New Year’s Eve is just around the corner, why not start the year off right with homemade fun New Year ’s Eve noisemakers. They’re environmentally friendly because you’ll be repurposing things you likely already have around the home, they’re cost effective, they’re festive, and their fun! They are a great way to get kids involved in New Year merriment.

Here are a few noisemaker ideas you can make at home.

Shaker Noise Makers

Ingredients:
* Cans or plastic cups. Baking soda cans are ideal for this because they have a nice tight plastic lid and the can is much noisier than a plastic cup. This is the one time noisier is better. Soda cans work well too.
* Masking tape or duct tape
* Beans or macaroni noodles
* Construction paper
* Markers and/or crayons
* Glue

Glue the paper around the cup or can and let dry. Decorate the paper however you desire. Fill the can with your noisy items of choice. If you’re using a soda can, you’ll want to tape over the mouth of the can. If you’re using a baking soda can, you can glue the lid on. Voila!  You have some really noisy noisemakers.

Paper Plate Noise Makers

Paper plates are great because they’re easy to decorate and you likely already have a few around the house. You’ll also need:

Ingredients:
* Small bells, beans, beads, or those macaroni noodles
* Glue or thread to seal the plate closed
* Markers, stickers, paint, construction paper and other items to decorate the plates with
* Binder clips or large paper clips to hold the plate closed while the glue dries

Step One:  Fold the plate in half and then unfold. Folding it in half shows you where the seam is so you can see what it will look like once you’ve decorate it. Decorate the paper plate. In addition to decorating it, you can add fringe on the edge by cutting strips of construction paper and gluing them to the edge of the plate.

Step Two:  Fold the plate in half and sew or glue closed, leaving a bit of room to insert your noise makers. Finish gluing or sewing closed.

Step Three:  Hold the ends closed with binder clips or large paper clips until dry.

Step Four: Shake and enjoy!

Happy New Years!

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Introduce preschoolers to the concept of sharing and fair play with this fun game. In the Noodleboro Fun Park game, kids visit the Ferris wheel, Log Flume, Circus, and more to earn sharing stars for the group. An audio CD and a storybook enhance game play.

This game for kids ages 4 and older uses a carnival to teach the concept of sharing with others. Sharing is often a big concern for parents, especially ones with multiple kids or kids who attend daycare so this game might be just what they are looking for. It consists of carnival rides and activities….a log ride, a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, and circus tent. The pieces are all really well made and cute so that the game looks like a lot of fun right from the start, just like a carnival. You roll a die to find out which ride or carnival game you need to do and then if you “win” you get a token. If you win the log ride for example, by balancing a ball on a forked twig without letting it fall, you win. Each ride has a unique token and each player has to get all their tokens before the park closes. Cooperation and sharing comes into play because you have to do the same rides more than once and you may get extra tokens that other players don’t have. Since everyone loses if you can’t get out before closing time it gives players incentive to share tokens with other and get sharing stars in return.

My own kids loved playing this game. Every time we played I heard “Can we play again???!” The game is for kids 4 years and older and I think the hand-eye skills in at least one of the rides does require some skill that kids younger than 4 might not have yet. There are definitely small pieces that young children could choke on too.

Noodleboro also has a Learning to Listen Pizza Palace Game and a Learning About Manners Picnic Basket Game.

Since moving to an urban community a couple of months ago, the kids have been spending more time skateboarding, walking to the park, and generally running about on the sidewalks.

So I was pretty excited to get a Skuut wooden balance bike.

I’ve never visited Scandinavia, but from books the kids and I have read together, biking is a way of life there, and kids start out with these wooden “balance bikes” before learning how to ride a “big bike”. No training wheels, the child learns how to balance using their feet so there’s no scary transition.

I thought my 3 and 5 year old girls would love the Skuut, but so far it’s been my 7 year old, who already rides a regular bike, who loves it. When it’s too cold to ride outside, he Skuuts around on the hardwood floors of the apartment!

I think the Skuut has an awesome, clean looking and attractive design. It took us about 5 minutes to put the bike together (it arrives in a flat pack box).

The design is simple but quite functional. The seat is adjustable as far as height, making it comfortable for a child from ages 2-5 (or a small 7 year old like mine – maximum weight is 70 pounds). It also easily angles back and forth for comfort.

And it’s darn cute! The thing looks good just hanging around which is all the better. Leave it to the Scandinavians to design something for kids that isn’t garish and ugly and plastic.

Another thing I noticed, and I’m not sure exactly what the wheels are made of (the website says they’re pneumatic rubber?), but they don’t stink like other rubber wheels. A plus since we store it in our apartment.

My son said about the bike:  “You pedal with it with your feet, it goes like 3 miles an hour and it lasts going for ten seconds or longer.”

My 5 year old said:  “It always doesn’t have wheels but it’s so easier. Sometimes I can balance on it but not really good of course. But I like the bike very, very much.”

Environmentalists would be impressed that Skuut, has partnered with Trees for the Future, and ensures that a tree is planted for every bike sold. Also notable is the fact that the bike won Dr. Toy’s 10 Best Active Products.

Kids like to be involved in the kitchen. They want to be a part of the action and it is a great place for learning and bonding. Kitchen stands are becoming a hot item among natural, attached moms because they make it so easy to bring the kids into the kitchen with us. Take a look at this review of the Kinder Perch, a sustainable US option that is much better than the learning Tower.

Entertainment can get costly for families and the travel required for many is not so green. If it just isn’t practical for your lifestyle or budget to make frequent trips to the movies, to the zoo, or too local museums it may be time to take another look at low impact, cheap entertainment ideas for the whole family. Spending time together and having fun are the most important objectives right? Neither objective requires a lot of money thankfully.

Family Game Night – You most likely have some good old fashioned board games lying around so why not get them out and start a family game night each week. If you don’t have any games you can buy one or two for $20 or less and they will provide fun for months to come. For younger kids you might try Disney Monopoly, Candyland, Life, or Operation. Older kids would like Sudoku, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, and Clue. There are many interactive DVD games that are fun for the whole family where you are quizzed on movie clips or famous faces and quotes. There are even dancing games that can provide fun and exercise.

A House of Cards – Card games are another great way to pass the time. Older kids would love to learn and play Poker, Hearts, and Gin Rummy. You can even invite extended family members or friend over for a monthly cards night. Younger kids can play Go Fish and War.

Movie Night – There is no need to go to the movies and pay $50+ for admission. Rent a movie from a local store or Netflix and have a movie night. Make some healthy snacks, prop up some comfy pillows and bean bags, and snuggle up together to watch a movie. Talk about it afterwards to get some good discussion going.

Get outdoors – Local parks are great sources of free fun. Why not make it a day trip for the whole family. Select a hiking trail that is comfortable for all and pack a lunch to eat midway. Make sure to stop several times to explore nature and maybe snap a picture or two for the family album. It you are near a park that has many different trails make it a goal to conquer all of them.

Reading Time – Kids love to be read to so why not make it a family event. Pick a book that everyone will like perhaps Little House on the Prairie, Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, or Eragon and start reading. You can cover one to chapters a week and perhaps have an older child or one of the adults take a few notes to review before each session. This is a great way to instill a love of books and reading and instigate great conversations.

Put On A Show – Set up a puppet show using a door jam, an adjustable shower rod, and a blanket and then let the show begin! You can even re-enact the story from your weekly reading.

Another idea for younger kids is to set up a Blue Clues adventure by creating and cutting out blue paw prints and hiding them on “clues”. Give them a notebook to write all the clues down and then help them solve the mystery. This is a fun way to have children guess what you will make for dinner or what book you will read them.

As you can see, family fun doesn’t have to be expensive if you get creative.

I have written several times on this about green and natural toys. They are important to me because I want to buy toys for my kids that are kind to the planet and safe and non-toxic for them. We are a family that has green family values and green gifts, toys, and holidays are part of that. Check out this site with the Top Green Gifts and the Top Green Toys for Christmas.

If your child gives you a glazed look when you suggest taking a walk in the yard or to the park to enjoy the outdoors he may have “nature deficit disorder.”  Author Richard Louv coined this phrase in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods.  What Louv was referring to was the reality that kids today have a declining interest in things that our natural.  That’s pretty frightening when you think about it, especially when well meaning parents may be the cause.

Gone are the days when kids were encouraged to go out and explore nature on their bikes or on roller blades, etc., with their friends.  Those were the days when the only restrictions or guidelines given were to be home for set meal times and before the street lights came on.

Today few parents are comfortable letting their kids ride their bikes beyond their own street, not alone to the nearest park or conservation area.  With every new media highlight of a child abduction, drug incident or worse, parents become more cautious.  The end result of all this caution is a generation of kids that have become distanced from their environment.

Not only have parents limited children’s access to natural environments, but the lure of television, computers and video games has also eaten up a significant portion of recreation time that might have been otherwise spent out doors.

According to the Playing for Keeps organization 80 percent of children under age 2 and more than 60 percent of children aged 2 to 5 do not have access to daily outdoor activities.  The National Parks Service reports that state and national parks are experiencing a 10 to 20 percent drop in visitation.  

In 2007, the Governor’s Outdoors Conference in State College gathered over 300 public health officials, directors of government agencies, park managers, nature-related outdoor group representatives and outdoor enthusiasts from across the country to look at the challenge of getting kids and adults outdoors and the reasons for these changing trends.

This gathering of outdoor stakeholders came up with a number of reasons and causes for this unhealthy trend. For one, it was determined that urbanization and school district’s concern about injury-related lawsuits contributed to the decreased number of easily accessible outdoor opportunities for kids.  Other reasons point to our unhealthy diets.  Health care workers notice a lack of stamina in our youth when confronted with outdoor activities and link this observation to lower levels of Vitamin D.

So if you think your child has nature deficit disorder what can you do?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Get involved on your school PTA and encourage the school to incorporate more nature trips into the school curriculum.
• Take community events out of the manicured local parks. Instead plan community events in nearby conservation parks.  Carpool families to the location and hold a barbecue and baseball game there.  The different wildlife to be seen in a conservation park will make the trip interesting and get the kids excited about the beauty that really is all around them.
• Hang bird feeders around your house and look at the different birds you can attract with different seeds.  Involve the kids in this activity and watch their interest grow!
• If you have space, plant a children’s garden or start planting in pots. Put them in charge of weeding and watering. When their seedlings bloom their excitement will be something to behold.
• On your next family vacation choose a location that has many outdoor adventuring opportunities.

Is your child suffering from not spending enough time in nature? Richard Louv, author of Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, asserts that many modern children do. In fact, other medical and mental health experts and a growing body of researchers are also concerned about how little time our children are spending in the great outdoors. Why should parents be aware of this? What are some of the problems that result from nature deficit and what can we do to prevent it in our children?

First let’s define the problem. As Louv sees it, when our kids spend less time in natural environments, the results are what we’re seeing more and more of in recent years: weight issues in children, attention problems, depression, anxiety and stress. According to Louv, anecdotal evidence as well as several studies point to a connection between the increasing amount of time our kids spend indoors doing more sedentary activities, and emotional, health and social problems.

To be fair, many parents are justifiably concerned about safety. But this comes at a price. Many of us who are parents today remember spending much of our own childhoods out of doors, even in less than perfect weather! Long walks through the woods with friends, bike rides through the neighborhood feeling the wind in our hair, day dreaming for hours on the tire swing under the tree, these were the stuff memories were made of. Our kids today are often shuttled from one activity to another, most of these taking place in structured environments, and many of them indoors. What are our kids missing out on?

The research points to several things. One is that spending time in nature can help relieve stress. It also helps kids focus more. One study conducted by the University of Illinois found that children with attention problems can focus better after outdoor activities. Other studies point to increased cognitive ability among kids who have access to natural settings and display fewer attention lapses (such as interrupting, not listening and distraction). Also important are the findings that unstructured play (the kind that takes place when kids roam the great outdoors) leads to enhanced emotional and social development. They get better at problem solving and getting along with other kids. Not to be discounted is the fact any Mom can testify to: that getting the kids outdoors makes them calmer, helps them eat better as well as sleep better!

So how do we make sure our kids are getting enough time outside, especially if we don’t live in a rural area? One way is to structure recreation around nature. Spending time in parks, taking walks on nature trails, hiking, mountain climbing, visiting lakes, rivers and beaches and picnics outdoors are some ideas. Even in urban areas you probably have access to city parks and botanical gardens. Build a treehouse in your backyard if you can. Encourage your kids to go outside and play as much as possible. Make it mandatory if they don’t seem to enjoy it at first. Like eating vegetables, they often will start to love it with time. If it’s not safe for your kids to play outside without supervision, then spend time outside with them. Go for walks outside as a family. Eat some of your meals outdoors if weather permits. Involve the kids in outdoor chores like yard work or hanging laundry. The benefits will likely be obvious to you after a period of time and are worth the extra effort.

It has taken some time, but finally there is widespread awareness that electronic games are contributing to the poor health of our kids.  Studies are showing that kids in general are spending approximately 5 hours a day in front of the TV and/or game video screen. Sure some of these games can be entertaining or even stimulating to a point, but 5 hours of electronic entertainment is way too much time for growing kids to spend in one stationary position. 

Researchers from Yale University and the University of Hawaii published a paper recently stating that by 2010 more than 50% of children in America will be overweight.  That’s a statistic that no one wants to see realized.  So what can we do? For many families it will take a significant effort to change some activities that have become hard to break habits.

Electronic games and DVDs have become the modern pacifier for many kids.  Parents will often pop in a DVD or whip out the Game Boy to keep kids occupied during long trips, while seated in waiting rooms or at any moment in the day when a child says “I’m bored.”

The challenge is to find ways to control (or better yet eliminate) the use of electronics as a means of childhood entertainment.  To get some ideas as to what you might do to entertain your kids, let’s take a look back to the pre-Game Boy era…

It’s a Wednesday evening, dinner’s done and the kids have finished their homework.  Mom looks to the game cupboard and pulls the Twister box off the shelf.  Twister is the game where the players are the game pieces.  Unfold the game “sheet” on the family room floor, get the spinner out, spin away and start moving arms and limbs onto the colored dots as directed by the spinner.  Last person to fall wins.  Now that’s a fun way to end a typical week day.

While Twister is a game from the past, it is very much available today as are a good many  traditional games that are engaging, fun and require no batteries or adapters!  The following are great games for all ages that you might want to pick up either on ebay, at a local garage sale, or your local toy store:  Monopoly (not the electronic version), Sorry, Battleship, Clue and Scrabble.  

What to do on a snowy Saturday afternoon?  Why build a snow fort of course?  Moms and Dads can and should join in this game since the more hands involved in fort construction the sooner it’ll be ready for its military inhabitants! All that snow that is cleared from the driveway and that is on the lawn, will be put to great use as building material for the family snow fort.

Who doesn’t like the game “Simon Says”?  This classic movement game is fun for any age and the best part is your 2 year old can have as much fun playing this as the 12 year old.  Assign a young child to be “Simon” for a really neat “Simon Says” session. Mom and Dad can be pretty good at giving orders around the house let’s see how good (or how able) they are at following directions especially when the order is “Touch your toes!”  Keep your chiropractor on call during your “Simon Says” sessions.

The best part of any “non-electronic” family activity is the good conversation and laughter that are so much a part of family life.  Watching your kids giggle as you trip over yourself during a game of Twister is a priceless moment no electronic game can replace.

It’s raining (or snowing) cats and dogs. You can’t send the kids out to play, but you would prefer that they not zone out in front of the TV or the computer for the next five hours. Good for you. How can you keep your kids entertained on a day like this?

One of the things that modern parents struggle with is the need to get things done and also spend quality time with children, and it’s not always easy with children complaining that they are bored every ten minutes. This is where you’ve hopefully trained them, and yourself, to be creative.

Here are some great ways to entertain your kids in the “old-fashioned” way. You might have to get them started, or even play along, but it will be good for them and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your children are learning to use their natural creativity and curiosity.

• Make a fort – get chair and sheets or blankets and show them how to build a fort. With some creativity, they can make rooms and will have a wonderful time.

• Read – Get out the storybooks and read to them if they are little, or have them read to you if they are older and learning. This is a great way to remind them of the power a book can have to transport a person to far-away places for fun and adventure.

• Paint – Finger paints, anyone? Create works of art on paper or poster board and display them when they are dry.

• Cookies – Make some cookies, or a cake or some bread. This is an age-old fun way to spend a couple hours. It gives you bonding time with your kids and they have fun. Later, you can have a snack (maybe while all watching your favorite TV show together – oops! There’s the TV, again).

• Help with dinner – Get out the recipe book and have your kids help you make dinner. Show them how measure ingredients and follow the directions. Make sure to show them how to clean up as they go, so there won’t be a huge mess after the feast has been prepared.

• Science projects – Go online and do a search for “rainy day science projects” or “science projects to do at home”. You will find a ton of easy and fun things the kids can do. They will learn something new, too!

• Repot plants – Get your hands dirty and show them how to properly repot plants that have grown out of the pots they’re in. Spread some newspaper on the floor, get out some potting soil and get to work.

• Plant seeds – If you have some clear plastic cups (not earth friendly, but they serve a purpose here), you can put some potting soil in them, and have your kids plant some seeds, preferably beans or sunflowers or another large type of seed. Even though the seeds won’t sprout immediately, in a few days, they will be able to see new life.

• Write letters (not emails) – Get out some paper and crayons, colored pencils or pens and have the kids write real letters to Grandma and Grandpa, or a cousin or friend who lives far away. They will have fun writing and decorating a special letter, and hopefully receiving a real letter in return.

If you use your own creativity and even think back to fun things you did as a child, you can probably come up with more great ideas for entertaining your children without the use of a TV, computer, or video game. Good luck!