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A Domain of My Own
Like most moms, I can’t even go to the bathroom without getting interrupted, but I do have a domain of my own. Well, it’s a virtual domain, but it’s my very own. My blog has moved to http://lifeasafieldtrip.com. Click on the link, check it out and sign up for email notifications!
Spring is just around the corner!
Yesterday’s post Attention Snow Scrooges 2.0 may have led you believe that I’m not looking forward to spring, but I am! Spring is my favorite season and every year when the flowers start to poke through the soil, I think of Frog and Toad’s “The Corner”. I have always loved that story. I devoured Frog and Toad stories as a child and still think of them often (Anyone remember Frog and Toad struggling with willpower in “Cookies”?). Now that P is able to read them, he’s devouring them too. Tonight we’ll read “The Corner” together. Tomorrow we’ll start working on the garden, or as P likes to say, play in the dirt.
What are your favorite spring stories, activities, or traditions?
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Attention Snow Scrooges 2.0
Spring in Wisconsin
It’s that time of year again when the snow scrooges start to howl. The first day of spring has come and gone, but the cold weather, and sometimes snow, is still hanging on. It’s like this nearly every year and yet every year we’re surprised it’s still cold and snowy in March and April. And every year the complaining about the ice, snow and cold temperatures goes on and on. In 2010 I posted about snow scrooges, begging them to try changing their point of view. To try seeing our very long winter as something beautiful. I will try again. Here goes nothing.
Another family member came to stay with us in March. He came during March to experience winter and snow. Something he had never seen before. We introduced him to all things Wisconsin- cheese, booyah, fish fries, beer, hockey, and of course, SNOW. Do you know what he enjoyed most? Snow! Playing, walking, sledding, driving, doing anything in the snow.
I wish I could capture his experience and have all the snow scrooges see it through new eyes again. See it like they did as children when they woke up to a snow day and absolutely could not get their snow-pants on fast enough. In fact, I challenge you to spend one day with an open mind. Can you do it? Can you find the beauty and wonder in our Wisconsin “spring”? Try it for a day and leave me a comment letting me know how it went. I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it. 😉
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(Almost) No time for April Fools
Usually P and I take April Fool’s Day seriously. It’s our hilarious mission for a day to make people laugh all day long. because it falls the day after Easter this year I just don’t have time to go all out for P this year. This wacky banana in his lunch will have to do. I wish I could see his reaction when he opens his lunchbox today! I also managed to stuff the toes of his shoes and boots with paper towels and put a raisin in the opening of P’s toothpaste. April Fool’s Day 2013 won’t be a total loss!
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How to create your own “Crack the Easter Code” Easter egg hunt
up this code for awhile, but once I came up with the plan, executing it was pretty easy. I wanted it to be educational, but fun. It turned out to be super educational and FUN!
- Choose a hiding place– I chose the place to hide P’s Easter basket first so I could decide how many number/letter codes to make.
- Write the secret message– I used “Look under mom’s bed.” Five words I was fairly confident he could un-scramble and read (and not so many letters that he’d have to search all day for hidden eggs).
- Gather supplies– You’ll need as many eggs as you will have numbers/letters to decode, card-stock paper, and a glue stick, at the very least. I also bought a special Easter-themed pencil for P to work with while decoding and used some spare curling ribbon to tie up the letter.
- Make a decoder strip– I downloaded a super cute free font, PC Easter Egg and made a simple alphabet/number code strip in PowerPoint (so much more than a slide maker!).
- Make numbers– Using the decoder, I “spelled” out the message in numbers, making each word a different color so they’d be easier to sort and decode.
- Write a letter– Again, I used PowerPoint to create the basic letter, saved it as a jpg file and added details using picmonkey.
- Print, cut and paste– I cut out the two sides of the decoder, used a glue stick to glue them together, and cut out each number.
- Hide the eggs!– I rolled up the decoder and put it in one of larger eggs, then filled the rest of the eggs with numbers and hid them.
- Set out the letter- I rolled P’s letter and tied it with curling ribbon. I attached a tag and his special Easter pencil with another piece of ribbon and set it on the coffee table for him to find first thing Easter morning.
Our son declared this Easter AWESOME and I have to agree. It was so much fun creating the egg hunt. It was even more fun watching P do the egg hunt. He’s already hiding the eggs again so we can have another hunt and I’m already dreaming up next year’s hunt…
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And the green grass grows all around
It’s 27 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but it’s definitely spring inside this morning! This is by far the easiest science activity we’ve done in a long time…with the fastest and best payoff.
Here are our 5 simple ingredients to growing SPRING.
- One Goodwill clearance wine glass from the 70s.
- Small pebbles or rocks.
- Soil
- Wheat-grass seeds soaked in water overnight.
- Cool frog mister from the Target dollar bins.
I couldn’t ask for a better spring activity. It’s P’s job to mist them daily and report on any new growth. He checks it first thing everyday and reports with wonder and amazement.
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Easter Egg Hunt (or one more way to add stealth education to my son’s day)
Before our son was old enough to read we hid his Easter basket and played “Hot or Cold” to help him find it. One year I drew a map of the house and an X marks the spot. The next year I made up clues- Each time he found a clue, I read it and he solved it, eventually leading to the big basket reveal in the tub. Last year I made it a little more difficult hiding plastic Easter eggs around the house and yard. No clues to find the egg this time- it was way too time consuming coming up with those (rhyming) clues. Each egg had a few jelly beans and one letter in it. Once he found all the eggs he had to unscramble the letters to figure out the location of his Easter basket. He loved it. Now he’s imagining what challenge the Easter Bunny has in store for him this year.
This year will be more challenging. I’m moving towards making the hunt for the basket what he looks forward to most, rather than the candy. What he remembers when he talks about Easters past are the hunts and the strange places he’s found the eggs and baskets. Last night I stayed up late working on the rough draft of Cracking the Easter Code 2013. When he decodes the secret message at the end he’ll find in his basket a few bits of candy, healthier snacks, and an educational toy, but I think he’ll find the hunt the best part this year. What do you think?
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Still needs tweaking, but this is the letter he’ll find Easter morning.
Categories: Activities, Holiday, Kids
Tags: Easter, Easter Basket, Easter egg hunt, secret code
4 Comments
Cracking the Easter Code
Creating an Easter egg hunt that is challenging enough to be fun, but not so challenging that P gives up, may be harder than solving the code! What did I get myself into?
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