Category — Seasons & Holidays

Whether you’re Irish or not it’s fun to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a parade. You could have a parade in the neighborhood, at a family gathering or with just you and your grandkids. This is an easy and fun hat to make. You just use a white, syrofoam bowl or a regular paper bowl and decorate with markers. You could even cover it with foil and use permenent markers to decorate. Add a ribbon to tie and you’re ready for the parade. Be sure and take pictures to post on your blog. Get directions and more ideas at CRAYOLA

Here’s a fun activity for St. Patrick’s Day that can stimulate your child’s or grandchild’s love for reading and writing. Read a St. Patrick’s Day story then together with you grandchild, write a story or a poem on the shamrock writing page.
Download Shamrock Writing Page

Aren’t these darling. To create the heart shape, place a small marble or a 1/2-inch ball of aluminum foil between each liner and one side of the tin (a great job for kids). This will push the paper into the batter to form the notch in the heart.

GET RECIPE

This would be a great Valentine’s Day gift for a favorite teacher, a Mother’s Day gift or a “thank you” to someone special.
GET INSTRUCTIONS

You’ll Need: cardboard tubes (foil, paper towel or toilet paper), tissue paper, ribbon, stickers, markers, small trickets or candy treats.

Directions:
1. Cut the tube to size ( a toilet paper tube is the perfect size).
2. Fill the tube with trickets or candy.
3. Wrap tissue paper around the tube and tape or glue. Be sure to leave the tissue paper longer on the ends.
4. Gather the tissue paper together on each end and tie with a ribbon.
5. Decorate and use as a place card at your Valentine’s Day dinner.

I had this great idea for a Valentine’s Day breakfast – everything in the shape of a heart including the napkin. Well, it worked out to be easy for the toast and the fruit in a heart bowl, but the egg was another story. I put a cookie cutter in the frying pan and poured in the egg. I pressed the cookie cutter down hard with my hand so the egg wouldn’t seep out. That was fine until the metal cookie cutter got hot. When it was time to turn the egg, there was a problem. Of course it was sticking to the sides of the cookie cutter. I got a knife and loosened the edges and when I took the cookie cutter off it kept it shape, YEAH! I flipped it over and finished cooking. Was it worth it? Maybe if my grandkids were here to eat it.

Download Conversation Hearts Activity Graph

This is a fun activity to do with any colored candy but especially fun at Valentine’s to do with Conversation Hearts.
What you will need for each person:
A graphing sheet
Conversation Hearts
Before you begin estimate how many Conversation Hearts you have then check to see how close you were to the exact number.
1. Classify the hearts by color
2. Cut out the squares on the graphing sheet.
3. Color a square for each heart. If you have 8 pink hearts you color 8 squares pink.
4. Create a bar graph by placing all the squares with the same color together as shown in the photo.
5. Talk about the graph. Ask questions like; which color has the greatest or least squares? Are there any the same? How many more or less does one color have compared to another color? What is another way to classify the hearts.

During the winter months many birds benefit from fat in their diet so why not make a suet bell or suet pine cone bird feeder with your grandchildren.
You will need:
Fat (lard or drippings from a roast or bacon ). If you don’t have enough fat you can add unsalted peanut butter.
Filler (bird seed, dried fruit, cookie or cake crumbs).
For each ½ pound of fat you will need 1 pound of filler.
Paper cup
String
Make a small hole in the bottom of the paper cup and insert the string. Be sure it is long enough so you can hang the bell on a tree branch. Tie a not on the inside of the cup so the string won’t pull through. Leave some string hanging inside the paper cup.
Melt the fat in a heavy saucepan and add filler. Mix well. Let the mixture cool slightly then pour into paper cut. When the mixture has hardened tear off the paper cup. Hang on a branch and see what birds come.

There are lots of activities to do once the suet bell is hung.
1. Predict and count how many birds will come in 10 minutes.
2. Predict and count how many different birds will come.
3. Take a picture of a bird eating the suet bell and write a poem or a story.
4. When your grandchildren leave, keep an eye on the suet bell and call or write them about what you’ve noticed. How long until it was all eaten.
5. Make 2 bells, one to keep at your home and one for your grandchild to take home. They can call or write you about what they have noticed.
For a pine cone bird feeder, I used the same mixture and spread it all around the pine cone. Hang with string or wire.

More Bird Feeder Ideas

How cute is this for a Valentine treat and there’s only 3 ingredients !
GET RECIPE

This calendar has fun activities to do each day counting down to Valentine’s Day. Many of them are service oriented. You could even make up some of your own ideas.
PRINT COUNTDOWN CALENDAR