Glitter Makes Everything Creative

One of the upsides of not having any serious DIY crafting talent is letting Ladybug Girl in on the creativity.  I really wish I had more patience and fine motor skills, but if I did I would probably be too much of a perfectionist to do projects with my daughter.

This way I can relax and still model the importance of expressing yourself and being creative.  My mama mentor for this is Jean of The Artful Parent and her insightful article about how parents influence the way their children approach art.

This is our story.

3 Ways to Make Play Snow

We have tropical weather all year round so snow is full of wonder and mystery.  Blame it on the overload of Christmas books and movies!  From my friends who actually live with snow on the other side of the world however, snow is played in for just a short while and the season stays way too long. 

I can't imagine why you would want to do these if you had actual snow outside your door during Christmas, but for all us tropical-loving folk, here are three ways we've made snow for play:

A Change for Peaceful Playroom Walls

There's a Montessori principle about preparing a child's concentration with sparse decor on the walls.  There's also this article about lower test scores in heavily decorated classrooms.  I've largely ignored those bits of wisdom until my recent proof that it must be true: A strange thing happened when Ladybug Girl turned six - she reverted back to sleeping with us in the master bedroom, after two years of sleeping on her own.  I had to wonder why.  
After a hard look at her bedroom I began to see what was once a happy space is now very likely visual clutter.  So I've given her walls a make-under.  Want to see? This was her wall view before going to sleep:

A changeable art gallery.  It was awesome - maybe a little too awesome.

3 Christmas Play Ideas to Leave-Behind

Welcome to another installation of leave-behind play the corporate mama way.

Leave-behind play invitations were my working-mom hacks to doing the things that the lovely homeschooling and Montessori blogs were doing, just in a much easier way for both mama to prepare and child to follow.

Here are few things we did in the few years of Christmas past:

Leave a Christmas drawing prompt.
In this case, a piece of broken furniture glued to paper on a clipboard.

Beginning to Konmari : Bedroom

My big sister clued me in on Mari Kondo's Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and after one night of reading it on my Kindle app, I was convinced it would change my life.