Kids holiday activities

What a great opportunity to spend some quality time with your children! Even though it can be very hard to "entertain" kids sometimes, it does not have to be. There are tons of webistes available online that you can find great ideas on. I like familyfun.com the best. They have great ideas. Take old Christmas cards and cut the front off, glue that on to a piece of construction paper-whala you have a new card. You can make gingerbread ornaments for the tree. Make a gingerbread house-what a great table centerpiece and lots of fun for all! Allow your kids to have a friend over sometime. I am sure they will miss their friends from school. have your children help around the house and do some chores that they dont usually have time to do when school is in session. Go thru toys and donate some old favorites to local charities. Encourage your kids to go outside each day and run some steam off. I am a stay at home mom, so we have a routine each day. In the morning after breakfast, we have free time-his time to play with some toys and my time to check emails and all. Then, its outside time if its nice. If the weather does not cooperate, we do something active indoors. When we are done with that, we generally do some type of art or craft project. Once art is cleaned up, its time for some type of school lessom. He is 24 months, so we are working on letter recognition, shapes and colors. Then, its lunch time and after lunch is naptime for him and cleanup time for me. Having a routine helps our day run smoothly and he knows what to expect throughout the day. It also encourages good behavior because he is not bored and learns the routine. He knows that when we come inside froom playtime, its time to do art. Transitions are smoother. A 20 month old can do quite a bit if you think about it. Make cookies together-she can put the cookies on the baking sheet. Merry Christams, I hope they have a great winter break!

here we go for a vacation

Just checking in to see how you are surviving the first week of the school holidays mystikel. At least Christmas would have kept the children occupied for a couple of days, hopefully, although they were probably a bit tired at the end of it. :) I hope that you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and that your New Year is all that you wish it to be.

You surely will have your hands full keeping them both the children entertained and amused given the differences in their ages mystikel. The older one can cut out pictures from books and magazines plus if you have any old cards (birthday, Christmas etc) that you no longer want to keep, they can also use the pictures from them. Put the children on an old sheet or very large piece of material but also give them something hard to work on, some paint pots, glue, paper and let them do whatever they want to. Although a bit late, perhaps you could get them to make some wrapping paper by painting on some butcher's paper. Hand prints, glueing on pictures or just plain painting whatever they like. :) Good luck mystikel and hope you can keep them occupied. One other thing you can do is to pack a lunch and take them to the park or somewhere similar for a couple of hours to get them out of the house.

Using magazines and cutting out different pics. and pasting them on newspaper or some big sheet of paper and see what they come up with, great for the imagination!