Our Favourite Jar – Family fun ideas

This jar is the basis for this blog. After seeing something similar on Pinterest I decided to make my own for the children for Christmas.

It’s a simple idea that’s only limit is your own imagination, so drawing on activities I’ve done in the past and the things that each child likes to do, as well as the adults I came up with a list of fun things to do throughout the year. Some of them are things that can be done around the house, some outdoors,  some will cost money but most are free.

I have tried to make sure there are things to do for each season, And various celebrations like Easter and Christmas based activities are in there.

Using revision cards I wrote each activity on, I tried to give each category it’s own colour. For example anything that is indoor is one colour and outdoor another. This way you can easily identify an activity based on the kind of day you’re presented with.
On the card there is then enough room to write on what you’ve done, who took part and on what date. And of course if you’ve done something more than once they can be added to. I liked the idea of keeping a log of what we’d done because it’s easy to forget.

It was fun to put together but even more fun watching the children get excited reading all the things that we could get up to this year.

So far we have worked our way through the following:

Make Sweet Pizzas

This was great fun! I highly recommend for anyone with a sweet tooth but would warn anyone who could be leaning towards diabetes…. You should definitely avoid! We used pre-made bases smothered in chocolate spread and topped with white chocolate buttons and marshmallows. We then foolishly thought putting 3 sugar filled children to bed would be fun. Sometimes I don’t always think things through so well!
We did expand on this and made savory pizzas. F doesn’t like pizza so stood this one out but S and E loved taking control of their own dinner.

Silly String fight

Our house is a work in progress so we can afford to make a little mess, If you have a beautiful home and are in anyway house proud…. Don’t bother trying this one. It cleans up well but the initial mess lead to some OCD induced palpitations 😉 
The children loved this as it is not often you encourage mess. The downside was at a £1 a can it’s an expensive 3 minutes of fun. But the look on their faces was almost worth it. Just be warned – Eyes and silly string will lead to tears! But I think they enjoyed the clean up as much as the mess-making so that was a bonus, and believe me when i say there is something so satisfying about hoovering it up!

Bluebell walk

I absolutely love woods and bluebells so this is a perfect activity for me. We ventured to Crackley woods in Kenilworth. This was a first for F and I, so we were in Rob’s capable hands. He didn’t disappoint. We were able to tick off tree climbing from our jar on this one. Although it was a fairly unsuccessful climbing session as 2 out of 3 children fell off and 1 out of 2 adults, Clue – It wasn’t me! The children climbed, scavenged, built a dam and indulged their inner vlogger by creating some videos for youtube and I took lots of wonderful photographs. Its fair to say we were all happy. We had a quick car picnic to hide from the cold before venturing to Abbey fields to let the children play. We had a nice walk from there up to the castle finding lots of interesting things along the way. The children were able to play in the brook and we even managed a game of Pooh sticks.

Fly a kite

We took advantage of one of our snow days this winter and decided it was the perfect day for kite flying. So as we all wrapped up nice and warm, Rob fetched the kite from the loft (This is the day we discovered that it does in fact snow in our loft… Yay!) and off we went to the local park. There is something so simple about watching a kite bob around a sky full of snow. It proved too cold for the girls but F and I stuck it out until I lost the feeling in my fingers. It certainly captured F and I suspect we will be doing it again and again.

Cake Decorating

This simple rainy day activity kept them entertained for just long enough. And actually they didn’t shovel sweets in to their mouths – one for the cake … 2 for me – style, the same can’t be said for the icing though. Although I learnt from my sweet pizza mistake and we did this sugar fueled activity early in the day. They loved being creative and fitting on as much as possible to each cake.

Do a treasure hunt

This was completely Rob’s domain. I just sat back and watched, well watched and played the part of shop keeper quite convincingly even if I do say so myself (Although maybe don’t ask Rob about me clearing up the front room after finding it covered in odd bits of upturned furniture…. How was I supposed to know it was a maze??) The children loved this activity so much. They had clues to follow and tasks to complete and the whole house was covered in ‘stuff’ no where was out of bounds and once they had completed it they wanted to get on and do it again. It wore them out for bed perfectly.

I also put together an Easter egg hunt, They had a clue which would lead them to a small treat and the next clue, The clues were simple but involved a bit of thought and i used the whole house to hide them. They finally tracked the grand prize down to the loft (Minus the snow this time) and they were very pleased with their efforts.

This blog will track our jar activities and any other fun things along the way. 2018 the year of adventure and fun!