Kathreen From Whipup kindly sent us this holiday idea.

Hi Kiddley readers, Kath here again from Whipup, doing a bit of a fill in spot this time about Traveling With Kids!

Lately, now that summer is upon us in Australia, me and the family have been a doing the occasional weekend getaway. We love going camping, that is, before we had kids we used to love to go camping, but for the last few years we haven’t felt adventurous enough to challenge ourselves quite that far. The trials of parenthood and working seem to have sapped all of our energy so that organising a camping trip just seemed too big. But now the kids are a bit older (4 & 6) and are more or less self sufficient in the basics, we have packed up the car and headed to the beach, not your usual all-the-modcons caravan park either, but a more basic no-toilet no-shower sort of place. And the kids love it, are in their element in fact. Running around naked and dirty, cooking by the camp fire, meeting other kids, staying up late – whats not to love?

But camping with kids is not all fun and games (not for the parents anyway), here some suggestions to a successful camping trip with kids.

1. Take activity books/colouring in books/drawing books etc, board games or card games (especially essential if it rains) (see our previous post on activity bags for more ideas – Ed.)

2. mp3 player for the trip down

3. Comfortable sleeping mats and sleeping bags are really essential (for the adults anyway)

4. Food – easy to prepare food for the hungry family, I find a pre-prepared frozen bolognaise sauce to be essential, as are sausages and bacon, baked beans and tinned tuna

5. Treats – of course, what camping trip is complete without chocolate and marshmallows – toasting marshmallows on the open fire is fun! (if a little dangerous, don’t forget to supervise those mini pyromaniacs)

6. Wine, whiskey or whatever – once those kiddies are asleep, sitting with a glass of something by the campfire under the stars is really magical

7. Safety – make sure you explain all the hazards in the vicinity – for us the main things are snakes, spiders and jellyfish – what are your hazards?

8. Have some jobs for the kids to do – setting up camp with eager excited children is not as easy as you might think – so instead of getting impatient and annoyed, give the kids a job to do – something that is totally non-essential and indestructible like setting up the camping chairs or handing you the tent pegs

9. Action and fun – make sure there is kid friendly stuff to do, we like to go camping at the beach where we can go surfing, rock exploring, fishing, hiking into the bush, canoing or searching for shells

10. Be prepared to enjoy your kids and listen to your senses. Throw away city impatience, schedules and stresses and try try to relax

Check out these resources for camping with kids:
Canoe camping with kids
Love the outdoors
Outdoor places

Myra From My Little Mochi sent us this great craft and is the last in our Advent calendar ideas:

Hello! I’m Myra from My Little Mochi. Here’s a last minute advent calendar that you can put together fairly quickly with an ink jet printer, a little bit of folding and cutting, and materials you probably already have around the house. It also makes a nice gift or goodie bag that can be used throughout the holiday season.

You will need:

Color ink jet printer
8 1/2″ x 11″ white paper (or A4 but you will need to trim down the paper to 8 1/2″x 11″ – Ed.)
Scissors
Glue or tape
Black construction paper

1. Print out 24 copies of the snowman PDF file onto 8 1/2″ x 11″ (or A4) paper.

2. Follow the folding instructions provided.

3. Once all the folds have been completed, place snowman face down and bring the left and right columns toward the middle while simultaneously bringing the top and bottom up toward the middle and you should now have a little folded gift bag. Fill as desired.

4. Use a pen to number the snowmen or cut out countdown numbers provided in the PDF file and attach. I glued mine to the scarf knot.

5. Trace the hat pattern template onto black construction paper and cut out 24 hats or print optional black hat provided.

6. Glue or tape the hat to the top of the folded snowman to hold bag closed.

And you’re done! Some display ideas:

- line them up on a shelf or mantle
- pin them on your Christmas tree or a clothesline
- arrange them on a tiered cake stand

For an even quicker version, use colored or patterned 8 1/2″ x11″ holiday scrapbook paper and follow the folding instructions. Then use a hole punch to punch two holes at the top of the bag, and then string a ribbon through the holes and tie a bow to hold the bag together.

Jo From Artsy Fartsy Mama kindly sent us this craft idea.

My daughter goes to a Steiner school and last festive season in an effort to avoid the commercialism of Christmas and find meaning in it, there was a lot of discussion and sharing of ideas. Much of the inspiration came from Denise McDonough who spent some time at a Steiner school in Scotland. Between us we came up with this ‘Advent Stick’.

As the child opens up a little package each day they move through the earthly natural kingdoms – earth, plant, animal and human until they discover something more ‘heavenly’ on Christmas Day (the tiny felt & bead baby in walnut shell pictured below). So rather than a chocolate each day – they find a little natural treasure – 6 items in each category.

For example:

Earth – stone, crystal, pebble, sand, charcoal, glass bead, ochre

Plant – lavender pillow, dried flowers, seeds, gumnuts, pods, bark, paper craft such as origami or a tiny notebook

Animal – shell, bone, feather, felt animal, walnut turtle, beeswax candle, goat hair (collected at the farm!), knitted chick

Human – tiny gingerbread men, wool angel, felt doll, peg doll, little letters, a sweet (if you choose)

These are just some suggestions and many of them make beautiful decorations for the tree. Last I wrapped them all in white tissue paper but this year I have different colours to differentiate between the 4 realms. You can then use some cotton string or raffia to tie off each parcel and tie it on to your stick (which could be collected from a special place/tree and kept from year to year). Alternating sides of the stick means as your child rips off a bundle there is still a tail of tissue paper to keep the stick looking attractive. I do this as a surprise for my children, but you could involve an older sibling in the process.

Thank you to those who uploaded photos for last week’s Kiddley Photo Theme “We are Family”.

Pictured above is Ethan’s wonderful family portrait.

This week’s new theme is “Yummy“.

Encourage your kids to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Don’t forget to check out Phil’s Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.

Last week we posted some ideas for creating a Christmas village mantel scene with your kids. Kiddley reader Lisa (thanks Lisa!) pointed us in the direction of Eco-guru Danny Seo’s blog who has just produce a beautiful Christmas village (above) for his mantel out of last year’s Christmas cards. The snow is made from old pillow stuffing. Danny’s Christmas ideas appear in December’s Life Magazine, and you can also find his book Simply Green Giving on Amazon.

Image reproduced with Danny’s permission.

Amanda From SouleMama kindly sent us this craft idea.

Hello, I’m Amanda, from SouleMama, here to share one of our favorite family holiday traditions – the advent stockings. I made these smaller-size stockings out of corduroy, and embellished individually, attached a ribbon for them to hang by, and then strung on a thick rope to be hung above a window. If sewing isn’t your thing, try making the stockings with paper and glue! However you make your stocking, it can be a great way to celebrate the holidays and spread out the joy for your little ones over the whole month. To avoid the repetition of putting candy in each one (though certainly a few of those are a nice treat), following are some ideas to get you thinking about what other little treats you can fill a month of stockings with:

Poetry, written by you or others
A love letter to your little ones
Craft items – glue, glue sticks, markers, pencils, crayons, chalk
Finger puppets
A ‘treasure map” to an item too large for the stocking
Harmonicas
Kazoos
Beads for stringing
Bubbles
Marbles
Seeds for planting
Stickers
Disposable camera
Instructions for a magic trick
Instructions for a secret handshake
Wee journals for drawing or writing in
Holiday cookie cutter (with the promise to make cookies that day!)
A beautiful rock
A collection of pine cones or acorns
Small ornament for the tree
Materials to make their own small ornament
A knock knock joke
Origami animals
“coupons’ for a special movie date, or staying up late, or a mid-day tea party

Blair From Wise.. Craft kindly sent us this craft idea.

The leaves in our neighborhood are especially beautiful this year, and my kids seem to bring a new “collection” home with them daily. With a collection of all different shapes, colors, sizes, and textures of leaves, we made leaf pictures the other afternoon. The materials are simple, leaves, a glue stick, paper, and markers or crayons. I loved the way this got the kids and me talking about the shapes of individual leaves. In less than an hour we had completed three masterpieces;

A peacock at sunrise

A mouse at sunset

and a mice family at sunrise

If you want to take this a step further, I found a great book “Things I Can Make With Leaves” by Sabine Lohf which has lots of cute pictures and ideas for leaf crafts.

Martha Stewart also has some fun ideas on her website:
Leaf motifs for the table and Leaf collage.

Last year we decided to follow Stephanie’s lead and come up with 24 short and simple activities for the family to take part in each evening during the Advent – from the first of December through to Christmas Eve. While I have to admit there were some evenings when the activities fell by the wayside, it was mostly a great success and something AJ has been looking forward to doing it again all year, so I am guessing it has now become a family tradition. The key to this is keeping the activities simple otherwise it can be quite demanding to find the time to do them every day. Some of ours included “Make hot chocolate with all the fixings” and “Give everyone crazy hairstyles”… all very manageable.

You will need:
24 activity ideas appropriate for the interests and the ages of your family members.
24 boxes, envelopes, socks, packages etc. to put them in.
Your calendar or diary or a notepad.

Write a list of your ideas and then pick your 24 favourites. Check your calendar for December and work out how each of the activities will fit in with your schedule. Plan the more complex activities for weekend afternoons or other big blocks of time and save the simple ones for evenings when you guess you might be exhausted. Keep an extra special family activity for Christmas Eve.

I put our advent calendar together in a hurry. In the end I simply folded 24 pieces of origami paper into envelopes with the activity written inside, sealed it with a sticker with the number scribbled on in biro:

and then put them all in a box which sat at our bedside for AJ to open each morning.

Not terribly glamorous but it did the trick and each envelope was opened with great excitement.

Here is another idea which I scanned in from an old Notebook magazine – this is originally what I wanted to do but we didn’t have enough old matchboxes lying around.

Rosa’s beautiful wall hanging is also a wonderful way of holding all the activities.

After writing up all the cards, I kept a list of all the activities and the corresponding dates so I could prepare ahead for each evening. Sometimes that meant something as simple as booking a table at a cheap sushi restaurant, and other times it meant getting together craft supplies, or recipe ingredients and so on.

And what kind of activities do we recommend?

Here are ours from last year (Some you will see we gleaned from Stephanie and her readers which are all definitely worth checking out):

1. Paint everyone’s toenails
2. Have hot chocolate with all the fixings (we might do milkshakes if it’s too hot)
3. Star gazing
4. Give everyone crazy hairstyles
5. Backyard cricket
6. Go out for sushi
7. Have an indoor picnic
8. Write letters to Father Christmas
9. Use puppets to tell bedtime story
10. Have breakfast for dinner (I am thinking pancakes)
11. Make decorations for the tree
12. Have a camp out around the christmas tree
13. Pack a picnic dinner and have it at a park (or Botanical Gardens)
14. Fancy dress for dinner time
15. Wrap a toy and take it to a charity christmas tree
16. Make handmade gift tags for relatives
17. Fish and Chips for dinner down at the beach
18. Fold origami for the christmas tree
19. Dance like crazy to music
20. Watch a christmas movie with popcorn
21. Go out for gelati
22. Take Grandparents out to see the Christmas lights
23. Have a bubble bath
24. Special christmas Eve treat TBA

Some more ideas especially for Summery Advent folk are over at Mundane Superhero, and here are her Christmas ones from last year.

Have you any more? It would be great to share them.

Myra From My Little Mochi kindly sent us this tutorial.

This is an easy winter craft I did with my son. Unfortunately, we don’t have pinecones in our part of the world, but if you do in yours it would make for a nice joint nature walk and craft to go look for a variety of different shaped pinecones.

You will need:
Tan polymer clay for face, ears, legs
Black polymer clay for nose
Pinecone
Large (4 mm) black beads for eyes
Powder blush/rouge
Small paint brush
Drinking straw for mouth
Toothpick for details
White tacky glue

For younger kids it might be good to prep the materials ahead
of time. Once all the materials are assembled it goes together
fairly quickly. And be sure the area is well ventilated during the
baking process.

Form the ball into a cone shape and firmly press it into the flat side of the pinecone. Use your thumb to further press and spread the outer edges of the cone onto the pinecone. Using your fingers slightly pinch the point of the cone upward to form an upturned nose.

Press the small and large logs into the bottom of the pinecone. Make sure the legs are placed so that the hedgehog is well balanced and won’t fall forward.

Use the toothpick to add details to the feet.

Slightly press the tiny balls onto the top of the head and then use the back of a small paint brush to create an indention for the inner ears.

Use the toothpick to slightly score the tip of the cone/nose and then place a small ball of black polymer clay onto the scored area for the nose.

Press the black beads onto the face for the eyes.

This is a trick I use to make a quick and easy mouth. Use a pair of scissors to cut away half of the tip of a drinking straw to create a “U” shape and then press the “U” tip of the straw into the face for the mouth. Perfect mouth every time!

Prior to baking, use a small paintbrush and lightly apply blush to the inside of the ears and on the cheeks. Blow away any excess powder.

Bake according to manufacturer’s instructions in a well ventilated area.

Note: the pinecone may expand a bit during the baking process. Should any of the pieces fall off or come loose, use white tacky glue to re-attach to the pinecone.

All pau!

Hello shiny, happy people – thank you to those who uploaded photos for last week’s Kiddley Photo Theme “Shiny”.

Pictured above is Becca’s fab photo of a reflective sticker.

This week’s new theme is “We are Family“.

Encourage your kids to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Don’t forget to check out Phil’s Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.