing new curriculum and test existing lessons for effectiveness.  A side benefit is that my kids become my guinea pigs because I figure if my 5 year old and 2 year old can handle some of these activities, certainly middle schoolers can! My kids helped me test [...]

Iced Cookies

My kids and I have a lot of fun in the kitchen together, and I typically don’t mind the mess. Recently I let the kids paint cookies. They weren’t terribly pretty, but they sure had fun doing it! We first made some cookie dough using “The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies” from AllRecipes.com. Ingredients 1 1/2 cups [...]

A wall of imagination

Have you ever had one of those unexpected moments with your kids where it feels magical, creative, and everyone is just happy?  My kids and I had one of those last night.  Hubby was coming home late from work so I thought for sure it would turn into a power struggle where the monkeys outnumbered [...]

Ramps, tubes, momentum, oh my!

Ever since seeing this “simple” construct for kids to explore forces, I haven’t stopped thinking about when I want to set this up in the garage without upsetting the husband with yet another one of my hair-brained ideas. More realistically I’ll probably build a few of these tubes and bring them with me to the [...]

Solar System Planets with Playdough

Boston Children’s Museum was one of the highlights of our recent vacation, and we just let our children dictate what was interesting to them. As the little one played with the ramps to his heart’s content, our older one sat with one of the museum “teachers” to learn about the solar system. You start with [...]

Homemade Marshmallow Fondant

I blame the endless “Food Challenge” and “Ace of Cake” shows on the Food Network for my fascination with fondant. I watch the contestants mold fondant into the most amazing displays of art, and even if the cake is inedible, people are wow’ed by the fondant. For my daughter’s 5th birthday cake, I thought I’d [...]

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