Here are two craft projects you and your kids can try at home…

Sock Puppets

Small children, even babies, love to see puppets. Instead of spending a lot of money on puppets, why not let your child make their own? If your house is like most, you probably have all kinds of unmatched sox sitting in a box or bag in the bottom of your closet. With glue dots, wiggly eyes, colored felt, and some yarn, your child can make their own puppet friends.

The look of their puppet is entirely up to your child. They can choose the type of sock – striped, with lace on the bottom, or whatever is on hand – to create a one-of-a-kind toy. Using glue dots, put on the wiggly eyes, add a moustache or teeth, if you have fake eyelashes, they can add those, too.

Have Mom or Dad find a large box and cut a hole out of it to make a puppet stage. With a little bit of imagination, your child can have many hours of puppetry fun.

Finger Painting

For a child, is there anything more fun that getting their paint covered hands, arms, and elbows into their artwork? When they’re usually told to keep their hands clean, finger painting allows children an opportunity to get dirty and have fun all the while. Water-based paints are available at most department stores as well as at craft stores around the country. If your child can’t find a color they want, this is a great opportunity to help them learn about which colors make which when mixed together.

Don’t forget to have your child wear an old shirt and be sure to have plenty of newspapers on the surface where they will be painting. Let them have fun and make a mess; it’ll clean up with soap and water.

Another option for cleaning up is to spray some shaving cream on the table. Not only will this be an additional bit of fun for the kids, it will also help your table end up clean as a whistle.

Whatever crafts you allow your younger child to do, get down there with them and have fun. You may have been told for years that you have to act like a grown up. You may have been told to act your age. When you have craft happy kids, who says you can’t act like a kid? There’s no telling the amount of fun you’ll be able to have with your children as you create sock puppets or finger paint. It’s also quite possible you might strike the spark of creativity that has been missing from your own life.

Visit A Local Pumpkin Farmstead.

Throughout the month of October, pumpkin suppliers usually have fairs like live music, hayrides, and crafts, not to mention the opportunity to hand select your very personal pumpkin right off the plant.

Pumpkin Painting

Paint your halloween pumpkins instead of carving them. Carving pumpkins is a great hobby during Halloween, but this can be dangerous to small kids. This is great for kids who want to celebrate the Halloween like adults safely. If you want to learn more about Pumpkin Painting and how your kids can enjoy this unique seasonal hobby, go to EZPumpkinPainting

Create an Eerie Halloween Record Together.

Is there a graveyard nearby? Why not make a movie as a family while you’re all in your scary halloween costumes? You can roleplay as your characters and create a story from your imagination.

Take a video of mom or grandma cooking creepy Halloween cookies or Grandpa drinking greenish looking witch’s brew (it’s just lemonade with green food coloring). Capture the moment when the youngest member of the family dresses as a goblin and tries to feed a piece of macabre heart (cookies wrapped in blood-red icing) to his trusty demon hound (your pet dog in his own costume).

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This is a great hobby to put together an enduring home ritual. The entire family will get to decide on the characters, now and then making non-living things like pumpkins and candy corn come alive. Once you create the personas, the background and the narrative, you will be flabbergasted how much each family member wishes to play a part in the legend. Set aside your annual account in a DVD, CD or a folder and read or view the homemade videos or stories from previous years. It’s a remarkable memory.

If you want to spend the most of your time together, some family projects are good to preserve memories. At least, in the ancestral home, we will have something to remind us of the times when we were all together…. sentimental, but thoroughly touching.

My grandma’s death reminded me of how time passes by and how short it really is to show every member of our family that we love them.

Tears aside, my suggestion is to build a Japanese garden together!

One cultural quirk that the Japanese shaed to the world is cultural gardening. This form of landscaping and gardening is meant to create a place that represents nature in its purest form. Some elements include small and medium trees, bushy shrubs, shapely and unique rocks, clean sand, man-made hills. There are also dainty ponds that are purely aesthetic.

I have never thought of flowing water as an art form, but it is. The traditions of Zen and Shinto play a big role in Japanese gardening and landscaping. These sceneries are meant to put someone in a contemplative mood (for thinking up all these sentimental thoughts).

This is a good place to reflect, and when the young ones have their own young ones, a great place for kids to play in.