Lesson Plans

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The Gift of Giving…Cards for Elderly

by 4 Comments

One idea that is simple and can get even young children involved is the gift of giving cards to the elderly at senior homes in your area during the holidays.  As I find more card ideas, I will post them.

I love this card from Family Fun… JOY!joycard

This would be great to do a mini- lesson and use the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree. Allow the children to express their thoughts on the meaning of the book as well as what giving means.

Making the cards can also be fun! How about trying this 3D snowball Card?

snowballcardOr this Dreidle Card

dreidelcard

Family Fun from Disney has great ideas for 3D cards.

In a rush? How about cards in an instant? Over at Family Fun, you can print out easy templates and glue pictures.

instantcards

Free Kids Crafts has another 3D tree that I love!

christmas_tree_popup

And finally, one of my favorite websites….Artists Helping Children has a bunch of links where you are sure the find the card craft that is right for your family! Here are just a few examples from there.

christmas_gifts

fabric_shape_card_1even_more_glittery_shape_cards

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Comments

  1. I absolutely LoVE the card ideas for the elderly. While I don’t have time to make cards for this Christmas, I do have boxes of new cards that I can write in and deliver tomorrow or the next day! I will begin making cards for Valentine’s Day though!!!!

  2. I have in the past worked with the elderly to make Christmas cards. They loved it. Would it be a good idea to have the kids work with the elderly to make Christmas cards?

  3. I have done cards for the elderly with kids before, but not kids and elderly together. It would depend on the temperament of the kids, I think. (And the adults, too, I guess!)

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Sun Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked. 

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

 

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