Tag Archives: bonding activity

Summer Crafts for Kids #3: Gaudi-inspired Coaster

Since we’re always at the beach these days, we got to collect a lot of sea glass. At a certain point, we had one too many. So, we thought of another super simple craft to make use of these beautiful beach finds.

Level of Difficulty: Beginners

In this craft activity, you will need:

Used paper bowl (cleaned and dried)

Sea glass

Scissors

Silicon

Acrylic paint

Paint brush

What to Do:

  1. Cut the bottom of the paper bowl.
  2. Flip it and paint the sides with acrylic paint. Set aside to dry.
  3. Once the paint is dry, fill the bottom with silicon. (Note: silicon sets very quickly so your sea glass pieces should be on hand).
  4. Decorate with sea glass. Leave overnight to dry.

Summer Crafts for Kids #2: Bohemian Keychain

As a tourist in a foreign country, I found it very challenging to engage my child in crafts, while making sure that 1.) we don’t spend on too many craft supplies that we can’t bring home and 2. We also don’t create more garbage.

As a result of some creative thinking, we came out with this very simple and whimsical accessory.

Level of Difficulty: Beginners. This is literally a 5-minute craft. The only part that took long was for the glue to dry.

In this craft activity, you will need:

0.5 cm wide ribbons, cut into 8 cm strips  (the ones we had on hand were from clothing tags)

Jump ring

All purpose glue

Feathers (*optional. We picked these feathers on the beach)

What to Do:

  1. Get a strip and fold into half.
  2. Attach to the jump ring using a cow hitch knot.
  3. Continue to do this until you’ve covered about half of the jump ring.
  4. To achieve a more bohemian look, you can also glue feathers.

 

Summer Crafts for Kids #1: Aqua Beads

It’s summer once again and for parents, this means that a lot of time will be spent on thinking of what to do with the kids at home. Luckily, I’ve discovered that there are a lot of simple and relatively inexpensive crafts to do with the kiddos to make sure that their time is occupied on meaningful endeavors, and not just mindless play (eg. Internet surfing, etc.).

Level of Difficulty: Beginners

For this craft activity, you will need:

  • Aqua beads set (which includes templates, aqua beads, water spray, and layout tray)
  • Clean bottle with lid
  • Glue gun

What to Do:

  1. Put the layout tray on top of the bottle lid so that you can measure how big your design can be.
  2. Start putting the beads on the tray to make your design.
  3. Once you’re happy with the design, spritz the entire thing with water. Let it dry overnight as the beads will not attach properly if the water is not completely dry.
  4. Glue the pattern to the lid using glue gun.

The advantage of this craft is that the beads come in a variety of colors. They also sell beads by the pack. The disadvantage is that once the kids get a hang of making them, they can finish quite quickly. Challenge them to a game of making the most number of designs.

Watch out every Wednesday for a new set of summer crafts!

Simple Joys of Summer

Plucking away at petals
Playing love me-love me not
Armed with water guns we run
Sucking on ice when it’s hot

Making faces, tongues all out
Munching on sour, green mangoes
Stomping on mud, pounding clay
Painting on our little toes

Climbing the wall of your house
A quick glimpse of your brother
Drowning in dreams and giggles
Ah, the joys of my summer!

And so I begin…

Wow, after weeks of delay, I am finally ready to post my first “official” blog entry. I have tried blogging before, via Multiply (when Multiply was just a fun site, and not a business empire), and I think I tried once or twice to post something on Facebook.  But, I’ve always viewed these outlets as more of a social network thing that you occasionally blog in, not really a blog site.  And so after months of my husband’s convincing, I finally agreed to ‘try’ this blogging thing.  It is a fulfillment of one of the dreams I wrote, which is to make many stories for my daughter to read.  She absolutely loves reading, and at 6 years old, already writes her own short stories (mostly about My Little Pony).  As she progresses in her reading skills, I want to be there, adding fun and fantasy to this world.  At the same time, I also want this site to be filled with craft tutorials.  My daughter also loves to craft with me, and I just want mothers out there to have something that they can do together with their daughters.  So, here’s to many more future entries!  We will see if once a week, I can share either a short story or a craft tutorial.  Thanks for reading!  And so, I begin…