Tag Archives: ideas

Ten St. Patrick's Day Resources

a mother looking down upon her young sonWe made it to March! Phew. Spring will be here soon in my neck o’ the woods. I’ve been in the mood to plan ahead a little bit this year, and thought I’d share some of ideas I found online for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. For an historical and encyclopedic definition of the day, see the Wikipedia entry or hop over to History.com for their St. Patrick’s Day article.

I was of course more interested in the snack ideas. Allrecipes.com has an easy yet tasty-sounding recipe for a Chocolate Mint Milkshake. In fact, there’s an entire category of Irish or St. Patrick’s Day recipes listed there. I had no idea there was so much available!

And of course, no holiday is complete without making a craft or two with your kids. For younger children the good people at KidsSoup.com have some options. My favorite was the Froot Loop rainbow. There’s even a free printable available.

Speaking of printables, there are literally hundreds of coloring pages and other printable activities available online to help you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. About.com has a list of 14 sites that include coloring pages, templates, cards, and printable craft resources. Disney’s Family Fun.com has more printables centered around the St. Patrick’s Day theme.

Have you ever noticed that a shamrock shape can me made using hearts? Cut out some green paper hearts for gluing on to pictures or photo frames and voila! Instant holiday craftiness. You can also use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to trace (or make cookies – yum) if you’re a perfectionist about heart shapes. Heart stamps would also do the trick. Make a shamrock tee shirt, or some lovely cards to send to friends and family.

If you don’t mind getting a little messy, head on over to Celebrations.com and try the Thumbprint Shamrocks. Or make your own rainbow complete with pot of gold courtesy of Sherri Osborn’s post at About.com. There’s also a suggestion of making your own pot of gold with a margarine container and cardboard disks and a lot of paint. I’d rather buy those chocolate candies and put them in a dish. But I’m lazy.

This list only just scratches the surface of what’s available to help celebrate the day. What do you do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

by AmyL

Photo graciously provided by Ilja, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

Parenting In The Media: Easing Fears Through Bedtime Stories

Kids have fears. We all have our thoughts on how to address them. The noted literacy activist, Pam Allyn, wrote a thoughtful essay on how bedtime stories can ease childhood fears. The essay also includes fantastic recommendations for bedtime books (and who doesn’t love a good book recommendation?) -

    “When the sun goes down, fears come up. The blessing of a transcendent story for any age is that it helps us to escape, to relate, to connect and to understand the perils and magic of our mortal universe.

    Great children’s literature assures us that frail looking boys with scars on their foreheads can become heroes, spiders can write words to save lives and bunnies can go to bed fearlessly. Great children’s literature inspires us to want to live backwards: to live as openly and tenderly as a child.”

Read the rest of the essay here.

Don’t know Pam? Here’s her bio from Scholastic: Pam Allyn is the Executive Director and founder of LitLife, a nationally known literacy development organization providing innovative, research-based professional development for K-12 educators. She was the Director of Funded Projects for The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and also the Founding Director of Books for Boys, a reading initiative for New York’s foster care children. Allyn has received several commendations for her work, including a Points of Light/Disney award for her literacy work and a James Patterson Page Turner Award.

Any thoughts? Got some ideas for fear-reduction? Do you play-act or have family forums or private talks? Do you avoid fear-talk (to avoid exacerbating the situation)? What’s your way to defeat the boogie man?

How Do You Teach Shared Responsibility?

liquid spill on the floorHere I am again, talking about kids and cleaning up. Are you getting sick of it yet? Hope not!

Today I walked into the office and the wireless keyboard was sitting in the middle of the floor, ready to be crushed by someone who wasn’t watching the floor carefully. I mentioned to the boys in the room that this was not cool, and before I could go further The Manager immediately blamed A, who was visiting for the evening. It didn’t matter that this was the third time I’d had to move that keyboard out of harm’s way in less than 12 hours.

I completely understand The Manager thinking that this problem was not his fault. However, he knew the keyboard was in the wrong place and he left it there rather than fix the problem. In my mind, while he’s not to blame for the situation, he should have taken the initiative to solve a problem he knew existed.

But how do you teach that? How do you get rather careless children to care about taking good care of their possessions? To notice there’s a problem and then solve it? I don’t want to complain or nag about it. That won’t do any good, and will make the situation worse. Blowing up and yelling: also not a good choice. So what does work? Any ideas?

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by AmyL

Photo graciously provided by //amy//, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

Fueling Dreams

dowels laying horizontal in a store displayWe took the boys to a store today that sells all sorts of supplies for woodworkers. The lower level was filled with bin after bin of doodads and thingamajigs, great for all sorts of invention and craftiness. The boys wandered through the store, oohing and aahing over their new discoveries.

The Mercenary had a 3-foot dowel in his hand and looked sad when I told him to put it back. “But I was going to use it in my sword-fighting game.” Yeah. Put it back, buddy. I’m not really interested in sanctioning a Beat Your Brother With a Stick Game.

After we got past the dowels, they started picking up spindles and wooden shapes and suggesting uses for them. It was when TechnoBoy said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make….”

That? That was cool. Who would have thought that a trip to the store would spark the creative imagination? I certainly didn’t expect it. I definitely want to see more of that though.

What do you do to fuel your children’s dreams?

by AmyL

Photo graciously provided by stevegarfield, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

All My Ducks in a Row

calendar with stones for markersAll moms have their challenges.  Stay at home moms, working moms, work at home moms, they all have a tough, yet important job.   One of the jobs that seems to fall on moms’ shoulders, no matter the employment status, is the job of family organizer.  Maybe it is just because of moms’ multitasking nature.  But, ask a mom, any mom, to find a free hour or two in their daily schedule, and they are likely to pull a jam packed calendar out of their purse.

I like to keep myself and my family organized online and on my phone.  I love the way I can sync my calendars across my computers and my phone.  I have a separate calendar for each member of my family as well as a “family” calendar for shared activities.   I also have an online todo list to keep track of those nagging activities like making dentist appointments, or paying the water bill.  I like to review my calendar and todo list at the beginning of each week to make sure that I know what is coming up.

And yet, I still find myself forgetting things.  I find items that slip through the cracks, like a post deadline to a certain website, or an item that was needed at the grocery store, or calling to set up music lessons for my son.  Or, I suddenly have a moment or two to relax on the couch and that moment or two turns unto an hour and all the things that needed to get done still need to get done and yet, I used up all my time to do them.

So, what is a mom to do?  I have tried outsourcing some of my jobs.  I splurged on a once-a-week cleaning person.  I have stopped stressing about making my children  “healthy” lunches and don’t worry if they eat in the cafeteria instead.  I have given the kids more jobs to do around the house.  And yet, when it comes to maintaining life’s schedule, it is still up to me, to keep everything in order: to make sure that kids get to sports practices and orchestra rehearsals and play performances and music lessons and swimming lessons.  It is still my job to make sure that if there are time conflicts that someone else can pick them up or get them there.  It is always my job to get all the ducks in a row and make sure that they don’t fight while in line.  And so, I continue on and hope that I don’t lose one of the ducks along the way.

by In The Fast Lane

Photo graciously provided by iheartlinen, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved