Bunchland

What we’re reading today:

1. New play date trend: signing a waiver. Are people threatening legal action action play dates gone wrong? Can we add sub-clauses re: reasonable, expected childhood injuries like scraped knees from skateboarding?

2. You know how toddlers are so irresistibly cute and you can’t get mad at them but you have no trouble yelling at their older siblings if they’ve misbehaved? Yeah, science shows babies loose their cuteness at 4.5-years-old. If any genius 3-year-olds are reading this, live it up while you can! You can’t rely on your adorableness to get you out of trouble forever.

3. Parents are going to have to shell out a little more money on Easter eggs this year. Europe is low on eggs. Between Norway’s butter shortage and the current egg crisis, it’s like the world is trying to deny Europe rich desserts. Egg production has dropped about 10-15 percent since the EU’s new requirements for bigger, better cages for egg-laying hens. Eh, maybe this is the Western privilege coming out, but raising egg prices and making them slightly less easy to come by doesn’t seem like the worst idea…  Read more...

Catherine Romano blogs about crafty projects for kids and parents

Now that we can finally embrace some spring-time fun in Toronto (thanks to a lovely warm weather weekend), our family has begun to plan a few outdoor activities. The first thing on the list is a day trip to the Toronto Zoo. My son is super excited to see “real life” animals – being a city kid he is only used to seeing a few birds, bugs, and little dogs.

In anticipation of our visit to the zoo, I thought it would be fun to make paper bag animal puppets. For inspiration, my son chose his three favourite animals from one of his colouring books (which also gave me a visual to work with), and then we gathered up our materials.

Materials  Read more...

• Paper bags (I found these colourful paper bags at the dollar store for only $1.00/5 bags)