By Sasha Graham
I love this time of year. The transition from the festivity of the holidays into the relative calm of January feels like a nice, deep breath. I enjoy putting all of the holiday photo cards we received in December into an album and I like how clean and neat the house looks after we’ve tucked the holiday decorations carefully into their boxes.
There is one thing I don’t much care for this time of year, however, and that’s New Year’s Eve. Although I’ve never really put my finger on why I don’t like New Year’s, I suppose it’s because it has always felt like a holiday infused with too many expectations and not enough substance. After all of the richness of Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year’s seems a little empty to me.
This year, in mid-December, I sat on the couch drinking a cup of coffee while my 17-month-old son played with his trucks on the floor. “Probably not a bad idea to drink less coffee in 2007,” I thought inhaling the delicious aroma from my steaming cup. Then I grimaced, mulling over how to implement resolution #2, cutting back on caffeine, while still sticking to resolution #1, implementing an early-morning work-out regimen. Ugh. I found myself wondering, absent-mindedly, if my son would write New Year’s resolutions one day. “Oh, I hope not,” I thought to myself, “I really hope that he likes himself enough to not waste his time writing resolutions.”
Wait, WHAT?!
Do you ever find yourself having a thought that is so unexpected that it brings your brain screeching to a halt? A thought so startling that it feels almost like it came from somewhere else? Because that’s what happened to me...
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A New Tradition For An Old Year
St David's Day is celebrated in Wales and by Welsh people throughout the world on 1st March. We'll will be adding quite a new ideas for St David's Day activities for kids in the next week or so, and today we have added some new St David's Day puzzles for kids for you to print out.
We have been busy creating some really fantastic new craft ideas for Chinese New Year, including a Chinese Lion Dance costume, a Chinese Dragon from egg boxes, a Chinese Lion puppet, a "Bowl of Oranges" collage, a Chinese firecracker, and lots more.
Groundhog Day is a US tradition originating from the German Candlemas day and brought to America by German settlers. On 2nd February, if the groundhog emerges from its winter hibernation and can see its shadow on the ground, it knows that winter will last at least another six weeks. If there is no shadow, there will be an early end to winter.
Mardi Gras is coming up soon (5th February), so you might want to think about some easy Mardi Gras crafts you can enjoy with your kids. You'll find the colors purple, green and gold in abundance on our Mardi Gras pages, and a collection of (noisy!) crafts that children of all ages will enjoy.
If you are celebrating Australia Day on Saturday, or just like the idea of trying some Australia-themed crafts with your children, have a look at our new Australia Day crafts page. You will find lots to inspire you, including a very fearsome shark and some characterful crocodiles!
New at Activity Village, we have a collection of some really super craft ideas for MLK Day. Make a "one world" poster, a hand banner, or our multicultural puppet, and teach the children that we are all the same inside.
Mardi Gras will be celebrated on 5th February 2008 and I have added new Mardi Gras coloring pages to the site today, as well as 7 pages of mask templates so that you can have some sticky fun with your kids creating your own colorful Mardi Gras masks. We also have some Mardi Gras crafts, a jigsaw to play on your computer, and an inspiring collection of links to other Mardi Gras activities for kids on other websites.
When buying and cooking food for our families, we all want to provide the best nutrition and the safest produce we can for the price we can afford, as well as putting together tasty meals that all family members will enjoy. But these days we hear more and more about the dangers of the chemical additives which have become commonplace in our foodstuffs. What are these additives, and which ones should we be avoiding?
