Recently we've been trying to reduce the waste we send to landfill each week from our household. We've been looking at ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Our girls are really enjoying getting involved with this and together they made this video to show what and why we're doing it!
Zero Waste
Recently we've been trying to reduce the waste we send to landfill each week from our household. We've been looking at ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Our girls are really enjoying getting involved with this and together they made this video to show what and why we're doing it!
Colouring competitions
Do your kids ever enter colouring in competitions? Did you when you were a kid? Ever win anything?
When I was a kid I won third prize in the local supermarket colouring competition and my brother won second. He got a big cuddly Gnu (yes a Gnu!) and I won a big cuddly panda. I was always very proud of that win, but when I was older, my mum told me that only 3 people entered the competition, which I have to say crushed my colouring in pride significantly!
However, now that I am a parent myself, I can see that it was probably true!
Our local library hosts colouring in competitions each school holidays to win cinema tickets. My girls both like colouring in, and have been entering these competitions for a few years now. Most of the time they win tickets! This time my youngest won the grand prize too which was a swingball set!
Both girls also won a double cinema pass to see Rio 2, so we had a family trip to the movies too.
I don't think there are many kids enter these competitions. Maybe kids prefer playing on their computers and tablets to colouring in.
It just goes to show it's always worth giving things a try. You've got to be in it to win it!
What competitions have your kids entered? Have they won anything?
Catching Fire - what age is it suitable for?
Elimination
During a spring clean of our cupboards in last week's school holidays, I found a few games that we have never played before.
So I decided that we should get them out and give them a go.
Yesterday my younger daughter and I played 'Elimination'.
This game is very simple. The board has 10 numbered grooves with a marble to sit in each one. You then roll 2 dice and can remove the marbles from the corresponding numbers on the dice. Either the individual numbers or the sum of the two. So for example in the picture above, I removed the 5 and 3 marbles, but could have removed the 8 marble instead.
You then simply take turns rolling the dice and removing the marbles. The person who removes the last marble wins!
Simple!
For younger kids it would be a fun game for number recognition and adding two single digit numbers together.
We just enjoyed it as a fun, simple game!
Do you have any games in your cupboard that you never, or hardly ever play?
Learning chess as an adult
This year, our younger daughter joined the chess club at school. Both our girls like to play chess sometimes, and as I wrote here a few years ago, it's a great game to play for improving your mind and all sorts of skills!
Since joining the chess club and participating in a few tournaments, I think our daughter's interest in chess is waning. She sometimes comes out of the 'lessons' saying it was boring - which means really that she didn't understand what was going on. It does appear that some of the teachers are better at explaining things than others, but when she has a 'boring' lesson, it really does put her off wanting to play chess.
Personally I've never really enjoyed playing chess, but I always try to encourage our kids in whatever they do, and do things with them so they get plenty of practice, improve and so enjoy doing them more.
Everyone enjoys doing things more when they are better at them!
So, seeing our daughter's interest in chess waning, I decided that I'd try to play chess with her to try and encourage her some more. I don't want our kids to just give up on things they find tricky, so me learning chess will hopefully set a good example!
We've got books out of the library to help. The very basic book is for me..
Plenty of pictures and simple explanations!
Then a slightly more advanced, but still a kids book for my daughter (she's 9):
So - let's see how we go. My daughter is happy to teach me as we play - hopefully this will help her understand the moves more as she explains them. I also hope this will pick her interest back up in the game.
How do you encourage your kids to stick at something if you yourself aren't interested in it? Have you ever learnt to play a game or sport to encourage your kids to play?
Chip packet bracelet
Have you ever made a bracelet like this before? I hadn't but had fun trying it out with my girls at the weekend.
Just now, we're being extra careful and learning about what we can recycle, reuse and not put in landfill. Chip packets were one thing that as yet we haven't found anywhere to take them for recycling here, so we looked for something we could upcycle them to instead.
Using this tutorial we cut up the chip packets we had and folded them into the mini chain links, tucking them together to make this cute shiny bracelet.
The girls decided to give this bracelet to their friend who loves crafting herself. She was really happy to get the gift, and the next day sent them a picture of another bracelet she'd made the same way (we showed her how).
Not a bad way to use up those shiny chip packets. You could make a whole set of jewellery with them, or bags...
So many possibilities!
So many possibilities!
Have you ever done this kind of weaving with chip packets or junk mail - or anything else for that matter. I'd love some more ideas and inspiration for this!
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