I have always been in awe of people with creatively carved Halloween pumpkins. At our house, we are lucky to get two eye triangles of approximately the same size. But this is my year! World Wildlife Fund has posted cute, simple wildlife pumpkin stencils on the web. There are several designs: a monarch butterfly, dolphins, gorillas, coral, polar bears, rhinos, tigers, turtles, the African plain, and of course the WWF panda. For all stencils, the pattern must be printed, taped to the pumpkin, then holes are poked around the pattern. The pumpkin is cut using the pattern, leaving you with a beautiful, creative pumpkin! Easy, impressive, and FREE. And what kid doesn’t love animals?  Read the rest of this post...

Ahh, science. Here at our house, we are quite comfortable with our geekiness and make an effort to pass it along to the kids. While it’s easy to talk about things like littering while on a walk or the birds that visit the backyard, the subject of energy takes some creativity. The people at OWI have been building solar powered toys since 1980, and their easy to build kit gave us the perfect opportunity to talk about energy sources and renewable vs. non-renewable energy, right in our own kitchen. OWI sent the Five Hens a Robotikit 6 in 1 Educational Solar Kit (retail price $19.95) to try out, and the Little Red family was lucky enough to play with it.  Read the rest of this post...

Every week I go to the library and check out about 15 children’s books to read at night to my children.  Well this week, one of the books, Silly Billy by Anthony Browne, had a big impact, quite by accident, with our family.  This book is about a little boy who worries a lot.  His grandmother gives him some worry dolls to put under his pillow.  The story explains that you are suppose to give each doll one of your worries and they will do the worrying for you while you sleep. When we were done reading, my son asked me if we could make some worry dolls.  This surprised me. I asked him if he worried about things and he said he did.  I had no idea he worried and of course this worried me.  You know how us moms can be, I flew into a panic that my son had anxiety issues.  After I calmed down, we all agreed to make worry dolls the next day.  Read the rest of this post...

My little guy and I just had a blast making playdough together. It’s a fun, easy activity that everybody can help with, is easy to clean up, and has an end result you can enjoy for a long time. And it’s cheap to make! You will probably have to experiment with colors a bit. My son wanted orange, and we had to add a lot of yellow before it didn’t look like a big spaghetti dinner followed by a stomach virus. I got my recipe from Discovery Toys a long time ago.  Read the rest of this post...