Father's Day is this Sunday - do you have any special plans? Special gifts ready? Tell us what you'll be doing - whether it's breakfast in bed, a special craft from the kids, or going out and letting dad have the house to himself!
And it's not too late to join the Kids in the Capital team to Walk, Run or Roll for Rogers House - we'd love to see you there!
by Anne
On a record breaking June day,(and yes even though june is not over it had to be record breaking 30+degrees!) I packed up the children in the car complete with an assortment of pails,diggers and dumptrucks. My children were excited to go to the rainbow park as they have named it. The drive there includes a game of what can you see-a mooing cow, smiling cat on sign, sheds, train tracks and more. Carp splash pad is located 14km from Stittsville, just behind Carp's farmers market(carp road- then turn onto Juanita rd). I usually park behind the baseball diamond as it is the middle of both parks.
The sand playground is comprised of swings, a seated digger, small structure of younger ones with a table for snacks, as well as a larger structure for older children with curvy slide, and straight slides. The entire area is fenced in which is a huge bonus for those parents who have runners. There is also mature trees that line the playground giving lots of shade and plenty of benches and picnic tables for nursing and providing snacks.
When the children are hot and have tired of the playground it is onto the short walk to the amazing splash pad. Equipped with pouring buckets,rainbow sprinklers, squirt guns, and a flower that sprays you it has variety for everyone. Did I also mention the other reasons I love this park? Again fenced in, shaded picnic area, and a CLEAN jonny on the spot.
Anne is the proud mom of two children, 2.5 and 4.
by Tiana A while back when I read about how to find and raise a monarch butterfly on The Art of Doing Stuff, I was totally inspired to get this in he works fir Bobby. He LOVES butterflies and it was one of his first obsessions ( along with balls and fans). Finding an egg and feeding the caterpillar with copious amounts of milkweed seemed like a lot of work and I had back burnered the idea until one day a couple of weeks ago when my doorbell rang during Brent's band practice.
Our next door neighbour raises butterflies. I know she provides them to a nearby school to help teach about metamorphosis and she is a retired teacher herself. She came by with a small container housing two painted lady caterpillars, a lump of food and a lot of poop. She is wonderful and she told Bobby what to expect.
Bobby was convinced she meant a cocoon but he shortly corrected his belief based on false information provided by Eric Carle. Moths come from cocoons. We kept them in a lit area but out of direct light and checked on them often. A day later they were "J" shaped and a day after that, one had become a chrysalis. I was watching as the remaining caterpillar became very stiff, then it started vibrating, then it's outer layer started sliding upward as the chrysalis was revealed below. I should have taken a video but I was too awestruck. It's seriously magical. Bobby looked a couple times and Brent didn't even glance. he totally missed out. For real.
Then, as instructed, we went next door and told our neighbour what had transpired.
The next day she came back with a larger home for the chrysalises and transferred them over.
Once again she told Bobby what to expect.
She gave Bobby a stack of post-it notes numbered 1 through 12 so he could remove one each day and know when the butterflies would hatch. On day 5 I found them scattered about his room.
A couple of days ago we all woke up the find that the butterflies had hatched in the night. Bobby was very excited and we agreed to go tell our neighbour about it AFTER daycare.
She was out at the time so we left a note on her door. She came by right before Bobby's bed time and we had even more butterfly fun! He told her their names. He named them Piper and Max. I have no idea why. She said they would be ready to let out the next day and that the flowering bush in our backyard was the perfect location. In the meantime, they were likely hungry so she placed a chunk of orange in their little home and Piper (assuming it's the same one that was in the spot since the morning) went for a drink right away.
Learning time: A butterfly 'eats' using it's proboscis which is like a long coiled straw in it's mouth that it extends to drink nectar. Or orange juice. This video shows the drinking and then the proboscis retracting.
Butterfly Drinking OJ a video by tianadargent on Flickr.
Since I always need something with which to lure Bobby away from daycare, I told him we would do it in the evening before supper. And we took a video of it!
If you ever get the chance to do this I suggest you do. It's super!!
Tiana is mother to Bobby Hurricane and Molly Rocket. You can catch her being generally awesome over at Do Not Rest Easy.
by Natasha Rainy days are perfect for making crafts with your little one. This year, we seem to be having more rainy days of summer than hot ones, so Baby H has grown used to seeing the arts and crafts box pop up at least once a week.
A while ago, I came across Frugal Family Fun Blog, a site offering free downloads of craft projects for children. One of the first projects Baby H and I embarked upon was making baby chicks. It’s basically gluing, painting and putting things together.
If you’re looking to do some arts and crafts with your little one, I recommend this easy project.
I pre-cut two circles out of yellow paper, orange triangles for the feet and the beak and cut up the feathers into small pieces. This is to help along with the project, since Baby H - at 22 months old - may lose interest if we spent too much time doing prep work together.
I watched as Baby H glued the two yellow circles onto a colourful piece of construction paper, a large circle for the body and a smaller one for the head. Next, he painted the body of the chick with yellow paint and set it aside to dry. Once ready, Baby H glued the small bits of feathers and pompoms onto the chick’s body. He was fascinated by the glue, and was a little too eager to stick everything together. I had to glue on the chick’s legs, feet and beak myself to make sure that they end up in the right places. I didn’t particularly feel like inventing a new brand of birds and explaining the modified chick to my son later on.
Baby H helped glue the remaining parts and the googly eyes, which he kept giggling at. At the end of it all, my son had learned a few new things, made himself a chick and I got to spend some time with him on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Arts and crafts are really important to me, and I think all of us really, because they help us see the artistic potential of our children early on. And once in a while, it’s fun to do something really messy and end up stuck to all sorts of things.
Natasha is a new mommy to her first born, Baby H. She runs ShopHaven, a blog that reviews products and profiles local businesses and individuals from the Ottawa area. Natasha is also the creative force behind ShopHaven Baskets; a highly customized gift baskets service.
by Eric Kiernan and I went into the darkened Mayfair theatre - not to see a movie, I explained to him, but to see the Cowguys. Not a western show, no - it would be juggling and magic.
The movie before their show had run late, but even as they setting up, they entertained the arriving audience members with melodramatic flourishes and jokes.
When the main show got underway, we were treated to a classic vaudevillian double act of straight man Brian Wilson and comic foil Nick Miller. They fooled around, performed sleight of hand, juggled pins and knives, and pulled audience members up onstage (or when they wouldn't come up, the show was brought right to their seats). Kiernan was fascinated, afterwards claiming his shrinking into the chair and hiding behind me meant that he really would have wanted to go up on stage.
For the finale, a cow-print box was rolled out and we were presented with a classic Houdini "Great Escape" act: Beautiful assistant "Nicolita", blonde wig stunningly complementing her trim goatee, was wrapped in chains and locked into the box, where -- well, I don't want to ruin it, but Kiernan told me he knew how the trick had been pulled off.
"There was probably a robot in the box and the robot turned into the other guy when they were behind the curtain." Man, if a four-year-old can see through your illusions, Cowguys, it's time to upgrade the show (or maybe just the robot).
Both Kiernan and I had a lot of fun and enjoyed the show - as well as the poster autographed by Bridini and Nicolita. Cowguys are available for private parties, and even have great birthday party packages available at www.cowguys.com. They will also be performing at Ottawa's 20th annual Busker Festival which runs July 28th-August 1st.
Eric is dad to 4.5 year old Kiernan and two year old twins Quinn and Juliette.
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