Make sugar or sucralose-dipped gelatin hearts, fish for compliments and share with your community.
Crafts and fun family activities are the golden moments that children will remember well into adulthood. They are the experiences children draw upon when raising their own children, to help strengthen existing family ties or renew those that are strained by the responsibilities of daily adult life. When your family shares its creations with the community at large as well, children learn to consider the feelings and needs of the forgotten or overlooked.
Make Heart Fish
Help younger children draw two large half hearts and one smaller half heart along the fold of a single, full sheet of newspaper. Use the hearts as templates to make two sets of three hearts for each fish. Provide brushes and paint or markers and have each child decorate four large and two small matching hearts in candy-heart colors such as pink, lavender, peach, yellow, sky blue or seafoam green.
Have older children help younger family members glue the two large hearts together, with the tops of each heart overlapped to look like a fish body. Glue the third, smaller heart to one end of the fish body, with the top of the heart forming the tail. Work together to embellish each pair of fish with strings of large, medium and small metallic, colored sequins. Begin with the smallest sequins closest to the tail and end with the largest sequins nearest the face. Turn each fish over after the paint or glue dries.
Create Compliments
Hold a brainstorming session with the entire family. Have each family member think of three things they appreciate about each member of the family. Some ideas might include the person's creativity, their ability to make other people feel energetic, their willingness to help without being asked, their support during a crisis or any other things that would make the person feel appreciated and loved. Write each compliment on a 6-inch to 8-inch square of white, pink or lavender stationery and crumple each square into a ball.
Fish for Compliments
Place a crumpled compliment at the center of the widest part of the body of one of each pair of matching fish. Put a bead of clear silicone adhesive or clear glue all the way around the fish that has the crumpled compliment on it. Place the matching fish, decorated-side-up, onto the fish with the newspaper ball and press them together so that the glue creates a good seal between them.
Punch a hole in each stuffed fish, about an inch from the tip of its face. Thread pink, red, or gold cord through the hole and knot the loose ends together. Place the fish in a pile. Take turns using a child's toy fishing rod to pull a fish from the pile. Once all the fish have been caught, read the compliments inside each fish to each other.
Make Pomegranate Gelatin Hearts
Have younger children help spritz heart-shaped candy molds with cooking spray. Have older children help younger ones mix gelatin with pomegranate juice instead of water. When making a gelatin mold, All Recipes and Jello Recipes recommend that you use 1/4 cup less liquid for each 3-oz. package of gelatin than package directions say to use when making regular gelatin. If you do, your gelatin will be firmer and will hold its shape better after you pop it from the mold.
Take turns shaking each gelatin heart in a paper bag filled with granulated white sugar, powdered sugar, powdered drink mix or any combination of sugars with cinnamon. Make at least one batch of sugar-free gelatin as well. Shake the sugar-free gelatin in powdered sucralose or stevia, or leave it plain.
Have older children wrap each heart in clear or colored cellophane. Place a half-dozen to a dozen hearts in a mug, bowl or basket. Make one basket for each family member. Make additional baskets to take to a nursing home, day care center or day activity program.
Make cutout hearts from heavy paper or poster board. Write the recipe used to make the gelatin hearts, including what was used to powder each heart, in case recipients have any dietary restrictions.
Tags: children help, each fish, each heart, Have older, Have older children, older children, children draw