Week 9: Robot Battles!

This idea was pulled from the interwebs about 3 years ago. It was the second  year I was married and my husband and I actually did this one night with dinner guests and it was easy and super fun. I got the idea originally from Red Ted Art.

I modified it for grandparent camp this year a bit, by making it a robot battle. I will say the kids under 3 weren't very interested, but buddy the kids from 3 until 9 were completely into it. The best thing is that the robots were made out of all craft materials and recycled things that Grandmother and Grandpap had on hand. The motors are 1.5-3V hobby motors that cost between 1-2 dollars.

Materials:

Hot glue gun and hot glue

1.5-3v craft motor

1 AA battery

electrical tape or soldering iron

anything you can think of to make a cool robot

We probably should have used the double sided foam they used on Red Ted Art. The vibrations tended to wiggle loose the hot glue pretty quickly, but it worked okay without it.

1. Hot glue the battery to the motor and attach the wires, one to each end of the motor. Make sure the motor spins.

2. Attach  something to unbalance the spinning end of the motor. Each of the kids chose something different. Some used plastic beads, some bits of wire. The point is to unbalance the motor enough so that it vibrates.

3. As soon as you verify that it wiggles, let the creativity begin! The only important part is to make sure the motors end can spin. We attached at least one end of the wire with electrical tape so it could be un-attached to stop the vibrations. Building our robots.

The kids really loved seeing how each of the robots moved, and building something that moved on it's own. Modifications went on and on, and we didn't even get through the battles completely, but I don't think anyone cared.

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The battle circle. Whoever pushed the other robot entirely out of the circle first won! This was great because it's entirely random, so the littler kids had just as much of a chance of winning as the older kids.

The kids chose so many different materials to build their robots. This one is made out of a toilet paper tube with yarn and pipe cleaners attached.

Pipe cleaners and toothpicks!

The bead attached to the front of this motor is what causes it to vibrate.

This project was fun at our dinner party and fun for the kids. Two AA batteries wired together will allow the motors to spin faster...a 9v battery will burn out the motor pretty quickly, though.

This project was a blast!

Week 8: Big Kid Wall Art

When my husband and I rented a house in Baltimore, we really wanted to put some art on the walls that we did ourselves, and we looked into buying canvases. Holy Toledo that stuff is expensive!

For a canvas that is only 2 by 4 feet it costs almost 40 bucks, and that's before you buy anything else, plus, we wanted something bigger.

So, my amazing husband found something better.
Hollow core doors from Home depot. He bought three for 20 bucks a piece. They are super light and easy to hang with a wire and a couple of nails.

They are awesome.
One we used to make our own giant chalkboard to hang on our wall,  and one I painted with Chompy when she was about 8 months old. It's hanging in our living room now above our couch. It looks sort of like an abstract map of the world.

So the other day when Chompy and Stinko were restless, and it was 114 degrees, we decided to break out the last board and give it a go.

Chompy painting when she was Stinko's age now. Home made finger paints.

So in the above picture, notice the chaos is contained. I actually had to coax Chompy onto the board and dip her hands in the paint. She ate some, she crawled through it a couple of times. She enjoyed it. Notice how clean the floor is.

I grossly underestimated the chaos that doing this with two children, one of whom is a human tornado.

It started out pretty well. I had the sense to roll up the carpet at least. I am using washable paints. Stinko is not interested in eating the paint, so that's a plus.

Stinko belly flopped into the paint immediately. Chompy is wearing her painting shirt. 

The painting shirt was useless.

I threw the kids directly into the bathtub, which I had to fill and empty twice.

The hand print on the chair is due to Chompy deciding she needed a paintbrush halfway through and climbing up on the table to get one. Luckily the paint is washable. I am, however, still finding paint to wash, and we painted two weeks ago. 

The art looks fabulous on the wall, though! When we get the other one hung it will look even better!

Simply beautiful! 8 foot by two foot wall art for 25 bucks! Win!

Week 8: Decorate Cookies

This past week my family got together for annual Grandparents Camp, which is a chance for all of the cousins to get together and do fun kid stuff together when we're not all overwhelmed with a special occasion like Christmas or New Years or a baptism or birthday. It's just an excuse to get together and do fun stuff, so everybody comes up with great entertainment ideas, so for the next few weeks I'm stealing everybody else's. I'm too worn out after this week anyway!

Ages 2, 5, and 6, all enthralled!

This is related to the cook with your kids, but even better, actually. My kid Chompy is absolutely interested in cookies, ALL OF THE TIME. So decorating cookies is a hit. The age range of kids decorating cookies was 18 months to 9 years, and everybody had a blast.

 I cannot take credit for this idea, this one comes from Auntie Bean, who made the cookies in advance and stored them in a plastic container to be available at all times. She also had the brilliant idea to make many different colors of icing and put it in clear squeeze bottles like these available from Amazon.

You can also buy them from Target, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, pretty much anywhere. They're pretty cheap, too. 

I'm not sure what kind of icing Bean put in these, but I know milk, powdered sugar and food coloring  mix together to make a good squeezable icing.

Those are some professional cookies!

Auntie Bean actually made amazingly delicious sugar cookies from scratch, but in case of a cookie emergency, you can also buy the ready made ones, or the dough you just have to pop in the oven like these.

Grandmother helps the littles

Cookies go well with milk!

Stinko watches his big cousin put on the finishing touches.

We decorated the heck out of these cookies ALL WEEK LONG! It's a great activity for a rainy day in Ohio, or a scorcher here in Phoenix, and they keep really well. Brilliant! Sprinkles are a bonus!

Special thanks to the rest of the Duck family for letting me use pictures of your absolutely beautiful kids!

Week 7: Go for Ice Cream! Melt is Phoenix Fabulous.

Melt in Downtown PHX

Nothing beats a cool treat on a really hot day, and Phoenix is hot. Although I don't really understand why the weather guys are freaking out over 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Is there really such a big difference between 107 and 114? I don't think going down to 111 should be allowed to be referred to as "cooling off" but whatever guys.

There's a super hip area in Phoenix near Roosevelt strip. I'm not very hip or super, but I do know some people who are, and they told me about it. It's full of funky art shops, a tattoo parlor and vintage stores. One of the most popular places on this strip is Jobot Coffee shop. I was told it was fabulous by my awesome artsy friends and family, and I guess it was a little too hip for me. I went in when I was 8 months pregnant, because my husband needed a caffeine boost before our home birth class with the midwives. We bypassed McDonald's because hey, go local, right?

When we arrived at Jobot we were ignored for a good ten minutes by the barista who was obsessively, lovingly cleaning a chalk board with the intensity that only someone stoned out of her mind can muster. There was only one other customer. My husband ordered a latte, and I tried to order a decaf coffee. The withering look that come out of the barista's eyes was backed with every ounce of her 22 year-old know-it-all scorn.

"We don't HAVE decaf coffee," She snorted through her condescending smirk.
because why would ANYONE EVER order a decaffeinated coffee.

Oh honey, at that moment I cursed her with every ounce of my 8 month pregnant in 110 degree weather in the summer of Arizona rage, and darling, that's a lot of rage. I wished upon that young girl the joy of being being pregnant in August, after having endured the worst morning sickness imaginable. I wished upon her heartburn to keep her up all night in tandem with severe sciatica. I also added in a baby that liked to move around and keep her awake, and a bladder so over active that she couldn't sleep for longer than ten minutes at a time. Hemorrhoids, varicose veins and insomnia were added to my mental list. In short, I wished that woman a world of future pregnancy hurt.

So that's when my Jobot boycott began. My husband continued to go, but I made fun of them. A lot. There is such a thing as being too hip, and I felt like Jobot had crossed the line (I mean, even my mom has decaf coffee at  her house, and she's not running a coffee shop).

plenty of nice comfy seating

This post is not about Jobot, however, this post is about Melt, the ice cream shop on the same strip, that happens to be owned by the same person, John Sagasta, and even though the ice cream girl was super hip, she was also super nice and awesome, serving up samples of fruity pebbles ice cream to my two year old with a smile. Also, it's all decaffeinated, so it won't keep my 7  month old breastfeeding baby awake, either (oh man I forgot to curse that girl with clogged ducts, we'll just add that to the list).

So skip Coldstone at the Arizona Center and take a walk down to Roosevelt and 5th Street and have some local Superstition Farms  ice cream down at Melt. It will cool you off, AND it will make you cooler.

great selection!

Chompy sharing with Stinko!

Week 6: Children's Museum of Phoenix

The Children's Museum of Phoenix's mission is to engage the minds, muscles and imaginations of children and the grown-ups who care about them. The Children's Museum has been in its current location at the old Monroe School building since 2008, but was actually originally founded in 1998 as the Phoenix Family Museum by a small group of volunteers. From 1998 until 2008 the Phoenix Family Museum visited community events and schools all over the valley and engaged the imaginations of over 275, 000 participants through a program called Museums Without Walls (MWW).

The Museum has been in its current permanent location at 7th Street and Van Buren Street in downtown phoenix for six years and continues to add new exhibits all the time. Just this past February, they opened an outdoor exhibit partially sponsored by the Arizona Diamondbacks. It has some pretty amazing play spaces including a super long climbing tube and a cactus maze. Musical instruments dot the lawn, and the outdoor visuals are so inviting it's hard to walk by without wanting to go inside and see what else is there is to play with. They also added a super cool hot dog stand to go along with the ice cream stand inside on the third floor just outside the noodle forest.

outside play area completed February 2014

The website is pretty good, and explains in detail all of the things the museum offers, but honestly I wasn't really sold until we had been inside. Sometimes we visit museums as a family, and it's made up of things that grown-ups think will be fun for kids, but actually aren't very fun for kids. Thirty minute long videos, even about things that are fun, aren't very fun for kids. This museum is the opposite of that. Everything you wish they would have they do.

A whole room devoted to building forts out of couch cushions? Check.

A giant room that consists of rolling balls down super long ramps? Check

Car tracks to race cars down? Check

A place to paint and color and craft? Check

Lots of grown-ups (ahem, playologists, as the museum likes to call them) around to tell you you're doing a great job and to play with you? Check

Chompy in her fort

Also, this place is super eco-friendly. If they can recycle it, they do, and there is some pretty amazing art in this building made out of old silverware, milk cartons, guitars, plastic bags and anything else you can think of. We have been there once a week since we moved to Phoenix, and we find a new favorite thing every time we go.

ceiling decorated with umbrellas

Only a few complaints, sometimes it gets super busy with school groups. Parents can check before they go and see how many groups are expected on the web site, though. Some parents complain there's not enough to do for older kids, and I could see that as a problem eventually. The memberships are a little confusing. I'm still not sure exactly how ours works, and we've belonged for almost a year. I'm going to get a better explanation this year when I renew.

Washers with giant bolts. This actually makes for a pretty cool visual and audio effect. 

 Chompy is two, and there's plenty she can't do yet. Stinko is only  months and he's really getting into the baby areas. Whoa, did I mention that in every space there's something for the older kids to do, there's a safe soft place to put your baby down to crawl around. Yep, they thought of everything. This is the place I go to on hot days where I can take a break and sit down and let the kids play. It's the ultimate indoor playground, with an extra bonus in that I don't have to chase Stinko around and make sure he's not eating cigarette butts.

Koi painted on floor of the eating space

chompy waiting to get in

chompy and stinko, happy until it's time to go.

I have taken everyone in my family to the Children's Museum in Phoenix. There are things to engage your little ones attention on every side.

Week 5: Papago Park Hole-in-the-Rock

Papago Park has  rich Native American History. It was also used as a P.O.W. camp for German prisoners during World War II. Its area includes the Phoenix Zoo, the botanical gardens and our chosen destination The Hole-in-the-Rock.

The Hole-in-the-Rock is a natural geological rock formation in Papago Park. There is evidence that the Hohokam Indians settled near this natural monument thousands of years ago. Climbing to the top is easy for kids of all ages. Better, you can park right at the base. Every time we go there are always a couple of families and grandparents with their grand kids.

So the trick to this Phoenix, Az,  thing is to get out early or stay out late, and since with little kids staying out late means lots of crying, screaming and possible biting, we tend to choose the early option. My kids are worlds better in the morning. The trick is getting them up and out early enough to enjoy the cool weather (by cool I mean 90 degrees guys, don't get too excited).

As we all know with kids, having definite plans is a no no. Things have a tendency to implode just at the critical moment, so I always start out the week thinking, some morning this week we will make it to Papago Park, and then, I am the best mom in the world because we DO make it to Papago Park some morning during the week. If I planned it for a specific day and it didn't work out, then I would feel like a failure. We missed one day that seemed promising due to an unforeseen shoe disappearance,but we managed to make it to Papago Park not once but twice this week! Take that universe!

Chompy calls it climbing a mountain, and ever since she did it for the first time with her big cousin she's been dying to go back! So we finally went. These pictures are from two different days. The climb is perfect for young kids because it's not too long, and there's plenty for older kids to do as well. Plus it's like a secret passageway when you climb up the back way. Super Awesome.

Stinko went, too, but he was in the carrier so no pictures! He's super fast, too, so he stayed in the carrier, too. I'm not trying to have him fall off a mini mountain when he's not even one yet.