7 Handmade Gifts You Can Make With Your Kids
Dec 14, 2011 Eco Friendly Parenting
As Christmas gets closer, it gets harder to figure out what you’re getting for the rest of the people on your list. It can be harder yet to decide what your kids will give to grandparents and the few other people they give presents too. It’s a good time to start working on some handmade presents, things that show personal effort yet look really nice.
1. Cookies
Kids love to make cookies. Pick some favorite recipes and get started. Use organic, fair trade or local ingredients where possible. You can buy organic or fair trade chocolate chips
2. Candy
A little touch of candy making is always fun. I usually do something with chocolate. Chocolate covered pomegranate seeds are easy, for example. You simply melt the chocolate, stir in the pomegranate seeds, then scoop away a few seeds at a time to a cookie sheet to cool. Just a few seeds together are best, and you may want to warn recipients to eat these quickly, as the pomegranate seeds won’t stay good for long. They’re also very juicy and should be eaten carefully so they don’t squirt.
Truffles are also fun to make. There are all kinds of recipes online. My own favorite is a pomegranate truffle, and yes, you are sensing a theme here. My mother has a pomegranate tree, which should pretty much explain it. The truffles are made from pomegranate juice simmered down to about half, with dark chocolate mixed in, allowed to cool, made into small balls, allowed to cool again, then dipped in dark chocolate to coat. The insides melt very quickly, so I usually keep these cold.
3. Homemade Play Dough
This is a great gift for kids to give their friends. You can mix it up all the way or just give bags of powder and instructions on how to finish it off. The play dough recipe can be as simple as a mix of flour, salt, water and food coloring. A little vegetable oil can help make it a little smoother, but I often skip that part and I’ve never bothered with the cream of tartar many recipes recommend, nor do I cook mine. It comes out well and lasts for weeks anyhow.
4. Homemade Slime
This is another fun project, although the ingredients aren’t all as safe as the ones for play dough. Still not too bad, overall. Slime is basically water, Elmer’s glue, borax and food coloring.
5. Heat Packs
You can make heat packs in a variety of sizes. Buy an attractive, sturdy cotton cloth for the bag. Other fabrics may not fare well in the microwave and should not be used. Decide how large a bag you want. Smaller bags are good as hand warmers, which can be nice for cold weather. Larger ones are nice for heating sore muscles and can be draped on the neck or leaned on for a sore back.
Use your choice of filler. Rice, buckwheat hulls, feed corn, barley and beans are common choices. Only one is really necessary. Don’t fill the bag too full, as it should be fairly flexible.
Add in any scents desired. Dried herbs such as lavender, rose petals, mint or rosemary smell nice. You can also use essential oils. Mix these in before filling the bag. Be careful if you know the intended recipient is sensitive to certain smells.
Fill the bag and stitch it closed. I like to include a removable cover bag. It’s much easier to wash a cover than it is to wash a heat pack bag, and they do get dirty over time.
6. Bath Salts
Bath salts are easy to make. You just need a clean, empty jar, epsom salts and/or sea salts, food coloring and some essential oils. Glycerin is a nice addition, but not absolutely necessary. Mix your ingredients together in a bowl, remembering that it doesn’t take much essential oil at all to make a nice scent through the whole thing.
You can decorate the jars to make them more attractive if you like. I save jars from spaghetti sauce and other things all year, so jars for projects like this really aren’t hard to come by.
7. Time
Not even handmade gifts always have to be from something you purchased. You can give the gift of time instead. You can offer to run errands, clean around the house, whatever the recipient would love for you to do.
This one can be great for grandparents, especially if they’re having trouble doing things themselves as they get older. Odds are they don’t need more stuff, but they certainly love having more time with the people they love.
Of course, you don’t have to limit this one to grandparents. Maybe you have a skill that someone else would love to have you share with them. I often have people asking me about how to set up a website, for example, and helping someone get started could be a great gift.
Tags: gift ideas, handmade gifts, holidays, kids
Kids and Christmas – How Do You Keep the “Gimmes!” Away?
Nov 29, 2011 Eco Friendly Parenting
Christmas is a fun time to be a kid. You get to ask all kinds of people for things you want, and there’s a chance you might get them. It’s all pretty amazing. It also encourages kids to get really demanding about wanting more and more stuff. Is there any way to control this?
No way is perfect, of course, but you can cut things down some. Kids will be kids, and that means that even if you limit exposure to television commercials, there will be friends talking about the latest and greatest whatevers. Still, cutting down on media exposure is one of the best ways to limit how much stuff children ask for. Here are some more ideas.
Talk to Them Honestly
Discuss with your kids why they can’t have everything they want. You can cover financial reasons (who can afford all that?), environmental reasons (the waste, oh, the waste!) and even that sometimes it’s hard to buy something because too many people want it.
Go with whatever works for you. Children, especially as they get older, understand more than many adults think.
Remind Them of What’s Important to Your Family
We all want things, but there are values beyond things. Whether it’s the meaning of the holiday, thinking of those less fortunate or something else, remind your kids what lies beyond wishing for presents.
Discuss the Value of Patience
This one really helps if what your child wants is something you’re willing to get, but can’t do so yet. It doesn’t matter if it’s for financial reasons or because all the stores are sold out. Patience is something children need to learn.
Encourage Them to Give
Whether it’s the gifts they give to family or something your children give to charity, help them to remember that giving is as much a part of Christmas as receiving. Help your children start thinking of others, even if it’s just family members.
This can also include giving toys to a Toys for Tots drive or finding a place that gives you information about what a child or a family would like for Christmas. Another choice would be to look at international charities that provide live animals to poor families or otherwise do things to help communities in need. There are many opportunities to give both locally and around the world.
Sort Out Old Toys
Christmas is one of my favorite times to sort out old toys to give to charity. Kids know that new ones are coming, and there’s always some that just don’t get used anymore or maybe never really caught your child’s attention.
If your child is reluctant, you can do the sort yourself. I still suggest keeping your child involved in the process. One way is to divide the toys into two more or less equal piles. Let your child pick one to keep. Allow trades for truly wanted items, but you can put rules on it such as having to give up two items to get one back. Make sure you keep sets together.
Take the unwanted toys to a favorite charity together. You and your child can talk about what the charity will do with the toys and who will benefit.
If you really want to work the lesson more, you can encourage your child to give up some current favorite toys. Children can be amazingly generous given the chance. They may wince and whine, but they also may do it.
9 Eco Friendly Activities to Keep Your Kids Busy This Summer
Jun 9, 2011 Eco Friendly Parenting
My son is out of school for the year, and soon my oldest daughter will be too. It’s time to start thinking about how I’m going to keep them busy, ideally without spending a lot of money or wasting a lot of resources. Here are some of the ideas I’ve come up with.
1. Grow a garden.
This is already started, of course. We have more tomatoes than I think we’ll manage to eat, but my husband always wants to grow a big variety of tomatoes. If they go well, I’ll either have to figure out how to preserve them or start giving the excess away to family, friends and neighbors. Not a bad deal.
We also have zucchini, basil, pumpkins growing from the seeds of last year’s Halloween pumpkin, strawberries and beans. Not a big garden, but we’re pretty limited in this house we’re renting to what we can do to the yard. We also have a few flowers planted just for attracting bees and for pretty. My favorite so far are the native larkspur that grew on their own.
The kids are learning to weed and are responsible to help keep the garden watered. They love knowing that they can snack freely on what grows and is edible.
2. Stargazing
Kids love looking at the stars, and my son picked a small telescope out for his birthday earlier this year. Stargazing is a great way to make those summer nights special for your family.
3. Camping
Take a little time and go camping with your family. Most areas have decent local campgrounds, or you could camp in your own backyard. Older children may even enjoy camping out in the backyard on their own. This was a favorite when I was growing up.
4. Playing with friends.
Don’t get so into doing activities with your kids that they don’t get a ton of time to just play with friends, whether it’s at your house, the friend’s house or on their own at the park once they’re old enough and responsible enough. Let them have fun doing their own things.
5. Visit the library.
Our library has a summer reading program that allows kids in grades 1-5 to earn prizes for the number of pages they read. Prizes shouldn’t be needed to get kids reading if you’ve encouraged it all along, but make sure they keep the habit of reading books that interest them all summer long. The library is a great resource that will allow them to read more books than you could probably afford to buy.
Don’t forget to check out any special activities your local library may have over the summer. Many have activities for all age ranges, which is great when your kids have a range of interests and abilities.
6. Do recycled crafts.
I covered a few good books to help you get ideas for recycled crafts just the other day. Summer is a great time for trying some of these ideas out.
7. Visit museums.
While museums bring a picture of boredom to some minds, they don’t have to. Most kids love a good, hands-on science museum, and many other museums have come to recognize that having a hands-on component makes it more interesting for children.
Check with your local museums to see if they have any free or reduced price days to keep the expense down. These days are usually more crowded, but may put this activity into a more budget friendly category.
8. Go to the zoo.
Most children love the zoo. Annual passes may be quite affordable, or you can suggest that family give passes as a gift. Children will be impressed by the range of animals, and it’s a great opportunity to discuss why we need to protect the habitat of various animals.
9. Go hiking.
Yet another thing you can do fairly locally in most places. Find out where the hiking trails are in your area and you have a great family activity that will help to keep you fit while seeing nature in action.
Tags: eco friendly activities, Gardening, keeping kids busy, kids, summer
What to do About All the Non Eco Friendly Gifts Your Kids Want
Dec 7, 2010 Eco Friendly Parenting, Green Gift Ideas
Most children have very long wish lists for Christmas. There are so many ads on television, so many toys discussed with friends, and they want most of them.
Unfortunately, very few toys are made in anything remotely resembling an environmentally friendly manner. How do you deal with the requests for toys that are not eco friendly when you’re trying to raise a green family?
Buy Used
Some classics I find hard to resist, as do many other parents. The good part about some classics is that they’re pretty easy to buy used rather than new.
Legos are a good example. Many of us had them growing up. We may even have some stuffed away in a closet or at a parent’s house.
I love Legos. They encourage creativity, especially the plain block sets. But eco friendly they are not. Too much plastic.
On the plus side, they’re durable. I’d expect a set to be handed down many times. That helps a lot on the environmental side of things.
Any toy that has been out for a few months you have the chance to buy used. No guarantees, of course, and you have to look at how much they’ve been damaged by previous owners. But in terms of finding popular toys in an eco friendly manner, that’s as close as you’re going to get.
Trade Around
This method takes a lot of trust. You can trade with family and friends who also have kids for the toys your kids want. You may even be able to arrange a toy rotation for those toys that they want returned. Agree that a toy will spend a month, a week, whatever length of time at each house.
If this works, it also teaches sharing. It’s harder to do with really possessive kids. Children who accept the trades can enjoy the wider selection of toys they can play with without costing you a lot of money.
Have a plan for when toys break. Will they be replaced? What if one child is more careful and the other damages a lot of toys? You do not want to ruin a friendship over a few toys.
Encourage Handmedowns
Anyone you know with kids older than yours you can encourage to give your children handmedown toys. Discuss the ones your kids want and see if they’re available. This makes gift giving within the family much cheaper if all the cousins are within a good age range.
Discover Eco Friendly Alternatives
This is hard to do, as many toys really do not have an eco friendly alternative
When it’s possible, go for it.
Get the Toy Requested
We’re human, we parents. Sometimes just because it will delight our children, most of us will choose the toy requested, regardless of environmental considerations.
It’s best if you avoid this until you’ve gone through the other options. But when your child really wants a particular item, and you’ve been eco friendly in every way you can manage, it may not be completely unreasonable to give in. Just consider what you’ll do with the toys when they break or aren’t played with anymore. Hopefully you’ll be able to find them a good home to be played with again.
Tags: christmas, gift giving, giving green gifts, holidays, kids, non eco friendly gifts
Want Happier Kids? Buy Fewer Things for Them
Oct 18, 2010 Eco Friendly Parenting
It may be contrary to what children themselves will tell you, but if you want happier kids, don’t buy them so much stuff. Things do not equal happiness, for any of us. By buying too many things for your kids, you’re encouraging them to want more and more, rather than enjoying the good things they do have.
Think about all the things children see on television that they want. No parents in their right minds would buy every single thing that a child says “I want” about. Yet so many parents always get sucked into buying more than children can really enjoy.
Teaching Kids to Avoid Consumerism
Children are impressionable. That’s why they love all the toys their friends have and all the toys they see advertised. It all sounds like things they must have.
But people who are excessively materialistic usually aren’t the happiest. Just think how happy simple things in your own life make you feel. The pride you feel in doing things yourself. How often is it things that make you happy rather than what you do?
It’s the same for kids, and it’s up to you to teach them that.
If you let them watch television, talk to them about what ads do to make them want the toys, fast food and other things they see advertised. Talk to them about why they don’t need everything they see. Point out the things that they have enjoyed for a long time, rather than the few minutes that many of the things advertised would be enjoyed.
It’s not easy to teach this in today’s society. Ads are everywhere. It’s easy to want ridiculous quantities of things you don’t need, yet that’s not the choice that will make most of us happy for any significant time.
Make sure you take your kids with your often when you go shopping. Talk to them about what they see that appeals to them, and whether or not those items would be a good purchase. Teach them what you think makes a good purchase. Show them how quickly the cost adds up for the things you do buy, and how much more it would be if you bought everything that caught their eye. Discuss the environmental cost to buying things you don’t need and won’t really enjoy for a long time.
But My Friends Have….
Kids are going to compare their possessions to those of their friends. It’s a part of growing up. They’re going to wish they owned some of the things their friend has, and may not always appreciate the lessons you’re teaching them about avoiding consumerism.
It’s not easy hearing your kids wish for more. We all wish we could let our kids enjoy whatever their hearts desire. But that’s not good for children and it’s not good for the environment either. Teaching your kids that they don’t need to have everything their friends have is one of life’s great lessons.
Help them to think about their own possessions and what they enjoy about them. Help them think of the things they enjoy doing. Help them to see how these things have value.
Talk to them about those who have less. Kids have great sympathy for the less fortunate if you talk to them about it. The idea that other kids have even less than they do is a great lesson that can be taught to young children.
Don’t make them feel bad about owning what they do or even for wanting other things. We all want things we can’t have. We learn to deal with it. It’s a natural feeling.
You can help your kids deal with our consumeristic culture without becoming excessive consumers themselves. Talk about your beliefs, and live them as a family. It’s amazing how well these things can work out.
Tags: ads, consumerism, kids, shopping
