Free Saturday Activity at Home Depot

If you’re looking for something to do this Saturday morning, Home Depot has a once a month Kids Workshop where the kids can use tools, glue, and paint to create different crafts.  This Saturday from 9AM-12PM, the craft at Home Depot is a wooden frame for the winter season.

I highly recommend getting there early so that you definitely get to make the craft that is scheduled for that month.  By the time we finished the craft at the last one that we attended, the kids that were showing up had to make an older craft because they ran out of the scheduled one.

It’s also super cute because the kids get their own Home Depot Apron (kids’ sized), a pin for the craft they made and a certificate of completion.  Home Depot does a really good job with this.

 

 

Please Touch Museum Half Price Tickets

I just found a great deal on Living Social thanks to my neighbor.

For 4 more days you can purchase half price tickets ($9 instead of $18) to the Please Touch Museum in Philly and it includes a Carousel ride.

Here the link  http://www.livingsocial.com/cities/1747-philadelphia-citywide/deals/451662-one-admission-ticket-and-one-carousel-ticket

You do have to have an account with Living Social to purchase the deal, but it’s a free account.

You will have to use these vouchers by December of this year, so please keep that in mind if you are interested in buying the vouchers.

Have fun!

Delaware History Museum- Free Friday

This Friday is the the First Friday of the Month of August.  Therefore, the Delaware History Museum in Wilmington, DE offers free admission from 11am-4pm. Normally admission is $6 for adults and $4 for youths (age 3-18).

It’s a really interesting Museum with the main exhibit discussing the history of Delaware and then a rotating exhibit in the front, always focusing on Delaware but on different aspects. The last time that I went it was focused on the Railroad in Delaware.

What’s great for smaller kids at the museum that is included in admission price is Grandma’s Attic.  This is a large play area with dress up clothes, kitchen area, store front, school area, and puppet show area.  Great for you to bring friends to.

Since it is located on Market Street, make sure to bring quarters for the parking meters so that you don’t get a parking ticket!

Have fun!

Herr’s Snack Factory Tour

This morning a friend and I brought our kids to the Herr’s Snack Factory Tour.  It’s located in Nottingham, PA, so it was only about 30 minutes from Main Street in Newark to get there.  The tour takes about 45 minutes and it was like coming home for LittleM.  She can eat her weight in chips right now!

The tour is free but I recommend scheduling an appointment to make sure that you don’t have to wait too long to get on the Tour.  Even on a Monday in the summer, there were quite a few groups taking advantage of the free tour.

I called this morning and was able to get an early tour time.  They offer tours from 9-11AM and then 1-3PM Monday to Thursday, and 9-11AM on Friday, but they don’t guarantee production on Fridays (to which I say, then why bother having the tour?).

While on the tour, you get to see all the steps of potato to chip production, packaging, and boxing.  You also get to sample chips hot off the line and a bag of chips at the end of the tour.  Their souvenir store has anything and everything you can imagine to purchase with the Herr’s name of it.  I ended up buying a 10 snack bag variety pack to try some new flavors for $3.75. Creamy Dill pickle and Baby Back Ribs are just two of the options.

This is Chipper, or Chip Herr, the official mascot of Herr Foods Inc.

While we didn’t get to meet the actual mascot, he was in the video and LittleM was able to get a ring with him on it.

Overall, it was a really great time.  The girls were good, it was fun and interesting.  And of course, free chips don’t hurt either!

Hope you are having a great start to the week!

Terrific Tuesdays at Winterthur Museum and Gardens

Last week we had a fantastic time at Terrific Tuesdays at Winterthur Museum and Gardens off of Rt 52 in Delaware.

They have lots of hands on activities for the kids.  It runs from 10am to 3pm so there is plenty of time to make it there for the activities and have fun in the Enchanted Woods.

The focus of last week was Art and Color.  LittleM was able to make a pastel crayon, paint with food coloring to learn about the color spectrum, make her own ink and write with a feather pen, and look at minerals through a magnifying glass. It was great.

This week the focus is Teddy Bear Triage.  The description from their website:

-Bring in a toy in need of repair and learn how to document, clean, treat, and store that precious object to best preserve it for the future.

Activities include:

• Taking pictures of (aka documenting) objects
• Filling out a condition report. Use magnifying visors like real conservators!
• Practicing basic cleaning techniques that can be done at home
• Creating a storage container for objects using old shoe boxes
• Experimenting with filling in losses on painting or ceramic tiles and mending tears in fabric

When you’re done with that (because it only took us about 20 minutes to complete the activities), don’t forget to check out the Enchanted Woods.  It’s where the fairies live and play at Winterthur.  While we haven’t been lucky enough to see them ourselves, we have had a great time playing in their houses!

A visit to Winterthur can be a little costly if you don’t have a membership. My husband and I agreed to try out a membership this year to see how we liked it because visiting 2 times would pay for itself with just the 3 of us.  Not only do you have to cover the cost of the entrance fee but these Terrific Tuesday’s also add an extra $5 to the cost if you aren’t a member.  General admission to the Museum is $18 for adults, $5 for children 2-11 years old.

Winterthur also has the largest collection of American antiques and a house tour will take at least an hour to learn about the branch of the duPont family that built it. I would recommend skipping that if you don’t think your little one can handle that much time being quite and not touching anything.

What is fantastic at Winterthur is that they allow you to bring in your own food and have a picnic anywhere on the property. That will save you some money and allow some pretty great views for picnicking!

I hope you get a chance to stop by and enjoy the activities. It satisfies the history nerd in me to visit. Happy Adventuring!

Summer Jars Finally Completed!

We finally finished making the summer jars!  Now we just have to complete all the fun activities that are in them during the summer! Look back at earlier post for the explanation of activities I put on the popsicle sticks and the inspiration for the craft here.

Here are a few pictures with explanation of how we created ours. We started with jumbo sized popsicle craft sticks that you can find at any craft store.  My husband was able to convince her to paint only the front of the sticks, as you can see here.

I save LittleM’s yogurt and fruit cup containers for paint activities.  We are not allowed recycle those containers here so I keep them to use for paint containers and then throw them out. Once the front of the sticks were dry, we were able to put the activities on them. I have plain white Avery address labels that I was able to type everything in their easy template, print them  out, and then it was the second part of the activity for LittleM.  Avery has a great thing with the labels where you fold the paper so the labels pop up making them easy peel.  I love it!  It made it so easy for LittleM to get the labels off the paper and onto the sticks.

We finished those 2 steps AWHILE ago.  Then the poopy hit the fan with family issues and my husband losing his job so we ended up going on a road trip.  These got put the the side but we finally got to it.

What I finished up by myself was the jars for the sticks.

I used 2 mason jars, paper, scissors, ribbon, a glue gun, permanent marker, and 2 very small metal frames I had for scrapbooking.

I cut a piece of ribbon that fit once around my mason jar.  Using my glue gun I put one piece of glue in the middle to stick to the back of the jar, then glued the two ends at the front of the jar.  I was so tired when I was making this that I totally forgot to take any pictures of any other steps.  Sorry.  The reason that I glued it on the front is because I put the labels for the jars on the front so the seam is easily hidden.

Here is the finished product.  I used the paper to write the 2 labels “To Do” and “Done”, glued those to the frames, then glued the frames to the jars.  Obviously they do not lay flat on the jars but I kinda like it that way.

Here is the finished product from the side. You can easily see our One Side Painted popsicle sticks in the jars! They are are an easy height for LittleM to reach when we get the “I’m Bored!” comment soon to come up. I’m also hoping to use these to help LittleM with her reading, having her help me read each stick and work on letter sounds. Let me know if you have any questions!

Happy crafting!