Moon Dough - it's for the moon!

One of our daughters received some Moon Dough for a birthday gift and I was so excited to try it.  Well, the excitement wore off pretty fast when I realized how MESSY it was.  At first I thought I did something wrong.  Maybe I should add water to it?  It just seemed to fall apart so easily - and into a million pieces.  It does go together fairly easy again but trying to keep all the very small pieces in one place was exhausting.  I finally just let them play and then all the small pieces on the floor I just swept up and threw away.  I know they say it is better than play dough because it won't dry out but I still think play dough is better and easier for the kids to work with. They seemed to be frustrated with it falling apart so much and trying to keep all the pieces together.  However, it was easier for the little girls to roll it out and make cutouts themselves. 

You can be the judge, but I think I will stick with good ole fashion play dough from now on.

Neat homemade art projects

I received an email from one of the blogs I follow, Excellence in Early Childhood Education, and it had wonderful art ideas that I thought I would share:

http://preschoolprofessional.blogspot.com/2010/05/recipes-for-home-made-art-products.html

Scrapbooking scraps come in handy!

I just returned from a scrapbooking retreat and completed 50+ pages!  I used to work for a scrapbooking company so I have been doing it for many years.  I do a book for each child and try to do a family book as well.  I really love preserving their every move in a scrapbook.  I just finished one of our daughter's 3rd book and she isn't even 2 yet.  I should really count how many I have done in total - I am sure it is around 30 or so.  Although it takes a lot of time, I think it is so important to preserve our family memories.  The kids love to go back and look at the pictures and stories from back when they were younger.  I know I will cherish them when all the kids are grown up. 

As I was working on my books this weekend, I found that I had a lot of scraps left over - extra paper mostly.  Most of the paper is oddly shaped, ripped, etc. so the likelyhood of it being used again on a page isn't very high.  However, I do not throw these scraps away.  All of my scraps go into a special container so that they can be used again.  They are especially great for the kids!

Here are a few ideas to use your scrapbooking leftovers:

• Use them for the kids art projects
• Frame the paper if it can add decoration to any room
• Have your young ones practice cutting
• You can cut out shapes and have your kids play a game with the shapes or just go through them to learn their shapes
• Use the scraps into a memory game
• I use most of my scraps to make cards! You can let the kids make their own cards as well.
• If you have a cricut, you can use your scraps to cut out different things with this machine either for future pages or for your kids

Whether you scrapbook or not, I hope you preserve your family memories in a way that suits you!