For this week’s post in our Connect with Your Kids series, Joyce from Childhood Beckons and I asked some of the most interesting and creative bloggers to share their best tips for helping kids to connect with faraway friends and family! Here is a summary of the responses, along with ten main themes that emerged from the discussion.

1. Write Letters –

“I help my 4 year old daughter write letters to her grandparents in NY.” – Rebekah from The Golden Gleam

“[My daughter] keeps in touch with her friends who no longer stay close-by, by either sending postcards or emails (since she’s very fond of typing)”. – Rashmie from Mommy Labs

“My 3 yr old son has a couple of pen pals in different countries and they send post cards to each other.” -Kelly from Happy Whimsical Hearts

“We use the webcam every weekend as well as draw pictures and write letters to our family.” -Cerys from Rainy Day Mum

“[My daughter] has recently began writing letters and I scan them and send out as email attachments. She loves hearing about her letter in her next chat sessions and loves getting replies from them. We do send post cards often too”- Roopa from Putti Prapancha

2. Mail Your Child’s Artwork –

“My mother will email pictures of their travels to the girls. They love looking at the fun things that their grandparents find. We also try to send some of our drawings and artwork to their grandparents to share some of the fun things that we do.” - Terri from Creative Family Fun

“I do send art packages to my parents, his parent, and his grandpa with printed pictures at least once a month.” Amanda from The Educators’ Spin On It

3. Schedule Regular Phone Calls –

“[My son] also likes phoning nanny and his grandparents and listening to them on speaker phone. It’s not a two way conversation yet but it’s nice that he hears their voice.” Ray from Taming the Goblin

“Jake stays connected to his grandparents with Skype and the phone.”- Katherine from Creative Playhouse

“My daughter calls my parents every morning[...] She usually talks to her aunts at least once a week as well.”- Carrie from Crafty Moms Share

“My daughter also loves to call and leave messages so family members can listen to her voice over and over.”- Adrienne from The Iowa Farmer’s Wife

4. Virtual Tea Party –

“Sometimes when we set up a video call (on Skype, Google+ Hangouts, or Facetime), the kids like to bring out their play tea set. They ask whoever we are video chatting with different questions like ‘Would you like sugar, or milk in your tea?’, ‘One lump, or two?’. There is always lots of stirring, and then they hold the little cups up to the camera for our guest to take a sip.” – Valerie from Inner Child Fun

“We use Skype, of course, to talk to the grandparents every weekend. Sometimes we set it up on the coffee table or couch and video talk that way; other times we set it up on the dining table as we are eating dinner (which coincides with lunchtime for them), so it’s like we are all sitting to eat together. They love that, and so do their grandparents. Other times they have ’virtual tea parties’ through Skype (we have a fab photo of our older daughter feeding Granny through the computer screen when she was 2!).” – Jane from Mama Pea Pod

“My kids live 4 hours from their dad and visit him every other weekend. Between visits they talk with him over webcam during their bedtime snack. Besides typical “how was your day” chat, he will often share silly videos and songs with them from Youtube. They get such a kick out of it.” -Krissy from B-Inspired Mama

5. Keep a Travel Journal –

“What about a traveling journal? One person writes in it, draws a picture, or glues a picture, etc and mails it to the other who does the same and sends it back to the first person.”- Andie from Crayon Freckles

“I want to set up a cousins “book” that my toddler and his 7 year-old cousin can send back and forth. They could draw pictures and such.”- Jennifer from The Good Long Road

“What about starting it by sending her some fun materials to decorate/create the notebook?” -Genny from In Lieu of Preschool

“I show [my son] photos of [far away family] all the time, and one of the activities I’m going to do with him soon is to make a family photo book with him where he can stick the photos in, and decorate it.” —  Katherine from Toddler Titbits

“My mom travels a ton. We have been able to Skype from central America and Europe! Plus she always creates cool scrapbooks for my boys about her travels. Very special.” — Marnie from Carrots are Orange

“When [my kids] were babies and too young to understand Skype, we made them a family photo album. We got this wonderful one just for babies that has a soft, fabric cover, like baby books do, and we put pictures of each family member inside. We looked at the book each day from the time they were newborns, and talked about each of the people. Once they were toddlers, we also used the book to help jog their memories of times they had spent with them in real life by saying things like “Oh, there’s Uncle Marc, remember when we went camping with him and he scared the bear away with the car alarm?” It helped them to hold on to the memories of real life interactions with them for longer.” — Jane from Mama Pea Pod

8. Set Up a Blog –

“We actually began our blog so that our family could see our son in his everyday life. They always looked forward to seeing new posts and pictures showing how much he was growing.”  – Gina from Famiglia and Seoul

“My first blog was set up to share with my family what we are doing and getting up to and I guess that is one of the reasons I have Rainy Day Mum as well. My mum comments most days on the blog and my brother reads it at least once or twice a week.” — Cerys from Rainy Day Mum

Resources for Keeping in Touch:

1. Recordable Storybooks – http://www.hallmark.com/online/in-stores/storybooks/recordable-storybooks/

2. Skype – http://www.skype.com

3. Ecards – http://www.123greetings.com/family/

4. Google+ — http://plus.google.com

5. Virtual Flowers – http://www.iflowers.com/vir/vir_newgallery_date.asp

A big thank you to everyone who shared a tip with us, and to Joyce for helping to summarize the responses! Do you have a great tip for keeping in touch with kids while you’re away? We would love to hear about it! Leave a comment and share your stories with us!

I am guest posting for my friends at Melissa & Doug today, and you can come see how the girls made their own Trunki Town! You may want to make a one of your own!

Wishing you and your lovely family a wonderful fun-filled weekend!

I’m guest posting for my friends at Stonyfield today to share tips for organic gardening with your kids!

Have you started a garden with your kids? We would love to hear about it! Leave a comment and share your stories with us.

Summer is quickly approaching, and you may be looking for ideas on what to do with the kids once they are off from school.

Here are some of our favorite kid crafts, activities, and ideas for Summer fun with the kids:

1. DIY Sponge Bombs – perfect for an impromptu sponge bomb bucket toss game!

2. Make Your Own Solar Powered Oven – Heat up some pizza, s’mores for dessert, and some homemade sun tea for a solar powered lunch.

3. Sprinklers! – Looking for other ways to stay cool this Summer? Be sure to check out 10 Cheap Ways to Beat the Heat.

4. Play Sand Bakery – The sandbox is one of our most favorite Summertime toys. Whip up a batch of sand cupcakes, muffins, cakes, cookies, and more!

5. Set Up a Lemonade Stand – For some great tips to get you started, check out Emily’s guest post 10 Tips for a Successful Lemonade Stand.

6. Pretend Potion Lab – Hours of fun, imaginative play!

7. Driveway Painting – Make memories and lots of smiles with splatter painting on a grand scale!

8. Sunshine Suncatchers – Made with cheap coffee filters, and watercolor paints. These sunshine suncatchers are sure to brighten up your home!

9. Go on a Picnic – Need inspiration? Check out our list of Top 15 Cheap Picnic Foods for ideas of what to pack.

10. Outdoor Mud Pie Kitchen – Give your kids permission to get messy with their own outdoor mud pie kitchen.

Have fun!!

Mark here (Val’s husband). The girls wanted to surprise Val with some handmade cards for Mother’s Day, and they were so pleased with how these turned out, that they couldn’t resist giving them to her a bit early. Val loved them so much, that she later sat down to paint more cards together with the girls.

Here’s how you can make your own hand painted cards for Mother’s Day, or any other special occasion:

1. Fold a sheet of watercolor paper in half, and invite your child over to scribble on it with pencil.

2. Trace over your child’s designs with a waterproof permanent marker. You can find these at many art supply stores, or, in my case, Val has them everywhere.  Look under the couch.

3. Invite your child to paint all over their designs with watercolor paint.

It’s okay to let the kids be goofballs while doing this, as long as they’re having fun.

4. Encourage your child to cover the entire sheet with the watercolor paint. Better yet, paint alongside with them.

5. Allow the cards to dry completely, then use black masking tape to frame your child’s designs.

6. Remind your child to give the hand painted card to Mom on Mother’s Day!

7. Remind yourself that Mother’s Day comes before Father’s Day.  You need this for some bonus points.

8. Win Husband of the Year Award, repeatedly.

“I know it is wet
And the sun is not sunny.
But we can have
Lots of good fun that is funny!”
–The Cat in the Hat

Looking for some boredom-busting ideas to get you through a rainy day with the kids??
Here are 50 of our favorite ways to spend a rainy day:

1. Painting!
2. Building forts.
3. Reading books… in forts.
4. Snuggling.
5. Grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.
6. Baking sweet treats.
7. Calling faraway friends to chat.
8. Tea.
9. Soul-searching.
10. Doodling.
11. Puddle jumping!
12. Finding money in the pocket of your raincoat from last Spring. None there? Hide a few dollars to “find” next year.
13. Making bread. From scratch.
14. Drawing on the windows with dry erase markers.
15. Playing with stickers!
16. Whipping up a batch of homemade play dough.
17. Trying new things!
18. Designing your own board game.
19. Drawing comics.
20. Starting a blog.
21. Taking a nap.
22. Impromptu puppet shows.
23. Puzzles.
24. Living room dance parties.
25. Building with blocks.
26. Filming silly videos.
27. Making your own instruments.
28. Taking a long bath.
29. Daydreaming.
30. Making your own sunshine.
31. Beading necklaces.
32. Homemade “lava lamps”.
33. Play dress-up!
34. Hide and seek.
35. Recording your own audio books.
36. Indoor picnics.
37. Building an obstacle course.
38. Back your bags and go on a pretend airplane trip.
39. Carpet golf.
40. Scrapbooking.
41. Writing your own cookbook.
42. Indoor carnivals.
43. Air-popped popcorn.
44. Making a target range for marshmallow shooters.
45. Building a cardboard city.
46. Designing murals made with sticky notes.
47. Playing hopscotch indoors.
48. Charades.
49. Sensory bins!
50. Recycle old crayons into new ones.

Have fun!!