Drawing Butterflies

My daughter found a beautiful butterfly one day and unfortunately it had died.  She decided to take it home to draw.

She sat down with her sketch book and a snack and started drawing. 

When encouraged to draw, children learn how to make choices.  

A neat exercise to try is asking your child (or anyone any age) to draw what they see without taking their eyes off the subject they choose (without looking at their paper).  This is great for hand-eye coordination and teaches kids how to study a subject carefully, taking time to really look and see.  It also takes the emphasis off an end result and places the importance on the process.

Drawing is a great way to conquer boredom and offers us new ways of viewing the world.

We have a great little art section at Owls Hollow including these neat sketch books made by eeBoo.  They come in a bunch of different designs and have several pastel and colour pencil sets to match.

Getting Natural with Kiss Naturals Lip Balm Making Kit

What a fun way for kids to spend an afternoon:

At Owls Hollow, we're carrying a line called Kiss Naturals.  It's made in Canada and uses all natural ingredients.  There are four kits to choose from: Lip Balm Making, Perfume Making, Bath Fizzies and Soap Making.  My daughter chose the lip balm making kit and was able to make it by herself from start to finish.

First, pour the ingredients into a glass jar.

Then stir it and heat it.

Then it's time to add some essential oils.

And then time to pour the mixture into the little jars.

After letting them sit for a little while, they are ready to use.  The set makes ten lip balms in total.  It's really great and feels a lot like Burt's Bees, in my opinion.

Kiss Naturals also donates $1 from every sale of their product at Owls Hollow to the Autism Society of Prince Edward Island.  The four kits run from $15 to $20 each.  A great idea for birthdays.

We also had a chance to meet the family who owns Kiss Naturals and they're fantastic.  They came to our store to do a demo of their Lip Balm Kits.

Grow Your Own

Sprout Your Own Sweet Scents ,by Chronicle Books, is an herb growing kit for young gardeners.  We gave it a try with great results.

It's an ideal planting set for kids over six years old, with easy-to-follow directions and a full colour booklet.  First we soaked the peat pellets in water and poured them into a bowl.

Then it's time to fill the pots with soil and plant the seeds.  The set includes fragrant herbs including Basil, Cinnamon, Spearmint & Lemon Balm. 

The easy to follow directions allow kids to figure most things out on their own.  The booklet also discusses plant science, recipes and more.

Our herbs took about two weeks to reach this point.  And there's great funky stickers included to decorate the pots!

And stickers for kids to label each pot.

Really fun and a little messy.  Perfect.

School's Out For Summer!

Now what do we do for the next two months?

How about making a list of things to do.

It's fun for kids to have a say in how the Summer will be spent and gets some great ideas flowing.  All we did was tape a big piece of paper (from an easel paper roll) to the deck one sunny morning, grabbed some markers and started adding fun ideas to our list.  Now it's taped to the wall in my daughter's bedroom, ready for boxes to be checked off as we spend our days doing fun stuff!

Welcome to the Owls Hollow Blog

HOORAY! 

We're excited to be starting the Owls Hollow Blog.

Now everything is not perfect, but we decided instead of fretting over every little detail, and font, and colour, that we would just get going and start 'er up!  We hope you enjoy our tidbits of info related to toys & games & puzzles & books & art & crafts & parenting & dressing up & make believe & that sort of stuff...