How to make a weather chart for kids

The kids and I are on a weather kick. After we made the weather vane, the wheels started turning and I remembered an activity one of my first teachers came up with in elementary school.

It was a daily project that gave us opportunity to remember days of the week, observe weather patterns, and recognize how they apply to us.

Buddy and I made a similar weather chart complete with various weather symbols attached to Velcro. Every morning he looks out the window and then sticks the appropriate symbol on that day’s box on the chart.

To make your own, one sheet of poster board will do the trick, along with a couple of permanent markers, crayons, scissors, Velcro dots (2 for each day of one kind and enough of the other side to put on the back of the symbols), and tacks to hold it to the wall.

How have you been teaching your kids about weather? Have any project ideas or books you can recommend?

How to make a weather vane, littles style

Weather is a vast source of curiosity for a young child. Where does the wind come from? What are clouds made of? Why does it rain? How far away is the sun? Answering a preschooler’s questions about the weather could make up a whole year’s worth of science, or more!

This summer I wanted to make a weather vane with Buddy. I had no idea how, or if I actually could, but after just a bit of research I stumbled over the perfect project. All you need is a straw, a straight pin, an index card, a pencil with an erasor, and scotch tape. Cut a triangle out of one end of the index card, tape each piece to the ends of the straw to create an arrow, and then push the pin down through the middle of the straw into the erasor of the pencil. The straw should be able to spin freely.

Buddy planted his weather van among the tomatoes, and we talked about why the arrow always points into the wind.

Credit for this idea goes to www.galaxy.net/~k12/weather/makevane.shtml. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the link to work unless I clicked on it directly from Google. Search for this link via “how to make a weather vane” and it will show up near the top of the search results.

Spring Flowers for Kids

Looking for a fun craft to make with your kids this week, while we’re stuck indoors with all the rain? For Mother’s Day Buddy, Girlie, and I made these paper flowers for their grandmothers, but they are good for any day and will brighten your table in dreary weather.

I found that thick cardstock works best for this project, to help keep them standing straight. If you do not have cardstock, you can glue additional strips of paper on top of each other behind the flower stem to strengthen it.

The patterns were cut out of printing paper, and while I didn’t measure them for you, you can sketch out a similar pattern by looking at the comparison of the objects with the pen in the following pictures.

Simply cut out the patterns and trace onto the patterned or otherwise colored paper, cut out the pieces, and glue together. Young children can help with the gluing, older kids can help trace and cut out the pieces. The finally picture includes the directions along with a drawing of the final product.

This flower, while simple, is easy to care for, and offers kids opportunity to practice craft skills!

If you try this with your kids, share pictures on your blog and include the link in a comment here. I’d love to see what you come up with!

Happy Spring showers to all!

Just another day…

I currently have several ideas for posts I’m working on, related to home and children, among other things, but the past week has been crazy busy, and I just can’t seem to find the time to write anything that requires thought. Finishing up Christmas gifts, tying together loose ends on my book (which I’m still hoping to have published through Amazon by the end of the year, by the way), and visiting with family and friends. Sorry mom, I don’t think I’ll be doing any more mending for you till after Christmas! Oh yes, and Glen and I celebrated six years of marriage last weekend!

Needless to say, I was planning to write about goings on today, when I got a call last night from a dear friend begging me to take her four kids today (ages 11 months to 7 years) from 6am to 4pm-ish because their babysitter stepped on a manure-covered nail. And, I had also invited another friend and her three  children to come build with Lego this afternoon. So I had seven kids to watch myself, and then three more came to play… and Glen stayed home from work today to rest for a while because he was up all night with a cough. It sure was a full house! But I was impressed with how well the kids behaved and it was really quite fun, even if I am exhausted.

So, no deep thoughts or long stories to share today, just some anecdotes and random pictures of family, friends, and the last Christmas present I made for the kids. And, my sincerest kudos to all stay at home moms of large families!!

This really has no “appropriate” place for the post so I’ll just say here, that I love the cute things kids say. My friend’s 5 year old who visited today was playing with Atlas and said “He’s so cute, I just can’t stop looking at him!” I’m in the same boat, but I couldn’t help but fast forward another 10 or so years…

But, because I can’t help but give plugs for blogs I love, I have really been enjoying Handmade Home in my spare moments, a book by Soule Mama, which I won at Fun In My Back Yard. I’m looking forward to making some of her projects, and I think it’s really cool that she included some which Nemo and Daphney may be able to help me with.

I’ve also been collecting ingredients to make hand lotion with at least some of my next two quarts of herbal oils. Perhaps they would make nice Christmas gifts?

And, I also have to put a plug in for my new favorite herb, Yarrow. I’ve been growing it because I knew it had a lot of good uses, I just hadn’t found many applications for my family at this point. Until Daphney came down with another fever yesterday morning. Granted, her temp had gone from 102 to 101 when I gave her the infusion, but each of two sippy cups full she had of yarrow tea brought her temp down over the course of the afternoon and by nightfall it was hardly a fever at all. No return today! And now I’m wishing I had more than 1 small bunch of dried yarrow left :0( I guess I’ll just have to start growing it indoors over the winter.

So here are the pictures of the road map I sewed for Nemo and Daphney. It’s a little smaller than I was hoping it to be, but it’s still bigger than most of the roads we contrive out of paper and cardboard. I’m excited because it’s made out of materials I already had, it’s supposed to be a map of our town, it rolls up cute, and I know they’ll both love it. What more can you ask for?

And while I’m on a train of random thoughts, anyone want to preorder a chicken coop for spring? Check out our website at www.nopoopcoops.com!

November Reads and Clips

Preview to the video tour of the U.S. capital with David Barton. Incredible! I know there is a lot of debate over whether religion should be in government, but even though the United States was not created as a religious institution or officially recognized any religion, but Christianity has been a part of our country from the beginning.

As mentioned in October Reads and Clips, FIMBY has posted it’s holiday grab bag. Visit here to find lots of ideas for homemade Christmas gifts.

As a birth doula and student midwife, with two of my three children born at home, homebirth issues are very important to me. Visit my post on Birth a Miracle Services to read about Dr. Agnes Gereb, a midwife/obstetrician who has been wrongly arrested for attending homebirths.

This month I’ve begun reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. I know some people who highly recommended the book and I found it at a $1 a bag book sale and picked it up. So far I appreciate his common sense approach on how to make money work for you. If you want to hear a thoughtful approach on teaching your children about money, do pick up a copy for yourself!

I’ve been switching up our Internet Reads page, so for new blogs check out that page at the top. You never know what you’ll find! And if you enjoy reading posts here, please make my day and subscribe to receive email updates at the bottom of this page!

Holiday Cheer

Holidays are just around the corner, and Thanksgiving is coming up fast! That means family get togethers, feasting, and the beginning of the Christmas season. We’re getting excited here in the K household, and we’re looking for new and fun ways to remember the reason we celebrate. 

Instead of stringing lights around the trim, Glen came up with the idea of bringing in tree branches to decorate, and they look lovely illuminating our livingroom at night!

What is Thanksgiving? Remembering the pilgrims? Our American heritage? Food? Family? Since I only have young ones right now I want to keep it very simple ~ Let’s praise God for His great goodness, and remember how blessed we are.

Nemo and Daphney and I pulled out the paper, crayons, scizzors, and string, and made “thankful hands” to hang from Papa’s branches. We each thought of three or four things we are especially thankful for (which is so hard to limit to only three or four!), and perhaps we’ll make some more to add later on.

How about making holidays more simple? Less “to-do” and more care? I think our family(s) have been doing pretty well, but I have found that having children provide a special opportunity to really examine the reasons why we do things and how we can make them more meaningful.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? How do you make holidays meaningful for your family?

The Holidays are Coming!

Seeing as I’ve already broken the first rule of Christmas, that being, not playing Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, I suppose I am entitled to begin making our kids’ Christmas presents in October. I’ve been gathering ideas for a little while now, and still am, but when Renee came out with her Handmade Holiday Gift Idea Exchange, I decided I might as well jump in the deep end. And now I am knee deep in yarn, cloth, wood, stickers, dye, and other odds and ends that make good craft materials.

A couple years ago Glen and I began dabbling in our new tradition of making at least most of our Christmas gifts, and last year we succeeded in making all but one or two of our childrens’ gifts. We’ve also extended that tradition to include some of our parents, siblings, etc. While this is not the path for some, I feel more joy in the season when I make things than when I have to stress about what to buy for who, so this part of the season is actually quite fun for me. Glen could tell you himself how excited I was last year, even during the thick of the Christmas shopping season.

So here you have the few things I’ve made so far for the kids, though only about half my ideas are complete (it’s only October right?). I’ve also included links or brief descriptions on how to make them, but most of them are quite simple.

Both Glen’s and my parents had a tradition of giving us a new Christmas tree ornament every year, and we naturally continued this special ritual with our own children. Until this year Glen and I have been shopping for ornaments at a specialty ornament shop in “the big city” an hour from us, but after running across this idea in Scrapbooks Etc. magazine I decided to make some this year, mostly from materials we already had on hand. Last year we spent about $20 on two ornaments, this year we spent about $2 on three. For downloadable directions, click here.

Next on the list was a memory game for Nemo and Daphney. It might seem a bit unconventional because I used juice concentrate lids for the base, but I think they make the perfect material for young kids because cards always get beat up and don’t last long, plus they are hard to manipulate with little fingers. I decorated them with various matching sets of stickers, and the great thing is that I can easily add to this set as their memories grow stronger! The idea came from the book, The Complete Tightwad Gazette, but you can vary the idea and use pictures of family members or something else for matching. I found an cute can in the closet that works perfectly as storage for this memory game.

And then I made a wave bottle for Atlas. This idea also came from The Complete Tightwad Gazette, and it is quite easy to make. I used an empty apple juice bottle from the the recycleables, cleaned it out and removed the label. Then I filled it half way with water dyed with food coloring, and filled the remaining space with vegetable oil. After sealing the cap with some hot melt glue, this gizmo attracted quite a bit of attention from Daphney, and I think she and Atlas may have to duke it out over this one on Christmas morning! The only downside I can see is that the oil does take on a bit of the coloring, and the gazette did report that after vigorous shaking the contents do foam up. I hope it lasts a while, but I think it will make for a good amount of fun!

Using the $2 of yarn we bought for the ornaments, I made this cute monster hand puppet for Atlas (to be played with an adult who fits the puppet of course!). I was originally trying to follow these directions to make Mr. Ribbet, but realized I didn’t have enough green yarn on hand and thought maybe I’d make a bear. Then Glen recommended adding goofy ears and hair to make it a happy monster. I think such creations are actually popular, so my experiment might be a hit among young friends? Anyway, if you want to try it for yourself, follow the directions above and use your own combination of stitches to make the ears (I used sc, dec, inc sc, and probably a couple others to make mine). I used a back stitch to go around the eyes and make the mouth, and made a pom pom for the hair, tied into the inside of the puppet. Althogether I spent about three evenings on this project.

Today I made the older two a “geoboard”. Otherwise known as a scrap piece of wood with screws in to hold elastics in interesting patterns. My mom made one for me and my sibs and for some reason the idea stuck with me so I’ve been meaning to get around to it for a while. I was going to use nails but couldn’t find the right sized ones kicking around so I used screws, a piece of scrapwood meant for the fire which I sanded down, and paint that I think we bought for the bathroom but have yet to use yet. I make this sound so artistic don’t I? lol. It worked out quite well I think, but if you have a choice I’d use a wider board so you can make a larger square. This one is roughly 10″ by 4.5″.

These last two pictures are for a project still in the works. I’m making a bean bag toss game, fondly referred to as “potty” by my family. I made six bean bags, starting with a cloth size of 5″ by 7″ for each one. I used the same pattern I did for my cloth napkins, which I of course can’t find the directions to right now. Essentially you put the right sides of the cloth together, sew almost all the way around, turn it right side out, fill it part way with rice or other material, tuck in the hem around the hole, then stitch a second seam about 1/2″ from the edge all the way around to close it in. Be careful not to add too much stuffing or it will be difficult to sew the final hem. The end result looks something like this…

The remaining work is the target. My poor hubby fractured or at least bruised a rib at work and hasn’t been able to do much after coming home each day, so he hasn’t been able to make the target yet. We’re not following directions on this, and I know there are many designs out there for bean bag targets. Our idea is to take two small (2′ x 3′ ?) pieces of plywood, cut a hole in the center of one, sand them out, paint them, and attach them together with a hinge or something at the top so that it folds up.

I’m also working on a cloth road map, which is still in the rough beginning stages, but I began with these directions, and I’m using materials I already have to make it. I’m pleased with how it’s looking right now, but it’s certainly not picture worthy at this point. Nemo and Daphney both enjoy making roads for their cars and I think this will be fun to roll out on the floor.

Ideas we’ve put on paper but have yet to start include: a bird house to be assembled by Nemo, and hobby horses. I’d also like to come up with something just for Daphney.

I’m having so much fun and I’m so glad I’m getting this head start. What ideas are you working on for gifts?