Category Archives: Kids

Pool Safety

Parents and families can build on their current safety systems at pools and spas by adopting additional water safety steps. Adding as many proven water safety steps as possible is the best way to assure a safe and fun experience, because you can never know which one might save a child’s life—until it does.
  • Never leave a child unattended in a pool or spa and always watch your child when he or she is in or near water
  • Teach children basic water safety tips
  • Keep children away from pool drains, pipes and other openings to avoid entrapments
  • Have a telephone close by when you or your family is using a pool or spa
  • If a child is missing, look for him or her in the pool or spa first
  • Share safety instructions with family, friends and neighbors
  • Learn how to swim and teach your child how to swim
  • Learn to perform CPR on children and adults, and update those skills regularly
  • Understand the basics of life-saving so that you can assist in a pool emergency.

If you own a pool or spa:

  • Install a four-foot or taller fence around the pool and spa and use self-closing and self-latching gates; ask your neighbors to do the same at their pools.
  • Install and use a lockable safety cover on your spa.
  • If your house serves as a fourth side of a fence around a pool, install door alarms and always use them. For additional protection, install window guards on windows facing pools or spas.
  • Install pool and gate alarms to alert you when children go near the water
  • Ensure any pool and spa you use has compliant drain covers, and ask your pool service provider if you do not know
  • Maintain pool and spa covers in good working order
  • Consider using a surface wave or underwater alarm

From http://www.poolsafely.gov/parents-families/simple-steps-save-lives/ and iaff523.org

It’s National Pretzel Day!

Bake your own soft pretzels. Here is an easy and delicious recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 1 package of yeast
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 11/2 cups warm water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • course salt to sprinkle on pretzels

Directions:

Stir yeast into water. Add the sugar and salt. Blend in flour with hands. Knead until smooth. Cut into pieces and roll into long, skinny twists. Put a little flour on the counter and give the child a piece of dough to create what he or she wants – balls, worms, letters, or pretzel shapes. Put onto a foil-lined, well-greased cookie sheet. Brush with the egg. Sprinkle with the salt. Bake immediately at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Photo from norcalcoupongal.blogspot.com

Let’s get moving!

Want to get your family moving? Tempt kids with irresistible active play. If you join in, your children are more likely to want to participate. Plus, you’ll reap fitness benefits from these easy activities too.

1. Hit the playground for instant active play.

Preschooler on playground climber
Most kids can’t help but move their muscles when faced with a tempting array of climbers, swings, and slides. Sandbox play counts too; all that digging and scooping is great for the arms. Mix things up more by:
  • Bringing some extra toys (balls, kites, jump ropes)
  • Meeting another family and playing together
  • Playing obstacle course—chart out a wacky route and see who can do it the fastest
  • Trying out a new playground to check out its offerings—anything different from your usual haunts?
2.   Teach classic backyard games.
Red Rover backyard game for active play
Recruit a few neighborhood kids to join in, or just play as a family. Remember Red Rover and Four Square? Inside, try get-moving games such as Twister and Hullabaloo.

3. Have some good clean fun.

Girl rides tricycle in leaf pile
Tackling housework together is more fun than doing it alone, takes less time, and gets everyone up and moving. Older kids can vacuum and mop; littler ones can dust and wipe. Everyone can help sort laundry or move it from one machine to another (extra points for hanging it outside on the line!). Outside, take on sweeping, raking, weeding, digging, or watering chores together.

4. Host a dance party.

Kids groove at an indoor dance party
This works indoors, outdoors, anywhere, anytime. All you need is some jammin’ music. If you start shaking your groove thing, your kids will clamor to join in. For extra incentive, bring out some dress-up items for props (filmy scarves, silly hats, or feather boas are perfect).

5. Walk!

Boy with backpack and parents hiking
Take a family stroll after dinner (try a walking game for more active play), walk to school and back, take your dog on a spin around the block, do errands on foot or park at the far end of the parking lot. Consider outfitting the whole family with inexpensive pedometers, then tracking your steps together. Set goals and reward yourselves with a family outing (bowling, batting cages, etc.).

Explore the outdoors

bug on handPhoto by D Sharon Pruitt

It is great to see the world through the eyes of children.  There are simple things in day to day life that can be a thrill for young children.  Below are a few ideas to get you started thinking.  Try to take time for them to marvel at the world and see new things.

  • A car wash (the drive through kind or a bucket and a water hose in the driveway at home)
  • Parking on the street near a construction site to watch the big trucks
  • Feeding ducks bread at the park
  • Collecting leaves, pinecones and rocks
  • Driving across a bridge where they can see the water
  • Driving past a place where you can see animals
  • Any place that has something out of the ordinary, like a fountain or sculpture

Take a walk today!

burkelakemain2

Take a Walk in the Park Day

Don’t miss out on ” Take a Walk in the Park Day”. It is an opportunity for exercise and relaxation. Are you stressed out? A walk in the park is just what the doctor ordered. Its calming and therapeutic. Taken after a busy work day, it helps clear your mind and re-energize you. Or, take the walk during lunch and you will find the afternoon of work goes by quicker and easier.

A walk in the park will likely be the most enjoyable part of your day. In addition to avoiding a fall, open eyes will allow you to take in the beauty of nature’s wonders: flowers, and trees, birds, and wildlife.

Take time to plan a Nature Scavenger Hunt for the kids.  It will be a great memory for them and will put a smile on your face.

Scavenger Hunt List of Items

  • Acorn
  • Animal Tracks
  • Caterpillar
  • Clover
  • Driftwood (small piece)
  • Feather
  • Fern
  • Flowers
  • Insect or bug
  • Items categorized by color or texture
  • Leaves (of trees native to the area)
  • Moss
  • Mulberries
  • Piece of litter left behind by someone else
  • Pine Cone
  • Pine Needles
  • Rocks
  • Sand
  • Shell
  • Snail
  • Tree bark from fallen branch
  • Worm

Celebrate Tiffany glass!

Louis Tiffany

Born in 1848 Tiffany (whose father started the Tiffany jewelry store) was a very fine painter but is best known for his work in stained glass.

Make your own “stained glass” by following these easy instructions. This is a perfect use for broken crayons. Spread out newspaper and make crayon shavings (a small pencil sharpener is perfect for this). Cover the ironing board with newspaper and sprinkle the crayon shavings on a square of wax paper. Cover with another square of wax paper and more newspaper. Press the paper with a warm iron until the wax of the crayons is melted. These look beautiful hung in the window! Make a frame out of construction paper if you wish.

from corningfingerlakes.com

Make a musical instrument!

Make your own instruments with children aged 4-8 and then sing and march along.

Drum: You need a coffee can or a round carton like the kind oatmeal comes in. Poke holes for a string so that the child can wear it around his neck; find two sticks to beat the drum.

Stringed Instrument: Cut a hole in the cover of a shoebox and tape the cover to the box so it doesn’t fall off. Stretch rubber bands over the box and plunk away. Try different rubber bands – wide and narrow, tight and loose.

Make a scratch picture!

scratch art picture

This is a fun art project for children ages 7 and up. You need paper, crayons (make sure you have a black one), and a paper clip. Take one crayon and rub it over the paper. Use the flat side of the crayon and rub hard. Take another color and do the same to another part of the paper. Cover the whole paper with different colors of crayon. Now, take the black crayon and color over all the other colors until the whole paper is black. With a paper clip or any other pointed but not sharp object, draw a picture by scratching through the black crayon. The other colors will show through where the drawing is scratched.

Are we there yet?

0703_FF_family_travel


Ideas for making those car trips memorable in the very best way:

1. WINDOW AS CANVAS If you don’t mind wiping the windows, let the kids use dry-erase markers to color pictures. Kids love to play tic-tac-toe. A baby wipe clears it up fast — makes the kids great travelers.

2. FOR VERY YOUNG ONES Pick up two clipboards at the dollar store to draw on. Tear pages out of coloring books and bring plain white paper. Let them use crayons – not as messy as markers. Also bring along some favorite lost and forgotten figurines from the bottom of the toy box. It was fun and quiet.

3. TAPES & ZIPLOCS Bring for each child lap desks for coloring, and individual snacks packed in their own Ziploc snack bags, and lots of sing-along tapes.

4. WIRED FOR PLAY Borrow a small tv/vcr and hook it up in the car so the kids can watch movies.With Red box or Blockbuster you can borrow them here and return along the way at other locations. Let them bring headphones and tapes or CDs they like. Get a couple of books on tape for the youngest kids that they really liked to listen to. The oldest can bring cards to play (like Uno, Go FIsh, a regular deck). Also pack a Frisbee, ball and gloves, and some bubbles in an easy-to-get-to place, so when stopping at a rest area you can all get a little exercise.

5. BOOKS & ACTIVITY BAGS Make a trip to the library and let each child pick out a couple of books for the ride. Pack an activity bag that straps onto the seat in front of the kids that are stocked with papers for drawing, activity books, and colored pencils (crayons melt in hot cars). Also bring a family activity bag with small magnetic games like checkers, Chinese checkers, etc.

6. MODEL MAGIC Take a couple of packages of multi-colored pipe cleaners and several packages of Crayola Model Magic which sticks to itself but not to the interior of the car or the kids’ clothes, it doesn’t blend unless the kids make it blend. Any little crumbles can just be brushed out or vacuumed away.

7. NIGHTTIME TRAVEL Even if it is a baby toy, kids have fun with ANYTHING that lights up. The dollar store has neon glow bracelets and sticks (the kind you’d purchase at an amusement park or nighttime parade) that kids can connect and make bracelets or necklaces out of. Glow-in-the-dark star stickers are fun to get out too. Have them use their mini-flashlights on them to get them to shine. They can stick them above their seat in the car (if they are big enough), or you can have them do it before it gets dark when stopping for gasoline or something quick.

8. TRAVEL JOURNALS Create travel journals in a 3-prong folder. Print off info — state bird, state flag, state capital — on the states you will be vacationing in (and also driving through) from state Web sites. Print out coloring pages from free Web sites on subjects having to do with those states (a moose for Maine, seashells for the beach). And to stop the dreaded “Are we there yet?”print out a map of our route and highlight the roads, marking off the parts as we complete them.Take all of the printables, add a few sheets of lined paper, and start each new section of the journal with “Our Trip to … Summer 2012.” Then the kids add what time we left, where we stopped, what we saw on the way, etc. They now have a collection of memories in one folder of all our trips.

9. TRAVEL BINGO Purchase auto bingo boards for sale, or just make them yourself and get the kids to help out.

10. SMALL SURPRISES Prepare small gifts along the way to keep the children occupied. Wrap them and tell the kids they will receive a gift if they are well behaved until the next stop.

11. CAR LICENSE GAME Play the car license game with them. Older kids can identify the states, and younger ones can look for the different colors, letters or numbers.

12. MAD LIBS Buy some Mad Libs. The kids will take turns filling in the answers and will love reading the funny stories

Inside games to play

It’s difficult when the weather is too hot for kids to play outside and get all of that great kid energy out.

JuggleGirl

Here are some indoor physical activity ideas:

  • Create an indoor obstacle course in the largest, kid safe room in the house (playroom, basement, family room, etc.)  Use large cushions and toys to create places for kids to climb over and under.
  • Turn on some music (kid music or other music that is appropriate) and dance.
  • Play freeze dance. Tell the kids to dance when you turn the music on and to stop dancing when the music stops.  Let the kids take turns being the leader,  controlling the music.
  • Do the limbo dance.  Play music and challenge the kids to go under the limbo pole as it gets lower and lower.

kids_dancing

  • Make paper airplanes and see how far they can fly.  Remind the kids not to throw them at other other people.
  • Mark small squares on the floor and challenge the kids to see who can stay on their spot the longest.  Make it tougher for older kids by having them stand on one foot.
  • Play ball toss games with soft items like rolled up socks.   The younger the children the larger the container they are tossing into should be.  For very young kids, use a laundry basket.  For older kids, use something smaller like a box, basket or large plastic mixing bowl.
  • Build a fort using blanket and furniture like chairs and tables.  Or if the kids have a small play tent put that up.
  • Play sports charades.  Charades is a game where you act out something while people try to guess.  You can do this with sports actions, using no equipment, just making the actions.  For example – hitting a golf ball, pitching a baseball, serving a tennis ball, bowling, etc.)
  • Jump rope. Jumping_rope.
  • Play with a hula hoop.
  • Try juggling, top spinning, or yo-yo contests.
  • Play hide and go seek.
  • Play “keep the balloon up”. Use one balloon per child or one balloon per small group. The group may add additional balloons as they gain control and awareness. *

* Safety Note – Balloons are a choking hazard, supervise children when playing with balloons and make sure to find and throw away any pieces of popped balloons.