The Benefits of Kids Using Their Own Creative Imagination: Making Something Out Of Anything

March 8, 2010 By Laura 9 Comments

Sometimes, I like to plan my kids crafts and art. But whether I plan arts and crafts or not, it still happens in this house, and all over this house, every day! The kids sure don’t need me, to come up with creative ideas. The kids use their own imagination, and it’s awesome! In fact, I’d go so far as to say, that their wild imagination tends to venture further than mine does. And frankly, their are great benefits of kids using their own creative imagination.

While a child following directions (such as to make someone else’s craft idea) is crucial skill to their development, the benefits of a child completely using their very own imagination, far outweighs it. In thinking of and creating their own ideas/crafts/creations, they are:
– developing brainstorming skills
– learning how to think outside of the box
– developing planning skills
– learning how to problem-solve
– developing the abilities of an inventor!
– developing great personal character
– increasing their own self-confidence
– . . . . and so-much-more.

So, I try to keep the school room stocked with art supplies at all times, so that the kids can get creating any time it strikes their fancy to. But to tell you the truth, they often end up using lots of materials I didn’t supply, or would have never even thought of! Every time I turn around in this house, there is some new creation sitting there, or they are playing with one, or someone is suddenly at my side saying, “Mama, look what I made!“. I’m always surprised, over and over, by their creativity. But really, I shouldn’t be anymore.

Here are just a very few things our young triplets have made lately, that I have found around the house, and happened to get photographed.

A robot, made by {JM}. Materials used: a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, paint, marker, and a toy car. You should see it travel across the floor.

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Pistachio Shell Art, made by {A}.
Materials used: Pistachio shells, and markers.
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A Tissue Paper Doll, made by {O}.
Materials used: Tissue paper, glue, wooden screw cover buttons, and pencil.

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A Pop-Up Card made by {JM}.
Materials used: Paper, marker, black pen, scissors, and glue.

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A Deck Hang-Out 2-Dimensional Art Piece, made by {JM}. Materials used: Rubber material (the scraps from a kit), ribbon, tape, glue, a pencil, a cupcake tin, and firewood.

*Note: {JM} made this creation for someone we really care about, who suffers from frequent migraines.

The hammock, which is my favorite part, is so she can lie there and relax until she feels better. Since the project is so big and heavy, we decided to just send her photos, which she really appreciated. She used one of the photos, in a blog post of her own, about migraines.
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A Watercolor Painting, made by {S}. Materials used: Paper, Crayola watercolors, pencil, brush and water.

I think I can let go of the guilt I feel sometimes, when I haven’t planned a craft project in awhile. I don’t think they even need me.
And leaving the kids to figure out all of their own creative activities, is a gift of some time to us parents! More time to do what we need or want to do, while they are busy making awesome things!

I encourage you, to encourage your children’s very own imagination! On the next rainy day, or a day they say they are ‘bored’, challenge them to find different kind of materials around the house, or even from outdoors, and make something creative and really unique! And when they do, and show you, make them feel really good about what they created! Because it is their very own imagination and efforts on display, and it has grown them in more positive ways than can meet the eye. And that is something to celebrate!
They may just inspire you too, as my own kids creations inspire me.
Please consider sharing, and spreading the creative inspiration.

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Winner of the Giveaway

February 23, 2010 By Laura

The winner of the vintage set Give Away is……..

Commenter #4 was Wendy!!

Congratulations Wendy! Please contact us, via the ‘E-Mail Us’ tag in the sidebar, to claim your prize and give us your shipping address, so that we can send along your vintage set to you. We hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to ALL of you, for participating, and sharing with us your lists of favorite things. We really enjoyed reading each and every one! We laughed, we said “Awww….how sweet!”, …..we said “Oh, me too! I should have thought of that one!”. But most of all, we loved getting to know you all a little bit better.

We’ll be having another Give Away very soon, so be on the lookout to see what it is! The chances of winning something are pretty good around here, and we love to do it! So keep checking back.

~ The Richard Family

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Love Is…… | The Giveaway Goods

February 16, 2010 By Laura 10 Comments

Love Is…..A Giveaway!!

To give a little LOVE back to you all, we thought it was high time for some giveaways! Anyone up for that?

First up, we’d love to giveaway this faux-vintage decoupaged metal set, of a watering can, and a little container.

It could be a lovely touch, for your home decor.

b_vintageset_pink It’s not much, but the set is rather sweet! Shabby-chic-ish!

c_vintagecontainer One detail I really love, is the message on the side of the container:

(Family) Where the seeds of character are planted.(Home)

Isn’t that the truth.

The container can be used for an indoor plant, a starter plant, a pen and pencil cup, or any little junk!

The watering can would look sweet in a little girl’s room.

It’s not perfectly made. It’s on the rustic side.

It’s imperfections are, to me, what gives our little treasures character.

You can try to win this Giveaway for yourself, for your daughter, for a friend, or as a gift you may re-give come Christmas. (We’ll never tell a soul. ; )

Since we are always trying to get to know our blog visitors a little better, we thought it would be fun to share a little, in the comments. Since the theme as of late, is LOVE, here’s how you can qualify to WIN this faux-vintage set, delivered right to your door for NADA!:

Please share at least 10 things that you really love. Things that share with us and the readers, a little bit about what makes you, YOU. Not “Oh, I love my kids…..”etc.,…..after all, if you don’t love your kids……..well, we just sure hope you do.

The Giveaway will end Monday night, the 22nd of February. We’ll announce the winner sometime on Tuesday, via the Random dot org number puller.

So…..we’ll go first!

(Just so you know, my kids helped me compile my list, and you can do the same. Sometimes others can do a better job pointing out these things, than we can of ourselves. After all, if they shout it out at you like it’s a good one, it’s probably a consistently obvious thing they can tell tickles your fancy.) So, here we go….in no particular order! :

Laura

photography
Mass/praying
snowstorms
first coffee of the day
antiques/old imperfect things
my kid’s love for learning
my kid’s artwork
Teri (lol)
trees in autumn
scarves
homeschooling
my home
blogging

Michael

fishing
muscle cars
outdoors
my home
music from 60-70’s
coffee
cake
home-made pizza
my work
a good homily
helping others
free stuff!!

a_vintageset_white-300x214

We look forward to reading your own lists!!

Good luck to you all!

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Table For 6: Family Dinner with Our Little Valentines

February 15, 2010 By Laura 10 Comments

Just sharing a peek into our Valentine’s Day Family Dinner, with our little valentines!

In getting ready for our special dinner together, one of the kids wrote this on my little chalk board that I use for schooling the kids sometimes. First, it made me smile. Then, I found out who wrote it, so we could have a little discussion about how they determined where they should put that apostrophe. It turns out, they were under the impression, that St. Valentine’s name, was St. Valentines. Therefore, because his name ended in s, it would be acceptable to just put an apostrophe after the s in his name, to show possession of his day. So, if she was right, she would have been right! But she was wrong, so she was wrong. Know what I mean? lol. In the end, she learned something new on Valentine’s Day: That the saints name, was indeed St. Valentine. Not St. Valentines. No S. Just like our LAST name. ; )

See? Schooling 24/7.

I resisted the urge to fix it. Just because I felt like I needed to SO badly, and knew there might be an issue there with myself, that I needed to work on. So I just left it. Not feeling free yet though.

Our afternoon dinner table, all set. We actually eat dinner together as a family every single night. But the kids get excited for dinner like these, because we go above and beyond the normal, to make it special. Special pretty table setting, candles, surprises, and more. It’s just fun to do with the kids, and see their excitement over the occasion.
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We’ve still got this little tree going. To decorate it for Valentine’s Day, the kids made cut out hearts, and wrote something on them that we can do to ‘show our love’ to someone. One of my favorites is: “Give a foot rub?“. Yes, with a question mark. lol. That was {A}’s, who possibly gives the world’s best foot rubs, and I possibly may want one more frequently than she wants to give one.
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Back in the summer time, our local CVS (pharmacy) moved from it’s location, to a bigger and newer construction, further up the street. Aside from my grumbling that CVS would now be further up the street, I wasn’t sure how I felt about a ‘Dollar Tree’ moving into the old CVS, either. Not having much experience with that store, and therefore really questioning the quality of product we’d find in there, I was leaning towards disappointment.

But as it turns out, I’ve found the store rather useful. There really are some darn good finds there sometimes, and the pricing certainly fits our budget!

So I checked out the Dollar Tree, to see what helpful items I could find for our dinner. Looking at the photo above, I got the plastic champagne flutes (which the kids got such a kick out of), the gift bags, their cards (2 for $1! )the napkins, and the candles and glass candlesticks! Not bad, for a fancy-ish dinner setting!

The kids loved their surprises.

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For the dinner’s main course, I made Shrimp and Pasta Diablo! Thankfully, the sky is the limit when planning a menu, even for a meal with our kids. They’ll eat just about anything under the sun, and they sure loved this dish, too. They really love shrimp and pasta anyway. {O} did leave just a few tomato pieces on her plate. There was definitely some ‘heat’ to those tomatoes, so I was surprised they all ate as many as much as they did. 2 out of 4 of the kids, had seconds! As did Michael of course. But I can never eat that much of anything. It was delicious though.

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A couple days prior, a good friend of ours, who LOVES to cook and bake, and does a whole lot of BOTH, so thoughtfully delivered to us some banana cake he made, as well as 6 molten lava cupcakes! We decided to save the cupcakes for our special Valentine’s dinner, so dessert would be covered. It seemed like the perfect dessert to top off our family dinner. And boy was it ever!
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We really felt the love. With every-single-bite! I would have taken a photo of the inside, but that would have required me to put down my fork, and pick up my camera, at a very excitable time. Goodness! We’ve been invited to have dinner with him and his wife at their home this week. I’m tempted to bring my camera, and photograph it all, but I don’t want to freak them out! lol. I know he is going to have a reallly goood menu plan, just for us. He’s brought us other food and treats before. But also because Michael said that he said, in inviting us, “I plan on doing some cooking this week!” See….when someone says something like that, in that way, you know they are serious about their cooking! We really look forward to spending a few hours with he and his wife. They are just good peeps. With our without the good food. But they want to feed us too? Well….alllriiiiiight. If they insist.

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It was nice that St. Valentine’s Day landed on a Sunday this year, wasn’t it? We opted to go to 4:00 Mass on Saturday, to leave Sunday wide open to get ready for our afternoon date with each other. We rarely do that, (go to Saturday Mass) because the Saturday Mass is just not the same for us, at all. And it wasn’t again. But as always, the homily was good!

So how was YOUR Valentine’s Day? Did you do anything special? Celebrate in some small way? Go all out? Skip it all together?

We’d love to know.

Oh, and also, we recommend you be on the lookout for a Give-Away! That’s all we’re sayin’.

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Superbowl Menu

February 8, 2010 By Laura 2 Comments

We had a nice little Superbowl Sunday. We kept it pretty low-key, for a couple of reasons:

1) Our own New England Patriot’s weren’t playing.

2) It was a school night.

Every year, I get all excited about Superbowl Sunday, no matter who is playing. And then I realize how late the game is starting! And then I remember, that I forget that that is the case, almost every year!

Still, we can’t let the opportunity for a little private family party, pass us by. But considering the circumstances this year, we kept the menu simple-simple.

Pastrami Sandwiches – we love them. We just put a pound 1/2 of pastrami in our steamer for 10-15 minutes, rearranging in the steamer basket about 1/2 way through for even heating of the meat, and then we pile it on a toasted wheat roll. The kids prefer no mustard, but Michael and I like a little French’s.

Here’s an item we were downright excited to try: Jalapeno Poppers!

Participating Ingredients:

18 fresh jalapeno peppers
8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
3/4 shredded or grated cheddar cheese
1 green onion chopped
package of bacon, cut in half to shorten (18 slices, 36 halved)
brown-sugar BBQ sauce
toothpicks
RUBBER GLOVES!

(You will only chop jalapeno peppers without gloves once, but never again. I did, once, and my fingers spent the entire night in HELL. Literally, I’m quite sure. The throbbing pain of burn, was nearly unbearable. I was near tears. Just take my word for it, and use gloves when chopping these babies, and don’t touch any part of yourself after having touched the peppers! Especially your eyes!)

1) SO….once dressed in your gloves, slice the peppers in half, lengthwise. We keep the stems on, and try to cut those in half too. It gives you a little handle later, and keeps them cute! Clean out the inside of the peppers completely – free of seeds and white membrane. However, the real heat is in the seeds and the white membranes – so if you like more kick, leave a little. We left just a little seed in ONE pepper, and I got the Lucky Popper. ; )

2) In a bowl, combine softened cream cheese, chopped green onion, and cheddar cheese. Mix well.

3) Being sure your gloves are on again, or still, using a little old-style butter knife, or a cheese spreader, fill all of the peppers halves with the cheese filling. We filled it well, as a little heap.

4) Pre-heat the oven to 275 degrees. (I realize most cooks/bakers do this first, but I’m too slow to prep the food, so the oven is on for too long, for no reason. Plus, I feel pressure because the oven is waiting and ready, but I’m not done! lol)

5) Next, wrap each cheese-filled pepper, with a 1/2 piece of bacon. Do not pull it tight, as the bacon shrinks when it cooks. Secure each one with a toothpick through the side of the pepper as you go, and place on a cookie sheet. (We cover the cookie sheets with tin foil for stuff like this, to avoid having to wash the pan after. ; ) Call us lazy.

6) Generously brush each bacon-wrapped-cheese-filled-pepper, with brown sugar BBQ sauce.

7) Put in oven for about an hour, or until the bacon is crisp and sizzling.

*You can serve immediately, at the risk of burning mouths. But we found anyway, that letting them set & cool some for 10-15 minutes, really makes them all the better! They firm up a bit, and you can really enjoy the different elements of the Jalapeno Popper in your mouth, instead of it all being very soft and mushy in your mouth.

A friend asked us, “Will the kids eat those?”, and the answer was YES! Our little ones, especially, like hot stuff. {A} just thought they “were just o.k.”. But it’s not the recipe, it’s her. ; )

We’ll be adding these to our appetizer hit-list for future occasions. We put 1/2 f this batch, already cooked, in ziplock bag and into the freezer, to be able to just heat some up sometime soon. And trust me, soon it will be!

BTW – My friend Mary Beth, from Nothin’ But Country, made up a batch of the Bacon-Wrapped Pineapple Bites for her Superbowl party, and came by the blog here to leave a fantastic review of the recipe! Check it out! If her review doesn’t convince you to try them, nothing will! And check out her blog too! She and her husband LOVE to cook, and all kinds of great recipes.

We also snacked on tortilla chips and salsa through the game, in between hoots & hollers at the tv. As you can see, we already had been at them before I remembered to take a photo. lol.

Our ever-creative boy, {JM}, made a football for our party, as some festive decor. He made it out of gold and white tissue paper, and a little gold mylar. That boy is ALWAYS ‘making something’, and he never ceases to surprise us with his great ideas either. Get this……..

…..the football lights up!! In the dark, it really puts off quite a glow!

Since our New England Patriot’s weren’t playing in the Superbowl this year <boo-hiss!!>, we decided to cheer on the Saints! Why? No real significant reason, except maybe because their names is the Saints, and we like their logo the best. : ) We are really happy for New Orleans.

Did YOU watch the Superbowl? Which team did you cheer on?
And more importantly, what was on your Superbowl Menu, if you had one? Do share!

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Love Is…..A Giveaway!!

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