{"id":180,"date":"2009-07-27T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T16:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.wordpress.com\/2009\/07\/27\/in-pictures-10-ways-to-make-today-magical\/"},"modified":"2009-07-27T16:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-27T16:26:00","slug":"in-pictures-10-ways-to-make-today-magical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/27\/in-pictures-10-ways-to-make-today-magical\/","title":{"rendered":"In Pictures: 10 Ways to Make Today Magical"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s 10 fun and easy ways we’ve made the day magical around here lately….<\/p>\n

1.  Make mud art!  Find a good place to dig in the dirt and provide some water, spoons, platters and pretties to decorate with (we used dried flower petals, dried beans and pasta, and beads).  Let the kids mix up mud andmake whatever designs they like and leave them to dry.  Take pictures and then just rinse and reuse the special stuff later.<\/p>\n

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2.  Put bubbles in the kiddie pool!  Just add a generous squirt of bubble bath or good quality dish soap and then spray fresh water into the pool.  We used Dawn dish soap and had bubbles for over an hour!  (Hint– look for the smallest kiddie pool you can find to use as a sensory pool outside for all-season fun.  Fill it with different things each week — fall leaves, packing peanuts, flour and small toys and scoops, dried corn, etc. and let the kids scoop, sift, search and sit in it.  Clean up is a breeze since it’s outside and the small size means it’s cheap to fill — and cheap to buy!)
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3.  Make a density column<\/a>.  This is not just pretty and cool, but also educational.  We used corn syrup, dish soap, vegetable oil, tinted water and tinted rubbing alcohol.  It actually was prettier than our picture shows! The kids loved this project and they wanted to know what would happen if we froze it so we extended the lesson.  That was pretty cool too!
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4.  Go see a pageant (a historic play) or other outdoor show.<\/div>\n
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5.  Better yet, sign up to be part of one!
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6.  Look for shooting stars.  This time of the year the sky is filled with them.  We saw two while the girls and I were celebrating their last performance of the season.
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7.  Play in the sprinkler!  Add props– frisbees, balls, slides, jump ropes, etc. and join the kids too!
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8.  Find a good hill and roll down it!
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9.  Set up the tent in the back yard, spread out a fun blanket and invite the kids to play inside.  We all played cards and it was doubly magical with the way the sun and the tent walls seemed to make everything glow!<\/div>\n
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(hint: when playing cards with toddlers around, save all the ad cards and instruction cards to deal them a "hand" so they can think they’re playing too!)
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10.  Break out the legumes!  For a simple sensory way to entertain little ones, give them a couple of measuring cups full of dried beans, peas, corn, pasta, whatever.  Let them pour them into a shallow pan (try for a mixture of textures and colors) and then stir with spoons, scoop with measuring cups, etc.  Make it deeper and you can hide small trinkets inside, or let them drive cars or boats through, you name it.  Alex happily played with this one all week and then we used it for the mud craft above later.  You can further use the beans and pasta to make glue mosaics on cardstock (the back of food boxes works well for sturdy canvases).  My big kids were irresistibly drawn to the bean pan all week too!  It’s very soothing and fun!<\/div>\n
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Did you do something magical this week?  Share your ideas or links in the comments and I’ll post them here.<\/p>\n

Have a magical week!
~Alicia
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Here’s 10 fun and easy ways we’ve made the day magical around here lately…. 1.  Make mud art!  Find a good place to dig in the dirt and provide some water, spoons, platters and pretties to decorate with (we used dried flower petals, dried beans and pasta, and beads).  Let the kids mix up mud…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[171,253],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}