I originally wrote this essay a few years ago and never published it. At the time I felt like maybe I was being a bit melodramatic.
My kids are older now (the one in the pic is twelve and in middle school!!) but I now feel that this kind of thing is timeless. I still cherish these kinds of quiet nature moments that are strikingly beautiful, and in this loud world, I sometimes still need the reminder to center myself in the moment.
Enjoy :)
How to Watch a Sunset with Your Kids
1. Find a Spot With a Nice View
A sprawling forested mountainside or the sparkling shore of a vast ocean would be ideal, but a small yard decorated with those, ahem, artistically placed brown dirt patches and a rusting grill {that you’ve been promising yourself for over a year now that you would clean} will suffice.
Work with what you’ve got.
2. Relax
Sit down. Lean on a railing. Lay out on a towel. Chill.
This one actually may take some preparation. For example, if you don’t want to find yourself trying to run through the house with a child in tow after nearly choking on your soda when you heard the shriek of, “Mommy, I have to go potty RIGHT NOW!” then be sure to do a potty break {or diaper check} before you settle in.
3. Turn Off Your Cell Phone
Or at least turn off the ringer. If you’re like me you’ll probably want to snap a few photos with your phone, but don’t take any calls. Don’t surf the web. Wordle can wait.
Trust me, Facebook doesn’t need your attention. In fact, it probably won’t even miss you.
4. Take Off Your Shoes
It helps with the relaxing. It removes literal and figurative pressures.
And your kids probably won’t argue, if they still have their shoes on. My kids, for example, are constantly trying to take their shoes off. At church, at Target, at the library … everywhere except our house, when they suddenly want to model every pair they own.
But running around outdoors without your shoes on helps you to live in the experience.
5. Laugh
This one’s important.
6. Let Them Get Dirty
Let them crawl around in the sand, the surf, the dirt. Let them run though the grass in their bare feet and dance in your neatly raked piles of leaves. Let them explore.
True, that grass stain may never come out of that shirt, but from here on out it will now function as a happy reminder of this magical moment. If you let it.
7. Never Take Your Eyes Off Them
As the pastels soften the horizon and transform the world around you, never take your eyes off of your children. Because the sun will set tomorrow, just as it always has, and just as it always will. But the sunset of your child’s youth will happen while you blink, and their innocence will disappear overnight. So never take your eyes off of what is most precious in this world; more precious than jewels.
Watch the sunset in the crimson and coral glint on the hair of your child. Watch the sunset in your child’s shifting shadow as it dances across the sand or the dirt or the grass at their feet.
I suppose it’s a bit of a swing to go from Halloween projects to something completely different … or is it?
Today I wanted to highlight the glory of Nature Art. Or, in general, making art with things found in nature.
These pictures are from a couple years ago but we have done this project many times.
Basic supplies you’ll need:
paper
pencil
glue
leaves, flowers, sticks, grass, feathers, tiny stones, etc.
I like doing this project on plain white printer paper because the things we collect really pop against the bright background, but it can easily be done on any color construction paper.
We don’t have the giant colorful leaves that you find up north, but this craft is really about exploring your own space and using what you have where you are.
Though I may point out a few suggestions, I let my kids pick whatever they find inspiring.
We also use it as a learning experience to look up a plant when we’re not sure what it is.
You can draw something very specific, like a house or tree, and recreate those items with the things you’ve collected, or you can go more abstract.
This particular day, my daughter was making random patterns.
This was her favorite finished piece:
And, like I said, what’s so great about this is allowing kids the creative space to explore their local environment and then utilize simple supplies to create anything they can imagine, all while experimenting on how things fit together.
It’s a great way to spend an afternoon, especially since we’re finally heading into autumn, and we’re still not able to socialize like we used to. This year has had us doing a lot of stuff at home – so we try to add in art where ever we can!
This was one of those super-simple craft projects that’s nearly free. You may already have all of the supplies on hand, but this changes things up from a normal painting or coloring project because it mixes the mediums.
It’s also a lot of fun.
What we did was create a drawing with crayons, and then color it in with watercolor paints. We did some regular pictures (butterflies and flowers) and some that were patterns of lines and shapes.
And don’t mind the ancient crayon box full of mixed crayon types…. this is a “rediscovered” conglomerate of art supplies from my own youth. We use what we can here… it’s part of what makes this craft free, or nearly-free (the water colors are new). We keep a craft drawer of leftover supplies from other projects, too, and sometimes we have a free-for-all craft with whatever we can find.
The kids love it.
We discovered that the crayon looks much better if you draw thicker lines to help it stand out against the paint. It also creates a neat, smooth texture.
And we experimented with the paint as well.
My older daughter tried painting with her fingers, instead of the brush, and she also would tilt the paper in different directions to see what happened when the excess paint dripped across her picture.
My youngest daughter tried different things, like using multiple paintbrushes at one time. This project gave them both the freedom to be creative in their own ways.
This project was cheap (free if you already have the crayons, paint, and paper) and easy to set up. It gave them a creative outlet, and it kept them busy for a long time. It had a lot of benefits on top of the fun-factor.
Plus, I had some beautiful fridge-worthy artwork at the end of it.
Here are a few of the finished products, including one of mine:
So, a couple of weeks ago I had these nagging words in my head that needed to be written down.
It really started as a kid’s book. Some sort of humorous counting primer.
It didn’t stay a kid’s book long.
It became a poem for moms who know what it’s like to count. You know, the you’d-better-do-what-I-told-you-to-do-before-I-get-to-three type of counting.
But the mom in the poem is nice. She goes up to ten. (Kind of.)
I recently joined Wattpad, so I posted the poem there. Grab a glass of wine and head on over to check it out (seriously, I think the whole thing is shorter than this blog post). Then please share it with all the moms you know that could use a little “time out.” ;)
First, as always, we did our construction paper craft. But instead of one big letter that we decorated, we did a bunch of little letters.
I had cut out a pile of Letter Js and a rounded top so that my kids could make their own jellyfish with the letters as tentacles.
And googly eyes. I swear they get more excited about the letters that need eyes…
Then for our Letter Sorting activity, where they needed to separate out the capital and lowercase letters, I went with jack o’ lanterns.
My kids were still kind of little at this point in out Alphabet Activities, so I had cut out the pumpkins and faces ahead of time and all they did was glue the finished jack o’ lantern to the paper before gluing on the letters.
Now that they’re older, I might still have cut out the face pieces but I would have let them make the faces themselves first, probably from a selection of eyes and mouths.
Back to the chalk!
I love that my girls love being outdoors, so chalk letters are great way to get them moving.
I drew a bunch of big Letter Js to represent the word “jump.” And then we did just that – jump from J to J.
This was a TON of fun for my girls.
The night before Letter J Day, I made a couple of boxes of Jell-O in a big plastic bin and I threw a bunch of toys into it that started with the Letter J.
I didn’t get all fancy with worrying about where the toys would stay once the Jell-O solidified. I just tossed ’em in. Most of the toys floated to the top, but they were still partially submerged and, thus, still had to be dug out by little fingers that were eager to get messy.
We did it outside to keep the mess out of the house, but I suppose you could do it on a tile floor somewhere if you covered it in a tarp or with a tablecloth.
We made a pile of the toys in another bin (the sand castle-shaped container you see at the bottom), and then we rinsed off everything with the hose when we were done.
The toys we used were probably ones I found in the dollar store, but here are some examples of the plastic Jet party favors, craft Jewels, and plastic Jacks that are similar to what is pictured above.
I would check the party sections of your local store for similar items that are sold as party favors, and the craft section for the jewels.
We did a few worksheets, as always. There were my typical letter searches and mazes and such, but the jelly bean ones were the favorites of the day.
So we watched the video above, which my girls love because they enjoy watching kids doing things (plus he’s really good), and then we tried juggling with some light balls we had around the house.
We weren’t terribly successful, except at producing lots of giggles. :)
Gotta love jelly toast!
I cut out the J shapes with our letter cookie cutters, then slathered the toast in some butter and strawberry jelly.
I didn’t want to make a big, complicated dinner in between our projects, so I kept things simple with this chicken.
I marinated a package of boneless thighs in some Jamaican Jerk Marinade that I picked up in the supermarket and threw them on a grill pan. Easy Peasy. (Don’t forget to have the Little Ones seek out the Letter J on the bottle of marinade!)
That’s it for Letter J! Except for the free printable worksheets I made, which you can get here:
Our construction paper project was making an island.
The island itself, in the shape of an uppercase I, is cut from brown paper. I made some little palm trees ahead of time (I free-handed those and they must have been close enough because my daughter knew what they were ;).
They we used some craft sand to represent the beach. You can sometimes find craft sand in the same place where they sell artificial flowers, or just in the craft section.
We probably should have tried gluing the trees down first, but my daughter was excited about the sand. We used white glue (not glue sticks) for this project, though, so that helped with getting the palm trees to stick to the sand once the glue below it was dry.
For our Letter Sorting, we made inchworms.
And watched the Sesame Street version of the Inchworm Song:
Then we tried to make marshmallow igloos.
This particular attempt didn’t work. We spread white glue all over a Styrofoam dome, and tied to stick mini marshmallows to it.
They fell off.
It occurred to me a few days afterwards that what we should have done instead was to slather the dome in white cake icing (icing is an I word!) and stick the marshmallows into that. That would have totally worked. And if I owned a dome cake pan we could have made a cake interior for our marshmallow igloo.
Next time.
Or, you know, you could just turn a bowl upside down and slather that with icing. There are actually plenty of options.
Either way, I would suggest having a separate (small) bowl of marshmallows available for snacking, to help keep the kiddos from eating the ones for the project.
You glue down some course salt or raw sugar and, once the glue is dry, add some watercolor paints.
We used kosher salt which was attached via glue stick.
It’s a fun way to play with texture. Just make sure you shake off all of the excess salt once the glue is dry and before you paint. That way you won’t end up with pieces of salt in your watercolor tray.
Oh – and this project is meant to represent an “Icee,” which is a crushed ice drink. Just in case that’s not a thing where you lived and you were wondering why I spelled “icy” incorrectly. ;)
I found this really cool ice cream shaped chalk at the dollar store, so we did some chalk drawings.
We often do practice our letters with chalk, but it was even more exciting this time around. :)
Then, we used our ice cream shaped chalk to trace around some letters we made out of sticks we found in the yard.
This was a lot of fun, especially since my girls love puzzles. I still have these in our Folder Games binder.
You can find similar things by doing an internet search, but these are a color matching worksheet with ice cream cones and an insect shadow matching worksheet which I got from Busy Little Bugs.
Of course, you could always use any type of sticker or stamp for these, or just make little sketches.
This was a map I found on a random internet search. There’s a very similar one at Free US and World Maps.
First we found all the states that began with our letter of the day, colored them and the letters in the title green, and then my daughter colored the rest of the map however she felt like it. (We also underlined the “island” part of Rhode Island.)
We made a construction paper Hamburger, and although my daughter didn’t put it together quite as I had conceived she would, we still got the point across. :)
I had cut out an H in brown to represent the burger patty, and there’s a bun in orange, a tomato in red, lettuce in green, and some Swiss cheese in white.
I also made a lowercase H and cut out some pieces in white that vaguely represented a horse’s head, tail, and hooves.
And my kids always love combining glue and construction paper, but if you throw in a googly eye then it’s really a party.
For our Letter Sorting, I cut out two shapes that looked kind of like houses and drew on some doors and windows and roof shingles. My daughter was pretty young when I did this, but she’s old enough now that I’d let her draw the doors and windows herself if we did it again.
Then she put the lowercase Hs on one house and the uppercase on the other.
Making Hidden Messages was pretty fun. This was the example I did for her, and I can’t remember why I don’t have a picture of the one she did. I think I didn’t photograph as well.
Anyway, you draw designs on a white piece of heavy or construction paper with a white crayon, and then you paint over it with water colors.
The crayon resists the paint and your designs show through.
You could always prep some hidden messages for them, kind of like I did. I used Letter H words: Hi, Hello, and Howdy.
Hopscotch is always a big hit in our house, and it’s great for practicing numbers.
This time I drew a big and little H at the start of the Hopscotch.
You could also make a version that’s like our Power Word Hopscotch, and fill the squares with H words (Hi, Hello, Hand, Happy, etc.) instead of numbers and have your child shout out the words as they hop over the board.
This was SO much fun. After discussing how “hula” started with H, we pretty much went right into dancing and dressing up.
During the summertime, it’s pretty easy to find hula skirts and leis at the local dollar stores around here. Or you could try a party store or check online.
Then we danced to some videos, including The Hula Song from The Lion King (just for laughs):
Then we watched the He Mele No Lilo scene from Lilo & Stitch:
And finally, we watched a more traditional He Mele No Lilo. My girls really loved this and we watched it over and over, dancing along with them. My older daughter also spent some time studying the little girls and the way they moved:
Then it was back to our projects…
I found these little wooden helicopters in the craft section of Walmart.
I think I paid about a dollar apiece for them.
After we painted them, we attached some of the little foam letter stickers that I had picked up in the bargain section of Target.
You can also see our LeapFrog Fridge Phonics magnet in the background (which is the older version of this one and kind of similar to this bucket set), because – of course – we had to discuss how both Hungry and Hippos started with H before we went on a crazy marble-eating rampage.
This was a fun activity for practicing fine motor skills.
I found some plastic hard hats and the dollar store and we hammered some gold tees into a piece of Styrofoam with a rubber mallet.
This one definitely needs close supervision because you may have to hold the golf tee steady for them at first or (preferably) you may want to stick it in the foam a little before allowing them to hammer it further down.
But it was fun. And we still play with the hats sometimes. :)
It just wouldn’t be Letter H day without a discussion of my favorite play.
My girls are quite familiar with Shakespeare and a few of his plays, and one of these days I’ll get around to posting some of the Hamlet crafts and recipes we’ve done, but for now you can still see some of the kid-friendly books about him.
The one pictured above is from the very first Usborne book I ever purchased (which has led to a serious obsession with Usborne, but that’s a little off topic). It’s called Illustrated Stories from Shakespeare, and is filled with gorgeous paintings and a story version of Hamlet and five other plays that are short enough to read to children.
Or, if you’d rather have a box set with five separate hardback books, including Hamlet, you could get The Shakespeare Gift Collection instead.
Depending on the age of your kids, there’s also the Shakespeare Sticker Dressing, recommended for age 5 and up, where you can dress up characters from the plays (like Hamlet) with stickers, and then there’s also the incredible Where’s Will book that’s like a “Where’s Waldo” book but with characters from Shakespeare’s plays (like Hamlet). The second book is recommended from ages 7 and up (and I really bought it for myself anyway….) but even my three-year-old enjoyed searching with me.
I didn’t come up with the idea all on my own – I have my daughter’s last years preschool teachers to thank for it! At the end of the school year, they sent home a “cookbook” of all the recipes they’d made. My daughter was excited to flip through it and I let her pick out which recipe she’d like to remake first.
She picked the Zebra Zoos.
Now, they actually did theirs a little differently, so this is my version.
Below are all our store-bought ingredients that make this super simple to set up. It’s the type of project where you can buy everything ahead of time and stick all the stuff in the back of the pantry until a rainy day.
The first step is to spread the icing over the graham crackers.
You don’t need a lot. And you don’t need your Little Ones overdosing on sugar, so you may need to gently offer to help them smooth it out a bit. :)
Melt the candy melts in the microwave according to the package directions within a small baggy (preferably freezer weight), then snip the corner off to drizzle the candy back and forth over the white icing.
This will make the appearance of the zebra stripes, which is where the treat gets its name.
Why did I use candy melts instead of chocolate chips?
First of all: the black candy melts are darker than the chocolate chips. Black instead of brown, so more zebra-like. Also, I wanted the flavor of them to match the icing. The candy melts have a vanilla flavor, like white chocolate.
[hint: you can usually buy the candy melts at Michaels with a coupon.]
Then attach a few cookies by pressing them into the black candy melt stripes before the stripes have a chance to set. (So, right after you draw on the stripes.)
Then enjoy!
Oh….. and it would behoove you to remember to coat your workspace with waxed or parchment paper first. Just sayin’.
Monsters Aren’t Real by Kerstin Schoene is an enchanting picture book that my kids are absolutely in love with.
It’s 44 pages long, but many of the pages have no words at all, or only a few. Wordless picture books are great for Little Ones. Plus, the story is packed full of laughs, which always makes reading fun.
The book is about a monster who’s keeps hearing “monster’s aren’t real,” which leads him to wonder, “then what am I?” He’s as big as a monster… as strong as a monster… so monsters MUST be real. Right??
Our gentle monster tries to prove that he’s real by attempting to scare people. He says “boo” and he juggles cows, but nobody is scared. He tried to spread propaganda via helium balloons and posters {my girls always giggle about the poster that’s upside down}, but nobody’s paying attention.
He gets sad and concludes that monsters aren’t, in fact, real. But then another crazy-looking monster shows up {this one’s my 3yo’s favorite} and insists that they ARE real.
I often have to reread and reread and reread those last two pages. My girls read them along with me, bursting into laughter every single time.
When the book is over, I always ask, “are monsters real?” and they shout, “NO!”
And then they laugh some more.
You can watch me reading the book in the video below:
And you can purchase the book from Usborne Books & More:
This Flippy Floppy Jungle Book is one of my kid’s newest fascinations. They’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
It’s a great lift-the-flap board book from Usborne/Kane Miller that offers a lot of interaction for kids.
The purpose of the book is to lift four flaps in order to slowly reveal a hidden animal. As you go, the animal you’re looking for appears as bits and pieces of other animals. For example, the tail of the tiger is also the beak of a toucan and the body of a snake.
There are cut-outs to look through and a little bird to find on all of the pages. The last page challenges kids to find all the animals again, and it’s sturdy enough for little hands to get excited about with thick pages and rounded corners.
I go into some more detail in my video review, where you can also see how it works:
And, yes… I’m aware that I have a strange expression on my face in the video thumbnail. TRUST me – it was the best one!
I’m also aware that I keep calling it “Flippity Floppity Jungle Animals” on the video. I don’t know why, but “Flippy Floppy” seems to be difficult for me to say…
Anyway, to see the book, or add it to your online wishlist, click:
Roaming Rosie 