When you think summer and children, you probably picture happy kids running around outside, wanting to be outdoors forever, and "awww-mom"-ing when called inside. Not so at my house. As soon as temperatures rise above 85 or so, my kids are clamoring to come inside (especially Jonathan, who's almost 5) because it's "too hot". The fact that our kiddie pool has cracked doesn't help matters. So, we've been spending a lot of time doing crafts and things. Favorite activities from the last few days are homemade play-doh (no surprise), snacky necklaces, and a construction paper flower garden.The necklaces are a happy answer to a candy necklace. We strung O shaped cereal and raisins onto doubled dental floss with a yarn needle. I thought the kids would wear them around, nibbling here and there, but they simply devoured them within about 5 minutes. Ha! It was still fun stringing them together!
For the flower garden, I cut round and petal shapes from construction paper, and the kids glued them together. First they glued petals to one round center, positioned a craft sti
ck for a stem, and glued another round over the top of that. Jonny and Evi are really into pom poms right now, so they glued those on the centers for extra fuzziness. For a garden to plant all their creations in, they painted a foam rectangle with watered down tempera paint and I covered the edges with ribbon. It's so fun to see how proud they are of it!The best part is I get to do all this along with them. I think that's one of the best things about being a mom to young kids. You get to be a kid again for a little while, too.
