Baloon yo-yo

Yes, the weather is awful these days and we mostly spend our free time in the house, but what can we do? Apart from grumbling how everything is ugly and gray, we can have fun. And that's exactly what we do.

For a last few days we are having fun with this yo-yo made out of a plain balloon:

It was super easy to make them.  We poured some water in the balloon, as much as it was possible, then we inflated them and tied a knot. We've added several rubber bands and the fun started immediately. Girls were so delighted with the new toy that I barely managed to take any photos.

I found a tutorial in which a balloon can be filled with rice or beans, but somehow I do not want to teach kids to play with food, so that's why we decided to fill it with water.

How do you have fun in this rainy weather? Do you make some toys with your kids? Or are you more fond of cartoons, apps and video games?

10 summer fun ideas

Finally we have beautiful weather which comes with a whole range of ideas for great outdoor entertainment and summer fun:

1. A Sea Mermaid

One plastic bottle, a piece of a potato sack (similar to our Merida greeting card ), a few sea shells, some green paper and markers for drawing faces. Quickly and easily we got a mermaid:

2. Beach in a bottle

If after making a mermaid, you stil have some sea shells left, add some sand and make this nice shelf decoration:

3. Pool noodles

We used them for everything but the swimming:

4. Homemade bubbles

The kids really love to blow soap bubbles, however, they quickly spill the liquid, so it is good to know that you can prepare it yourself, from the ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen.

5. Homemade children paint

This is something my kids particularly like and we've come up with several ways of homemade paint:

Out of flour and salt:

Ice colors:

Or with the old, dry markers:

After you've prepared some of these homemade colors, let the kids paint on a canvas (actually an old sheet in our case):

7. Boats in various ways

It does not matter if you are far away from the sea, you can still make sea toys. Bucket of water is just enough large for these sweet boats to sail:

8. DIY kite

Great for windy days ... and  in almost no time. See here for a tutorial.

9. Homemade play dough

This always turns out to be a very messy play, so I insist on for this to be an outdoor activity. However, the homemade play dough is much easier to clean up than the store bought one. See here for our recipe.

10. Moon dough

Very similar, but yet so different from play dough. Only two ingredients (again from your kitchen) and a lot of "messy" fun:

I wish all of you to have a great summer, fulfilled with kids fun!

A pool noodle toy horse

Ever since we've tried to ride real horses, The Younger does not stop talking about it, so I've decided to make her a horse on a stick, until she grows enough for horseback riding practices.

Limited by my free time and available materials, I wanted to simplify it maximally and that's why I was thrilled when I saw this amazing idea as another great way to use pool noodles.

We folded the noodle, tied it with a wrapping strip (it should represent the reins). The eyes were drawn with a ballpoint pen, while the mane and the tail were made ​​from the wrapping paper scraps.

It was really a quick craft, and I don't need to tell you how thrilled she was, she even went to bed at night, hugging her "horse" saying "this is my friend."

 

Pipe cleaner crafts

This is a story of how smoking accessories came into our non-smoking home and became a very popular toy. Of course, I'm talking about pipe cleaners and this is how we played with them:

First we made some nice jewelry  - a bunch of colorful bracelets:

We also made a crown, but unfortunately didn't take photos of it. However, it will be a part of our homemade carnival costume, so we'll take some shots very soon.

We also made some Valentine's crafts: 

The Older remembered the paper chains we made as an activity from our advent calender, and wanted to do something similar with pipe cleaners:

And in the end she made "a pipe cleaners hill": 

Need some more ideas what to do with pipe cleaners? Check here.