Summer DIY, personalized beach towels

I don't know about your house but around here the kids are frequently at a loss of what to do now they don't have the structure of school to fall back on.  So it's been Pinterest to the rescue around here to keep everyone busy.  This project is two fold because it gave us an afternoon of crafting and provides us with our summer beach towels.  Each child now has their own personalized beach towel with their name so no fighting over "you have my towel" and Mom now knows who's towel didn't get hung up.

We started with cheap white bath towels which I was able to find for $4 each.  When picking your towel try for natural fibers (ie cotton or bamboo) so you will get more vibrant colors when tie dying.  On your towel, using duct tape, spell out your name or message that you would like to appear on your towel. This step did take awhile especially as this step was above the level of some of our participants so Mom got to prep 8 towels.

 Next we took all the towels and spread them on the back lawn and got our die ready.  I bought this kit and we easily were able to complete 12 towels with this one kit.

Next we sprayed various colors onto our towels not worrying about whether or not we sprayed the taped area.  The spraying of the die was something that most of us could handle and was good fine motor practice for all.  If you don't want colored hands you may want to wear rubber gloves, we braved it and had colorful hands until we spent a couple hours in the pool.  It works best if you use your darkest color around the taped off area to provide the largest contrast so your letters show up well.

After the towel is colored to your liking let it dry (we left ours on the grass in the sun), once dry peel tape off to expose your name and leave for 8 plus hours for the color to set.  The next day run the towels through the laundry, washing and drying (in the dryer) so the colors set.

Now your towels are ready to use.  I hope you enjoy making these as much as we did.

Crafting away our stresses

Life has been extremely hectic around here with the never ending renovations, Christmas preparations, power outages, flooding basement and the arrival of our adorable but very sick grand daughter.  So the kids and I decided to step away from the stress and spend the day baking, crafting and watching Christmas movies.

Christmas trees and stars made out of popsicle sticks and then decorated with glitter glue and sequins.

Sugar cookies galore, mixing colors of icing seemed like a good idea to some resulting in some unique colors.

Beading on pipe cleaners to make snowflakes and candy canes.  This was excellent for practicing our fine motor skills.

We also used coffee filters to make angels.  The heads were made from cotton balls cover with the coffee filter.

These reindeer were a huge success with hours of imaginative play after they were created.  I don't know if they will survive long enough to make it on the Christmas tree.

Duct tape and cats don't mix.....keeping special needs adults busy

Keeping our 18 and 19 year old children with significant special needs busy for the summer has taken a lot of planning on our part.  If not pushed and encouraged to do something one would sit and stare at the walls all day long and the other would be getting into all kinds of trouble.  There is the added challenge, that although they are both adults, neither function anywhere near their age.

Obtaining employment is not an option for either, at this time in their lives so it takes some creative planning.  Both will be continuing with high school come September in a life skill program.

We are fortunate enough to have a wonderful respite person who takes the 2 children out twice a week 5 for 5 hours each day.  During this time they are learning/practicing life skills.  They have been learning how to use the public transit system, they are learning budgeting and shopping skills, and social skills.  During this time they have been to museums, tourist attractions, hiking, shopping, the library, etc.  They are expected to plan and prepare for each activity.  Both are expected to pack their own lunch before their outing and this has been a huge learning curve for both.

At home we have been encouraging learning and teaching hobbies that will keep them busy and hopefully teach them some skills that may carry over as ongoing hobbies.  The hobbies are simple ones as their abilities are challenged.  Pinterest has been a huge help in finding activities to keep them busy.  Both have a raised garden bed that they are caring for, our son has been building all kinds of creations with Lego and our daughter is trying to learn how to play the guitar.

Today we have been making Duct tape wallets, we found directions here.  Both were kept busy for a couple hours making their first wallet.  The older of the 2 was getting frustrated with the stickiness of the tape (so was the cat that always wants to participate) and the other enjoyed this task so much that he made another.  They did some gardening, caring for their garden beds.  And later in the day they baked some chocolate chip cookies with supervision.

People with special needs need a lot of teaching and re teaching and it is helpful if this happens in an enjoyable way that doesn't feel like work.  We continue to search out activities that keep them active and productive while building on their skills.  Do you have an activity/hobby that may be of interest to them?  Please share.