Make Your Own Birthday Cake
If you know a little bit about me and my parenting philosophy, you’ll know that I welcome opportunities to get my children into DIY mode. The only way they’re going to learn how to do something is by getting involved,…
Category Critical Thinking Skills
Art Journaling: Add Color with Crushed Flowers
Now that summer is coming to an end (sniff — I’m kind of in denial — you?), it’s a good time to harvest some of your last blooms for some flower-painting experiments. We took a walk around the neighborhood and…
Messy Art: Splat Paint Olympics
Today I’m over on the Melissa and Doug blog, writing about our experience making Splat Paint Olympic Rings with household sponges. Painting with non-traditional materials does wonders for helping children look at the world with fresh eyes. And throwing paint-soaked…
Invisible Ink: A Citrus Painting Experiment
It’s summer and we’ve been doing a lot of citrus juicing in our home. Between my 4-year old expert juice squeezer and my almost 2-year old juice taster,  our simple and inexpensive juicer has been hard at work. While little…
DIY Paper Tape Roads
Sometimes we have to push our kids outside their comfort zones to help them take on new perspectives, face and overcome challenges, and confront their biases. I have a growing collection of diecast vehicles that I keep in a nice, inviting…
Imaginative Play: Dress-up
Do your kids love dressing up? Mine do, and not a day goes by that they’re not in a bumblebee costume, waving around magic wands, or adorned with tiaras.  I should say that I fall into the camp of allowing…