Friday Fun: Homemade ice cream, meteor showers & more

It’s time for some Friday Fun! I hope some of the following activities and ideas provide you and your family with some fun this weekend or this upcoming week.

Make some simple homemade ice cream in minutes with this easy recipe.

Make plans for April 22, during which we’ll be able to see a rare meteor shower.

Add some of these natural mosquito repellants to your garden plan this year. Plus, check out these free videos about permaculture if you’re interested.

And here are some wonderful garden activities for kids. I know the blog is about Kansas City Adventures, but it has plenty of cool ideas that make it worth following across the country, too.

Raising an empathetic child may not be a craft or weekend activity, but I thought these tips were really worth sharing. Like most other good tips, it starts with the simple advice to lead by example.

This list of ten women in history you may not know about from A Mighty Girl is fantastic! I love to share things like this with my daughter. She decided to make her own set of Susan B. Anthony currency out of cardboard after we read about her.

Here’s a cool TED Talk about raising kids to be entrepreneurs. In my experience, most kids want to start a business at some point or another. I used to sell song lyrics and art in elementary and middle school (though I probably should’ve charged more than a buck a piece!). My kiddo is always wanting to sell things; she held her first lemonade stand this past summer and she wants to start her own recreational center, among other things, when she’s older.

Mother’s Day is coming up, and About.com Crafts has this cool washi tape card idea to use for moms, grandmas and other caregivers. Here’s a spring garland idea to decorate with, too.

We have two big book birthdays going on right now: Mo Willems’s Pigeon series is ten years old, and Roald Dahl’s Matilda is a whopping 25! Click on the links for some fun ideas for celebrating. Wood Sprite loves both authors and we’ve been celebrating very simply, with just their books and movies this week.

I’m not a big fan of lapbooks; I think they are a lot of busywork. But if your child enjoys doing them, this free ancient Egypt one seems cool. When you’re finished, you can make it into a pyramid.

Here's a really fun-looking butterfly project to make out of recycled material.

Wood Sprite and I have 4H Club, Girl Scouts Earth Day activities and Oak Scouts sash sewing this weekend (all on different days, thankfully!), but between that and several projects I need to finish for work, I think we’re going try to hit the pool and maybe look into those natural mosquito repellent ideas. Do you have any big plans this weekend? Share your links and ideas in the comments below!

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia