Grandma Ideas

Have you seen the latest Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise crawls out of a window in a super, super, super high hotel and climbs up several stories to another room? And he does it with gloves that have special ‘sticking’ power?

I knew it was just a movie.  I knew that Tom Cruise wouldn’t fall and plunge to the ground because he was the main character and he couldn’t die so early in the movie.  But still, those scenes so high above the ground made my stomach queasy.

This next photography game that you can play with your grandchildren is called Mission 24 – based on the Mission Impossible movies.  You won’t have to climb a building hundreds and hundreds of feet above the ground.

(Thank goodness – or else I wouldn’t play this game.)

Here’s how it works.

Grandma chooses a word and tells her grandchildren.  They have 24 hours to take a picture of something that illustrates the word.  Encourage your grandchildren to be creative and clever.

For example, let’s say that you choose the word ‘five.’ Your grandchildren could take a picture of five buttons, five trees, or five baby kitties.

To be more creative, your grandchild could take a picture of only five stripes on a flag, or five bricks in a brick building, or five stores in a strip mall.  To be clever, they could take a picture of five bare feet or tiles from Scrabble whose points add up to five.

If you have a blog where you and your grandchildren share pictures or a Flickr group, have your grandchildren upload their picture.  If you don’t have one, have them e-mail you their picture.

I just had a thought.  If you play these photography games, you could collect the best pictures and make a photo book through an online site such as Shutterfly.  You could print up copies of the book for everybody who played and give the books as birthday or Christmas gifts.

Have fun taking pictures!

It’s always a challenge to find activities to do with your tween-aged and teen-aged grandchildren.  If they have access to a digital camera — or if they have a cell phone that can take pictures — there are several photo games that you can play with your grandchildren.

Over the next several posts, I’m going to share 4 photography games that you can play with your grandchildren. Be sure to come back to find out what they are.

Before I explain how to play the first game, let me recommend that you (or your grandchild) create a blog where you share your photos.  If you have more than one grandchild playing with you, you don’t have the hassle of sending the pictures back and forth to lots of people.  There’s just one spot to see them.  Each individual uploads their own picture.

So, here we go.  Here’s the first game.

Photo of the Day

Grandma, you select three words and tell them to your grandchildren.  Your grandchildren have seven days to select one word, take a photo that represents the word and post it to the blog. That’s it.  That’s all the rules.  Easy, huh?

The idea behind this is to encourage creativity while having fun taking pictures and sharing them.

For example, let’s say that ’round’ was one of the words. Of course your grandchild could take a picture of a basketball, a wheel on a car, or a door knob.  That would be dandy.  But when encouraged to be more creative, your grandchild might take a picture of a sibling’s mouth while the sibling says the word “oh.”  Or a picture of a slice of an orange.  Or the head of a nail.

Get the idea?  Good!

You can take turns being the person who selects the words.  You can play only one round (a round is a week) or you can do this for a month — or however long your grandchild has interest in the activity.   Whatever suits your situation best.

For a moment, think ahead toward summertime when you might be having a reunion.  Send out the three words to all of your grandchildren.  They take a photo and e-mail it to you.  You print them up.  Then, at the reunion, display the photos and have the cousins guess who took the pictures.  The one who got the most correct answers gets a prize.

Hope you have fun taking pictures!

Yesterday as I was exercising (at 5:15 a.m.), the weatherman reported that Utah had the driest December ever.  Read that to mean very little snow.  No white Christmas.  No sledding.  No building snowmen. No shoveling snow. No below zero temperatures.

Yesterday, it was 54 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, which would I rather have — snowy weather and the sub-zero cold that it brings or the balmy 54 degrees?  Tough decision, eh?

The lack of snow won’t stop me from making snowmen though, thanks to Amanda from Crafts by Amanda.  See the picture at the beginning of this post?   She graciously let me use it here on my site.  Aren’t those snowmen and children absolutely stinkin’ cute!  But first, let me tell you a little bit about Amanda.

Amanda is Someone Important. S he hob-nobs with the rich and the famous.  In December, she was on the Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius Satellite for the Living Today show.  She also did a demonstration sponsored by the folks at Kellog’s(R) Rice Krispies (R).  (You’ve just GOT to see her cutest ever Gingerbread Man Rice Krispie Treats. They are so delightful that you almost don’t want to eat them!  So, go right now at take a look at them.  I’ll wait for you to come back.)

Glad to see you back.  Let’s move on.

It’s amazing to see something so cute as these snowmen and children and know that they are simply made out of the empty cardboard tube from toilet paper.  Can’t get much cheaper than that.  Or easier.  Visit her site to see her pictures and directions on how she made these little folks.  Young grandchildren can make these as well as older ones.  That’s the beauty of this craft project.  It’s simple for wee grandchildren to make yet older ones can spruce  them up, be more inventive and creative,  and add more details.

She has also made a cardboard scarecrow that would be great fun to make with grandchildren for Halloween.  You could also make witches, zombies, Frankenstein, and all sorts of other creatures.  In fact, for all of you creative grandmas out there, you can probably think of a gillion people, animals, and critters to make out of the toilet paper tubes and papertowel tubes.  (You’ll have to send me photos of what you make!)

Also, check out her iron-on glitter snowman shirt.  More cuteness.  I remember adding designs to a sweatshirt or two for my daughter when she was little.  Seeing how easy it is to use these iron-on transfers makes me realize it’s time to start making some things for the grandkiddos.  Like sweatshirts, t-shirts, bookbags, or a pillowcases.

Thank you, Amanda, for sharing your photo.  Thank you for your directions on how to make such a fun craft.  And most of all, thank you for being so creative and sharing that creativity with the whole world.

My grandchildren will love making your ideas!

I’m busy doing some freelance work and don’t have time to write about ideas you can do on New Year’s Eve with your grandchildren.  (I hate it when that happens.)

So, I thought that I would link to a couple of posts that I have written in times past. (Is that lazy or what…?)

Celebrate New Year’s Eve with grandchildren

New Year’s Eve party with grandchildren

Treats for New Year’s Eve

Punch for New Year’s Eve

My husband is on call New Year’s Eve so our celebrations will not be as wild nor as long into the wee hours of the morning as we have done in the past.  We just might pop in a video, munch on popcorn, and have a quiet cozy evening just the two of us. (Unless I can convince my 85 year-old mother to play Beatle’s Rock Band with me…)