Creative Activities to do with your kids:
- Soap Foam These next two activities are from the book, 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids. Add 2 Tbsp dish soap, 1/4 cup water, and a few drops of food coloring to the mixture. Use an electric mixer for 1 – 2 minutes on high to mix and create foam. If it doesn’t make much foam, mix a few more minutes. Brooklyn had fun making bubbles from the mixture.
2. Moon Sand It’s crumbly, but when you pack it together, you can form shapes. Combine 4 cups cornmeal with 2 cups cornstarch. If you use white cornmeal, you can color it with food coloring. Add 10 tablespoons of Vegetable oil into the mixture, mix well, and knead. If it stays too crumbly, add a little bit of vegetable oil at a time. Mix and enjoy!
3. “Put-put/Croquet course”: If you have a little bit of space in your yard and a putter (we only had one), you can play “putt-putt/croquet”. First, we collected sticks, then made notecards to tape the goal number onto each set of sticks. We used paddle balls, but if you don’t have those, you could color polka-dots on tennis balls – one color for each tennis ball so you can tell whose ball is whose. I thought golf balls might go too far and we didn’t have any. For each “goal”, line up two sticks close together and tape the number of the goal on it. Pick one person to start and putt the ball. I gave each kid two hits per turn, but if they shot the ball through the sticks, they got one more try.) If they don’t hit the ball through the sticks after two tries, the next person gets a turn. Have fun!
Faith & Parenting Content
Lord, I pray for each tired mama right now. I pray you would renew her strength, her spirit, her heart. Remind her that you chose her to be her child’s mother for a reason and that she is just the mom her kids need. Help her smile as she sees the awesomeness in that. When she feels done, please carry her by the power of your Spirit. Give her your strength, your power, your love. Thank you, Lord, for the ways you will meet her needs. In Jesus’ name, amen. ❤️
My kids were so excited when I mentioned this idea to them.
The funny thing is that they started planning right when they heard about it and two of my kids’ plans were tougher than my own, while my third child’s plans were fun, and as simple and short as possible. 😂
I gave them three rules:
1. They have to run their plans by me and so I can approve them.
2. It can’t be more than 3 hours.
3. All the kids have to respect the “teacher”.
I know this might not work for every family depending on school assignments and the ages of your kids, but if your child could be in charge in some way during that day, they’d probably have a lot of fun with it.
Our kids might surprise us with their ability to be responsible and lead. Have fun and let me know how it goes!
Linsey Driskill 