Baking Birthday Gift (for kids)

My daughter was recently invited to a birthday party for a little girl turning six.  I always have a hard time coming up with gift ideas for kids, since it seems most of them have everything they could ever want or need!  While out shopping, I remembered a creative gift my daughter had received for her fifth birthday, & decided to recreate that gift.

I shopped Wal-Mart & Dollar Tree for items to create a baking kit:

Cookie Kit Birthday Gift

From Wal-Mart I grabbed a pink bowl, cupcake dish towel, cookie mix, decorating gel, & a pink spatula.  I got a whisk, digital timer, measuring cups, & pot holders from Dollar Tree.

Bandana Apron

Next, I made a simple apron by sewing brown ribbon across a “baking themed” bandana from Hobby Lobby.

Cookie Kit Birthday Gift

Then, I assembled it in a bowl to create a cookie baking kit!  All together, I probably spent between $10- $15 to create this kit.  Hopefully, the little girl we gave this to will enjoy it as much as my daughter enjoyed hers!

Do you have other creative gift ideas for kids?  I’d love to hear them!

Keeping Kids Busy During Summer Break

Like many other moms, every year I struggle with ways to keep my kids busy during the summer months, while maintaining a somewhat clean house & remnants of my sanity!  Most of the time I don’t have things figured out before summer break begins & my plans of maintaining my home & sanity, & my kids’ education have vanished!

Fortunately, this year, I read this article well before summer began & started making a plan for how to keep the kids occupied & educated while keeping our home clean!  Since this seems to be working pretty well for us, I decided to share it with you guys!

I encourage you to click over & read the article, but for a very quick recap, the author/mom had a list of activities for her kids to do between breakfast & lunch each weekday.  The activities included things to help grow their minds & bodies, as well as household chores. 

After reading the article, thinking about it for a few days, & discussing it with my husband, I came up with a plan.  I took the main idea from the article above and combined it with this daily cleaning calendar and a combination of the summer math & reading programs at my kids’ school (these optional programs were new this year for our school).

So, here’s a breakdown of our summer schedule:

Upon Waking

  • Make Bed
  • Get Dressed
  • Feed Pets
  • Straighten Bedroom & Bathroom (Putting dirty clothes in hamper, hanging towels, wiping toothpaste out of sinks, etc.)
  • Empty Dishwasher- Mom (While getting breakfast ready)
  • Breakfast + Rinse & Load Dishes in Dishwasher (We are trying to keep everyone accountable for their own messes!)
  • Wash Up & Brush Teeth

Next, everyone participates in a daily home chore.  My husband & I realize that our job as parents is not to do everything for our children.  It is to train our children how to become independent, responsible adults.  Therefore, we are requiring them to help with the daily running of our household.  While these responsibilities may seem like a lot on paper, I assure you our children are not child laborers!  These tasks usually only take them 20- 30 minutes per day!

(Source)

Home Chores

Monday- Bring down laundry baskets; Help sort & stain treat your clothes; Help mom fold one load of laundry; Put away your clean, folded clothes at the end of the day (Mom will fold & put away the rest of the clothes.)

Tuesday- Vacuum Living & Dining Room; Vacuum Study & Family Room (Each child does one set of rooms per week for the month.  Mom will vacuum the upstairs & steps.)

Wednesday- Clean & mop kids’ bathroom (I usually have one child clean the sink & mirrors & one clean the toilet.  To be completely honest, we only clean the shower/tub on the 4th Wednesday because I HATE to clean the tub!  Then, one child sweeps & the other mops.  Mom cleans the other two bathrooms.)

Thursday- Help sweep & mop downstairs while mom prepares the grocery list, shops, & cleans the appliances.  In the evening, the kids collect the garbage & take it to the curb.

Friday- Swing Day (A different chore is done each Friday of the month)
1st- Dust
2nd- Wipe walls, doors, cabinets, & baseboards (as assigned by mom)
3rd- Wash bedding (remove & replace bedding)  Sorry if this grosses you out, but it’s another chore I hate doing & sadly, once a month is much better than it has been lately!
4th- Clean glass (windows, monitors, mirrors- as assigned by mom)
5th- Quarterly Chores (Dust lights, clean carpets/rugs, vacuum upholstery, wash couch cover- These are mostly my chores, but I plan on enlisting the kids help removing the couch cover & vacuuming the upholstery.)

Hopefully, with everyone helping around the house, it will always be pretty clean!  To maintain our home throughout the day, we will all load our dishes in the dishwasher after eating, straighten up before leaving the house (or going outside to play), & clean up as a family after dinner (putting the food away, wiping the table & counters, & sweeping & spot mopping the floors).

Upon completing the daily home task, it is time for the kids to work on their summer reading & math programs.

Kids Summer Activities

Learning Time

Read for 20 minutes (Our nine year old reads independently, while I listen to our six year old.)

Write in journal for 10 minutes (I have told my son that he can write for 10 minutes or 5 sentences, whichever comes first.  Hopefully, this will motivate him to quickly come up with five sentences, since looking at his journal from last year he barely wrote one complete sentence on most days.)

30 minutes of math (For this time, they can play math games on the computer, take online math quizzes through Pearson Success Academy, or work on the unfinished pages from their math workbooks from school.)

Depending on when the kids wake up & how motivated they are, all of these tasks only take up about two hours of our day. 

Screen Time

If our kids had the option, they would watch TV & play video games all day long!  Therefore, we have chosen to limit the amount of screen time our kids get each week to two hours.  (Yes, that is two hours per WEEK!)  We do not count special family movie nights or math computer time as part of their two hours.  We also allow them to earn 10 minutes of extra screen time for every 30 minutes they work on a skill (examples include reading, practicing a sport, practice riding a bike with no training wheels, helping make dinner, etc.).  This has really motivated our son to read more & he has gone a couple of weeks having nearly five hours of screen time from practicing tennis, basketball, & reading!

Keeping Track of Screen Time 

We keep track of the kids’ screen time using this Taylor brand timer I bought in the cooking section from Wal-Mart for about $10.  It is pretty easy to use & has two separate timer functions.  We use the top one for Zeke & the bottom one for Elie.  Every Sunday, we simply add two hours onto the time they have remaining on their timer.  Then, whenever they want to use their screen time, they just hit the button for their timer & press start & stop it when they are finished.  Whenever they earn extra time, we have them bring us the timer & we add it immediately.  This timer is simple to use & helps ensure the kids stay within their screen time limits.  (FYI:  Wal-Mart also sells timers with four timer functions, but I didn't feel that one was necessary for our family!)

Fun Time

We are trying to do something fun several times a week.  To keep track of the fun things we want to do & the fun things we have done, I listed them on our chalkboard wall:

Summer Fun List

We are quickly working our way through the list!

So, there you have it!  My plan to maintain our home, education, & sanity throughout the summer!  Do you come up with a schedule for the summer months or do you just take it one day at a time?  I’d love to hear your thoughts & ideas!

Last Day of School Traditions

The last few weeks have been so busy shuttling kids to and from day camps and settling into a summer routine that I haven’t had much time for blogging.  Now that our schedule is becoming a bit more relaxed, I will hopefully have more time to work on home projects and blogging! 

Last year, I posted about the last day of school, & without any promotion (linking to Pinterest or other blogs) it became the most viewed post on my blog!  Since we did things slightly different this year, I thought I’d give you an update on our yearly traditions!

I had been sick earlier in the week, so I was still playing catch up the morning of the last day of school.  This year, we gave the kids’ teachers, custodians, secretaries, principals, & nurses gift cards to Orange Leaf for frozen yogurt.  In the past, we have given $5 gift cards to the staff for Dairy Queen, Star Bucks, & Little Caesar’s (where you can get an entire large pizza for 5 bucks!) as well.

This year, instead of just putting a note in Zeke’s lunch, I decided to do something silly & unusual & wrap his lunch container!

Last Day of School Lunch  

I used a sharpie to write a note on the packaging & added a little washi tape flag to the stem of his apple!  Luckily, Zeke thought it was funny & didn’t have his hopes dashed when he unwrapped his lunch instead of a cool gift!

Summer Fun Gift Ideas

Once both kids were in school, I assembled some goodies in sand buckets as a last day of school surprise.  The gifts consisted of goggles, sidewalk chalk, bug nets, water squirters, glow sticks, bubbles, a styrophome plane, water football, jump rope, & magnifying glass.

Last Day of School Surprise

Later, I sat them on the front stoop & attached a note for each of my kids explaining how excited I am to get to spend all summer with them!  I also made a poster for the front door & was informed it could be seen all the way from the bus stop!

Last Day of School Water Balloons

Our yearly tradition is to hide around the house & spray our kids with water guns & hoses once they walk up the driveway on the last day.  I kept stalling hoping my husband would be home to help (especially since there was a big toad in the shed, making it impossible for me to go in & get the hose!) & frantically at 3:00, with about twenty minutes until the kids got home, I began filling up water balloons at lightning speed.  I put most of them in a bucket at the end of the driveway with a note that said, “I think you know what to do with these!”

With just minutes to spare, I armed myself with a water gun & water balloons, & ran around the side of the house!  As soon as they got to the driveway, I ran out & attacked them with my ammo!  Unfortunately, the kids soon noticed the bucket of water balloons & without my handy sidekick (aka my husband) I got the worse end of the deal! 

After drying off & grabbing a quick bite to eat in the car, we headed to a local amusement park, (we have season passes) for some extra fun!  The weather was great, the lines were short, & it was the perfect way to kick start our summer break!

Amusement Park Fun on the Last Day of School

So, do you celebrate the last day of school?  I’d love to hear what you do to make the last (or first) day of school special!

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