Fun activities for moms and little girls

If you are a mom, and especially a working mom, then you probably know how hard it is to have enough time to spend with your kids, moreover to have the patience and energy to play with them after a hard day's work, after picking them up from school, bathing, dressing them, cooking dinner, taking care of clothes and the house... On top of everything you need to do, you want to spend time with your children, but also rest a bit and relax, after all you've earned it... But probably what you will get is a list of demands of the stories they want reading and the games they want you to play with them and that probably are not what you had in mind...

So, why not find out something that suits everyone heart's desires? Games and play can be fun for children and moms alike, you just have to find your common ground and that is not something you can expect your children to do, no, it's something you, as a mom, must find alone...

This hub is about some fun activities you can do with your little girl... Bear in mind these are just some ideas I came up with.

I came up with these for me and my little girl, who is 4 years old, and I think these are ideas that most moms and daughters will enjoy, though there are some of you who may think: "Well, this is definitely not for me...", which is alright also, the important thing is that you start thinking about your common ground and come up with activities that both love, that both can have fun with and even relax...

Most little girls just love necklaces and bracelets and rings and the likes... Well, I know I do now and I did when I was just a little girl and my daughter is just like me.

From a young age I started doing my own necklaces and bracelets. I always enjoyed picking the colours and the special pieces for a particular necklace, putting it all together and moreover being sure that piece was one of a kind.

Until this day, for me, it's extremely relaxing making beaded necklaces and bracelets and the best is my little girl just loves all that, so it's quite common finding the both of us sitting on the sofa arguing over which colour we should use for our next masterpiece.

We get to spend some time together doing something we both enjoy, she has tons of "jewelry" and, on top that, I save some money, because if I had to buy all those necklaces and bracelets it would not come cheap.

Make it fun and take your daughter shopping with you for everything you need, the beads, which can be glass, stone, ceramic or base metal, the beading thread or silk cord and, of course, clasps. If you want to make it professional you will need a few extra things, such as crimp beads and crimping plies.

Personally I like to keep it simple and I just tie a knot on each end, it still looks good, no one notices it and my daughter is quite happy with the result.

When I have some time to spare I just love to go for a walk late afternoon or in the evening, especially in the summer. At that time, it's not so hot anymore and you can quiet down after the day's work, relax and then it seems everything settles smoothly into place...

But the fact is once you have a child that walk isn't that quiet anymore, it's more of an adventure, with a lot of running around, screaming and shouting and who knows what else, that your head will probably start spinning around and, on top of that, once you reach that special place, where you thought you could sit down and enjoy the view for a while, you'll probably just have about five minutes, before you start hearing something on the lines of: "Let's go... I want to go now... I don't want to be here..." That should do it for the peace and quiet...

There's actually a way to please all involved. Forget the walk and try going on a tale walk...

My little girl just loves tales with all the princesses and dragons, princes, all the love and the magic, so I make up stories for the places we go to. Each place has a story and it doesn't even have to be a very good one for that matter, a simple recipe of fight between good and evil, love and a beautiful princess usually does the trick...

We go over where the prince stood while talking to the princess and what did they talk about on this bench and why they planted such a beautiful tree centuries ago and how it is so big now nurtured by the memory of their love... If we are on the beach, I'm sure there have been pirates around 200 years ago or so and a treasure, of course... And the shells we find on the beach, well that one surely belonged to a mermaid, the other to a princess and this one is a bride's shell...

This one you actually can also do with your little boy, also... I have twins, a boy and a girl, so usually they are both with me and instead of a all love and romance tale I add a bit more of adventure and fight, to make sure I also get his attention, which is actually a bit harder to do with him being a boy, since he gets tired very quickly of all things quiet...

It's nice to come back to a certain place and listen to them telling me the story I told them days before or how they come home explaining to dad how the pirates came to shore to bury the treasure and that dad must go with them next time to see where they buried it...

This is a fun and colourful idea, most little girls love braids, but braiding their hair with threads is even more amazing, because you get colour and that little something special.

Now, there are a lot of places where you can get it done, but it's so easy that really what's the point of paying for it, when you can have a quality time with your daughter braiding her hair... Let her chose colours and patterns and have a quiet half an hour just braiding her hair with thread while you talk to her for a while and get the latest on what happened at the kindergarten that day. She will love the result and she will love that you did it yourself and you can do it as often as she likes and, again, save money, since you are the one doing it.

In time, as she grows up, you can also ask her to do it to you... wouldn't that be nice too? Give a little colour to your hair also...

So, what do you need? Just some small hair elastic and a lot of embroidery floss of various colours.

• Use at most four different colours for each braid (that is, if you want to do more than one, usually I just do one braid each time). Chose your colours before starting. If your daughter has long hair you will need about 4 m of each colour, if it's short, than 2 m will do.
• Ask her to chose where she will want the braid, then select some hair and make a thin basic three strand braid, finish the braid tying it with a hair elastic;
• Then take the strands of embroidery floss you selected, put them together and pass them beneath the braid near the scalp, until half of the length hangs on both sides equally, then tight one or two knots to hold it in place. Be sure to
• Select the first colour you want to use and pull it to the side, while you smooth the rest of the colours down next to the braid, then start wrapping the colour you chose around the braid and the strands that are not being used for the moment.
• When you want to change colours, do the same as before, smooth the strand you want to stop using down next to the braid and pick the colour you wish to use, pulling it to the side. Don't forget to wrap the thread as tightly as possible, so you can't see any hair.
• Repeat until you have finished. Notice that you can go on even after the end of the hair if you want a longer braid.
• Finish with a knot and/or add a bead for fun. Cut the excess thread.

Have you noticed how, these days, every little crayon, every rubber, notebook, pen and the likes, has to come with some princess or Hello Kitty picture or... And have you noticed how much they charge us, parents, for that? How much is the difference in price between a simple notebook and one with the Hello Kitty picture? And do our children really need that? I mean, isn't it enough to have one or two things with the picture they like and the rest just have plain and simple?

And it starts at an early age, too, if your child attends a kindergarten you probably have a long list of things you need to buy, from the gymnastics and dance equipment, to the notebook and the archive folder.

So, best is to save some money and have fun in the process. Buy two or three items with the picture of whoever your child dreams about, be it Cinderella or Barbie and then the rest just buy plain and have fun decorating it.

It's even better, because you can customize your little girl's things and she'll have something of a kind...

At birthdays and Christmas I usually keep the boxes from her toys and then cut out any interesting pictures I find and just save them for later, you never know when an Hello Kitty picture will come in handy for a collage.

If you have the knack for drawing, you can draw beautiful images to decorate whatever needs decorating, you can teach your daughter to draw also, in the process, and obviously you can both colour the drawing together afterwards... If not, don't fret, there are plenty of websites nowadays where you can chose all sorts of drawings and then it's just of matter of printing the ones you and your daughter like best and you can colour them together, you can even make small changes to the drawing to customize it and, of course, add your daughter's name in beautiful, big, colourful letters...

Just make sure you do it together, choosing the drawing, the colours, colouring, pasting it. Of course, again, this activity is good for girls and boys alike.

The most amazing thing about this activity, at least for me, is that it is so relaxing... We just sit there the both of us, a lot of times in silence, just colouring our drawing for 20 minutes or half and hour, just exchanging opinions over the colours we should use next and when we are done we have something to show off... Maybe it's nothing much, but it's ours, we did it together and we love it...

Think about what you and your daughter like to do, find your common ground and have fun with her... There are lots of things we can do with our girls, that actually don't take that much time or work, that can be fun for us, too and, the fact is, it all goes by so fast, we should definitely make the most of it, now... It's not just that we are spending time together, it's that we are having fun, we are getting to know each other and we are bonding... And in 20 years times, I bet these little moments, will have made a difference... So, use some of my ideas or come up with your own, the important thing is having fun...

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