10 Ways to Make Today Magical

Happy Monday!

I hope you and your family had a fabulous weekend.  We got together with friends who met us in a nearby town and swam at their motel pool, talked, played and hiked at two gorgeous sites.  I kept up pretty well for an old pregnant lady, and the kids had a blast. 

Here’s a few ways to make some magic with your kiddos this week…

1.  Make poetry shells.  Gather up a bunch of pistachio shells, smooth rocks  or other natural objects and use a magic marker to write words on them.  Make sure to use adjectives, nouns and verbs.  For example…. I, you, we, love, wet, dogs, jumped, lick, stars…. the more words you make the more variety you can get in your poem.  Drop the rocks in a bucket, shake, and grab a handful to arrange into each line.  Make sure to add some funny words!

2.  Help the kids hide love-you notes for a loved one (daddy, grandma, etc.).  Fill them with messages to make the recipient laugh or feel good, such as limericks, 5 reasons you’re the best grandpa, and so on.  Try to leave some where it will take a few days and some that will pop up in dull places, such as in the car or briefcase.

3.  Take the whole family out for a starry drive.  Park by a lake or just in an empty lot away from city lights.  Lay a blanket down or pull out some lawn chairs and just sit as a family and watch the stars.  See if you can see any shooting stars.  Point out the constellations to your kids.  Talk about what you thought when you looked at the stars when you were a child.

4. Make puzzles for breakfast.  Use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of toast, pancakes or french toast.  Let kids match the shapes to the pieces with the holes and fit back in.

5.  Have the kids make up funny fortunes and put them in homemade fortune cookies or leave them in unexpected places like cereal boxes.

6.  Go down memory lane.  Take the kids to the hospital where they were born, the school you went to, or the park where daddy proposed.  Tell them the stories of those far-off times.

7.  Start a wish tradition.  My mom always saved the tip of her pie for the last bite and made a wish on it.  You can also wish on stars, dandelion fluff, pennies in fountains, or just something you make up.  See if your family can invent some neat new ones.

8.  Dress the kids up with some whimsy (with painted faces, wearing fairy wings, in ball gowns, etc.) and go someplace fun.

9.  Dance in the rain.

10. Celebrate an unexpected anniversary.  Search through baby books, letters or old e-mails and find something neat that happened on this date.  Surprise your little one with a cake to celebrate the 4 year anniversary of her first word.  Start writing notes on your calendars of all the milestones your family goes through, then keep them on a master calendar.  How fun it would be in a few years to be able to look at this date in your family’s history and see that 6 years ago you moved into your house, 3 years ago the baby crawled for the first time, and last year this was the day your son cooked his first meal.

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And with that, my dears, I’m off to make green smoothies and get really, really dirty in the garden. 

Have a magical week!