Free (nearly) Paper Toys!

http://www.thetoymaker.com - Click on Free Toys to find a large assortment of projects that are free. (OK, a few cents for ink and paper.....) Toys that almost anyone can fold and put together, boxes that can be folded for decoration or to hold small surprises.... Loads of fun designs! (Even a few learning toys.....)

Help With Getting Chores Done!

******UPDATE - Handiland has begun charging subscription fees in order to access most everything above the most basic functions. We will be leaving the service and I can no longer recommend it unless you're not watching your budget. :(

Do your kids resist doing their chores? Do chore charts help, but maybe they need an extra boost? Have you discovered HandiPoints yet? (http://www.handipoints.com)

Handipoints is an online system where parents and kids can assign and track chores. Parents assign a certain number of points for each chore and the child checks off the chore as it is completed. You can easily list chores as daily, like brushing teeth after each meal, or weekly, like taking the garbage cans out to the street for pickup. You can also choose any combination of days that work for you - useful if Child A does dishes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday while Child B does dishes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday! In fact, for many chores, I choose the daily option so that we have the flexibility to assign points whenever the chore is completed - some things just aren't scheduled for the same day each week.....

For each chore completed, the child actually receives two kinds of points - the system keeps track of each separately. One type of points can be saved up and used to 'purchase' rewards from Mom and Dad - 10 points to play an extra board game with Dad, 40 points to choose a movie to watch, etc. You decide on the rewards and how much it will take to earn each one.

The second kind of points is used to 'buy' virtual items in the HandiPoints world. Each child has a cat character that they get to customize and play games with. (Some of the games offer the chance to earn more points) With HandiPoints, they can choose to 'buy' items to decorate their virtual room with, clothing pieces to dress their cat in, or do things like send virtual postcards to other cats.

Handipoints is most likely to appeal to younger kids, though I know of quite a few pre-teens who really love playing in the virtual world of HandiPoints. Even if the virtual-world aspect is "too young" for your kids, the point-tracking system alone is worth joining. (As of now, it is free to join. Rumblings suggest that this may change.....) With younger kids, internet security is, of course, a concern for many parents. Handipoints handles this well - kids communicate with each other using a set menu of G-rated statements, questions, and answers. There is no way for them to give out personal information, so that's one worry out of the way! They can also make their cats do things like wave, dance, sneeze..... My daughter particularly enjoys sneaking up to my cat (I do log on sometimes to see what she's up to - she's aware of it and we have fun together.) and sneezing on her. LOL

After the storm.....

Where I live, we've spent the last several weeks with near-constant ice and snow. As long as you don't lose electricity and heat, it's gorgeous, but too many of us wind up staying inside. While it's fun - and almost luxurious sometimes - to take a day to snuggle up with family, reading or watching the fire, drinking hot chocolate, doing puzzles, etc., it's important to get yourself and the kids outside when you can. Cabin fever will hit before the warm weather does and it always seems so much worse when you haven't been outside at all for a few months, barring the weekly venture out to the grocery store.......

Some kids need absolutely no encouragement to play outside, not matter what the weather and temperature. Others need a bit of a nudge.

Snowmen/critters. Build a whole family of snowpeople. Or how about a family of dinosaurs? If you've got ice to break into triangles for back plates or icicles to make tail spikes, you can really go to town. Maybe you forget rolling snowballs to make your snowpeople - can the kids figure out how to make a snowman out of cubes or some other odd shape? What can they make out of pine needles for their creation? Or maybe you have a family (and neighbors. lol) who would appreciate a tableau of Calvin and Hobbes-inspired snowfolks?

Sliding. Many people have sleds or discs to fly down hills on, but what's stopping those of us who don't from improvising? Grab a piece of cardboard for each kid and let them spend the afternoon going up and down the local hill! When your new sleds fall apart, just dump the pieces in the recycling.

Snow Coloring. Fill spray bottles full of water and  environment-safe coloring and tell the kids to decorate the yard. (You want safe coloring for the big ecological reasons, but on a personal level, who wants to have the snow melt to find that you need to re-seed patches of ground because your coloring killed off the grass? Bleah) What can they make? Giant faces, a flag representing the family, a menagerie of silly critters, maybe a people-sized game board that can be played on until the snow melts?

Nature Hunt. Yes, it's cold. Yes, the ground is covered in snow. But nature lives on. Maybe the kid who identifies the largest number of animal tracks gets an extra marshmallow in their hot chocolate or perhaps the family can identify which birds are out and about, then find out what sort of food they might be looking for.

Check Out Snowflakes. Set a piece of very dark fabric outside (or in your freezer) until it's really cold, then get out a magnifying glass and take a close look at the snowflakes that fall on the fabric. What observations can the kids make about the flakes? Watch the flakes under the magnifying glass as you breathe on them - how fast do they melt?

Snow Snacks. If you can trust that the snow near you is fresh and clean enough to be edible, give each of the kids a small bowl and have them fill it with snow. Pour a little juice on top - orange juice works well! - and enjoy.

Got Ice?  Do you have a patch of ground that has frozen over with ice? Kids love to slip and slide and an ice patch like this is safer than a lake or pond that isn't frozen thick enough. Give everyone brooms and play broomball, trying to get the ball into the other team's/player's goal.  If the ice is smooth enough that it won't ruin clothing, you can have Seal Races with everyone sliding on their bellies. (This is also a safe place to have kids practice what they would do if they fell through the ice while skating on a pond.)

Talk to the Owls. On a clear night, go outside and have someone do as realistic an owl-hoot as they can. If you're lucky, you might get a reply!

Snow  Tag. Stomp down snow in a wheel pattern - a largish circle with spokes running in to a hub. The person who is It stands at the hub, while everyone else stands on the outer circle. The person who is It yells Go! and darts down one of the spokes, trying to tag another player. The other players may run around the circle or down a spoke to the hub and back out another spoke to the circle, but may NOT leave the paths or pass each other when on the same line. The deeper the snow, the easier these rules are to enforce, but footprints will show up easily enough in any depth to settle any disputes.  This is best played with a number of players since one or two people may evade It easily, but with a few more, players start bunching up on each others' heels when they cannot pass each other. When a player is tagged by It, they become It.