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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

It's Playtime: Colors of the Rainbow



It's almost spring!  All over the internet, snow activities are being replaced by bubbles and rainbows. Next month is the Holi Festival of Color which I think is a fantastic holiday and long to attend; sadly San Diego doesn't have one.  Instead, I'm honoring color by featuring some of the great color and rainbow activities posted on last week's It's Playtime.    

The Holi Festival is March 7th and Putti Prapancha is ready to help you celebrate The Festival of Color with several fun activities and links.  

Why not try some Rainbow Sponge Painting posted by hands on: as we grow.  

Color fun can be clean fun too!  I love this Bubble Bath Spray Painting from Growing a Jeweled Rose.  

Little Wonders' Days shared Rainbow Shaving Cream Painting

If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button." 



Now, on to this weeks play date! 
It's Playtime is a community and Thursday link-up hosted by:

* Rachele : Messy Kids (That's me!)
* Anna : The Imagination Tree
* Rachel : Quirky Momma
* Jamie : hands on : as we grow
* Jenny : Let the Children Play

How to Play :
* Link up a post about a playful learning experience enjoyed by kids.
* Give us love and pop a button into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly play date!


* Stop by one of our blogs every Thursday and add your link about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It's Playtime community.
* Each week the playtime hosts will choose favorite posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link to you, if featured.)
* Be sure to visit some of the links that catch your eye. Commenting on posts that you find interesting or inspiring is a wonderful way to develop your own playful community.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

It's Playtime: Woodworking

It's Playtime had a busy week with over 200 entries!  It was so hard to choose who to feature, so I went with my favorite post.  Yup, just 1 this week from Messy Kids.  Since woodworking has been so popular in our house lately, I chose this great post from Picklebums on Working with Wood.  I love the addition of the plastic bottle caps!

For being featured, they get to sport the special button:


Now, on to this weeks play date! 
It's Playtime is a community and Thursday link-up hosted by:

* Rachele : Messy Kids (That's me!)
* Anna : The Imagination Tree
* Rachel : Quirky Momma
* Jamie : hands on : as we grow
* Jenny : Let the Children Play

How to Play :
* Link up a post about a playful learning experience enjoyed by kids.
* Give us love and pop a button into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly play date!


* Stop by one of our blogs every Thursday and add your link about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It's Playtime community.
* Each week the playtime hosts will choose favorite posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link to you, if featured.)
* Be sure to visit some of the links that catch your eye. Commenting on posts that you find interesting or inspiring is a wonderful way to develop your own playful community.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

It's Playtime: Simple Fun


My dear readers, between The Heart Project, the My Suite Giveaway (there's still time to enter), and the TinkerLab Creative Paper Bag Challenge, I'm beat this week.  So for this week's It's Playtime, I'm keeping it simple....but fun!

Learners in Bloom shared how a $1 Plastic Mesh Baskets=Hours of Fun.  They include 3 great ideas that are not only fun, but develop fine motor skills and coordination.  

Getting Messy with Ms. Jessi showed us that Ribbon Dancing is way more fun then regular dancing.  She also explains how simple it was to make these lovely streamers (no sewing!)

If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button." 


Now, on to this weeks play date! 
It's Playtime is a community and Thursday link-up hosted by:

* Rachele : Messy Kids (That's me!)
* Anna : The Imagination Tree
* Rachel : Quirky Momma
* Jamie : hands on : as we grow
* Jenny : Let the Children Play

How to Play :
* Link up a post about a playful learning experience enjoyed by kids.
* Give us love and pop a button into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly play date!


* Stop by one of our blogs every Thursday and add your link about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It's Playtime community.
* Each week the playtime hosts will choose favorite posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link to you, if featured.)
* Be sure to visit some of the links that catch your eye. Commenting on posts that you find interesting or inspiring is a wonderful way to develop your own playful community.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Distressed Art: Paper Bag Challenge

Once again Tinker Lab has challenged and we've answered.  This time the challenge was...paper bags.  Of course one thinks of puppets and goodie bags.  But there is so much more out there.  My Messy Kids and I decided to try our hands at distressed art work using paper grocery sacks.  Here's how it went:

 You begin by cutting a side from the grocery sack.  Then wad the paper up, crunching it as much as possible.  Open it and begin drawing.
Michael insisted I draw with him.  
 Then be sure to leave your camera where your 4 year old can reach it...
 Next, wad the paper some more, then iron it flat.  Wad and iron, wad and iron, over and over until the art work is soft and distressed (or until your child decides he or she is done)
 It wasn't long before my son decided he was done....

 Let's see how my daughter does...
 Wad, wad, wad...
 Iron, iron, iron..."mom I think I'm done with this." (which really means, "I want to go watch T.V.")
 Ariel's kind of distressed art.  Some of the crayon melted!  

 When performed in it's entirety, this project creates soft, distressed paper.  If homeschooling, use it in conjunction with studying Native Americans.  Start by ripping a piece of paper from the bag.  Instead of free drawing, provide early N.A. symbols. for children to copy.  Then they wad and iron, wad and iron. The more wadding and ironing, the softer the paper becomes.  In the end, it will look like a piece of animal pelt with N.A. symbols painted on.  Since my kids bailed on me, hopefully, you get the idea.  

Tinkerlab
   

My Memories Suite Software Review & Giveaway


I'm a scrapbooker from way back.  Long before my daughter was born I went scrapbooking crazy: paper, punches, scissors, stickers, totes, magazines (for ideas), etc.  Anything related to scrapbooking I couldn't wait to get my hands on.  After she was born I found a wonderful group of moms who met every week to scrap and talk.  We all had babies, so some weeks were productive and some weren't.  But we met together, shared our supplies, and had a great time.

But as it goes, life changed for me. I moved away from my scrapbooking ladies and my projects fell to the back burner.  Over the years I've thought about pulling my giant tote from the garage and restarting, but now with 2 kids, it's just so much work!  That was, until now....

Scrapbooking has become digitalized!  No more printing pictures, cumbersome tote, or tons of money wasted on stickers I'll never use (I'm also a former sticker collector in recovery).  Until recently, I had no idea there was scrapbook software available.  But now, with My Memories Suite, I am hooked!   
  Why am I so excited about this?  Look how beautiful my pictures look?  And it was easy.  There is a large selection of albums to choose from and each page is easy to change.  Pictures can be dragged and dropped into the photo boxes and additional pictures can be added (which I did above) any where you choose.  There are spaces for titles and journaling if you choose to use them, or simply delete what you don't want.  Each decorative element can be moved, copied, pasted, deleted, etc.    The tool box makes it easy to add embellishments, shapes, calendars, hotspots, and even music!  Need more pages in your albums?  Not a problem!  Copy existing layouts, mirror them, or add pages from other albums.   
My Memories digital scrapbooking software allows scrapbooking to be as simple or as complicated as you desire.  There's even a feature which will grab photos from your chosen file and randomly place them in the album of your choice.  You can literally build an album in seconds!  I chose not to do that... but I could if I wanted!  
When it comes time to share your album, you are loaded with choices.  You can print the pages (I have a high quality laser printer and I printed a sheet onto regular 8.5"X 11" and it was beautiful!), export them to JPEG (which is how you are seeing them now), turn it into a movie, add it to an ipod, etc.  I love the variety of sharing options.  

Now here is what excited me last night...the desk top computer I normally use died yesterday.  I had installed My Memories Suite onto that computer because it's where I also store my photos.  No need to panic though because My Memories stores your downloaded items on their site!  So while on my laptop, I went to the site, redownloaded the software, and was able to start fresh on my project (also thanks to  Google and Picasa).  But....had I gotten far enough with my previous album, I could have downloaded it to the My Memories site where it would be saved for people to view (and would have saved me a lot of work!).  

Now do you see why I'm so excited about this product?!  

Ok, now here's the part you really want to know about...the giveaway!  
One winner will be chosen randomly to receive a promo code good for the downloadable version of My Memories Suite (a $39.97 USD value!) Software available worldwide but intended for English language computers.  Platforms include: Windows 7, Vista, XP, Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later.

To Enter to Win:
  1. Contest open to Messy Kids readers.  Please follow via Google Friend Connect before entering.  Then go to https://www.mymemories.com/ and pick out your favorite digital scrapbooking kit.  Leave a comment below telling me which one you like best.   
For Additional Entries:
  1. Follow the My Memories Blog.  Leave a comment below saying you did so.
  2. Follow the My Memories FB page.  Leave a comment below.  
  3. Follow My Memories on Twitter.  Leave a comment below.  
  4. Follow Messy Kids on Twitter.  Leave a comment below.  
  5. Follow Messy Kids on FB.  Leave a comment below.  
  6. Share this giveaway on FB or Twitter.  Leave a comment below.  
Entries close February 14th at 10:00 p.m. PST  

All readers can use the following code: STMMMS40986 good for $10 off the purchase of the My Memories Suite software + an additional $10 towards the MyMemories.com store.  Feel free to share with your friends and family!  

Friday, February 3, 2012

Mommy & Me Book Club: Winter


*This article contains affiliate links

With the new year I decided it was time to host a Mommy & Me Book Club at my house once a month.  The idea came to me last year when I came across a great blog called The Mommy & Me Book Club.  They read books, create art, and have fun activities all relating to a theme.  As a former preschool teacher, this sounded like a lot of fun and very doable at my home.

I am a member of a super mom's group I found on Meetup.com  This is a great place to find a play group (or any kind of group) in your area.  I talked to one of the leaders and she added me to the calendar.

For January, our theme was winter/snow:

We read:
    

 I created a winter sensory bowl using epson salt, blue rice, and snowflake confetti
Then I added scoops, bowls, Arctic animals, and a 2nd bowl filled with shredded white paper, just for fun.

For art, the kids created "snow" pictures using white paint and corks.  While the paint was wet, I gave them a small amount of silver glitter (in a bowl) to sprinkle on the page.  

Then it was snack time.  We created Cinnamon Snowflakes.  The recipe was from Come Together Kids and pinned on Pinterest.  Due to the age of the kids, I did the cutting, but they were able to shake on the cinnamon and sugar.  I have an adorable, clear, bear shaped shaker.  I mix cinnamon and sugar to keep inside.  It was perfect for the kids to use.  They loved this treat so much I couldn't make enough of them.  The parents too!    

So that was our first Mommy & Me Book Club!  It was a small group which was good for a first time.  For February, I'm expecting a much larger group and I'm very nervous.  The kids loved playing together and the moms loved the time to talk.  It's a win, win!  


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