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Archive for the ‘Grandparents Day’ Category

Grandparent’s Day is coming quick!  Do you have your card made yet? Grandparents love cards and gifts made by little hands.  Here’s one that sends along a hug!

This fun and easy craft will surely bring lots of smiles to Grandma and Grandpa this year!

What you need:

• Construction paper (4) 9″ x 12″ sheets (your choice of colors for the base of the card, shirt color, skin color and hearts)
• Googly eyes (large)
• Kid-safe scissors and adult scissors
• Ruler
• Glue (or double-stick tape)
• 3D paint (optional)
• Markers
• Coffee cup (use as a circle stencil)
• Newspaper to cover your work area

How to do it:

1. Choose a color of construction paper to be the base of the card. Looking at the paper horizontally pick up the right side and left side of the construction paper and fold them towards the middle. When the edges of the paper meet press them down to crease and flatten both sides. Your card should now have two flaps that open in the middle (like a pair of double doors). Set this aside for now.
2. Next, choose a color of construction paper for the shirt. You will need to measure and cut a 2″ x 12″ long strip of paper (arms) and a 4″ x 6″ rectangle (shirt). Set them aside with the card.
3. Choose a piece of construction paper to make the hands and face. Tracing around an upside down coffee cup makes a nice circle for the face. Draw two lines down from the face for a neck. Using paint, markers and glue create pink circles for the cheeks, attach the googly eyes and have your child draw the nose, ears and hair as a self-portrait. Draw two circles or a pair of hands on the same paper. Allow any paint used to dry, then cut out the completed face and hands. When cutting out the face make sure to leave about 1″ of neck below the chin (you will need this to attach the face to the card)
4. While the face is drying you can cut out a small heart from construction paper. Set aside.
5. Take your finished face and with the card open to the inside, glue the neck and chin to the top of the card. (When the card is closed you should see the eyes and nose peeking out over the top)
6. Next attach the hands to the ends of the long 2″ x 12″ strip of construction paper. These will be the arms. Attach this strip over the bottom of the neck across the top of the card. The hands should hang out over the edge of both sides of the card. Attach the small heart you made earlier to the right hand.
7. Attach the 4″ x 6″ rectangle on top of the arms below the face. This will be the shirt. Using markers, have your child customize their shirt by drawing a neckline and writing Happy Grandparents Day or BIG HUGS.
8. To complete the self-portrait, have your child add pants or a skirt below the shirt edge using markers.
9. When all paint and glue used is dry, close the card so that the hand with the heart peeks out the front and using markers write: To Grandma and Grandpa on the front of the card.

This fun craft was found on NestleFamily.com

Don’t forget Grandma and Grandpa this year (September 12, 2010)!  The Sunday after Labor Day each year, the nation comes together to recognized the older generations in our families.  That’s right.  That Sunday is officially recognized by the country as Grandparent’s Day.  This holiday to many, comes with the anticipation to celebrate these important people in our lives with clever and creative Grandparent’s Day gifts.

Consider all that your grandparents have done to honor you in the past.  Consider their impact on your youth.  Think back on the many happy memories you shared with them.  Now, think about what it would be like to share them with thirty-nine siblings and cousins.  A master in the art of time management is Marian McQuade, the woman that is able to brag many impressive titles was once Vice-Chairman of the West Virginia Commission on Aging.  Her dedication to serving the older population did not start or end there.

She was the wife of a coal miner, but that did not mean that she was going to settle for a life of quiet, small town living.  She took her love and appreciation for the experienced residents and made it a goal to ensure that they would be properly recognized for their contribution.  Knowing the impact a grandparent could have after having been a grandma to forty children, she was armed with the tools she needed to fight her case.

Her goal was ultimately achieved, nine years after she started her fight for the cause, and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter announced that from that point forward, the first Sunday after Labor Day would be recognized as National Grandparents Day.  This was the perfect day to choose, given that those being honored were in their “autumn years.”  In 2008, Mrs. McQuade passed away.  At the time, she had fifteen children, forty grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild.  Surely she is honored by many each and every Grandparents Day.

Dear Grandma,

We made some Christmas cards to send to our relatives and friends in
Ontario. We peeled and dried some birch bark off some of the wood pieces from the river bank. We selected our best pressed and dried flowers that had retained their coloring pasting them with egg white in a pleasing arrangement or design, sometimes stitching them. The spring flowers and autumn made the best showing but we are anxious to display the variety that grow on the wild prairies, so each family got different flowers and colorings. It was a problem to get white paper to wrap the finished cards for mailing so we wrapped them in yellow-brown building paper for security, and note paper for addressing. We were complimented on the results, so we are making some for our walls.

For Christmas gifts we had not any (like Simple Simon) but we exchanged some of our treasures and put them on a bare poplar tree, decorated some Chautauqua books Uncle Alex or A.K. had sent us with his usual Christmas letter. “May the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and do you good.”

For dinner we had a cherished wild goose stuffed with potato dressing seasoned with wild sage, vegetables, of course, suet pudding of grated carrots, flour and dried
Saskatoon berries boiled in a cloth.

Mother allowed us some hoarded sugar for taffy, flavored with wild mint. Some of our pop-corn popped but not much pop in it. We danced on the threshing floor and in the evening played hide-and-seek and did some story reading by lamp for a treat as coal-oil is five dollars a gallon at
Saskatoon.

At midnight Christmas Eve we girls went to the stable to see if the oxen would kneel as father said they would or did on Christmas Eve. We had never had the opportunity until now. When mother followed us out to the stable the oxen knelt for a second, as they got up they were disturbed. See?

We missed you and our old friends, Grandma. Everyone sends love.

Maryanne

According to the US Census Bureau, there are about 56 million Grandparents in America. Of those grandparents, nearly 6 million have grandchildren under the age of 18 that live with them.

According to Hallmark research, nearly 80% of grandparents speak to their grandchildren either on the phone or in person each month.  About 3 million Grandparents will be remembered this Grandparent’s Day with a greeting card.

This year, consider remembering your Grandma and Grandpa with a Grandparent’s Day Gift from Holiday Gifts & Gift Baskets.