I love Independence Day! The bright colors, fireworks and the good food!! I usually spend most of that day in the kitchen and my kids always want to help me. It is not always the easiest thing to have “help” when you’re leveling and stacking a flag cake! This year, I decided to find some fast little projects they could help me with and I honestly think kids of all ages would be able to make any of these. My 6, 4, and 1 year old all had a blast!
Crafts
Firework Rings
These were the simplest activity and I am already thinking about how I can adapt these to other holidays! Start with 6 pipe cleaners then take one away. With the remaining 5 bend them in half leaving a circular ring shape. Take the last pipe cleaner and wrap tightly around it.
You can bend the pipe cleaners to stick straight out or round them out to look like a falling firework. My kids loved this and have already made several more!
Handprint Craft
The second project was a handprint craft, but before you close the browser, that was almost all it was! A handprint and a few red stripes to look like the American flag on a piece of construction paper. Super easy. Since I was doing this with all 3 kids I started with each handprint. I then let the bigger kids loose with the red paint.
As they were painting I reminded them that our flag has 50 stars for 50 states and 13 stripes for the colonies. I had planned on explaining what the colors meant and maybe even showing a few pictures of the varieties of American Flags through the years but my kids were pretty much done at this point and I was trying to make sure the baby didn’t eat paint. Depending on the age of your kids, this could be a great option!
Food
S’mores
My children might be addicted to smores. They pretty much ask for the ingredients everytime we go to the grocery store. I knew I wanted to try to make a patriotic version for them and I kept searching for red, whtite, and blue s’mores and I kept coming up with a marshmallow dip. I decided to see if we could dunk a marshmallow in red and blue sugar and see if it kept its color once we smushed everything together. *It is important to note that I make s’mores in the microwave because an open fire in Florida in the summer would be torture.
Directions:
Place a few pieces of chocolate on a cinnamon sugar graham cracker square with the sugar frosted marshmallow on top. Microwave for 15 seconds. Put the top square on and eat while hot and gooey! It is that easy!!
Fruit Kabobs
I chose strawberries, blueberries, bananas and marshmallows for these, but you could easily substitute with grapes, blackberries, watermelon, raspberries, etc. Anything your children like! I let my 4 year old cut up the strawberries and bananas and then make patterns with the colors.
At the end I did let her use some marshmallows instead of bananas for the white because who can resist marshmallows?!
Ice Cream Sandwiches
The last treat we made for ourselves was the easiest to make!
Directions:
Unwrap ice cream sandwich and pack sprinkles into the exposed ice cream! You could do the same thing I did I did with the marshmallows and dip one side in red sugar and the other side in blue as well!
Although I am including pictures of our finished products so that you get the gist of what we made, I want to remind everyone that the finished product isn’t even what matters! Getting messy and having fun with your kids is what they will remember, not the uneven banana they cut.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and please let me know if you decide to try any of these!
