Little Elephants: Kids Crafts and Fun Activities

On Crafty Mom today

I've posted about having kids create their own board games on Scholastic.com today.

Please go have a look and comment with abandon -- I'd love to hear about games your kids have invented, too!

Can you hear me now?!

On Sunday afternoon Maggie was at an extended sleep-over, Tor was napping, and Bjørn was B*O*R*E*D, bored.

This mama did what and self-preserving soul would, and hauled out two plastic cups, a skewer, and ten feet of kitchen string. Voila! We have a telephone system.

It killed me how easy this was: I just poked one hole in the bottom of each cup with the skewer, threaded the kitchen string through and knotted it on the inside of the cups. You'll want to pull (very) taught and have one person listen while the other speaks. I promise you and your kid will be amazed at how incredibly well this works.

Bjørn and I spent a good bit of time telling each other silly secrets that Dad couldn't hear :-)

What passes for TV in our house

{Vero sticks with the post a day for November by sharing random photos}

Stick toddler in box -- instant family entertainment :-)

{groan ... when you stick something up on the internets, it's forever ... folks who get my blog feed will no doubt be laughing at my title's typo ... now corrected}

PVC pipe toys

Last night we had dinner with some dear friends. While the adults chatted, the kids found a box full of PVC pipes and connectors and had a blast playing with them. They literally spent over an hour constructing an elaborate watering system for my friend's garden. I couldn't believe what a great game they made of it! Tomas and I got dollar signs in our eyes as we imagined marketing such a toy. We'd have bright primary colors, widgets and whosits, bells and whistles to attach. It was a glorious moment.

This morning I did about five seconds of research and found another dad had the exact same inspiration and acted upon it over a year ago. He created Konstruk Tubes.

I'm not planning on buying the set just now, but I do think that when we have a bit more space I'll have to bring the kids with me on an outing to the hardware store to get us a bucket-full of pipes and attachments. It's just too much fun not to. Crazy-cheap, too :-)

Pokemon obsessed

Bjørn has dumped his treasured Tamagotchis in favor of the eminently more exciting Pokemon. He rents all the movies, is a member of the club, visits the sites, spends all his allowance on new cards, and is thrilled to instruct the uninitiated in the glories of all things Pokemon. He's even recruited his sister into the brotherhood, and they have started making their own cards. First designing them based on "real" characters, and then branching off to create their own.

I'm not sure what I'll do when he discovers Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft...

I do know I'll be learning quite a bit about magical characters :-)

Poolside tents

Second only to table-top tents, we love chair-top tents. Today M&B spent a blessedly good bit of time arranging and negotiating their poolside condo. Each section was its own home with special characters (animals, I think) living in each.

When the olders weren't re-arranging their new homes, they were testing their newfound swim skills against each other. Race after race; breast-stroke, free-style, back-stroke... they tried it all.

Meanwhile Momma sat in the shade and muttered to herself that she would get well again. Soon.

Brain games

The olders love puzzles. Any kind of puzzle will get them going for a good half-hour -- just enough time for Mom to take care of whatever needs doing around the house without (much) interruption.

One of their favorite games these days is this one called RUSH HOUR by Think Fun. The game comes with a bunch of plastic cars, a "road" and 40 puzzles for the kids to solve, the objective being to get out of a mythical traffic jam. They love it.

Personally, this sort of thing drives me nuts, so I've decided that they must have gotten this trait for problem solving their Dad. I'd much rather deal with "real" problems like how to translate grams to cups so my crepe come out right.

Table-top tent

I've been under the weather and miserable today -- living with a box of tissues by my side, and dreaming of, well, dreaming. Definitely not the stuff that fun kids' activities are made of.

So I'll follow Charlene's cue and post an easy kid distraction for us poor, tired moms parents who just need a break every now and again.

All you need is a super big sheet, a table and a child's imagination.

Enjoy your five minutes, I know I will.

The quiet game

After three hours biking through the Baylands, the kids came up with a timely game. Silence: the kid who can keep quiet the longest wins. They are clever, eh? And, having been on foot while they biked the whole time, this Momma certainly needed this game.

Dinner games and Chocolate

This is what passes for dinner conversation in our house... Miss M was away for the evening at a sleep-over party on Friday night (lucky girl!), so at dinner-time B had the parents All To Himself. I think he was practically falling over himself with the pure joy of it. {& no, we didn't lose the baby, he was in bed}.

Tomas suggested that we play a game. We are always up for one of his games because they are fun, and you tend to learn something along the way. Double greatness as far as I'm concerned.

Here's how this one went. Looking at some of the dishes at the table, we each had to guess when and where said dish was invented. After dinner we would open Le Google and find out who was right.

The prize for the winner? This is the best part -- A piece of chocolate from Ingeborg's in Solvang, CA. Possibly the best chocolate I've ever tasted, and my father-in-law (who truly knows about such things) insists that it tastes exactly like the handmade chocolates he ate in Denmark as a child. Heavenly.