Foamerator

I saw this idea on Family Fun and had to try it. They call it the Foamerator. It was simple super to make! Simply cut the bottom off of a water bottle. Then attach a piece of towel to the bottom of the bottle and secure it with a rubber band. Dip the end in water, then into a shallow bowl filled with dish soap and then blow!!
My 2-year-old loved it.

The 11-year-old loved it.

The 7-year-old sucked the bubbles into his mouth somehow and proceeded to gag and choke for at least 10 minutes.

And the 5-year-old started a bubble fight. The kids had fun throwing the big suds on each other and smearing them everywhere. I would say they played with this for over an hour.

We kept our bottles so we can play with them again. It's definitely a fun summertime activity. Next time we will break out the sprinkler and the swimsuits before we suds up!

Cardboard Racetrack

I was over on the Mother Huddle the other day and saw this post, about recyclable crafting. Well, it inspired this racetrack! We all want to help the planet right?

This was the greatest Saturday afternoon project! The kids played with it for hours and were so excited. It made it worth the 2 hours it took me to cut out all the pieces and to put it all together.

I've seen this done with cereal boxes, and it's very cool. I only have a couple of open boxes of cereal, so........

I used boxes. This is just a few of the left over boxes I had after my Alison's Pantry order. I started cutting up pieces to make this track. I used a hot glue gun to attach all the pieces. I was going to use packing tape, but we couldn't find it.

The kids love the tunnel. The nice thing about this track is that it's a bit flexible so they can lift portions of it and make jumps and hills. I added guard rails on the corner's of the track and I added a few jumps in the corners. It's super flexible so the kids can make more jumps by putting more boxes or toys underneath it. The kids loved drawing flames and road lines on it, also.

The kids spent the afternoon making cars jump off the tunnel. I spent the afternoon in front of the jump trying to catch a really good picture of the cars as they came off. This one is so awesome and it's really the only good one I got. The kids thought it was hilarious to watch me dodge the cars as they came flying at my face!

The great thing, is that this track will last a long time and hopefully get a lot of playtime. It's also pretty easy to fold up and put in a closet or corner when you need the space.

Foam Swords

Another fun Christmas present that my boys got were these fun swords. I picked them up at the Dickens Festival, which is this fun holiday boutique that they hold every year. I paid $3.00 a piece for these and my husband was appalled. He said we could have made them for a lot less, but I don't think we could have done it for less, because to do it in bulk, it would be lots less expensive than to make 2 swords. Sorry for the rambling, but anyway. These are made out of a short piece of pvc pipe, an end cap, about 1/3rd of a piece of foam noodle, and some garden edging. So easy! If you were throwing a pirate birthday party these would be so awesome. The pvc is probably about a foot long, so when you get hit with the sword it doesn't hurt, because it's only noodle that your getting hit with. For boys this is a great thing, because they love to sword fight.

This is from a post that I did in March on my family blog, but thought it would be a good to share it here on this blog. It's a great activity for boys.

Isn't it funny how boys can be entertained with a simple paper airplane? J.D. and his grandad Ward used to play with paper airplanes every Sunday when we would go and visit him. Grandad would save the advertisements out of the paper and build airplanes for J.D. I hope this is something J.D. will always remember about him.

Mine are probably nowhere as cool as Grandads. After several failed attempts to make a plane that would actually fly and withstand a 3-year-old, I finally got on the internet to find out how to make one that would fly. And amazingly enough these did fly very well. The boys spent the whole afternoon playing with their paper planes. For all you other moms who have boys and want to impress them with your airplane flying abilities, check out this link for a short little video that walks you through the process step by step.