Supplies: 2 hex nuts 2 pipettes 2 wires (we used red and blue) 1 500ml plastic bottle with lid water

1. Snip the pipettes about 2/3 of the way up.  You will be using the bulb part.
2. Slip the hex nut onto the pipette bulb and screw it onto the base of the bulb to secure it
3. Wrap one end of blue wire around stem stump of pipette, curving the other end to make a hook
4. Wrap the red wire around end of second pipette, starting at the stem, looping it around top of pipette bulb, and securing back at the stem

5. Fill each pipette about 1/2 full with water by squeezing bulb, putting into water, and releasing bulb.

6. Test the buoyancy of each pipette bulb - fill the red one with enough water to make it sink in a cup of water.  It will probably be just over half full with water.  Fill the blue pipette so that it floats in a cup of water, just below the surface.  Ajust water levels in each pipette to get correct buoyancy.

To play the game:

Fill a 500 ml bottle with water.  Drop the red pipette into the bottle.  It should sink to the bottom.  Drop the blue pipette into the bottle.  It should float almost at the surface.  Make sure the bottle is completely full with water, and secure lid.  Gently squeeze bottle.  When you squeeze the bottle, the floating pipette should dive down.  Try to hook the pipette that is sunk, and bring it to the surface!  

How it works:

Buoyancy: when your pipette is less dense than the water it is in, the pipette will float.  When the pipette is more dense than the water it's in, it will sink.  The combination of nut + water + air in the pipette will be just heavy enough to sink if you add more water, and float if you add less. 

Pressure: When you squeeze the bottle, you are increasing the pressure, making the air trapped in your pipette compress, which means more water can creep into the pipette.  This makes it makes less buoyant causing it to sink.   When you release your squeeze, the air expands, pushing water out of the pipette, making it more buoyant so it floats.

• Do a quick review of craft suggestions with your child, pointing out pictures and ideas.  This will often be a very QUICK review, as they may just want to get started right away!!
  
• Note: the instructions are just guidelines that show suggestions for the craft supplies.  Your child may want to do something completely different, and that's great!   
• Let them open the craft supply package, and dump the contents onto workspace so that they can easily access supplies
• Put a small amount of glue onto a plate or plastic lid, and let them use a sponge, paint brush, or craft stick for spreading glue
• Let your child take the lead - kids are often more interested in process, rather than end product!
• Be nearby, in case your child needs some help
• Ask open ended questions about what they're working on, such as "tell me about what you're doing" or "that looks interesting"......they might want to share their thoughts on what they're doing
• Keep the conversation and their interest flowing by referring to the included 'fun facts' sheet and talking about their craft subject matter together

Q. If my family only has time for crafts every so often, which crafts are most worth our time and why?

A. The best thing we can do as parents is to offer our kids a range of craft supplies, projects, and tools to explore.  Kids learn new skills and make new connections every time they have a new experience.  If you’re short on time, try to focus on a different activity every craft time.  For example, one week can be painting, another week can be beading, another week is drawing or modeling with clay.

If your child is confident with a particular activity, such as building or painting, make the supplies for that activity accessible, so that your child can work independently while you are focusing on other tasks.  A simple supply of scissors, paper, pencils, glue and crayons will be enough to get them started.   

 If your child is reluctant to do crafts on their own, encourage him or her by picking up on a theme they’re interested in.  Calendar themes are a common interest for every child, so take advantage by suggesting they make birthday cards or decorations for special events.  This way, you’ll save a trip to the store to buy a card or decorations.

 Crafts don’t need to be complicated for kids to have fun with them.  Know your child’s interests and abilities, give them a few supplies and creative control, and watch them learn through hands-on fun!

Supplies: paper towel, plastic lid, vinegar, pennies

What to do:

Fold the paper towel into a small square and soak it generously with white vinegar.  Place soaked towel on a plastic lid and place the pennies on top of the towel. 

Check your pennies regularly over the next few hours to see if the towel or the pennies themselves are changing colour.  Is anything turning green? 

If your penny turns the paper towel green, or if it turns green itself, then it has a high percentage of COPPER in it.  The vinegar helps create a reaction between the copper in the penny, and oxygen in the air, making things turn green!

Tip: to see even more green, dip the pennies entirely into vinegar and then place them on the paper towel to dry.   If you're doing this at preschool or daycare, do it at the start of the day and check results throughout the day. 

In the USA, pennies were made with 95% copper until 1982.  Then copper became more valuable than the penny itself, so they started making pennies out of mostly zinc. 

In Canada, pennies were made with 98% copper until 1996.  After that, they started being made out of 98% zinc. 

If your penny turned green, it has more copper in it than a penny that doesn't change colour!  It's copper value is worth more than just 1 cent!

To make your volcano, you will need:

Salt Dough:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons oil
• ~ 1 cup water

Volcano form & lava:

• warm water with a few drops red food colouring
• 2 tbsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup to 1 cup vinegar
• large baking sheet with a rimmed edge (could use a 9x13 cake pan instead)
• Clean, empty soup can (10 oz)  You could use an empty pop bottle instead, but we liked the can because it was easy for my son to manage building around it and pouring ingredients in the wide opening without any help, and it's small enough to get a quick 'eruption' 

Mix the salt dough:

Measure Dry ingredients

Add the wet ingredients

Stir to combine, then knead until smooth.  You may need to add more flour or water if too wet or too dry

Play Dough ready for modeling our volcano

To make the volcano:

Place clean can in centre of baking sheet.  Form dough around can in a cone shape

My guy decided to carve some flow lines into his volcano (from where it had previously erupted, he explained)

Fill can with warm coloured water to ~ 3/4 full

Add 2 tbsp baking soda and stir to mix.  Now for the fun part:

ADD VINEGAR!

Watch the lava flow over the volcano!  You can add more vinegar once the eruption settles down.  We did this over and over again!  Might have to dump everything out and start with more baking soda if your volcano no longer erupts. 

On a recent trip to the Library, I stumbled across the book 'Play - How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul' by Stuart Brown, M.D.  I was intrigued and picked up the book.  In an era when it seems like kids have less and less time to just play, I was curious to read an expert opinion about how important (or not) play really is.

All of my reading so far, and my instincts and experience with my own kids have reinforced the feeling that free play is essential to early childhood development.  This book discusses not only the impact of play during childhood, but its effects throughout childhood and into adulthood.  It turns out that many of us adults have simply forgotten how to enjoy guilt-free playtime.  And worse; we keep taking free play time away from our kids in favour of more structured activities.  The book talks about how play influences our well-being throughout life, including our work, our relationships, and our satisfaction with life in general. 

Brown explains the reasons why we play, colouring his scientific analysis with stories of play in the animal kingdom, in children, and in adults.  He relates how play impacts brain development, and describes 'play personalities' for those of us who have forgotten how to play and need help figuring out what makes us tick.  

The book goes into ways we play from infancy into adulthood.  Brown discusses the benefits of play in the workplace, including innovation and mastery. He also talks about play in relationships, and what happens when we lose our sense of playfulness. 

i enjoyed reading this book.  The anecdotes and analysis reinforced my belief in the importance of free play, and the book served as a good reminder to integrate play into my parenting.  I feel like I started out with a playful approach to parenting, but as my kids get older, their schedules busier, and my expectations of them higher, I've slipped a little.   Since reading the book I've been making a conscious effort to maintain a playful attitude within my parenting, and I can see the results.  Through using a playful approach, I have diffused several conflicts that would have easily gone sour otherwise.  The book also served as a good reminder that it's important - even essential - to make time for my relationship, myself and my interests - in other words, to find more time to just play! 

Find more information on Stuart Brown and the National Institute for Play that he founded, or watch his talk on play. 

1. Make some Music:

You can't listen to music without power, so make some!! Practice singing, even if you're tone-deaf.  The kids will be quick to join in.  Sing kid favourites or teach them some of your favourites.  Start harmonizing or sing in rounds - this can be really tricky for kids!  Our favourite is 'Don't Throw your Junk in My backyard - here's a classroom full of kids doing a demo!  Or make a marching band with 'instruments' from pot lids, wooden spoons, and containers full of dried beans or rice.

2. Do Crafts:

Low-tech creative play that we (of course!!) love love love.  Pull out the glue, scissors, and craft supplies, and start creating.  Don't forget to check the recycling bin for any hidden crafty gems!  If you want to work to a theme, ask kids to build a battery or generator that would give you power, or draw pictures of how power is made.  If they're not interested or too young for that, do crafts that feed off of their current interests or calendar themes (such as winter or spring, for example)

3. Go Outside

Always a good alternative, whether the power is on or not.

4. Water Play

If your windows need cleaning or the floors need wiping, turn the kids onto the task!  They'll be happy to help as long as it feels like part of a game.  And if everything is already scrubbed, then get paintbrushes out and put the kids to work with water on an old tile or chalkboard - they can make water patterns that dry quickly.  And of course they can extend the water play by having bath time - but remember that the heat won't come on as long as the power is out, so they'll need lots of snuggles to stay warm is their hair is wet afterwards!

5. Do A Play or Skit:

A happy alternative to watching TV is to create a drama (or comedy!) of your own.  Be inspired by 'Jillian Jiggs and the Secret Surprise', a wonderful book about Jillian putting on a show - it even has a fun script at the end!

6. Build a Fort:

In the living room, with blankets and chairs.  This would especially be fun in the dark!

7. Make Wall Shadows:

You might need to close the blinds during the day, but flashlights against a dark wall are always a favourite way to entertain!

8. Make Simple Snacks and Meals:

Cheese sandwiches without the grill, wraps, or anything you'd usually send in a bag lunch.  Snack can be apples spread with peanut butter and sprinkled with raisins.  Yum!

9. Build Something

Stack blocks or (non-breakable) cups.  Try making a tower out of paper (!?), make a marble maze out of toilet paper rolls, build a 'sculpture' from playdough, or use popsicle sticks to make a teepee frame or other structure. 

10. Read a book, play a game, or do some sports

Anyday, anytime, anywhere.

Supplies: ice cube trays, food colouring, clear or white cups, stir sticks, water

Set Up (prior to experiment): Put a few drops of red, blue, and yellow food colouring into three separate containers and add water.  Pour coloured waters into ice cube containers and freeze.

The Experiment: Pop a coloured cube out of the ice cube tray and into a cup.  You can stir the single ice cube to watch it melt if you like.  Add another ice cube (of a different colour) and continue stirring so both cubes start melting.  How do the colours mix? 

Things to talk about: How do the colours mix?  Make a colour chart showing how the primary colours make other colours, ie. red + blue, red + yellow, yellow + blue.  What happens if you mix two of the secondary colours together?  What is your favourite colour and how do you think you can make it, starting with the three primaries?

Other (non-colour) things to talk about: What happens when you stir the ice cubes?  Does it make the ice melt faster or slower?

One of our favourite teachers tried this with her class:  " I used one of your Craft Caravan ideas a few weeks ago with my students.  It was a great hands on way to teach the magic of primary colours. I made ice cubes with a few drops of colour in each.  Thanks for the idea."

The picture says it all:

2. I Dig You Valentine

This one would be great for little boys in particular!  Use blue or green hearts instead of pink or red if your little guy prefers.  We made a black shovel, but your kids might choose a brighter colour similar to the bright plastic sand shovels every child owns.

You will need two colours of construction paper, glue, scissors, and a marker,crayon, or pencil crayon for this craft.

1. Make the scoop of your shovel - from black construction paper, cut a rectangle.  Trim the rectangle so that bottom edge is slightly wider than top edge.  Fold top and sides over to give your shovel some dimension.  To do this, fold the edges, snip the intersecting corner, and glue edges together.  2. Make your shovel handle - cut a long thin rectangle from construction paper.  Fold it in half to make it appear thicker.  Fold the end of the rectangle over to glue to edge of shovel scoop 3.  Cut out a heart in the same colour as your shovel to make the top of your handle.  Glue heart in place

4.  Cut out a heart in contrasting colour.  Write the message 'I dig you Valentine' in the heart.  Glue into scoop part of the shovel

Tip: to simplify, simply draw a shovel shape and cut it out in one piece, omitting folding for dimension.  This could be good cutting practice for little ones!

3. Frilly Fancy Heart Valentine Card

You will need cardstock or construction paper, one piece of facial tissue, scissors and glue for this craft 1. Cut a large heart shape from your cardstock or construction paper 2. Fold facial tissue in half and cut a small heart along fold line.  Glue to centre of large heart

3. Cut another heart shape around space where small heart was cut, and discard.  Then cut a third heart shape around the space, making it bigger than smallest heart but smaller than your large construction paper heart.  Glue onto card

4.  Make your frilly edge - tear strips of facial tissue.  This is easy to do by folding the tissue along it's natural fold line, and then tearing from fold towards open edges of tissue.  Once you have several strips, make a line of glue all around your large heart edge.  Place end of one tissue strip along glue line, and then push the rest of the tissue onto the glue line.  Continue pushing tissue strips onto glue, making a frilly edge.

Supplies: black paper bag, orange, black, and white paper,  Penguin puppet template

Step 1: Print Penguin puppet template and trace the pieces onto coloured papers.  Use Black for the wings and inner eyes, white for the belly and eyes, and orange for the beak and feet  

Step 2: Glue penguin belly to bag on the side where the flap opens.  Glue white eyes to flap.  Glue black eyeballs onto eyes.  Glue wings to either side of belly and glue feet.

Step 4: Make penguin beak:  Lift flap of bag and add glue to the underside of flap, on top and bottom.  Push folded end of penguin beak into glued area of flap and squeeze flap together so mouth is firmly pressed onto puppet.  Let your craft dry. 

1. Cotton Balls

The classic craft supplies for winter themed crafts.  Cotton balls already look like a snowball, so all the kids need is a little glue and a piece of paper so that they can create snowmen, snow forts, and other snowy day pictures.  Ripping the cotton balls up into smaller pieces is a fun tactile activity that creates whisps of snow or snowbanks.

2. Paper Doilies

different sizes can be used for small, medium, and large 'snowballs' on a snowman picture, or sponge on some glue and sprinkle glitter to make a sparkly snowflake

3. Shredded Paper or paper confetti

Put your paper recycling to work by running old bills and statements through the shredder to create long strings of snow.  Tear, rip or crumple paper shred into snowy scenes or 3-D forts.  Use a sprinkling of white paper confetti to make a blizzard.  A blizzard looks especially intriguing if it's created on black paper with white pencil crayon or crayon drawings, and lots of paper confetti.

4. White Yarn or String

Use white string or yarn in any number of ways: glue it on to paper to make a pretty design, press it onto a glued pattern on waxed paper, leaving it to dry into a peel-off snowflake, pull it through white paint to create an abstract snowy painting, or integrate science by making a borax icicle

5. Shaving Cream

Play in the snow indoors!  Spray a small quantity of shaving cream onto a washable placemat or table surface.  Kids can use their index fingers to practice tracing oversized numbers or letters in their 'snow'.  Gently wipe the letter away and start all over again

6. Food Items from your Kitchen

The kitchen is overflowing with various items that can be used to create a lovely snowy scene.  Use flour or icing sugar for a dusting of snow, sugar cubes to create 3-dimensional snow projects such as igloos or snow forts, shredded coconut for larger snowflakes, and whipped cream for a big dump of snow!  Most of these ingredients could be integrated into a baking project too - make Gingerbread with a dusting of icing sugar, and serve with whipped cream and a sprinkling of coconut.  Wouldn't that be great after a big play outside in the snow?

Yogurt Gingerbread

Grease a 9x9 square baking dish, and preheat oven to 350

Separate 2 eggs

In a large bowl, combine:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 tsp each baking soda, ginger, cinnamon
1/2 tsp each ground cloves, ground nutmeg

In another bowl, mix together:

1/2 cup canola oil
1 1/2 cups maple syrup
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 egg yolks

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix.
Beat 2 egg whites until stiff, and fold into mixture.
Pour into pan and bake for 35 - 40 minutes. 

Let cake cool.  Decorate cake by sprinkling with icing sugar.  We placed a snowman cut-out in the centre of our cake, and sprinkled around to suit the day's 'snow' theme.  Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.  Yum!!

Supplies:  Red mask form from cardstock or other sturdy paper Mask strap, chenille stem, or string to tie mask Red, yellow, white, orange, and black paper Red and yellow tissue shred pencil, scissors, glue black string (optional) for long moustache

Step 1: Trace little hands, cut them out, and glue them to the top of your mask

Step 2: Cut red oval shapes and large arching eyebrows from black paper.  Glue to mask

Step 3: Cut triangles from length of white paper to make white teeth.  Glue to mask below nose.  You could also glue a black yarn moustache to your dragon mask.  Glue tissue shred to sides of mask

Step 4: Secure mask with mask strap, chenille stems, or string.  Wear your mask for the Dragon Dance!

Tip: don't want to make your own mask form?  Use our Superhero Mask Kit to get started!

1. Paper Bag Dragon Puppet Craft

Supplies: red paper bag, red, orange, black, and white paper, orange tissue.  Dragon puppet template

Step 1: Make your paper bag look 'dragony' by cutting the bottom edge into a jagged zig zag. 

Step 2: Cut dragon pieces using dragon template.  Use red for the dragon mouth and largest circles, orange for ears and medium circles, black for small circles, eyebrows, and nostrils.  Cut zig zag strips of white teeth

Step 3: Glue dragon eyes to front of bag flap.  Glue ears to the back side of the puppet.

Step 4: Make dragon mouth.  Glue nostrils to the ends of mouth shape.  Open mouth and glue strips of teeth to top and bottom.  Crumple a piece of tissue and glue it to the centre of mouth, to make a fire breathing dragon

Step 5: Lift flap of bag and add glue to the underside of flap, on top and bottom.  Push folded end of dragon mouth into glued area of flap and then squeeze the flap together so mouth is firmly pressed onto puppet .  Let your craft dry.

2. Dragon Craft with Basic Shapes

This is a good one if you want to practice cutting and basic shape identification.  Use small, medium, and large circles for eyes.  Use Large triangles for dragon mouth.  Use medium triangles for spikes on the back of your dragon's head.  Use small triangles for sharp teeth.  Rectangles are used for eyebrows.  Can you use other shapes to make your dragon even more unique?

3. Toilet Roll Dragon Stick Puppet Craft

Supplies: Red poster paper (we used dark pink  11x14 paper) Toilet paper rolls 2 large craft sticks Tissue squares and other decorating pieces Markers, crayons or pencil crayons Scissors

Step 1: cut long edges of poster paper into scalloped edge, and decorate entire paper with tissue squares and other decorating pieces

Step 2: make a slit in the ends of 2 toilet rolls so the craft sticks can slide in.  Secure them with tape

Step 3: Glue the toilet rolls to the underside of decorated poster paper.  Leave some space between rolls so your dragon will be able to move.  We used 3 toilet rolls in total, but it probably would work even better to cut the rolls in half and use 3 halves instead.  This will create more space between each roll so your dragon can twist and turn more easily

Step 4: Cut a dragon head from poster paper.  Decorate the head in the same way you decorated the body.  Flip your dragon body right-side up and glue head to body.  Now you can make your dragon dance by moving the craft sticks back and forth!

1. Whipped Shortbread

This is my moms recipe, and I haven't found a shortbread cookie that I like better!  The dough is easy to make and it can be pressed (as I have done), or rolled into a log and then sliced.  The kids can help by adding sprinkles, coloured sugar, or other toppings before baking.

3 c all purpose flour 1/2 c cornstarch 1 c icing sugar 1 lb butter or part margarine

Cream butter and add sugar, mixing until creamy.  Add flour and cornstarch and whip together until fluffy.  Drop from a spoon, roll, or use a cookie press.  Bake at 325 for about 8 minutes.  Tip: this recipe make ALOT of cookies if you're using a press!  You can half the recipe and still have lots of cookies to take to special events. 

2. Gingersnaps

This is another holiday favourite, and I decided to give a new recipe a try this year.  These ones are good, but I will follow up with my mom's recipe, as I've decided that hers can't be beat.  We had a small taste off between these and some my sister made, and I gave these ones the nod.  My mom's recipe for the *best* ones will have to wait, as she's visiting us for the holidays while her recipe remains at her home.  The kids can help by rolling the dough into balls, and then pressing the cookies down with a fork to bake.

2 c flour 2 tsp baking soda 1 tsp each cinnamon & ginger 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1/4 tsp salt 1 egg 3/4 c vegetable oil 1/4 c molasses 1 c packed brown sugar granulated sugar

Mix dry ingredients. In another bowl, whisk egg.  Beat in oil and molasses.  Beat in brown sugar.  Gradually stir flour mixture into wet ingredients.  Roll dough into balls.  Dip top of each ball into granulated sugar and place on greased baking tray.  Press down with a fork.  Bake at 350 for approximately 8 minutes.

3. Mini Butter Tarts

This recipe has been modified from the regular butter tart to become mini tarts - use a mini muffin tin to make these.  Kids can help by cutting out the dough with the rim of a cup or circle cookie cutter.  We used a 1/3 c measuring cup as our cutter.  Once the circles are pressed into the tin, the kids can help again by placing the raisins or pecans into each tin

Pastry: 1 1/2 c all purpose flour 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 c butter, cubed 1 egg yolk 1 tsp vinegar water Filling: 1/2 c packed brown sugar 1/2 c corn syrup 1 egg 2 tbsp softened butter 1 tsp each vanilla & vinegar pinch salt pecans (or raisins or other)

For pastry: combine flour and salt, and cut butter into mixture until it looks like coarse crumbs.  In liquid measure, whisk egg yolk with vinegar and add enough water to make 1/3 cup.  Slowly pour egg mixture on top of flour mixture and stir with fork to combine.  Press into disk, wrap, and refrigerate for an hour.  To make tart shells: roll dough out to 1/8" and cut circles to press gently into mini muffin tin.  Reroll scraps and continue making shells.  For each shell, break up a pecan with your fingers and place it in the shell.  For filling: whisk all ingredients together.  Spoon over pecans so tarts are 3/4 full.  Bake at 450 for about 8 minutes or until filling is bubbly and pastry is golden.  Remove from oven and remove tarts from pan.  Cool on rack.  Makes approx 30 mini tarts. 

I thought I'd go down to her house to learn how to make bread one day when she happened to be making it.  She makes six loaves every week to give to her kids and grandkids.  But instead, she marched up to our house with a few ingredients in hand and "we" got to work.  I put the "we" in quotes because she did all the work and I happily helped by holding the bowl.....I also poured water now and then, but really, my contribution was limited.  I felt like the child who's helping mom, dad, or a grandparent - so eager to contribute that even the simple task of holding the bowl made me feel important :)

So here's what we did to make bread:

The Ingredients:

Some Yeast
Some Bran
Some Salt
Lots of Flour
Water

She brought the yeast and the bran, and my kitchen supplied the rest. There are no measurements for these ingredients, because we didn't measure anything.  My neighbour has clearly become an expert at bread baking over the years, so her keen eye could estimate all of the measurements.  My not so keen eyes would rewrite the ingredients to look like this:

About 2 tablespoons of yeast....we used the kind that comes as a cake or block, crumbled up into warm water
Probably 2 to 3 cups of bran
1/4 cup of salt (she poured the salt into her hand but thankfully put it in a small cup so I could see approximately how much I would need next time!)
Around 20 cups of flour - I'm guessing this amount by measuring my flour container and converting from cubic inches to cups.  The entire contents of the flour container was used, plus a few more cups (or so)
About 2 litres of warm water (8 cups)

Once we got going with the dough, it quickly became clear to me that this would be a great tactile activity to do with the kids.  It's messy, it's gooey, it's warm.....what's not to like?  There is the inevitable clean-up to deal with, but you'll have plenty of time for that while the bread is rising!  Here's what we did to make five yes FIVE loaves of bread:

Five bread pans ready and waiting.  Grease with canola oil or other oil.

Dump the flour into a large mixing bowl, then add bran and salt.  Use your hands to gently mix the dry ingredients.  Make a well in the middle and start slowly adding warm water, mixing with your hands as you add.  Continue mixing/kneading and adding water around the edges, incorporating more of the dry ingredients as you add water.  Add the diluted yeast as well.  The dough will be VERY sticky and will cling to your hands as you work.  The whole process of slowly adding water and kneading took about 15 minutes.  The dough will be quite sticky but not wet.  When all of the dry ingredients have thoroughly been incoroporated, finish kneading, sprinkle with flour, and cover. 

Now, when I say cover I mean really cover the dough and keep it nice and warm.  We used a tea towel, then a clean baby blanket, then another towel, a knitted afghan, and finally a large square of thick clean burlap.  That dough was really nice and cozy.  Let it rise for 1.5 to 2 hours - when you gently press it with your finger it should spring back.

Once the dough has rested, unwrap the blankets and divide it into portions.  You can use a knife to cut off a large segment of dough, then knead on a floured surface for a couple minutes.  Press your hands into flour every now and then as you knead, so that the dough won't stick to you.  Shape dough into a log and place in an oiled baking pan.  We used canola oil to grease our pans.  My neighbour kneaded four of the portions into logs for the pans, and I did the last one.  Relatively speaking, I did a terrible job.  Most of the dough I worked with ended up stuck to my counter, or on my hands, and my 'kneads' weren't nearly as effective as hers.  She was extremely patient and very helpful in teaching me to properly use the heel of my hand.  I thought I'd be able to handle the task well enough, but clearly I will need some practice.  I took this as a reminder for when I do new things with my kids - for me, the 'teacher' in most scenarios, it seems easy, but for them, the 'students' it's new and it takes time......and patience on my part!  

When the dough is in the baking pans, cover the pans well (again we used towels, blankets, and burlap) and let rise for 1 hour.  

Uncover, slash tops with a knife, and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Towards the end (about 5 minutes) remove the loaves from pans and let them continue to bake directly on oven racks. 

Remove from oven and let cool.  My neighbour said to put a towel over the bread while it cools, to keep it nice and soft.  You can freeze the loaves you're not going to use right away.  Enjoy!!

Roasting the seeds you collect while carving pumpkins is super-easy and really yummy too!  Our kids look forward to eating the pumpkin seeds almost as much as they look forward to carving the pumpkins themselves!.  Here's what you need to do to roast the pumpkin seeds

• Seperate pumpkin seeds from pumpkin pulp or 'slime' (as the kids would say!)
• Put seeds in a collander and rinse thoroughly
• Spread seeds on baking sheet to dry
• Once dry, put seeds into a bowl and add between 1tsp and 1 tbsp of olive oil, mixing thoroughly
• Spread seeds onto baking sheet and sprinkle lightly with seasoning of choice - could be seasoning salt, cinnamon and sugar, a dusting of pepper, etc
• Bake at 350 for up to 20 minutes, stirring periodically and checking for browning
• Let cool and enjoy!

• white t-shirt or strips of cotton (bedsheet, t-towel, etc)
• Chenille stems or coated wire
• wide craft sticks (optional)
• scissors

We started by cutting an old corporate t-shirt into strips.  Finally, corporate gear put to use after a trade show! :)

As I was cutting the t-shirt into strips, my crafty girl decided to become a mummy herself:

We built our mummy form using craft sticks and chenille stems.  You could probaby do it without the craft sticks, but I wanted something sturdy to wrap around in the middle

Then we started wrapping!  Here's what our mummy looked like after the first layer:

We looped our t-shirt strips into each other so we didn't have to worry about a lot of loose ends:

Finally, our little mummy was complete!  My daughter is taking her to school to decorate their classroom for Halloween. Then she'll sit on our front step to greet trick or treaters on Halloween night.

This was so much fun!  The original idea for this craft can be found at Family Chic