The twins turn six on their next birthday, and at our house that’s the Allowance Birthday. The kids always get a bank for their sixth birthday, and an envelope with their first allowance in it.

We gave my oldest child this Toysmith Cash Box, chosen primarily because that’s the kind of bank my brother had when we were growing up, so that’s what comes to mind when I think “bank for a boy” (I had a pink pig bank named Piggles). I bought it from a local toy store, not only to avoid the shipping costs but also because please note that the bank I’ve linked to requires you to be okay with them choosing the color for you, which, please.
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Here is the problem: The twins have been invited to the birthday party of a little girl turning five. I need two presents by this weekend. I’m looking for things that cost about ten dollars, although less would be even better. I have a few things I’m considering buying, and I also have some maybes on the gift shelf.

Stomp Rocket Jr Glow Kit (photo from Amazon.com). My mom has a stomp rocket and the kids LOVE it. I would prefer to get one WITHOUT the “glow” feature, but the glow one is marked down to $7.83 AND comes in a “junior” version, so…

Crayola Telescoping Pip-Squeaks Marker Tower (photo from Amazon.com). About $11.  Maybe it isn’t the same in everyone’s house, but at our house we have an endless need for marker replenishment.
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Oh, good, school’s out. No more lunch-making, bus-catching, homework-nagging. Now we turn our attention to scrabbling for ways to alleviate boredom.

Orb Factory Sticky Mosaics (photos from Amazon.com). Beth recommended the sticky mosaics, and I got the jewels one for Elizabeth for her birthday. Not only does Elizabeth totally love it, _I_ totally love it. I don’t usually like to do projects with children, but we’re on our fourth mosaic and I’m still having to prevent myself from working on it after she goes to bed. I bought the dinosaur set for ME to do (I’ll use the resulting pictures to decorate the room of dinosaur-loving Henry), and I can’t wait for it to arrive.  I wish they made sets for grown-ups.

They’re not CHEAP, it’s true:  about $17 for a box that includes 4 or 5 mosaics.  But after hesitating over the first set, I wouldn’t hesitate again:  well worth it for the fun, the fine motor skills development, the finished pictures (the three we’ve done so far are all on Elizabeth’s wall), and the project I LIKE doing with a child. If they sold them individually instead, for $3-4 each, I’d probably put one in my cart every time I went to the store.

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This is the sixth in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. The third: marshmallows and toothpicks. The fourth: unspilly stuff in a bowl. The fifth: no-mess paintbrushes. Today’s test: PVC plumbing pipes.

We got the idea for this when Paul needed some pipes and joints for a project he’s working on in the basement (I don’t know what it is—it’s better not to ask, I’ve found), and when he brought them home from the store the kids were fascinated.  On his way home from work the next day he picked up a bunch more so he could take his back from the kids.

Intention
The children will quietly build things with the pipes and neither bother their mother nor hit each other with the pipes.

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The recent events in Haiti are never far from my mind these days. I watch the news and I cannot believe the things have have happened over there—that are happening. Everything in our lives seems impossibly luxurious now, and I feel both grateful for our situation and helpless in the face of such an enormous tragedy.

We watch the news at night and if things aren’t too graphic, we let our preschooler watch it too. I’ve tried talking about the earthquake with him, but I don’t think he quite understands. He does want to know if earthquakes happen here, too, and he’s super focused on whether or not there are firefighters in Haiti because I think in his mind firefighters make everything okay.

It’s hard to know how to talk about subjects like Haiti with kids. I don’t want to scare him, but I do want to teach him a bit about what happened and what people are doing to help. I want him to understand how Mommy and Daddy are trying to help by sending money, so he knows that’s what our family does when we can.

For those of you with similar confusion and questions, here’s a list of resources I found when researching ideas for talking about Haiti and other difficult news events with children.
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(Winner in the Worst Mother’s Day Gift contest: Jana, who was commenter #9. Yay, Jana!)

This is the fourth in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested, um, dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. The third: marshmallows and toothpicks. Today’s test: unspilly stuff in a bowl.

Intention
The preschool-aged child will satisfy her seemingly endless Stirring Impulses, without wasting food or getting any more flour behind the cupboards.
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This is the third in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested, um, dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. Today’s test: marshmallows and toothpicks.  This would be, of course, for children who are no longer in the young “trying to kill themselves with everything that exists” stage; my test children were both aged 3.75 years.

Intention
The children will make structures with the marshmallows and toothpicks, without eating the marshmallows or poking themselves with the toothpicks, and will thus justify my impulse buy of pastel, bunny-shaped marshmallows
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‘Tis the season for this blog to start talking about gift ideas and tips for surviving the holidays without blowing your budget or losing your mind. There’s a lot of great stuff already lurking in the gift category archives, and we’ll be posting more entries on this subject over the next few weeks.

I see I wrote a post almost a year ago on charitable gift ideas, which is sort of what I planned to talk about today. More specifically, how do you get your kids to embrace charity, in the middle of a season designed to overload their brains with GIMME? My own children are too young to fully grok the notion of . . . well, much of anything about the holidays yet (my 3-year-old just asked me this morning if Santa was a pirate. I guess “Ho ho ho” does sound a lot like “Yo ho ho”), but I’d definitely like to create some traditions that involve all of us thinking about more than just our Amazon wish lists each year. Here’s a few activities I’ve been thinking would be good to do with kids during the holiday season:

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