Teaching the joy of chores...

Take a little ten to let your kids help with the chores you usually take care of in the house. My kids are at the age where they love to help with the things that they do not usually get to do. Yesterday I let them help vacuum.

The search for crumbs was the best part for them. It was a like a little treasure hunt...just a little. 

Easton pointed out some crumbs for Melanie to catch....

She was happy to help...

My philosophy is (and I'm not positive about this) if we take time to teach kids that chores are fun while they are little, they will not be so unhappy about doing them when they are bigger.

Train them up in the way they should go...right?

Take ten!!

Paint your cookies...

Do you know how to paint cookies? I just learned...it's pretty cool and REALLY easy. Try it with your kids.

Egg wash: One beaten egg, add one tsp. water and beat some more, mix in your choice of food coloring..we chose green.
Paint the cookie dough before baking and then bake as normal. I made East's name and a piston cup cut out to freeze and save to put on top of his birthday cake.

The kids cut out cookies..Mel chose a Christmas tree and Easton of course chose to make more piston cups.

Then they got to paint and sprinkle their cookies.

I decorated these. Some have the green egg wash and crushed candy cane sprinkles and others have melted chocolate chips topped with the candy canes. YUM!

Yesterday I asked the kids what they wanted to do tomorrow (which is today), and they said they wanted to make Thanksgiving cookies. We didn't have any turkey cutters so we started Christmas early!

Happy Holidays! Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Take Ten!

Extra candy corn..DIY experiment

I had candy corn and a bag of Costco size pretzels....the kids were getting tired of plain pretzels. What do you do when this kind of scenario happens? Well you melt the candy corn down of course and cover the pretzels with it...DUH! :)

Throw some candy corn and butter into a pot..I did not bother measuring...

Melt it down...

Add some marshmallows...again no measuring there either.

Melt it...looks good huh?

Toss in some pretzels and cover them up with the chewy gooey goodness...

Then toss the pretzels onto some parchment paper...but don't be like me and forget to spray the parchment paper or it will stick to the bottom pretzels.

These were delicious! Everyone liked them..and we used two things that were going to go to waste in our house!

After they cooled down they were not sticky to pick up and eat. Great post Halloween treat! Take ten to try it. It literally took ten minutes!

Family night!

Smile, sit down, and have a little family time. Make a happy little person like the one below.

Or, you can make a couple of snails like daddy and Easton made....

Our family play dough night kind of happened by accident. Melanie took out the play dough, Darrell sat down an joined her, and eventually all of us were sitting around the table making dough art. I stole away to take a quick pic of our happy family time.

These are the memories that will shape our children's personalities, their futures, and the way they view their childhood. 

It was so fun, just ten minutes of playing, but big keepsakes for all of our hearts.

Take ten for family memories.

A cup of cake...

On her birthday a friend gave Melanie a little busy bag that contained play cupcakes to decorate. They are so fun and cute, and oh so many possibilities for learning this little bag contained!

Inside the bag there were cupcake tops and bottoms of different colors and all different shaped sprinkles. It gave lots of room for creativity. But as a mom, I wanted to make it educational too.

So after a little bit of playing around and decorating we began our math lesson.

We sprinkled ten sprinkles, we subtracted sprinkles, we added sprinkles, we counted just the blue and pink sprinkles..we did a lot of math with those darn sprinkles! It was fun.

The best part about this project is that it is something you can make quite quickly and easily with construction paper and scissors. Try it and make math fun! The earlier you start math learning, the easier it will be later.

Take Ten!

Stumble upon...

There are many things offered to moms and kids for play time, learning time and activity time and in the last two weeks I've stumbled upon a couple of them.

Last week a friend and I wanted to meet up for a play date on a rainy day. She suggested we meet at the library with the kids. We got there and guess what? They were having a preschool story time and class..FOR FREE! It was really cool. Check it out.

I circled Easton's face...look at how HAPPY he is! The teacher brought out a parachute for the kids to shake around with a ball on it. It was so fun!
Now if you look at the bottom of the picture you will see a little pony tail sticking up...that is Skyelynn. She got in on the parachute action too!

The little girl next to Melanie wouldn't let go of Mel's hand. Too cute!

This preschool time is offered twice a week, every week. There is playtime in the beginning, story time, a question and answer time with a felt board and puppets, dancing, and obviously this parachute thing too! So, during this time the kids were introduced to simple math and counting, shapes, reading, listening skills, and peer interaction skills. Very cool stuff! I can't believe it is all free. I'm so glad to have found this!

Over the weekend we found something else fun to do. We went to Barnes and Noble to meet up with my sister and her kids to play in the kid area. Here, they were having a story and activity time! Once again, it was FREE!

Story time..as you can see some of the kids wore their Halloween costumes.

Here is the activity table...paper bag puppets!

Take ten to find out what your community offers your kids! You may just be surprised how much free learning is available outside of the home! 

Take ten!

Lunch in a tin...

Take a little ten to make lunch a little more interesting than usual. Think outside the regular old lunch plate! Try this idea that my friend Skyelynn so creatively invented.

Use a muffin tin to create a lunch platter of healthy foods. Above we have almond butter and jelly sandwiches cut into skinny "finger food" slices, ranch dip for the carrots, apple slices, cheese slices and turkey meat rolled up. 

I wish I would have recorded my kids' reaction when they saw this lunch. You would have thought they were getting a huge piece of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top! They ran to the table yelling "oohh yummy! Look carrots! ooohh apples! Look cheese!" AND, they ate it ALL! 

Try it, take ten to think outside the normal lunch (or breakfast and dinner) routine!