The Kindness Pets' First Adventure

The Kindness Pet's house is complete.  Our solution to creating a house for our pets involved paper-maching a plastic pumpkin to create a round home.  We then mod podged and hot glued a straw hat on top.  The house was spray painted brown and a LEGO door was attached.  When the house was complete we realized that the door was too high so we designed and created stairs from sticks.  Problem solved!

I think the pets are happy in their house.  They challenged us today to start spreading kindness.  We made simple homemade granola bars (recipe below) and cut flowers from our yard.  We delivered this cheer to our great aunt.

How can you be challenged to share kindness today?

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

3/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup honey

2 1/4  to 2 1/2 cups quick oats

Mix peanut butter and honey together in a microwave safe bowl.  

Microwave for 10 seconds.  Stir.

Add oats. Stir until all oats are coated with peanut butter.

Press into a 8x8 square dish and place in the refrigerator to cool.

When cooled, use a pizza cutter to cut into bar shapes.

You can add your favorite "extras" with the oats . 

You could try mini chocolate chips, raisins or diced dates.

Adjust the amount of oats accordingly.

The Kindness Elves are Coming to the Remote "Lab"

I was recently inspired by an article about The Kindness Elves and decided to incorporate a version in my "Remote Summer STEAM Lab" (aka my dining room).  The Kindness Elves were originally designed as an alternative to the Elf of the Shelf.  Instead of the elves appearing every morning in mischievous ways, the elves appear each morning with a note about an act of kindness for children to do. Check out the website in the image above to find out more about The Kindness Elves.

The original Kindness Elves are dressed for winter so our STEAM Challenge today was to create summertime elf alternatives and to create a home for them in the remote Lab.

I found three possible alternatives for elves around my house.

With input from my sons, I decided the lab should have "Kindness Pets".

The next step was to create a house for them.  

Inspired by the picture above, I gathered supplies from around my house.

Check back next week to see the finished project,

and to find out more about the challenges the Kindness Pets leave in the lab.

If this inspires you to create Kindness Elves or Kindness Pets on your own, 

I would love to see pictures of them.

The Adventure Begins

It is the first day of the first full week of summer vacation.

This summer will be an adventure of discovery.  

And what does every adventurer or explorer need?  

An Adventure Journal

You can make your own Adventure Journal.

You will need:

A copybook

A printed picture of an old map

A glue stick

A copy of the Adventure Journal Label

To make the journal cut the map to cover the front of the copybook.  

Glue it to the copybook.

Then cut the journal label to a size you like and glue that on top.

That is all there is to it!

This journal was made from a copybook that had been repurposed.  The copybook had originally been used in school this year 

but had plenty of blank pages left in it.