Children’s Activities | warmhotchocolate

Daily Art: Paper Flower Fans

Every once in a while we have a craft activity that turns out to be a huge hit. Last week, I made paper flower fans and let Jason and Jenna decorate them. Not only did they enjoy creating the fans, they loved playing with them. Jason even turned his into a ‘Stop/Go’ sign, which, of course, he uses to direct my comings and goings.

I posted an article on how to make paper flower fans on Blissfully Domestic.

See my how-to post on Blissfully Domestic.

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Daily Art: Counting in the Garden

May 27, 2010 at 9:59 am | Posted in Children's Activities, Daily Art | Leave a comment
Tags: books, Children's Activities

Today’s art project was based on one of Jenna’s favorite books: Counting in the Garden by Kim Parker. Here are Jason and Jenna, counting (and matching number stickers) in our living room:

Daily Art: Where’s My Sweetie Pie?

April 27, 2010 at 9:59 am | Posted in Children's Activities, Daily Art | Leave a comment
Tags: art, books, Children's Activities

Jenna’s favorite book right now is Where’s My Sweetie Pie by Ed Emberley. We read it every night before bedtime, sometimes 3-4 times. For today’s art activity, I created two panels with small flaps out of shipping material (we receive lots of boxes, so I’m always inventing ways to recycle shipping material into art projects). I placed a picture of Jason and Jenna behind one flap on each panel and then gave them shape stickers to hide behind the other flaps. Jenna loved opening and closing the flaps, but something tells me we’ll still be reading the book every night.

Entertaining J+J: Part 1

September 5, 2009 at 2:32 pm | Posted in Getting Out | Leave a comment
Tags: Children's Activities, dallas, fort worth

child in motion, nasher sculpture center Most of my almost 3-year-old son’s favorite activities can be classified into 2 categories:

1. Things involving elevators: watching them, talking about them, riding in them and pushing their buttons

2. Things involving motion: as in, being in motion, and watching other things in motion – water, trains, airplanes, and, oh yes, elevators

So, it would seem that keeping him entertained would be easy: take him to the nearest hotel and let him go up and down the elevators to his heart’s content. But maybe because we have a younger daughter and we’re hoping to cultivate a broader set of interests in her or maybe because we’re too easily bored with our son’s interests, we continue to seek out new and interesting things to do with our kids in the DFW area.

We found a few favorites this summer, so I thought I would share.

summer in dfw

Dallas Arboretum

The Dallas Arboretum has an installation of child-sized houses that children can play in. Each house was designed by a local architecture firm and is based on a children’s book. Our son’s favorite was Treasure Island – probably because of the sand. This is a great place to pack a picnic lunch and spend the day.

Nasher Sculpture Garden

The first Saturday of each month is free and features art activities (scavenger hunt, crafts and demonstrations) for kids. The outdoor garden is beautiful and the James Turrell ‘skyspace’ is amazing. Almost as amazing is the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup at the Nasher’s Wolfgang Puck cafe.

Central Market Outdoor Cafe

This is our Friday night stand-by. A cafe with an outdoor park allowing kids to play while their parents watch close by is definitely win-win. And we get to enjoy the occasional live music. Kids eat free on Tuesdays, which doesn’t help us so much on Friday nights.