Friday, November 16, 2012

Family History

November is a super time to think about family history. The holiday season means families will get together. Some families members haven’t seen each other in a long time. It will be a time for sharing favorite family stories, remembering those who have gone on, and celebrating new members of the family.

What better time to focus on putting together a family tree. Your kids can share it with all the family at your family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

I am going to give you a few links to help you get started and hopefully give you ideas.

  • This site offers a free lapbook and video for making a family tree.
  • Mila’s Daydreams has ideas for making unique family trees.
  • Family Tree Kids has great ideas and activities to make designing a family tree totally fun.
  • DLTK offers printable templates
  • Genealogy for Kids has free, printable forms to help organize your genealogy records. Made especially for kids.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Pumpkin Play Dough

I found this great Fall recipe and thought I would share.

Ingredients for Basic Play Dough
1 cup flour
1 cup water
1/2 cup salt
3 tablespoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Food coloring (when you are creating basic play dough)

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a medium pan. Add water and oil. Cook on medium heat. Stir continuously. When the dough mix pulls away from the sides and forms into a large ball, the dough is ready to be placed in a small bowl to cool.

To create Pumpkin Play dough add the following to the basic play dough recipe listed above:

Add Pumpkin Pie Spice and orange food coloring to create dough that looks and smells like pumpkin pie.

Add graham cracker crumbs to get that pie crust smell as well.

Adding raw oats will correlate with a Harvest theme and create a new texture.

Mix in a few pumpkin seeds and have your child search for the seeds by manipulating the dough.

* Store in a small plastic container ( butter tubs, carry-out food containers, zip lock baggies). It should last a few weeks.