When family birthdays and holidays roll around, we like to have our daughter Ally, 4, make something special for her grandparents, aunts or uncle.

Usually that has meant taking Ally to the local pottery place to paint a plate, bowl or mug. And while these gifts are always enjoyed and cherished, I think Ally’s relatives are coming to expect them. Also, with a big family, all that pottery studio time can get expensive.

So I started looking for easier and more inexpensive ways for Ally to create one-of-a-kind gifts for her loved ones. And one great idea was to have Ally paint and decorate flower pots. 

First Ally and I went to the store and picked out an inexpensive brown clay flower pot, a plant to go in it and some potting soil. The total was about $10. When we got home we gathered some paint, paintbrushes and an old t-shirt of my husband’s for Ally to paint in and Ally painted the pot all over. After it dried, we found odds and ends from her art supplies box to glue on the sides.

Depending on whether the flower pot will be inside or outside, you can decide whether to glue on foam pieces, buttons, shells or ribbons, etc. or leave it plain. 

Ally has created a few of these flowerpots now and they have all been received with excitement and are proudly displayed on relatives’ porches, decks and patio tables. Ally loves giving her one-of-a-kind gifts and seeing the plants grow when she goes to visit her grandparents and relatives.

So the next time you’re stumped for a gift idea from your kids, the answer may be as simple as a quick trip to a garden center or a quick walk out to your garden shed. 

This Mom Tip was passed on to me by a fellow mom and I thought it was such a great solution to the very common dilemma of keeping your car upholstery clean when your kids are eating in the backseat.

This mom said that she solved the problem by buying a large bath towel or bath sheet that matched her car’s upholstery and then laid in down in the backseat, covering both the seat and the backrest. Then she put her childrens’ car seats on top of the towel and secured them. Now when her kids eat in the backseat, the towel catches and absorbs the juice box spills and the ice cream drips and the graham cracker crumbs.

She removes the towel when it gets too dirty, washes it in the washing machine and puts it back in the car. And while its hidden underneath a towel for now, someday when she can show it again, her car upholstery won’t be forever ruined. 

My daughter Ally, 4, has always loved sidewalk chalk. We draw the hopscotch squares and pictures and write our names. And we do this over and over again. 

So this summer I came up with a new idea for sidewalk chalk. Ally and I used sidewalk chalk to draw an elaborate “neighborhood” of streets, houses, bridges, traffic lights and signs on our driveway. The whole “neighborhood” was just the right size for Hot Wheels cars.

Ally and I sat there driving our different Hot Wheels cars down the streets – stopping for traffic lights – and then continuing on to park in the garages that we had drawn next to each house. We even drew a fire station for her Hot Wheels fire engine. Ally loved deciding which car belonged to which house; making up stories for where the cars were going and naming each of the streets. I loved that it was a new way to play sidewalk chalk and a new way to let Ally be creative.

I’m always carrying around snacks in my purse for my daughter Ally, 4. I always want to carry a variety of choices for Ally, so I toss granola bars and small bags of Goldfish crackers, animal crackers and pretzels in my purse. But whatever snacks don’t get picked will stay in my purse and I’ll find them a couple of days later at the bottom of my bag reduced to crumbs and dust.

So one day, I took a quart-size plastic sealable bag and put her snacks into that and then right before I sealed it shut, I blew air into the bag to inflate it. The air cushions the snacks inside the bag from getting crushed when my purse gets tossed around. Now Ally’s snacks stay in good shape no matter how long they’ve been in my purse.

And I can find the snacks easier since they’re all together in one sealed bag.

My daughter Ally has several Colorforms sets, but after awhile sticking them on to the same cardboard scene gets a little boring. And one day Ally went over and stuck her Colorforms on the living room window and came up with a new way to play.

Now I let Ally play with her Colorforms on one of our living room windows whenever she wants. It’s such a simple and easy idea but it has made the same old Colorforms new and exciting again for Ally. Now she makes up stories as she arranges them on the window – combining her Dora the Explorer Colorforms with her Fancy Nancy and Thomas the Tank Engine Colorforms. 

The only drawback is the finger smudges on the window, but let’s face it, they would have been there anyway. 

I always make Ally take down her Colorforms when she’s done playing, mainly because I don’t know how they would do sitting in the hot sun of the window all day. 

My daughter’s preschool teacher recommended reviewing phonics lessons with my daughter Ally, 4, over the summer.

To make the phonics lessons a fun project for the two of us, I decided that Ally and I could make a phonics book together. First Ally and I went to the store and she picked out a pink three-ring binder. We also bought some clear protective binder pages and paper.

Then we got to work cutting out pictures from magazines that would be easy for Ally to identify and making collages of these pictures for each letter of the alphabet. The collage for the letter “B” had pictures of books, birds, blocks, buttons, a bear, etc. Ally helped me put the binder together and decorated it with letter stickers.

Now from time to time, we go through Ally’s “special book” (as she calls it). I start by asking Ally what letter is at the top of the
page and then Ally names aloud each picture on the page, which starts with that letter. Then I ask her tell me what sound that letter makes.

The phonics book has really helped Ally to learn her letter sounds and also to understand that some letters have more than one sound. And since I wrote out the words under each picture, the book is also teaching Ally word recognition.

This was a fun project for Ally and I to do together, and Ally is always excited to look through the book since she helped create it. And if she learns something while we’re looking at it, all the better.

My daughter Ally has a couple of the Memory Games and loves to play them. So at Christmas time I came up with the idea to make our own holiday-themed memory game with Ally’s help. First we cut some plain index cards in half to make two matching squares. Then Ally and I each took two squares and drew the same picture on each one. Ally drew two matching snowmen on her squares and I drew two Christmas trees. We continued cutting and decorating until we had about 8-10 pairs. Then we shuffled the cards and put them face down on the floor and played it just like a normal Memory Game.

Since we made the pictures ourselves, Ally thought it was lots of fun. And since she drew half of the pictures herself, it was extra special – particularly since often Ally was the only one who knew what her pictures were.

Since then Ally and I have made more Memory Games. Ally has written her name or letters on the cards for a word/alphabet memory game and recently we made a fairy princess-themed game, which had Ally drawing carriages and magic wands.

Since you’re making your own Memory Game, use it to practice whatever skill your child is ready to learn.

You could draw a picture of a cat, dog, car, etc. on one card and then write the word to match it on another card. Or, for example, draw two apples on one card to be matched with the number 2 on another card. Another idea would be put uppercase and lowercase letters on each card and then have your child match them up.

This is a game that’s easy and fun for families to make and can be adapted to any age or skill level.

My daughter loves doing art projects. And over the last couple of years we’ve collected a huge amount of paints, stamps, stickers, glue sticks, crayons, markers, glitter, pipe cleaners, etc. For so long I had all of these things scattered around the house and would haul them to the kitchen table whenever Ally felt the spark of creativity. But recently I found a way to keep all of her art supplies together and give Ally a special place to make her beautiful glitter and glue-covered creations.

I found an old second-hand coffee table in our basement and painted it. Then I put the table in the corner of Ally’s playroom. I divided her art supplies into a three-drawer storage container that sits next to the table and into a couple of tubs that slide under the table. I also bought stacking plastic shelves from an office supply store to separate her white drawing paper, construction paper and coloring books.

Now our budding artist uses the table and her art supplies every day because everything is together and within her reach. And best of all, since I don’t care about the coffee table, it can be smeared with paint, glue and Play-Doh without costing me a bit of stress or clean up time. And since her art projects aren’t on the kitchen table, they can be left out half-finished.

I also a bought the Work of Art Clips from Land of Nod ($12.95), which is a like a clothesline with decorative clips to hold your child’s artwork. The string and clips were easy to install on the wall over Ally’s table and give her a place to display her latest creations. I love the art clips because they allow us to have rotating artwork for Ally’s playroom wall and gives us a place other than the refrigerator to showcase her artistic talents.

When my daughter turned 3, she was ready for the safety rail to be taken off her bed. But my husband and I were still nervous about her falling out of bed. So we bought a swim noodle and stuck it underneath our daughter’s fitted sheet and positioned the noodle along the edge of her bed. Now our daughter can climb in and out of bed easier, but the noodle provides enough of a bump at the edge of her bed to keep her from rolling out.

When my daughter sleeps over at my mom’s house, she sleeps in my mom’s guest room which has a very high queen-sized bed. My mom also bought swim noodles and put them under the fitted sheet. To keep her in the middle of the bed, my mom pushes the noodles toward the middle of the bed on either side of my daughter so she never gets close to the edge.

My preschooler was always asking “What day is it?” and “What are we doing today?” To help answer her questions and let her see what she’ll be doing each day of the week, I made a simple calendar for her and taped it to our kitchen door.

To make the calendar I bought a piece of poster board, multi-colored index cards, velcro and stickers.

First, I used a marker and divided the poster board vertically into seven equal rectangles. Then on the left side of each rectangle I put a velcro circle, where my daughter could attach an index card reading “Today is…” She moves this index card down the calendar each day.

To the right of the velcro circle I wrote the day of the week inside each rectangle. To the right of the day, I put two more velcro circles. Then on the index cards I wrote each of my daughter’s activities and used stickers or drawings to help her identify each activity. For example, I put a ballerina sticker on the index card for her dance class and a book sticker on the index card for a visit to the library. I put velcro circles on the back of each index card so they can be attached next to any day on her calendar.

Every Sunday night, I go to her calendar and attach the cards to plan her week. We have index cards for school, dance class, play dates, trips to the museum, trips to the library, holidays, birthday parties, etc. We also have index cards to represent each of my daughter’s grandparents, relatives and babysitters so she always knows who is coming over  and can looking forward to their visit all week.

This calendar is easy to make and can be customized for any child and his/her activities. In addition to helping my daughter understand the days of the week, this calendar has also taught her letter and word recognition. When she asks me which day is Monday, I say that it starts with an “M” and she looks for it that way. It has also helped her to recognize words like “school” and “dance,” which are on her calendar every week.