We thought we'd share some of our favorite simple Halloween craft and treat activities to help while away the hours up until it is time for Trick or Treating!
1. Spiderwebs from Mom Tried It
We love this simple and engaging craft and can't wait to try it ourselves!
We are sharing part of a post from MomsWithApps today, featuring creative, open-ended Halloween apps for the iPhone, iTouch, and iPad...
Treat Street includes a mix and match costume shop, a street with doorbells to ring and treats and surprises to collect, and a goodie bag that can be searched through to see all the treats collected. It is a simple exploratory game, with nice graphics.
Leaf Jam is a new release that lets kids play with fall leaves, tapping the screen to make them fall, shaking it to move them around, and touching the rake button to clean up and start over!
Let's Bead Friends allows kids to create a bracelet with beads they design themselves, using simple or complex patterns. They can even send a jewelry greeting by email or through facebook. This is another open-ended and exploratory game (with Halloween beads, too!) that encourages creativity.
We have posted about this product before, in discussing the importance of pretend play in developing empathy. This particular toy, though, has gotten a fair amount of recent playing time at our house, and with Halloween right around the corner, we thought it would be worth revisiting. It is the Make Your Own Monster Puppets by Melissa and Doug. The pieces can be attached to the puppet bodies with velcro and changed as often as kids want! In our house, each individual creation gets its own name and characteristics, and we have been expanding the stories about these characters into drawings and mini books. So much creativity from some felt, fur, and velcro!
"There is a myth that doing nothing is wasting time, when it's actually extremely productive and essential," says Dr. Hirsh-Pasek. "During empty hours, kids explore the world at their own pace, develop their own unique set of interests and indulge in the sort of fantasy play that will help them figure out how to create their own happiness, handle problems with others on their own, and sensibly manage their own time. That's a critical life skill."
"Children continue to learn and develop throughout childhood," notes Hirsh-Pasek. "But they need time to recharge their batteries and process what they've learned. Free time allows them to explore, to be scientists, discoverers, creators, and innovators. They do that when they build pillow forts in the family room, sail away in a laundry basket to a foreign land, or find the remarkable in the mundane."
You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back.
If there were only one valuable gift we could give our children ........ What would it be?
The gift of TIME. This simple yet clear message is delivered beautifully by Patrick McDonnell,
in his book, THE GIFT OF NOTHING.
This author, illustrator and Award Winning Cartoonist makes the entire book available for us to enjoy! A dedicated promoter of animals and of an earth friendly environment, all of his books are printed on recycled paper.
This boy really got the hang of the "I CAN DO IT" theme! Try it with your kids! It feels great!
Make your own "I CAN DO IT" Dance video and email it to us at info@toolsofgrowth.com. We will be posting them and every participant will be entered into the "I CAN DO IT" Dance drawing to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card! Have fun!
This wonderful iPhone App is yet another creative way to remind your child that their inner greatness is just an affirmation away! AFFIRMATIONS help "switch" a negative thought to a positive one, building our children's happiness foundation. The app is extremely easy to use and you can choose the "Read it Myself" option or the "Read to Me" option, which is narrated by Louise Hay, herself.
Looking for AFFIRMATIONS for yourself? On the face page of the iPhone app, press on the round button with the a picture of a house, and VOILA! you will be introduced to a world of AFFIRMATION iPhone apps, for health, wealth, romance and much more.
I Think, I Am by New York Times Best Selling Author and founder of Hay House, Louise Hay, teaches children how to quickly and easily learn to be open-hearted and open-minded by thinking and saying positive statements (affirmations), leading to positive behavior and actions. It also encourages children to love and honor themselves, as well as those around them, by expressing kindness and love.
What are affirmations?
It's simple: They are positive statements! Affirmations are a fantastic way to create new beliefs about oneself or to reaffirm existing ones. Here are a few examples from this "must have in your children's library" book:
"I can make today great"
"I love to learn new things"
"I am surrounded by love"
"I am grateful for what I have"
How wonderful would it be if we could teach our children early on to believe in themselves!
At the end of this book, Louise Hay suggests seven simple techniques to help children practice the art of positive thinking and speaking. One of my personal favorite authors and speakers, Dr. Wayne Dyer, also referred to as the "Father of Motivation" says, "You'll see it when you believe it."
Try it, have fun, unlock your children's potential, and lead them to their greatness!
Research shows that our experiences in life reshape our brains and change our nervous systems. The problem is that we are wired to respond more to negative than positive experiences. As psychologist Rick Hanson says, "The mind is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones." Negative experiences are actually stored in a different way than we typically store positive influences. But recent research shows that if we train ourselves, we can focus more on positive experiences, building them up to counterbalance this "negativity bias."
We can do this by noticing the positive events more (rather than just letting them slip by), savoring them (by staying with the positive emotions for more than just a few seconds), and letting these positive experiences become a part of us. These steps help embed the positive and change the structure of our nervous system for the better!
The Happy Book is a little bit silly and fairly visual (one page asks you to go outside the box and draw a picture of a crazy animal hybrid (a rabbihippo, bearicorn, catigator, etc.), another exhorts you to plan a "perfect kid's day menu" for yourself.) The exercises are fun and creative and will definitely stretch those positive thinking skills!
The Field Guide to Happiness is a slightly more structured program for noticing and savoring positive things in life. It has sections for making lists of things that make you happy, with helpful prompts and clear explanations of the point of the exercises. It calls on you to think deeply about what inspires and delights you, which takes some effort but will also pay you back by embedding these positive emotions even more deeply.
An additional Parent TOG that we just have to share is Christine Carter's new class, based on her book and one of our all-time favorite TOGs, Raising Happiness. This online class starts next week and promises to teach:
Practical skills for raising kids who are happy now and in the future
Greater happiness yourself—both as a parent and an individual
Ways to raise children’s emotional intelligence and school performance
Strategies for dealing with life’s difficulties, such as: divorce, sibling rivalry, brattiness and entitlement, and big changes, such as moving or a death.
We are so excited about this class and hope to see some of you in the virtual classroom! Click here for more info.
Be Happy!: A Little Book for a Happy You by Monica Sheehan is a small board book with a big message - how to be happy. The advice is great for everyone from toddlers to adults! The suggestions like "Draw and paint a little," "Make friends," and "Be Brave" are accompanied by cute drawings of a dog engaged in these activities, either alone or with children. Reading this with your kids will help remind both them and you of the important things in life.
This book is a bite-size version of her bestseller, Be Happy: A Little Book to Help You Live a Happy Life. This latter version is also full of simple but true statements about the road to happiness, along with illustrations.
For this weekend's activity, we thought we could help you, the parents, inspire yourself, so that you may teach your children to recognize their marvels and nurture their self-worth. This activity, is taken from Dan Zadra's book One: How Many People Does It Take to Make a Difference. It will make you stop and think for a moment, and perhaps help you acknowledge your unique gifts! Have fun and please give us some feedback. We will post your comments to share with other TOG family members.
