Decorated Easter Eggs

Last year around this time of year, I gathered all of our Easter egg supplies and took the activity outside where we could decorate without fear of spilled dye on the carpet or dripping fingers touching the furniture. I know that not everyone has the luxury of warm weather in the spring, but if you are able to get outside to decorate your eggs, it really is the best option. I have a little play table that is a good height for the kids so they can stand over the dye cups and not risk tipping the cups over like they might at a dining room table or kitchen counter.

I have my boys dress in old clothes and then let them go at it. I buy an inexpensive egg decorating kit that includes the dye pellets, a wire holder (though a tablespoon is generally easier to maneuver), and sometimes a few stickers, which I usually put into their Easter baskets. I’ve never gone for those complicated dye kits that add glitter or wrap plastic casings around the eggs. I think they take away from the creativity and imagination of making your own designs. My boys like to draw on their eggs with a crayon before dipping them to create patterns or personalize them with their names. The half-and-half egg is a popular one at our house but requires a steady hand to hold the egg only halfway into the dye before flipping it on the spoon and dipping the opposite side into another color. My eldest likes to use an old eye dropper to deposit small drips and make a swirl effect with a rainbow of colors.

Using dye is the perfect opportunity to learn about color mixing (last year we ended up with lots of purple eggs, the result of my littlest trying to make a brown egg!). My boys usually abandon their spoons and holders halfway through the proceedings and end up dipping their fingers into the dye to retrieve their eggs. I don’t mind a little mess as I think it encourages the imagination, but if you want the kids fresh and clean for Easter Sunday, the dye does stain fingers and nails so have them wear rubber gloves!

This weekend I will be setting up our egg coloring station in the front yard. I hope you will share your own family Easter egg coloring traditions with us!

Time to decorate those eggs!

When my children were growing up, they had a craft table — a place abundantly supplied with paints, paper, paste, scissors, glitter, craft sticks, rubber stamps, inkpads, and whatever else their little creative minds construed as art supplies. Many a ziti necklace was created, each noodle carefully painted a different color. Cheerios were a big favorite, both as a snack and an art element. Gluing Cheerios to construction paper was something even a 3-year-old could delight in. It never occurred to me that it could be dangerous until the day my 3-year-old rushed into the kitchen waving her latest creation.

“Mommy, lookit. I made it the self!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed with delight. Or so I thought.

Admittedly the Cheerios were very artistically placed, and I praised her efforts while noting that she seemed to be covered in glue. Then I noticed her pulling at her eyes.

“Mommy, my eyes is stuck.”

Sure enough, she had rubbed her eyes while gluing and then apparently had worked so intently on her project that she had managed to glue her eyelids open. She couldn’t blink! Fortunately, she didn’t seem deeply upset while I frantically scrambled, wondering what to do. A warm, wet washcloth and a little pressure soon had her eyes back to normal, but I reconsidered letting the 3-year-old have the glue and replaced it with school paste, which I considered more benign. She scampered off to create another masterpiece.

When you have young children, they want to do everything you do, and with my widely varying interests, I’ll bet I have the only children in town who learned how to spin wool with a drop spindle, knit, sew, and make pysanky eggs before they were 6. Their abilities varied widely and only one of them continuously builds on those precise early skills. My middle daughter has far surpassed my abilities in everything I taught her, and it is with great delight that I watch her make her own clothes and tackle quilting projects I wouldn’t even dream of attempting. The other two have gone off in their own creative directions. One is a talented artist and the other an amazingly creative thinker. I like to think it all began at that craft table with the glue and the Cheerios.

(more…)

If you’re a cat-lover like I am, you just have to check out this video of a great cats’ house, created by home owner Bob Walker.

You can also “visit” The Cats’ House own website: www.thecatshouse.com.

Wall art of Gandhi created by Will Kasso

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”
- Gandhi

I just love this quote from Gandhi. I now have the bumper sticker on my car–mostly to remind myself of the responsibility we all share to “be the change we wish to see” in our families, communities, counties, states, countries, and the world.

A new arrival, ‘Be the Change’ Pendant, is now available at our sister site, IsabellaCatalog.com.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with graffiti artist Will Kasso:
Question: One of your latest portraits is Gandhi. Why?

Kasso: Well, Gandhi was a great human being. His contribution to society, the world for that matter, is undeniable. He directly influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a host of others for positive change. So when I decided to do the wall, I wanted to paint someone that ignited change, since aerosol artists are the most misunderstood and stereotyped artists on this planet.

My 11-year-old son was in a play last week. For years, friends had been telling me what a great experience this theater program was and how much their kids enjoyed participating in it. I’m not sure why, but in my mind I pictured spoiled child stars, overly-doting parents, and cramming rehearsals into an already packed schedule. In short, I could not see much positive coming from the whole experience.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself talking with the program’s director at a neighborhood park one day. He explained that the emphasis in the productions was not on the singing and dancing or who was the star of the show, but on responsibility, character, and leadership. Now I started getting interested! Not that I don’t value singing and dancing, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s the real life lessons that I value most.

So Ben auditioned for the play and made it. The weeks just flew by until it was time for the scheduled performances. The kids were busy, and the parents were even busier since it was an all-volunteer production. On the final night before the last performance, I found myself sitting in a room with all of the performers while the director gave them suggestions. After having seen the play from lots of different angles—as a parent, from backstage, from the audience —I expected to hear him tell them not to miss a certain cue, to sing out more during this scene, or something of this sort.

Instead, what he said has stayed with me a long time, and in fact, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. (more…)

Imagination lies at the heart of being human. Without imagination, life has no meaning and no sparkle, problems remain unsolved and life becomes flat. While giving lip service to the importance of imagination,
our culture does much to dampen our children’s imaginative abilities. Toys that have only one answer, prepackaged entertainment (i.e., television, videos and many computer games), schooling that involves too
much rote memorization, and even the negative, fear-based attitudes that pervade our culture all deaden our children’s ability to live in the imaginative world. If ever we have needed imagination, it is now. Imagination is the key to solving our world’s problems. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” All the knowledge in the world won’t fix anything unless we have the creativity to imagine new solutions and new ways of living.

As parents, we have so many ways to foster our children’s imagination. I guard my children’s imaginations like a jealous hound, for I know that the more we encourage our children to exercise their creativity, the stronger learners they will become. Allowing our children the time to experience hours of fantasy play and hours of outdoor play with a minimum of toys, and even giving them plenty of opportunities to be bored without rescuing them, fosters our children’s creative abilities. When we fill our house with the materials to make things (and it is remarkable what they will create out of string, sticks and boxes!), and we allow our children the freedom to make messes and mistakes with these materials, their imagination will lead them to amazing heights. The more tightly we structure days and close off the opportunities for openended play, the harder it is for our children to strengthen their imaginative muscles.

When making decisions that affect our children’s day, do we keep imagination in mind? If we send our child to day care, how much time does that facility dedicate to open-ended play? If we are home with our children, are we home long enough each day for them to fall into the land of make-believe deeply enough that they almost forget about the real world? When we buy toys, do we look for toys that engage our children’s imaginative capacities? The simple choices we make over and over again will facilitate or dampen our children’s relationship with the imaginative world.

[Reprinted from Under the Chinaberry Tree with permission from Random House Publishing.]

“Human beings are born with a great deal of creativity, and by the age of twelve, we’ve lost most of it. The world just slams it out of us. Our teachers and parents tell us that what comes from our imagination isn’t true; it’s just “imaginary.” I think that what’s imaginary is truer than what’s “real.” Adults prefer facts, because facts are limited. Like truth, imagination is unlimited, so many people are afraid of it.”
—Madeleine L’Engle