The Chaos and the Clutter

Sharla Kostelyk

Snow Day Activities (indoor)

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Today is way too cold to venture out, so I got to thinking about what indoor activities I could do with the kids to keep them (and me) from going crazy. Here are some easy ones that I came up with that could be made with household items.

Doll House or Castle.  Using empty boxes, help your child make a doll house or castle.  Imaginations, scissors, and markers are all you need.  If you really want to be creative, use scraps of fabric, pipe cleaners, and tiny boxes (such as match or toothpick boxes) to make curtains, lamps, and furniture for the house.

Faux Stained Glass.  Use up your broken crayon pieces by spreading out a sheet of wax paper and having the kids make crayon shavings on it using a pencil sharpener.  When they are done, fold the wax paper in half and iron it on a low temperature.  The kids can then make a frame for their creation out of construction paper.  They can make it look like a butterfly or a stained glass window.

Themed collage.  Have the kids create a collage using glue and pictures from a catalogue, magazine, or flyer.  Give them a theme such as “favourite things”, “foods that are healthy”, “things that fly”, “things that are red”, or “what I would buy if I had a hundred dollars”.

Masks.  Masks are a good way to change the mood.  They can be made using large paper bags, paper plates, stiff paper, or paper mache.  Feathers, glitter, sequins, ribbons, and beads can make the masks more interesting.  The kids can even then put on a play wearing their masks, which will help the hours pass more quickly on a rainy or snowy day.  If you don’t have supplies for mask making, face painting can also change the mood in the house and be used for make-believe.

Easy Shrinky Dinks.  Use empty small size potato chip bags or regular size chocolate bar wrappers.  Hole punch one hole near the corner and then place them on a baking sheet.  Put them in the oven at 325 degrees, keeping an eye on them.  They will shrivel and curl and then uncurl.  Remove from the oven when they are at least halfway uncurled.  Wait for them to cool.  They can then be made into keychains, zipper pulls, or jewelry.  Kids love this one!

For other great stay-at-home activities, be sure to check out these fun posts:

Creative Mail Ideas
More Snow Day Activities (outdoor)

Creative Mail For Kids – 7 Unique Ideas

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Everyone likes to receive happy mail, which is pretty much anything other than a bill. You can use these ideas to have kids send mail to grandparents, friends, cousins, or pen pals.a mother helps her two young boys mail a letter in a mailbox. Text reads "Creative Mail Ideas for Kids"Writing letters is a great way for children to practise their writing skills and penmanship in a practical and fun way. Sending them (by “snail mail”) instead of e-mail is especially fun. Below are some suggestions for fun and creative mail they can send.

Creative Mail Ideas:

A Homemade Photo Postcard – Take pictures and let the your child turn them into postcards by sticking a white index card onto the back of them. They can then write a message, fill in the address, put a stamp in the corner and send their personalized postcard.

A Puzzle – Have your child draw a colourful picture on cardboard or thick card stock with a message for a friend or relative. If the child is old enough, have them cut the picture into puzzle pieces. If they are too young, you can cut the pieces for them. Pop the pieces in an envelope and mail to the intended recipient for a very fun greeting card. 

Invisible Ink – Have your child write a message or draw a picture in lemon juice on a paper. Include a note on a separate piece of paper explaining that in order to view the message, the recipient will have to heat the paper up over a candle. This one is as fun to receive as it is to make.

Mail a Hug – I love this idea! Kids can send one of their actual hugs to loved ones by tracing their outstretched arms. This is particularly heartwarming for situations when you can’t give your loved ones a hug in person. Find the full instructions here.

Building Suspense – One idea that can improve your child’s creative writing abilities as well as their desire is to have them write a story and send a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or friend one chapter at a time. The recipient will want to know how the story ends and will phone or write to ask the child, who will then feel encouraged in their writing and be spurred on to finish that story and to write others as well.

Secret Code – Your child can write a letter using a secret code. Be sure that they send a decoder along with the letter of course! Here are some secret codes kids can use.

Add a Sentence – This one is also good for building creative writing skills in your child. The way it works is that your child writes one sentence or one paragraph (depending on the age and writing level of the child) and sends it to the recipient. The recipient then adds another sentence or paragraph on to the story and sends it back. Your child then continues the story from there and this continues back and forth until the story is finished.

Sending and receiving mail is fun for any child (it’s fun for adults too!). If there isn’t a relative that your child can send mail to, consider asking a Senior’s care centre if there is a lonely resident there that your child can send letters to or find a pen pal for your child.

Check out these other fun activities for kids:

Sensory Scavenger Hunt

Theme Day Ideas for Family Fun at Home

Easy Indoor Sensory Activities at Home

How to Make Your Own Tempura Sauce

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While cooking some tempura shrimp, I casually checked the fridge for the tempura sauce only to discover to my dismay that I could not find it.  I scoured everywhere in my kitchen, but the search was fruitless.  Desperate, I did a quick Google search for tempura sauce recipes, but became increasingly discouraged as the recipes called for things that would take a trip to a specialty grocery store to acquire.  My pantry doesn’t have many authentic Japanese ingredients!  I changed the ingredients to things I could find in my kitchen and tweaked it to suit my tastes.  Given the ingredients, this is not authentic tempura sauce, but it tastes like a good likeness and it can be made in about 5 minutes and with common ingredients that are in most kitchens.

1/2 cup chicken or vegetable broth

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

2 Tbsp. white wine

1 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 Tbsp. minced ginger

Stir ingredients together on low heat for five minutes until they are well blended.

It turned out so well and was so fast and easy to make that I will be making my own tempura sauce from now on instead of buying it.

 

Healthy Lentil Soup

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Saute 1/2 a chopped onion and 1 clove of minced garlic in 1 Tbsp. olive oil for 5 minutes.

Stir in:

4 cups (or more) of vegetable stock

2 cups fresh or canned diced tomatoes

1/3 cup pearl barley

1/3 cup green lentils (known in the real world as split peas)

1/3 cup yellow lentils (known in the real world as split peas)

1 tsp. dried oregano (or more – I never measure spices)

1 tsp. dried basil

2 bay leaves

1 cup of chopped vegetables (whatever you have on hand…carrots, zucchini, celery…)

Simmer, covered for about 45 minutes.  Then add:

1/2 cup or more of sliced spinach leaves

2 Tbsp. blackstrap molasses

1 Tbsp. cider vinegar

1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper

Cook for another 15 minutes.  I like to add a bit of hot sauce into my personal bowl for some kick.  This recipe freezes well.

Horse Theme Party

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For Miss Optimism’s ninth birthday party, she wanted a horse theme party.  She loves horses, though with her allergies, she cannot actually ride them.  Having two kids with December birthdays is always a challenge, but I was so fortunate this time to have The Ferrari ice the cake for me.  I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things including cake decorating, so when I ice the cakes myself, it can take me anywhere from two and a half to four hours to finish, but as long as someone else is doing it, I don’t much care whether it’s perfect or not, so having him do this for me saved me hours of work.

This was The Ferrari (who is 15)’s very first time ever piping a cake and he did an amazing job!  What an amazing gift for his little sister and for his mom!  This is the finished product:

Decorations were pretty easy.  I had ordered horse plates, napkins, cups, banner, and blowouts.  I didn’t get a tablecloth, as I thought the wood table would be best.  I found a plastic bucket at the dollar store that looked like a tin feeding bucket.  I put the treat bags in the bucket and placed it in the middle of the table to build a centrepiece around.  I propped up some carrots with stalks on the bucket, propped up a foam cowgirl hat, and placed an apple next to that.  So simple, so inexpensive, but it worked well.  I placed little plastic horses on the table, which the party guests were able to take home after the party.

For activities, the girls at the party coloured white cardboard horses and they decorated the foam hat from the centrepiece with foam horse and cowgirl theme stickers.  We played “Trainer Says” which is like “Simon Says” but horse themed so the girls pretended to be horses and I said things like “trainer says swat the flies” or “trainer says trot”.  This went over well.  I had another game planned, but the girls decided to play a make believe barnyard game instead.

For food, I of course served carrots and apple slices and the birthday girl’s request of macaroni and cheese. Here is a picture of the happy birthday girl.

I can still hardly believe that the baby girl who came to us at 4 lbs. 14 oz. is now 9 years old! We love you like crazy muffins Miss Optimism!

Penguin Theme Party

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It is no secret that Granola Girl’s favourite thing in the world (next to God and her family) is penguins.  For her sixth birthday, she asked for a penguin theme party.  This one is not as easy to pull off as themes where the cake pan and decorations are ready made, but I was up to the challenge!

For the cake, I baked a cake in the 3D mini bear pan, cut off its ears and feet, made a beak out of part of one of the ears and glued it on with icing, moved the feet to the front and iced.

Then with the remaining cake batter, I poured it into a glass bowl and attempted to bake an igloo cake.  This one didn’t really turn out because it stuck to the bowl really badly and came out in pieces so I had to use the other side of it, so it wasn’t very round, but six year olds didn’t care. I sprinkled icing sugar over everything to look like snow and voila – penguin cake!

For activities, the kids did races with a balloon between their legs, like the dad penguins carrying the eggs, made a penguin craft, and made sugar cube igloos. The kids who stayed later also got to watch the movie “Happy Feet”.

For food for the penguin party, the kids ate Penguins of Madagascar pasta, fish crackers, Oreos (because they are black and white), and drank blue punch (for the ice cold water that penguins like). Granola Girl had a great time!