My kids and I love to stare up at the clouds. We see animals, shapes, and images that captivate us and spur on conversations among us.

There goes a bunny rabbit.

Is that a lion about to pounce?

As we were driving home this evening, Noah yelled out that he saw something. Can you see the dragon in the sky?, he asked.

And, boy did we!

My lovely friend, Donna, kept my kiddos busy (and quiet) for quite some time yesterday evening. She had my kids and her kids assembling mini dinosaur and insect figures until our patio table was full of lizards, dragonflies, beetles, spiders and more.

Some of these little figures fell apart as soon as they were put together, but Donna had a solution for that, too… She helped my kiddos put together a prehistoric diorama!

I’m thinking everyone needs a friend like Donna!

As I travel across the country for the third time in the last week, I can only imagine what my babies are doing to keep busy under the watchful eye of Aunt Sara. It was cold and raining when I left this morning, so I envision many little ones – eight to exact, including my two nephews – running around indoors, shirtless and shoeless, as my boys often are.

I have many ideas running through my head, as I begin to plan out the next several weeks of school, with my notebook here in front of me. Lessons, field trips, and many more wintery weather activities will take place, before the sun decides to stay out from behind clouds and begins to shine again.

When my plane was preparing for departure on the tarmac of the Denver runway the other day, I noticed that it began to snow. A beautiful sight for this California girl, who doesn’t much witness snowfall, let alone study snowflakes. I sat in awe as I began to really see the flakes of frozen water drawn to my window like magnets. Beautiful white specks, displaying the individuality of their Creator.

Sitting there I began to notice that, although each flake was unique and beautiful, each had six points – something I had known to be true, but was now witnessing first-hand. Of course, I immediately googled snowflakes and began reading about these little flakes.

Now, I vaguely remember being taught all about snowflakes when I was of elementary school age, but I just sat in awe of God and the little flakes of frozen water. Flakes that can blow through as a blizzard, trapping families in their homes. Flakes that, when falling ever so slightly, can be one of the most beautiful natural occurances.

It was at that moment, sitting there in my seat, that I decided that my children needed to see the beauty of snowflakes. A perfect topic for a fun wintery weather activity! I recalled how, when I was little, I was shown pictures of the remarkably shaped flakes and proceeded to recreate images of snowflakes by cutting shapes in to a folded piece of paper. Seems simple enough, but not living near the snow, it never really occurred to me how fun this would be to do with my own kids.

So, I decided that next week, when I am home from my travels, the kids and I will study snowflakes. If not real ones, the idea of them.

Have you done any fun snowflake activities, made any fabulous snowflake crafts, or had snowflake unit studies with your kiddos? I’d love to hear about them!

This post is sponsored by Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup who wants you to know that 32 feet of fresh egg noodles go into every can. For lots of fresh ideas about how to keep your kids entertained and the chance to win $500, check out Wintery Weather Fun at DivineCaroline.

So, how did you do this last week? Were you able to be more intentional about fitting in a fun activity or creating a new craft with your kiddos each day?

This week we discovered some new games – Zingo and Super WHY! ABC Letter Game – and we played some of our old favorites, as well – Uno and Connect 4. We even made some sweet treats; the most favorite of which is the yummy and delicious Muddy Buddies. Josh also spent some time with Daddy digging up his dinosaur bones and piecing together a T-Rex!

I didn’t quite get in the special time with each of my kiddos every day this last week, as I had hoped, but we did create some great memories indoors. All while the weather was not so pleasant outside.

As you have already seen of my fabulous guests this last week, I have some pretty crafty friends, but in my efforts to find fun, unique crafts and activities for us to try, I have discovered some new lovely and creative blogs. (Thanks for your recommendations, Mindy!)

I hope you’ll check ‘em out, too!

• The Crafty Crow is a craft collective, meaning that many great crafts are featured from around the blogosphere every day.

• P is for Preschool is written by the director of a real Kansas preschool. Its kinda fun, because all posts are correlated with letters of the alphabet!

• Little Food Junction is a delightful blog with terrific ideas to make food fun. I am loving the Valentine’s Day food art!

• Today is Fun is a site that features entertaining, affordable activities that are meant to foster kids’ innate creative impulses and encourage a love of life.

Where do you get your inspiration?
Please share… I still need all the help I can get!

This post is sponsored by Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup who wants you to know that 32 feet of fresh egg noodles go into every can. For lots of fresh ideas about how to keep your kids entertained and the chance to win $500, check out Wintery Weather Fun at DivineCaroline.

In my quest for a craft-filled week, I have asked some of my friends to help me out with some fun ideas. Today my friend Amanda has agreed to share a wintery weather craft with us.

Amanda is a happy stay-at-home mom to two. She blogs at ohAmanda and Impress Your Kids. She’s a member of the 2010 Disney Mom’s Panel. And she twitters about all of it @oohamanda.

Please help me make Amanda feel welcome and let us know if you try these mini ice sculptures!

With all the freezing, it took two full days and I photo-documented it every step of the way. My four year old daughter, Lydia was ecstatic about checking on our “ice-thing”. However, when it came time to time to take it out of the mold, this is what we ended up with…

Not quite the same, huh? Lydia almost cried. So, we had to jump to Plan B. I have a ton of silicone ice and muffin trays in various shapes (I pick them up on clearance whenever I see a cute one). We squeezed 1-2 drops of food coloring into each compartment. Then we used a measuring cup with spout to fill the shapes to the top.

Instead of trying to do a hole like the Family (not-so) Fun Sun Catcher, we cut some yarn and dropped the ends in the water. (You’ll want to cut the yarn significantly longer than the ones shown above.) We had to use a a fork to push the yarn under the water…I tried using my fingers first but now my nails are blue. Oh well.

So, what do you think? Pretty cute, huh? Plus, I upped the ante by adding a quarter to one of the ice-ornaments. Lydia’s already staked that one out. It would be fun to put leaves, berries, small toys or glitter inside, too!

This is the perfect craft for any age kids. I think it would be fun for older kids because you could experiment with color combinations and measurements. Little kids just like water. And I’m pretty sure watching it melt is going to be even more fun than making it!

We have a very special guest here at From Dates to Diapers today, to help us out with our challenge to be more purposeful about doing crafts and fun activities with our kids.

Marie is a mother of 3 living in Utah. She’s the founder of Make and Takes, a top rated parenting blog featuring kids crafts, home crafts, recipes, and parenting tips. She’s listed as one of Nielsen’s Power Mom 50, is a regular contributor at Alphamom, Snackpicks, and Craftzine, and is a hostess of SocialLuxe Lounge. When she’s not crafting with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog!

Please help me welcome Marie!

Supplies for Snowy Winter Wonderland:

• white paint
• old toothbrushes
• paper plate
• cardstock paper – the thicker the better, but any paper can be used
• embellishments – yarn, stickers, crayons, googley eyes, etc.

Steps:

1. Fold a piece of cardstock paper in half to make a crease. Open it back up and squeeze a few drops of white paint onto the paper. You can put the paint anywhere you like, but stay at least 2-3 inches from the top and bottom so it doesn’t ooze out.

2. Press the paper together and rub your fingers all around, helping to spread the paint. Sometimes you can shape which way the paint will go by pressing your fingers up or out.

3. Open your paper and see what creation you’ve made. Hopefully, it’s turned into something that looks like a familiar object, or I’m sure your kids will be able to see some sort of shape. We think our looks like a small child dressed for winter, even wearing a snow hat.

4. Now it’s time to make the falling snow. Pour a little bit of white paint onto a paper plate. Dip your toothbrush in and tap off any excess paint. With newspaper or a drop cloth and in an area where paint can be sprayed, you’ll flick the toothbrush using your thumb on the bristles. You’ll see paint spray onto the paper, resembling snow.

Let the paint dry completely, then you can add embellishments. We cut a hole on either side of this little winter boy and tied yarn around for a scarf. We added googley eyes and a crayon mouth. Have fun indoors creating your white wintry scene.

What a simple and fun craft that you can do with your kids this week! Please help me thank Marie.

Now, head over to Make and Takes and check out all of the fabulous crafts and activities that you can do with your kiddos. Let me know which one you would try. Oooh, and please let me know if you try one!