Boring backyard? Not this spring! Step right up and try your hand at some psychedelic lawn bowling, tin can slits and homemade funky face paint. Commemorate the day the Ringling Brothers Circus opened this Saturday by turning your backyard into the place to be. Here are some fun activities:
1. Sifted flour lawn stars
These easy lawn decals will glam up your grass in minutes. All you need to do is cut a big star out of a pizza or cereal box, set it on the lawn, use a spray bottle to douse the lawn inside the star with (this will make the flour stick). With a flour sifter, shake some white flour liberally over the template. Fill your lawn with stars of every size!
Jane Jacobs would want your kids to explore their city
Jane’s Walks are free walking tours of your community and they take place all over the world. They are named for Jane Jacobs, was an urbanist and activist who “saw cities as ecosystems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used.”
Organized Jane’s Walks are happening this weekend! And one of the Toronto walks is specifically designed with kids in mind. It’s the first Jr. Jane’s Walk! Bunch spoke with architect and dad
David Butterworth, who is helping lead the first Jr. Jane’s walk in Toronto.
What can you tell us about Jane’s Walk?
Jane Jacob’s philosophy was all about the connectivity between people and spaces and how people interact with the public realm.
How do we introduce space and architecture to kids?Read more...
Everything you need to know to make your own mega mural
There’s a whole of great, tiny art, but sometimes you just gots to go big.
To set up:
Clean and dry your sheet so there are no wrinkles that get in the way of painting. Hang the sheet on the clothes line and make sure it’s low enough to the ground so you can rest rocks along the bottom to make it taut. Or, if you have a fence in your backyard, drape a plastic sheet over it (an old shower curtain liner will do), securing with duct tape if need be, then drape the sheet over. Now, set up your studio with some serious buckets of water and old towels for clean up along the way. Read more...
A kite recipe that would make Benjamin Franklin proud
If you really want your kite to rule, it helps to take instruction from the master in physics himself. Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the United States and the inventor of the lightning rod and bifocals, also meant business when it came to kite-making.
A handmade kite was an integral part of his 1752 experiment that proved lightning was a form of electricity. Franklin and his son made a kite from strips of cedar, twine and a large thin silk handkerchief. Silk was “fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder gust without tearing.” On a dark and stormy night, the father and son thrust their kite into a thunder storm from a window in their barn. They tied an iron key to the end of the kite string, and tied a thin metal wire from the key and inserted the wire into a Leyden jar. As the kite flew, negative charges passed down the string and into the jar. Read more...
Naturescape playgrounds are making waves in Canada
So long, plastic, steel, and confined sandboxes. Donnan Park in Edmonton is raising the bar for playground design. It will become Edmonton’s first “naturescape” playground, part of a growing trend in playground design.
Kids will use the good old fashioned modified natural world as their stomping grounds – giant logs and rolling hills will be climbers, a slide will be built into a hill, and a sideways growing tree and boulder spiral will enliven the space. Of course, there will also be plenty of plants, trees and greenery. Read more...
This spring, take your scavenger hunt to the next level
In an attempt to turn her IG’s into OG’s (indoor girls into outdoor girls), one mother in Oklahoma decided she needed to achieve the compromise that so many families seek. Enter Geocaching.
Geocaching is an adventure-seeking hobby built around a website. Essentially a high tech version of a scavenger hunt, geocaching uses the real world as a playing field. All you need is a handheld GPS device, the co-ordinates off the site and an adventurous team (your family). Read more...
