The crazy party.

We were looking for a low-key in-house Birthday party idea for our 5yo daughter. We were to have a dozen of kids from 4 to 11yo, so we needed something that would work for all of them. My idea was to make a giant ball pit.

We took out all the furniture from the bedroom, and rented over 5 000 plastic balls. (I wanted to buy them and found a manufacture, but they were sold out)
First of all, it took a while to find a party rental place that had that many balls. Also, we spent about 12 man-hours washing them as they were way too dirty. Anyway...

It was a huge success, and that's what matters. The kids had a ball (pun intended). It was very loud at times, but there were no whining or bored kids! Now the kiddo wants the balls to come back every year. I'm not so sure about that.
[PS: that's only about 2K of balls on that picture.]

Another hit was the dining table covered with sheets of drawing paper. There were some crayons for the kids to doodle with (safer option for drawing on the table than pencils or markers). It was as practical as it was fun. At some point one side of the table got too dirty, so I just replaced that sheet of paper.

We also had a self-serve sprinkles for the cupcakes, and the kids loved that as well. Non-pareils are the glitter of the baking world, so expect the mess.

thrifty Holidays 101: garland

Gingerbread men garland from mailing paper

This was my favorite cutting activity when I was in kindergarten. You can say, that I was abscessed with folding the paper, drawing 1/2 silhouettes and cutting them, unfolding to see what I've got.

It's super easy. If you woke up and remembered that you were in charge of classroom decorations, and the party is today - you can still make it! Here's how to.

1) Find a piece of paper that's as long as you want your garland to be. Note, that if your garland is longer that 10 Gingerbread men, it might be too difficult to cut through that many layers of paper.  

2) Decide how wide you want your design to be. 

3) Fold the paper back and forth like accordion (fan fold). Draw your design on the top layer. You can either draw the whole Gingerbread man or just a 1/2 of it.  Make sure their hands are touching at the folded edge. If you're making a very long garland, you can make a wider folds and draw 2 men, or Gingerbread man and a Snowman.
4) Cut out your garland, being sure not to cut the fold lines under the hands.

5) Open up the garland. 

6) Iron it with a hot iron with steam turned off.

7) For extra credit, decorate the Gingerbread men. 

Happy Hanukah

This is a Menorah bagel we made as a Hanukah snack. Our little one is allergic to eggs among other things, and there aren't that many traditional Hanukah foods she can have. But I just wanted to point out that a little out-of-box thinking can turn the plain snack of bagel and carrots with some dip into a unique, festive (ok, maybe not so festive, but attractive) dish. I think it will also work for kiddo's Birthday. :-)

Very easy holiday cards

Here are two simple ideas for Holiday cards your 3-5 yo can make with minimum help. Another hidden benefit of kid-made card is that they are so cute you don't have to write a message! A simple "Happy New Year" scribbled by your preschooler is more than enough.

Draw (or have your child draw) a simple tree shape (a triangle over a small rectangle).

Cut construction paper (scraps left over from some other project are perfect) into tiny pieces, the smaller the better.

Starting at the bottom of the tree, apply glue row by row, put the paper pieces on, apply more glue, keep going until you're done.

Draw a tree-topper or make one from paper pieces.

Scribble a short note inside the card (write it on a piece of paper so your child could copy it).

Make as many cards as you need. Mail them to friends and family.

And here are the cards we made last year (with almost-4-yo.).

Scribble a snowman (or a Xmas tree). Use the stick-on foam mosaic pieces to decorate it.

December calendar template

Wow, is it December already!? Where did the year go?

If you came here looking for a calendar templates, this is your lucky day. Lots of snowflakes.
I promise to put some easy ideas for Holiday cards. We're working on them now.


Fill-in calendar December 2010

November calendar template

Here's the link to November template. Enjoy!


November 2010 fill-in calendar

She's reading!

It finally happened. The little N. overcame the fear of "long" sentences and became to read. The excitement of the child who just discovered that she can read the whole book all by herself is priceless!

She was able to read phonetic words for a while now, but she was intimidated by sentences. It was funny, because she'd choose to read 50 words instead of 10 sentences. But now, she's excited and proud of herself, and she loves reading the BOB books or Hooked on Phonics books. She reads TO us at the bedtime now; she reads to her toys at the playtime; she reads to herself...

I also finally found a guide I was searching for - The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. It has a step-by-step lesson plans that take you from teaching letters and letter sounds to reading "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". And the lesson should take you only 10-30 min a day. It's the first time I opened the primer and said to myself: "Yeah, I can do this. I can teach my child to read, even if the school keeps discouraging her from reading." (long story)

The other reading activity that we recently got is a Very Silly sentences game. It won't teach the child to read, but it will introduce him to the idea of the sentence structure and parts of speech.