the summer approach

as the school year comes to a close, i am relieved and yet a little melancholy that my little girl will be entering third grade in september. third grade!?! i remember being in third grade! third grade for some reason sounds so much more serious and unfortunately these days, with standardized testing and a jam packed curriculum, it is. i wish that there was just a little bit more room for play. today, for their end of the school year party, the kids went to rockland lake. they played ball, painted the landscape of the lake, did crafts, hung out under trees, ran around aimlessly... it was great. the lake is literally a few steps from the school, yet the children only go there once a year! one of the teachers and i were expressing how the kids should be out here year round. she said that in order for them to make the trip today, each child needed three sets of permission slips. to me, there should be an open permission slip for the entire year but there is so much legislation about so many things, your head would spin. anyway, i think my point is that these kids need to play. just run around and play in the fresh air. where are we as a society if to some, this is considered unproductive? it is so much more productive that they think...

i'll end my rant there to show you a few crafts we enjoyed this week. eden has made a few winning father's day t-shirts in the past for her dad but the little screenprinting place in town closed down a few years ago and so that tradition was put on hold. until recently, i found this great idea of using a bleach pen on a dark t-shirt to create prints. so cool! ofcourse this is a craft for about 7 years and up due to the use of bleach. the bleach pen (sold at the grocery store) is easy to use and not messy at all. to make prints: put on some old clothes and some plastic gloves (shh we didn't have any), lay out the dark colored t-shirt and slide either a plastic bag or some wax paper inside of the shirt so that the design doesn't go through, sketch your design using some chalk and then use the small end of the bleach pen to outline. set aside for 2 hours and then wash the t-shirt alone on cold and dry. and there you have it. i was expecting thinner lines for ours here but i think it spread due to the amount of bleach we used (she went over it twice or more). i bet if we only outlined once, the lines would have been thinner but eden loved the way it came out. she said, "it's awesome!"

another fun craft were fireworks pens that the children made at the end of the year picnic i was talking about. i got the idea from familyfun magazine. 

i love this monthly magazine. it has really creative ideas for kids. this craft was simple and fast for first and second graders. they were pleasantly surprised how great they came out and were so proud to show them off to each other. they look like sparklers sans the ouches from the sparks.