Parenting Tips: Old Movies To Share With Your Kids

By Deborah Pace Rowley

My husband started a tradition in our family that has become a cherished part of our Christmas celebration and continues throughout the year. Many years ago, Lin decided that he wanted to introduce the movies of his childhood to his children. So for Christmas he purchased a set of old Marx brothers movies and wrapped them up as a gift for the "Rowley Family" from Santa. On Christmas afternoon, we gathered our skeptical young family into the family room where we watched the first movie together. Before too long it was hard to tell who was laughing more.... Dad or the kids! Throughout the rest of that year, we watched 6 or 7 more Marx brothers movies together. The following Christmas we got another set of Marx brothers movies to enjoy. Over the next few years we watched the entire Marx brothers collection. Joseph began to do a mean Groucho Marx impression and we had a whole language of movie quotes and jokes to share together.

After the Marx brothers, we moved on to Elvis Presley and Dad shared 5 or 6 classic Elvis films. Then he introduced Cary Grant. Our kids were becoming quite cultured! Last year Dad purchased the complete set of Hogan's Heroes episodes. Now I regularly hear the kids coaxing their Dad into watching "just one episode" before bed.  I can hear them laughing together in the other room as I type this post. This has become such a fun tradition for our family and has brought my husband and his kids so close together.  I am sure most everyone has purchased a new DVD or two to put under the tree. Have you considered some old movies or T.V. shows from your childhood?

Perhaps you didn't watch the Marx brothers or Hogan's Heroes when you were young. How about the Three Stooges or Charlie Chaplin? We have friends who have purchased several seasons of Gilligan's Island to share with their kids. We know other friends who have the "I Love Lucy" Complete Set. There are so many fun shows from the past that are available now. What about "Scooby Doo" or "I Dream of Jeanie" or "The Brady Bunch." Think about the great moral lessons that are found in 'The Andy Griffith Show." The great thing about most of these shows is that they are clean and appropriate for children of all ages. Chances are if you liked a show as a child, your kids will love it too. Try putting a blast from the past under your tree this year!

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Preschool Activities: The Best Homemade Ornaments

By Deborah Pace Rowley

I love adding new homemade ornaments to my Christmas tree. If my children didn't bring home a personalized ornament from preschool or kindergarten, I would usually whip out a few simple supplies and we would have an ornament making session of our own. I particularly love homemade ornaments that include pictures of my children. I love how each ornament perfectly captures their age, their image, and their artistic abilities all at one time. Each time I hang one on the tree, I am transported back in time. 

Here are a few of my favorite ornaments from the past. 

This simple ornament is a fun foam shape in the front and back. A cookie cutter was used to trace the opening for the photo.  Don't forget to embellish the ornament by letting your child dip the tip of his or her finger in glitter paint!

Popsicles sticks were glued together to form this simple frame. Then some lose puzzle pieces were painted red and glued in place. Simple, cute, done.

Shannon added some extra touches to this popsicle stick frame. She decorated it herself with a simple pattern of Christmas bulbs with colored pencils. It was the perfect frame for a photo of her "dressed" in a tangled string of lights. Dad loves this photo and the memories it recalls!

The pieces of this ornament were purchased from Oriental Trading Company for $4.99 for a set of 12. See some examples here.We used them at an extended family Christmas party to keep the kids occupied while the adults were finishing dinner. I love this ornament because it includes the year that it was made and it has a picture of my daughter with her Great Grandma Virginia Pace. We have an ornament like this for each of my children. Now that their Grandma G.G. is gone, this cheap frame has become a keepsake ornament because of the picture inside.

I love this ornament that Natalie brought home from kindergarten. Her teacher let the children embellish a cardboard frame by applying modge-podge to some pieces of festive paper towel. Creative, right? I love how she put each child in a Santa hat before taking their picture for this cute and simple ornament. Love it!  

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Toddler Activities: Baby Sock Nativity

By: Deborah Pace Rowley

I loved to watch my little ones play with a simple nativity. It was so sweet to see them position the characters around the baby Jesus and even place the baby in an unsuspecting shepherd's arms. If you don't have a simple child-friendly nativity set, it is easy to make one with supplies you probably already have on hand.

Here is a toilet roll nativity that would be easy to color and assemble.

Here is a 2-D nativity that can be printed out and laminated and then positioned with magnets so your toddler can move the figures around on a cookie sheet or magnet board.

Our nativity was made with 3 pairs of baby socks stuffed with batting. Baby Jesus and the sheep were made from cutting one of the socks in half. Then we used old fabric scraps, ribbon and yarn to make the head coverings and added puff paint facial features. We used tacky glue to stick everything in place.

The total cost for this nativity was $2.55 (the cost of the baby socks.) Kate and I worked for about an hour creating it for Anniston. We had so much fun. Katie wanted me to tell you that the only rule is to be creative and let your imagination run wild! You don't have to do it exactly the same way that we did.

If you don't want to make a complete nativity, one of my daughters brought home the cutest baby Jesus from her nursery class. It was made with a pink pearl eraser wrapped in a kleenex and then nestled in some raffia in a match box.

This is the cutest video about a child who uses her Barbies and other supplies to build the sweetest nativity. She reminds her parents about the meaning behind the holiday in the process. If you haven't seen it already, please take two minutes to watch it. Watch it Here. It really helps me feel the spirit of the season.

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Elementary Activities: Practicing Honesty When Receiving Gifts

By Tiffany Rudd

If you read our posts here and here about lying, you know that we've really tried to teach our kids to be honest and create an environment where they are free to tell the truth. This does, however, sometimes cause a slight problem when it comes to the holidays and gift receiving. 

A few years ago my sweet, talkative and usually very honest son, was constantly creating awkward moments with his unintentionally unkind reactions to presents. Responses like "I already have one of these!" or "This isn't really what I wanted," were pretty embarrassing. 

I remember debating what to do and being stumped, because, really, teaching him to tell a lie like, "This is the best gift I've ever gotten!" wouldn't exactly teach a life lesson I was happy about.

 Luckily, I read an article about teaching kids how to receive gifts (maybe in Family Fun?) and realized that cringe worthy honesty and lying weren't the only two options. The next day our annual "Gift Receiving Practice Night" was born. I gathered a gift bag for each member of the family and instructed everyone to run around the house and choose any object to "give" as a gift. Then we traded bags and took turns opening them up. We talked about looking for honestly kind things we could say about each item and the right way to say thank you. For example, when you open up a dish towel, you don't mention how boring it may be, but you don't lie and say you'll have fun playing with it either. You may comment on how much you love the color or how soft it feels, or how great it will be for drying the dishes. Anything positive but still honest. 

It turned about to be incredibly fun and it is still one of our favorite holiday kick-off traditions. The kids have fun picking items, like toothbrushes, that they know will be tricky to be positive about and we always get a good laugh out of some silly comments. But, the best part is, we haven't had an embarrassing response to a gift since our first practice night!

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Preschool Activities: Letter of the Week {Ff}

By Tiffany Rudd

Snack Ideas:
      * Fruit Faces: I found the idea for these fruit faces here. Both Brooklyn and Anniston love these and Brooklyn loves to help make them. Since kids eat fun food so much quicker, I've started including vegetable faces with lunch too. Even they have been a hit.

Favorite Books:

      * The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister - This is one of my favorite books to read aloud to my kids and my preschoolers. It is such a cute story that also teaches an important lesson on friendship. With my preschool class we usually color or paint a rainbow fish like this one and add glitter paint. I just saw the idea for this one made out an old CD on pinterest and I think I'll have to try this one next year. Super cute.

      * The Foot Book by Dr Seuss

Crafts:
      * Paper Plate Frogs - All you need for this fun craft is a paper plate, some markers or paint (unless you happen to have a green paper plate), a little construction paper and a red party blower. First cut a hole big enough for the blower in the middle of the plate. Then just have your preschooler paint or color one side of the plate green and the other red. Add pop-up construction paper eyes and the red party blower and you have a super cute and fun frog.

      * Footy Fish - I just saw this super cute idea over at Happy Day Preschool. Just a simple footprint turned into a fun and cute fish.

      * I also love this Feather Cover Letter F Craft. If you don't have any, you can buy cheap feathers at Oriental Trading. There are so many fun educational activities with feathers, one of these days I'll have to do a separate post.

Activities:
      * Fish Pond - Deb posted this fun activity last summer. It is always a favorite and it a great way to review shapes, colors and numbers. You can also print out these alphabet fish to review the letters and their sounds. Click on the photo below to read the whole post.

Printables:

      * Click on the photos to print out your Ff Flash Card and Writing Practice Worksheet

 

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Toddler Activities: Santa Countdown Calendar

By Deborah Pace Rowley

It is so fun to share the Christmas season with toddlers who are just starting to understand the whole magical event. This can also challenging because they want to participate in all aspects of the holiday but many things are too fragile and too breakable for little hands. I have always tried to have a toddler-friendly advent calendar that was just for the youngest children in our family. This kept them excited and involved and kept me from worrying about our fancier advent tree with heirloom ornaments.

The easiest type of advent calendar for toddlers involves cotton balls that can be glued onto Santa's beard-- one for each day. This is an example of a calendar I used with Melissa and Shannon.

For their calendar I had placed a heart around every third or fourth day. For example--- there was a heart around the 4th, 7th, 11th, 14th, 18th and 21st. On the days that had a heart, we did something special such as going to see Santa at the mall or shopping for a present for Daddy. Sometimes I had wrapped a new Christmas coloring book or a new Christmas DVD that they could open on the day with the heart. Spacing out the celebration by adding hearts to the calendar helped make the long wait until Santa arrived a little bit easier.

I have included a printable Santa Countdown Calendar for you here.  All you need to do if you want to add mini celebrations is choose 6 dates spaced throughout the month and draw a heart around those dates on the calendar. Check your schedule and choose dates that are relatively free if you are planning an outing. Visit the dollar store and wrap up 6 small gifts if you prefer that option or choose a combination of the two.

Now all you need are cotton balls and a glue stick. Put up the calendar at toddler eye level and help your child stick on one cotton ball first thing each morning as her or she gets out of bed. This is a great time to practice numbers. You can also help your toddler count how many days are left before Christmas or the next heart. Hopefully this calendar will help the days fly by! Christmas will be here before they know it. (Isn't that right, Moms.....?!*&#)



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Elementary Activities: Squeak, Piggy, Squeak

By Deborah Pace Rowley

One of our favorite games to play around the holidays is "Squeak, Piggy, Squeak. This was another fun game that I discovered in Family Fun magazine. We like to play this game after a family dinner when we have lots of victims and all the adults are in the mood to relax on the couch but the kids still need to be entertained. Once again, games like this are great teaching tools. This game particularly can help shy children become more comfortable in awkward social settings. Then of course, there is the lesson on how to disguise your voice. That skill that will be valuable for......prank calling? Oh, never mind!

All you need is a blindfold and a couch cushion. Blindfold one person. Once It is blindfolded, have family members switch seats and move around on the couch or on chairs that have been set in a circle. Give It a pillow and gently lead him or her over to the edge of the couch. He or she must move down the couch and use the pillow to sit on someone's lap. (The pillow is in place so that you can't tell who you are sitting on based on the size or shape of the lap.) Once It has sat down, he says, "Squeak, Piggy, Squeak!" The person he is sitting on then must make a pig noise that is designed to be as deceptive as possible and disguise his or her voice. It then tries to guess who the pig is. If It guesses correctly, then the person he guessed becomes it. If It guesses incorrectly, he must move on to another lap and try again.

The funniest thing about this game is how hard it is to keep from laughing while you try to squeak. Invariably we give ourselves away by the giggle and the oink! Try it this Thanksgiving with your family and see.

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Preschool Activities: Our Top 10 Favorite Educational Gifts {For Preschoolers}

By Tiffany Rudd

Now that we've posted our favorite educational gifts for elementary age kids and toddlers, it's time for preschoolers!! Obviously, as a preschool teacher, 3 & 4 year olds are special to me. There are so many fun and educational toys for this age, I'm excited to share my favorites with you.

1. Pretend Play Cash Register and Play Money: These are hands down the most used toys in my preschool. My kids love and use them a lot too. I love how good they are at encouraging imaginative play, which is so important at this age. We've had stores, ice cream shops, restaurants, garage sales and even an animal hospital using these fun toys.

2. Play Kitchen: You'll notice that there are quite a few toys on my list that encourage imaginative play. I've read study after study showing the benefits of creative play. Our play kitchen is another toy that encourages imagination and gets a lot of use at our house. And, it doesn't have to be a super expensive version to be fun. We own this American Plastics Homestyle Kitchen which is $30 at Walmart and has worked great.

3. Letter Factory Phonics: I've mentioned in the past how much I love the LeapFrog Letter Factory movie. We own the Fridge Phonics set that goes with it and love it just as much. We use them constantly to practice letters and their sounds, build words, and practice alphabetical order. Brooklyn asks to play with them alone a lot too. They also have a set called Letter Factory Phonics that isn't magnetic.

4. Butterfly Garden: I promise your child will absolutely love watching caterpillars grow and then turn into butterflies in this super fun toy. We've re-ordered caterpillars 3 times now and it is always a hit!

5. Games: Games are fantastic for learning while having fun and practicing social skills. Zingo, Sequence for Kids, and Uno Moo are a few of the favorites at my house.

6. Lacing Beads: Lacing is a great way for preschoolers to develop the fine motor skills needed for cutting and holding a pencil correctly. We have a cute Melissa & Doug Set similar to these Lacing Beads in a Box that get used constantly. This Wooden Bead Set and these Lacing Cards would be great too.

7. See & Spell: Brooklyn is just starting to sound out and show interest in writing. We have an old set of these spelling cards that she asks to play with quite a bit. It's fun to see her skills improving.

8. Pattern Blocks: This is yet another classic that is always popular with my preschoolers. You can even print out and laminate new cards to go with them for free here.

9. Pretend Play School Kit: Playing school is a favorite at our house. We have this School Set and it has been loved and well worn.

10. Pretend Play Dr Kit: Okay, just one more imaginative play toy, I promise. :) We got this inexpensive Fisher Price Medical Kit when our oldest was 3 or 4 and it still gets constant use. Like I keep saying, the classics are classic for a reason. If your looking for a little bigger set, this one from Learning Resources looks super cute.

Well, I hope these lists help with your Christmas shopping this year. Happy Thanksgiving and happy shopping! :)

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