Camp Mom - Me & My Family

I know it's the end of summer vacation for most (I survived! I'm still here!!!), and some of you may have even sent your kids back to school already, but before you know it, the winter holidays will be here, and you better be prepared than sorry, so... What's better than another day of Camp Mom? We already had Nature Day and Art Day, and today I invite you to join us for a family day.

To start the day, we talked about their favorite things. I asked them to take five minutes to walk around the house and collect their favorite things. Then we used some of these items to create a self portrait.

She used hearts, glitters and princesses, of course...

He used a spaceship we made a long time ago, a card of his favorite online game, playmobil images and... Glitters!

Then we created a family board game. We began with planning how the board will look like, then created the spaces, the chance cards and the rules. The idea was that everything should be related to our family (the spaces on the board contain dinosaurs and soccer for him, princesses and fairies for her and glitters for both. The cards require family knowledge like her favorite outfit, his favorite food and Granma's special pancakes recipe). We even used Das to make the small tokens ourselves. 

Then we played a few times, of course, and I'm proud to say that even now, 2 weeks later, it's still one of the favorite games for all the family members.

Then we made secret notebooks. Each got a simple notebook, and I laid on the table lots and lots of scrap goodies, that usually are off limits for them. Half an hour later they each had a notebook decorated exactly like they wanted it to be. Now, the idea of a secret notebook is very simple - they can write (or draw) anything they want. It can be something that is just too difficult to say out loud or just something they want to tell Mom or Dad. Then they place it on Mom or Dad's pillow. Mom or Dad then reply back and place it back on the kid's pillow.

Last thing we made that day was a family phone book for each, with numbers for Mom, Dad, grandmothers, uncles and aunties and some friends as well. 

Have a successful, interesting and pleasant school year!

Camp Mom - Summer Activities for Kids. Art Day

Were having another Camp Mom Day today! After playing in the nature, we're moving on to mommy's favorite day - it's art day! I know, The Boy wanted a sport day, The Girl wanted a princess or fairies day (gee, are we gender appropriate or what?...), but mommy wants an art day, so mommy will get an art day.

We opened the day with a book. It's one of my (and their) favorite art books for kids, Picasso's Trousers. We bought it in the amazing shop at the Tate Modern, but you can also get it from Amazon as well. The book not only features Picasso's masterpieces, but also teaches the kids that art is what you want it to be.

Then we decided we also want to be Picasso. So the kids got photos of themselves in size A4, and on the table I placed scissors, glue and some other materials that I've been collecting for our craft table. The instructions were very simple - (1) Create a new self portrait from the photo (2) You can do ANYTHING. In the beginning it was a bit hard for them, but as the scissors were cutting the first line, it all became easy.

Here's his finished one -

And hers...

Then we talked about pointillism and tried it ourselves using Q-tips and gouache paints.

Then we moved on to the kitchen and played with fondant (that's edible art, mind you :) )

With this Boy in the house, not much fondant left to work with...

After washing hands, each child got a shirt and markers for fabric. Confession - this was when they've had it and asked to watch TV instead... The shirts still wait unfinished in my craft room...

While they were having lunch (and getting some TV time…), I drew frames in different sizes and shapes on pieces of paper . When they were ready again, they drew inside the frames whatever they wanted.

Yay! Finally I get to participate as well!...

Then we made a sign for our museum and hung it on the door and hung the art pieces they made around the house. Can you believe that I forgot to take pictures?!

This was the end of the day for us, but you can take this subject to different directions. Want some ideas? The Artful Parent is one of my favorite websites EVER. It has so many ideas, you won't be able to stop browsing... If you know other similar website, please share in the comments :)

* This post contains affiliate links. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Camp Mom - Summer Activities for Kids. Nature Day

Summer vacation to me is like a cute monster. On one hand, it's scary. On the other hand, it's cute and I can't wait to see it up close. I'm now an experienced mother (crazy!), so I already know that the more you plan ahead, the more difficult this vacation will be. But if you don't plan ahead, well, good luck to you!
So some of the days I plan ahead and some I'm just being spontaneous. Those planned days are our Camp Mom days,  and the kids really love them ("Mommy, what are we doing today in Camp Mom?").

First Camp Mom day this year was nature day. Since it's really really hot here, I had no plans to go to "real" nature. Instead we brought nature to our backyard.
We opened the day with a nature scavenger hunt. They had to find things like a big flower, a small flower, twigs, something living (which we didn't touch), something that smells good, something pink and more.

Then we picked flowers in different colors. The goal was to make paint out of flowers. We talked about how people painted before you could just go to a store and buy paint, and we tried to brainstorm methods of paint making. We also added dirt and leaves to our experiment.

Then we crushed everything...

I searched online and found that mixing flowers with egg yolk should work. I thought about trying to cook the flowers, but that would make too much mess, and our house is messy enough as it is, so we didn't cook.
Instead we just mixed the flowers with the egg yolk and even though some didn't work well, some were great and we could actually paint with them!

Now to what I loved most - we made mud soup! We just mixed soil with water and whatever else we could find. The Girl loved dipping her hands inside, The Boy mainly gave us instructions from a safe distance and The Baby wouldn't even go near... And I thought we're going to have a nice family mud bath :)

We used the mud and some twigs we found to make a bird nest.

And if we're going to have birds, they need to eat something. So we took an empty milk carton, cut openings, stuck in a stick (so that the birds can stand) and painted.

After it dried, we filled with birdseed and hung it outside.

At the end of the day, they each got 5 minutes with mommy and daddy's camera (that's really special for them!) and took pictures of nature as they see it. I'll skip the pictures of the house, the cat and all the blurry pictures, and show you just one picture of each.

Him.

Her.

Enjoy the rest of your vacation!