Summer Fun

Beans and Bags

Sarah Sewing, Summer Fun

Our last “Red, White & Blue week” activity had two purposes.  The goal was to wind up with some homemade bean bags to use for an activity during Anna’s birthday party.  But as long as I was opening up some bags of dried navy beans, I thought we’d try the “sensory box” idea I’ve spotted on various sites.

There are little toys hiding in the beans!

So, a box.  (Or in this case, a toy bin that I emptied for the purpose.  I’d consider getting a dedicated box with a lid for this if I do this activity again, but it turned out a little messier than planned and involved a few bickering sessions between the girls, so…I don’t know.)  You fill it with beans, and then hide a bunch of little objects in there.

Scooping and digging for buried treasures.
Look! Little frogs and lizards!

I put the filled box on top of a cookie sheet, handed them some measuring cups, and let them do their own thing.  There was a lot of scooping, more spilling than I expected, a fair number of arguments over who could hold the little toys they found, and still a fair amount of time-consuming fun.

Lots of little random goodies.

Then I got out the fabric.  This bit was mostly me with kids observing, although Carolyn did help with the parts that didn’t involve sharp blades or sewing machines.  I like to make double-layer bean bags, as follows:

For each bag, cut two 4″ squares of muslin.  Place squares wrong sides together.  Sew three sides with a 1/4″ seam.  Fill with 1/3 – 1/2 cup of beans (depending on how firm you want the bags) and sew the final side.

Squares all cut and ready to sew.

Cut two 4 1/2″ squares of the outer fabric.  Place squares right sides together.  Sew around with a 1/4″ seam, leaving the center 3″ on one side open for turning and stuffing.  Turn right side out and poke corners out as best you can – clipping the corners diagonally will help with this.  If you are not lazy, at this point, you could press the squares.  I don’t.

Outer square ready to turn.

Stuff the inner square with the beans into the outer square.  Fold the open edges in 1/4″, then top-stitch around the square about 1/8″ from the edge, being sure to close that open edge completely.

Finished bean bags.

Commence juggling!  Or bean bag tossing.  Or whatever it is you can think to do with bean bags…as long as it doesn’t involve lobbing it at your sister’s head and causing her to scream with all the drama one would expect out of someone who had been hit with a brick instead of a bag of beans.  Sigh.

Blue…ish Playdough

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

The strawberry playdough was such a hit last week, I thought I’d add blue playdough to the mix.  The “Ice Blue Lemonade” Kool-Aid packet, however, didn’t really make blue.  It really turned out more turquoise than blue.

Blue? Not exactly.

Note that this didn’t stop the girls from enjoying playing with it!

Spaghetti and Sundaes for All!
Piles of playdough pasta.
A spiky sundae.

And now I’ve had requests for purple, orange, white and yellow to go with their red and blue…ish playdoughs.  Maybe I’ll just make a different colored batch every week and get rid of the old mostly dry cans of commercial play-doh!  And maybe I’ll find the right flavor of Kool-Aid to actually make blue…

Red, White & Blue Button Fun

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

This activity was the first one so far I’ve bought any specific supplies for.  I was contemplating red, white & blue pony beads, but could only buy gigantic packages…and let’s face it, how many red, white & blue pony bead necklaces can two small girls make?!?  So when I found somewhat smaller packages of red, white & blue buttons, I decided it was time to introduce Carolyn to a needle and thread.

First, assemble your materials.
One button at a time!
Patriotic string of buttons.

Button necklaces are pretty simple, you just thread the string through two holes of each button and slide them down – they’ll sort of naturally alternate which way they face off the string to make a reversible strand.  As simple as they are, though, Anna was not quite ready for stringing buttons on her own, so we worked together to make a necklace for her.  And I had some magnetic clasps in my stash so the finished products could be (slightly) safer.

One girl in a necklace.
Another girl in a necklace.
A finished button necklace.

Since I knew Anna wouldn’t be able to string buttons with a needle and thread, I had other plans for her to play with the buttons.  I wrote her name on construction paper with glue and had her stick buttons on it.

Buttons on a letter 'A'
'Anna' in buttons!

Then Carolyn wanted to glue some buttons.

'Carolyn' made out of buttons.

And then we traced some cookie cutters for other shapes to glue buttons onto.

A button heart!

And when all was said and done, we managed to use up almost all of those red, white & blue buttons, but it took them most of the afternoon.  That made buying buttons totally worth it!

Happy Fourth of July!

Sarah Holidays, Summer Fun

This week the theme is: Red, White & Blue.  Of course!

We started out this morning picking black caps.  My parents had a wild bunch start growing near their deck, and every year about this time they start getting ripe.  They have to pack the most sweetness in the smallest berry space – they’re tiny, but so, so yummy.  (Not quite blue.  But they do stain red when squished!)

Watch those prickers!
A pint of pure deliciousness.

Then we spent the afternoon at my grandparents’ house.  My great uncle lives next door and has a retired race horse living on his farm.  Carolyn and Anna and their cousins Benny and Ryan wanted to go feed Brownie, so we walked over to the pasture and fed Brownie apples, carrots and many handfuls of tall grass.  Poor Brownie probably had a stomachache after eating all that grass!

Feeding Brownie
Kids on the farm

We decided Anna was not going to make it through a late night of fireworks, so Denis took Carolyn to see them while I’m at home with a sleeping kid and a neurotic dog who feels the need to growl and bark at every pop of a firecracker outside.  It’s been a long evening…

Strawberry Potato Stamping

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

For our final strawberry week activity, we decorated the goody bags for Anna’s upcoming birthday party.  I wanted to stamp strawberries on these neon green bags I found in Target’s dollar spot, but I couldn’t find a simple strawberry rubber stamp.  I ran across this post that used potatoes to make stamps, which seemed pretty easy (even if I couldn’t use cookie cutters to make the stamps).  This part needs an adult, a steady hand, and a good sharp paring knife:

Potato stamps, carved and ready to go.

There aren’t any action shots of the stamping, since this needed to be a very hands-on activity for me.  Basically, we dipped the potatoes in a paper plate with some paint on it to “ink” them:

Inked stamps - a little easier to see!

Then we stamped the bags.  (If you try this at home, be sure to put some folded up newspaper in there to keep the paint from soaking through to the other side of the bag!)  It was hard to line up the leaves with the tops of the strawberries, so they’re all a little…unique:

Stamped bag, phase 1.

Finally, a toothpick dipped in yellow paint to add some seeds:

Lots of little yellow dots.
Stamped Bag, Phase 2.

And we now have a pile of inexpensive, homemade, (hopefully) reusable goody bags:

Oh, goody!

Of course, with the paints already out, the girls wanted to paint some more things.  So we added a number of other colors to the paper plate and broke out some paper and paint brushes.

Concentrating hard!
Little Artist

But the temptation of paint…oh, so tempting to squish little fingers in…

Little fingers in the paint...

Luckily, we had nothing else planned, so we could go straight from painting to the bathtub!

Messy little jazz hands.
Slightly bigger (and cleaner) painted jazz hands.

The plate itself is a little work of art, or at least evidence of a thoroughly messy and fun painting session!

Do they make paper plate-shaped frames?

Strawberry Picking

Sarah Summer Fun

Continuing with the strawberry theme of the week, and to celebrate Lisa’s birthday, we went strawberry (and raspberry) picking last night.  It’s sort of the tail end of a not-so-great season for strawberries, but the ones we got are quite sweet and everyone had a good time!

Enjoying a strawberry!
Carolyn picked a lot of good berries!

Strawberry Playdough

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

I found a recipe for making homemade strawberry playdough (scroll down on that page) and decided to try it this morning.  I will never buy commercial playdough again – this smells better, is more malleable, and I know exactly what’s in it.  It would taste awful, but if some ended up in a little mouth it certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone!

So, I had my doubts at this stage:

Playdough in a pan...?

But then after a bit of kneading it looked like this:

Looking a bit more playdough-like!

Add a toothpick for a tool, and here’s a strawberry made out of strawberry playdough:

Strawberry playdough strawberry. Hulled, of course.

The kids have spent the past hour and a half playing with this stuff.  I think we have a winner!

Pokey little toothpick.
Smash!
Squishy!
Master sundae chef.
Shhh. Don't tell her she's working on her motor skills!
A delicious strawberry playdough sundae.

Summer Camp, At Home!

Sarah Summer Fun

In an effort to avoid relying on the TV to occupy the kids, I’ve planned out some themes for every week of the summer, and come up with some craft ideas, “field trips” and other activities around each theme.

This week is “Strawberry Week”.  We’ll see how it goes!