Joanne Gonzales
If you are drowning in Pinterest boards for kids’ activities, you might yearn to have them all in one place. I’m like this for recipes and kid stuff. I love my pin boards, but I equally love having the tactility and simplicity of flipping through a book for ideas. It’s not even a nostalgic thing, because I adore reading other books on Kindle. I just sometimes need to have the open, printed pages to hang out with and fondle.
So- about books on kids’ activities. Asia Citro is a friend of mine, and she’s in the Rockin’ Art Moms group with me, and I am sure you all know her, because she is the megaforce behind the blog, Fun at Home With Kids. I am seriously in awe of her because she comes up with the wildest, coolest, messiest, goopiest, most tactile activities and substances for kids, all in a really beautiful way. It’s playing with art.
This post is all about her new book. Written by her. Jam-packed with her crazy projects and activities. This is it:
Her book is an extension of her blog, but you know when you are on someone’s blog, and you are completely digging what they are all about, and you’re poking around and pinning projects, but you still sort of feel like you’re missing a lot of cool stuff? That’s because it’s harder to organize a blog that goes on for years than it is a succinct, planned out book.
This is a fantastic resource for activities for kids, but it’s also a joyous dive into the imaginations of kids, and Asia totally gets it. She knows that kids like to: touch everything, make up imaginary worlds, sort things, and get messy.
When I got the book in the mail, I maniacally ripped it out of the bag and flipped through it while waiting for Beckett to get out of school. Then I hugged it for a while. The riot of colors and ideas had me wanting to try about 20 activities that afternoon with Beckett, but I settled on an old classic with a new twist: dyed noodles.
When I was a kid, the ridiculous name for it was macaroni art, but Asia calls it colored pasta, and you don’t have to sit around painting each little noodle with paint. You use…. liquid watercolor! The colors are so, so, so much more vibrant, and it’s a thousand times easier to make. It’s on page 167 of the book for the recipe.
I made up some of each rainbow color of these for my little crafter (I made half the amount of the recipe), and then I pulled out some wire and Beckett and I sat and strung pasta beads and gabbed and swore and drank gin like a couple of fishwives.
We made sculptures!
This was a lovely way for little B to work on his newfound love of patterns, and we got to bend and re-bend the wire-bead sculptures all around.
Find 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids on Amazon here.
Anyway, her directions are clear, the activities are for all ages of kids (even wee little babies), the photos are beautiful, and she offers several variations for most of the activities. Your kids will never be bored again.
P.S. You didn’t think we’d forget to make necklaces, did you?
I feel the same way – sometimes (a lot of times!) Pinterest has so many ideas as to be overwhelming rather than inspiring. I loved this book as well – and looks like your little peanut had a lot of fun with the colored pasta!