Make Flowers Change Colors - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Make Flowers Change Colors - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

While studying plants recently, we decided to try the age-old flower dying experiment. Although we didn't have as much success as we have had in the past (when my oldest did this same experiment), we are still starting to see some color change, and the kiddo had fun with it.

All you do is add some food coloring to a vase of water, then add your flowers. White flowers tend to work the best - make sure to give then a fresh cut stem before putting them into the colored water. Although, kids will often use a celery stalk as well. I think it's better if there are some leaves still on the celery as opposed to the pre-cut ones.

This experiment shows how plants pull water up through their stems into their petals
 and leaves.

Start a Garden – Fun Stuff to do Anywhere

Start a Garden – Fun Stuff to do Anywhere

If you started some seeds indoor earlier in the year, they are probably ready to move outside either into the ground, or into larger pots.

We have never lived in a house with a yard big enough for a garden in the ground. So I have become a good container gardener over the years. So if all you have is a small apartment patio or balcony, you can still create a little garden to grow stuff with your kids.

We have grown tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, broccoli, peas, herbs, flowers, zucchini, cantaloupe, strawberries, and blueberries in pots over the years. The bigger plants may need pretty large containers to grow well in, but it can be done. Pick a few of your favorite fruits or veggies, and start growing! For tomatoes, or vine-y or sprawling plants like cantaloupe or zucchini, I find that cages help the plant to grow without sprawling out of the pot and breaking the stems.

It isn't too late in the year if you want to start from seed. You can start indoors, or right outside if you want. If you'd rather get more of a running start at your garden, lots of plant centers have good sales this time of year on seedlings.

Each plant will have it's own slightly different requirements about how much sun and water and spacing they like, so just follow the instructions that come with your plant or seed packet, and watch your garden grow.

Play a Card Game – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Play a Card Game – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Playing a card game with your kids can have multiple benefits. You get some good fun together time, and hopefully some conversation too, but additionally, many card games are great for math practice.

Simple card games like 'Go Fish' or 'War' are good to play with younger children. Then games like 'Twenty-one' or 'Cribbage' can introduce some simple strategy and mental addition. There are literally hundreds of card games out there.

There are great books full of games, or pagat.com has rules for a slew of games too.

Put Together a Jigsaw Puzzle – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Put Together a Jigsaw Puzzle – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

I remember putting puzzles together with my mother when I was small, but for some reason I never thought about doing it with my own kids until recently. They did simple 25 piece, then 50 piece puzzles as preschoolers on their own and loved them. Often they would put the same puzzle together over and over again. But when they moved on to 100 piece, they did one or two and stopped. I thought they had outgrown puzzles, but now I think it was something else.

I think they hit a point where the puzzles were more challenging and they became intimidated. We did a 500 piece puzzle together, and in the beginning they acted discouraged before we’d even really begun. Once the boarder was put together, and some other small parts had been assembled enough to be recognizable, their enthusiasm for the project grew. Every piece placed was a tiny celebration.

We didn’t try to put it together all in one sitting, or even all in one day. I think that would have been more than they could take. But we ended up having a lot of fun, and I look forward to another group jigsaw puzzle again soon, although some puzzles at the store have gotten pricey in my opinion, but sales and thrift stores, and garage sales are great places to pick a puzzle up if you want totry one out without spending much to start.

Letterboxing – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Letterboxing – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

After last week's introduction to geocaching, I thought this week, I should introduce geocaching's low-tech predecessor: letterboxing.

Geocaching and letterboxing share a lot in common. The idea for both is to go out into the world, often into nature, and find the hidden container. In geocaching, there will be a logbook, and possibly some swag for trade in the container. In letterboxing, there will be a logbook and a stamp. You can bring your own stamp to mark the logbook with, or just write your name, and you can use the stamp in the letterbox to mark your own book to show you made the find. You should not trade or take anything from a letterbox.

The benefits of letterboxing is that no special technology is required (other than looking the letterbox up online before leaving home.) Instead of GPS coordinates, letterboxing uses landmarks and more old-fashioned treasure hunting terms. For example you could be instructed to find a particularly noticeable tree, and go ten paces to the north, then turn right, and so on.

The downside of letterboxes is that there are far fewer of them around than geocaches. The website we've used is www.letterboxing.org, but we've only found two letterboxes. If you are an experienced letterboxer, and have other online resources you can share, please do so in the comments.

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

I've wanted to write a post about geocaching for a while now, but couldn't decide where to put it. I can certainly be done almost anywhere in the Bay Area, but I think it could deserve it's own full review like the Thursday activities get. So, I decided to do both.

This week will be just a quick introduction to geocaching, and in a future week, I'll write a more expansive post with ideas to take you deeper into the hobby of geocaching.

Basically, geocacaching is a treasure hunting game played with a GPs device, and the website geocaching.com. There are other websites as well, but this is the main, and most popular one as far as I know. The website offers a few different ways to search for nearby caches. You can enter an address and get a list of geocaches close by. I personally like the 'search on the map' function. It gives me better information about where a cache is than just how many miles from the entered address.

Not all geocaches are kid or family appropriate. There are a number of different attributes that can be added to each cache listing to describe it. For your few outings, you may want to look for caches that are labeled as "kid friendly" or listed as "beginner" caches. I've hunted for caches along busy roads and other places I wouldn't have wanted to take my children. That's another reason to check out the map on geocaching.com before heading out to your hunt – make sure it is an area you'll all feel safe.

Luckily, most are very family friendly. If you have a popular walking trail near you home, or park, or regional open space, there are great odds there will be several geocaches there for you to find.

What my kids like best, is the swag. If you are looking for a cache labeled 'small' or larger, then there may be small toys, coins or other little items inside. If you bring small items to trade, you can put in your item, and take some other trinket out of the cache. My kids have traded for things like beads, rubber bouncy balls or matchbox cars. Try to keep the trades fair, so the next kids to come along have something fun to pick out too.

We have a hand held geocaching GPS, but you can geocache with just a smartphone ap if you don't have a GPS. (Car GPS devises don't work well for geocaching). Geocaching.com has their own ap that costs $10, but I have used and like c:geo, and it is free. You do need to go to geocaching.com and sign up there for an account first to use c:geo and some of the other free geocaching aps out there.

If you're ready to get started, the geocaching.com website can walk you through finding your first cache. Otherwise, I'll be back with even more geocaching fun for you and your family another week.

Stomp Rockets - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Stomp Rockets - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Since we have had such beautiful weather lately, it's been nice to get outside. Stop Rockets are a great outdoor, park going activity.

Stomp rockets work by forcing air up a tube into the hollow inside of the rocket and launching it into the air when the end of the tube is 'stomped' on. There are a lot of different brands that can be found at hobby shops or toy stores.

Kids love rockets, at least, every kid I've ever met. I'm sure there are some out there somewhere that don't. It takes them a long time to get tired of stomping. Then there's all that running after the fallen rockets to retrieve them, which is great exercise.

There is even a little bit of science and experimentation involved as they try stomping harder of softer and adjust the angle to see what will happen.

We have the rockets pictured below. I like them because they don't go too high, and are safe to use in our local park. I also found a book about how to make your own. That sound like a lot of fun too!

Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel – Book Review

Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel – Book Review

Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel was a quick favorite with my then kindergarten kiddo. Unlike many other things she loved back then, she hasn't 'outgrown' the Bad Kitty books. She squealed with excitement just last week (now a 4^th grader) when she saw that the library had the newest book in the Bad Kitty series.

The first Bad Kitty book (above) is a picture/alphabet book with one letter for the alphabet for each food Bad Kitty can try when they run out of her regular food, then again for each naughty thing Bad Kitty does, and then another one for each nice thing she does to make up for it. So it takes you through the alphabet several times. However, unlike most alphabet books, the words are not simple. I found it as amusing as my kids do.

The other books featuring Bad Kitty, however, are short chapter books, heavy with illustrations. They were perfect for my daughter when she was a strong enough for longer stories and chapters, but still intimidated by big blocks of text. She would read each book over and over again, and I could hear her giggling every time.

Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco

Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco

The Visitor Center for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is located in Crissy Field in San Francisco. It isn’t a large marine museum, but there are still some very neat things to see. The Farallones Sanctuary visitor center is open Wednesdays thru Sundays from 10 to 4, and is free of charge to visit.

The Marine Sanctuary also offers several public and school programs. Although we have never attended a program our homeschool program offered an in school program a couple of years ago that we really enjoyed. It appears that the main Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary website, linked above, is not up to date for their current program offerings. However there is another website, for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association that is where you would find the best information about their programs and how to schedule your own or attend one they are putting on.

Our visits to the center took us less than an hour, but since it is located in Crissy Field in the Presidio, and right on the beach, our family had even more fun walking along the waves and watching the beach wildlife. 

Photography - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Photography - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

My kids always like it when I let them have my camera to take pictures of whatever they like. That's part of the beauty of the digital age. I was never allowed to take photos as a child because I would 'waste' film. You don't need a fancy camera to call it 'photography'. Even a camera on a cell phone will make the kids happy.

To go a step further, you might print out their favorite photos and make a scrapbook, or even frame one for their room. You can take a hike or just let them pose their toys at home for a snapshot. Most county fair offer a photography category for kids if they want a chance to see their pictures displayed, and maybe have the chance to win a couple bucks.

Make a Graham Cracker Gingerbread House - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Make a Graham Cracker Gingerbread House - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

After one of my Halloween posts, I promised to share something fun you could do with the Halloween leftover candy that nobody likes. Here it is: use it to decorate a mini graham cracker gingerbread house.

These graham cracker gingerbread houses are cute, and fun to make. And since they are small, they aren't too complicated. The key to a nice graham cracker house is good frosting. A frosting that is too soft will make the house wobbly, and easy to fall apart as you add other decorations. However, a frosting that is really nice and stiff, and will dry like stone will also be pretty uneatable, so you might want to decide ahead of time if you want to eat them when they are done. I suppose you could also use glue instead of frosting if you don't want to eat them, but most white glues will dry clear, and I think they white joints look nice.

I find that the canned frosting is generally too soft. I like the prepackaged tubes of frosting because they are fairly stiff, and much easier to handle and work with with little mess. If you want to make your own, I found a  recipe for stiff royal frosting here.

For the graham cracker parts of the house, we used two squares (1/2 of a whole big graham cracker) for the roof, and 4 squares for the sides of the house. I have also seen ones made with 2 small rectangles of graham cracker (or 1/2 of a square) for the sides of the house, and the front and back made by cutting a square of graham cracker into a house shape by cutting the corners off one of the smaller rectangles. When I've tried to make those cuts, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I broke a lot crackers, and became frustrated. They do turn out a little cuter that way though.

Use your frosting to stick all the sides and the roof together and then let it sit and dry a little while. When it is dry and fairly stable, you can use more frosting to stick candies on the house for decorations.

TA-DA! Little Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses.

Play a Board Game - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Play a Board Game

We used to enjoy a weekly family game night. The with unpredictable work schedules, and busy weekend obligations, we lost track of it. Now we don't always manage a board game every week, but we get the whole family together from time to time, and we are always happy we made the effort.

Plus games are one of those sneaky fun learning experiences for kids, especially younger kids. There is counting, sometimes adding, maybe spelling even in games like Scrabble, sometimes strategy and logical thinking.

Here are some of the games that my kids pull out the most often when it's their turn to choose a family board game:




What are your family's favorite games?

Draw with Sidewalk Chalk – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Draw with Sidewalk Chalk – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Those big pieces of sidewalk chalk can be found very inexpensively.  Whenever we are with a group of kids it's always a surprisingly big hit. Toddlers love making marks on the ground, and even the teens in the group enjoy making more elaborate or artistic drawings. I love activities like this that appeal so well to all age groups, and are just so simple, and pure fun.