Magical Garden Archive

Peace Pops

Summer is such a great time for popsicles! And popsicle sticks make a great start to so many awesome crafts! This idea comes to us from one of our YogaKids Teachers, Paula Demeo. Thanks Paula!

Materials: 

  • popsicle sticks
  • construction paper
  • drawing materials
  • scissors
  • tape
  • beads & string (optional)

 

Instructions:

  1. Cut out two equal-sized circles from the construction paper.
  2. Draw the peace sign on both circles. (A peace sign looks like this: )
  3. Cut out the peace signs and tape them to both sides of a popsicle stick.
  4. You can also create peace necklaces by punching holes in the signs and then lacing them with beads on a string.
  5. Hold it up when you need to remind yourself (or someone else!) to take a peaceful moment.

 

 

Peace Pops

child with peace pop craft

Peace Pops

This idea comes to us from one of our YogaKids Teachers, Paula Demeo. Thanks Paula!

Materials: 

  • Popsicle sticks
  • construction paper
  • drawing materials
  • scissors
  • tape
  • beads & string (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Cut out two equal-sized circles from the construction paper.
  2. Draw the peace sign on both circles. (A peace sign looks like this: )
  3. Cut out the peace signs and tape them to both sides of a Popsicle stick.
  4. You can also create peace necklaces by punching holes in the signs and then lacing them with beads on a string.
  5. Hold it up when you need to remind yourself (or someone else!) to take a peaceful moment.

 

 

Balloon Squeeze Balls

About Stress

The word “stress” has many meanings. It can be a noun — emotional and physical pressure you experience. (“Homework is such a major stress!”) It can also be a verb — emotional and physical reactions in your body as a result of the pressure. (“Homework is totally stressing me out!”) Stress can also be subjective, meaning it can be good or bad depending on the person experiencing it. (Maybe you love doing homework!)

Nevertheless, when people talk about stress, they’re usually talking about negative stress. This is the bad kind — and it’s important to know how to recognize and deal with it. When you feel negative stress, you also often feel anxious, frustrated or angry. It can also show up in your body — with a stomachache or headache.

So what can you do when you’re feeling negative stress? One GREAT thing is… (surprise!) yoga. Another great thing to do is to use a stress ball — a squishy toy you can squeeze when life gets challenging.

Balloon Squeeze Balls

Create these super-cute Balloon Squeeze Balls for yourself — or for someone special!

Supplies:

  • Balloons
  • Flour
  • Funnel
  • Permanent Markers

Instructions:

  1. Blow up the balloons, then release them — to stretch them out.
  2. Use the funnel to fill the balloons with flour.
  3. Tie the ends of the balloons. (Get a grown-up for help!)
  4. Draw faces on the balloons with a permanent marker.

 

Balloon Squeeze Balls

Balloon Squeeze Ballsballoon squeeze craft

About Stress

The word “stress” has many meanings. It can be a noun — emotional and physical pressure you experience. (“Homework is such a major stress!”) It can also be a verb — emotional and physical reactions in your body as a result of the pressure. (“Homework is totally stressing me out!”) Stress can also be subjective, meaning it can be good or bad depending on the person experiencing it. (Maybe you love doing homework!)

Nevertheless, when people talk about stress, they’re usually talking about negative stress. This is the bad kind — and it’s important to know how to recognize and deal with it. When you feel negative stress, you also often feel anxious, frustrated or angry. It can also show up in your body — with a stomachache or headache.

So what can you do when you’re feeling negative stress? One GREAT thing is… (surprise!) yoga. Another great thing to do is to use a stress ball — a squishy toy you can squeeze when life gets challenging.

Balloon Squeeze Balls

Create these super-cute Balloon Squeeze Balls for yourself — or for someone special!

Supplies:

  • Balloons
  • Flour
  • Funnel
  • Permanent Markers

Instructions:

  1. Blow up the balloons, then release them — to stretch them out.
  2. Use the funnel to fill the balloons with flour.
  3. Tie the ends of the balloons. (Get a grown-up for help!)
  4. Draw faces on the balloons with a permanent marker.

 

Chakra Butterflies

About the Chakras

Have you heard the word “chakras” before? In yoga, the chakras are energy “centers” in the body. There are 7 chakras total and each one is has it’s own color and feeling:

  1. Red (the Root chakra): “I am grounded.”
  2. Orange (the Sacral chakra): “I am happy.”
  3. Yellow (the Solar Plexus chakra) “I am strong.”
  4. Green (the Heart chakra): “I am loving.”
  5. Blue (the Throat chakra): “I am truthful.”
  6. Purple (the Third Eye chakra): “I am smart.”
  7. White (the Crown chakra): “I am whole.”

The chakras move up through you body, beginning with the your feet (the “root” chakra) and up to the top of your head (the “crown” chakra). When your chakras are “balanced,” you feel the positive feelings of each one. For example, if you’re feeling super-smart — you have a healthy, balanced Third Eye chakra.

 

About Butterflies

Butterflies are extraordinary creatures. They begin their lives as caterpillars and change into butterflies through a process called metamorphosis. This is why butterflies often represent change.

There are over 20,000 types of butterflies in the world. They live almost everywhere, except in Antartica and the driest of deserts. Butterflies are like birds in that they migrate to warmer weather during colder seasons. (The Monarch butterfly will travel up to 2500 miles!) A group of butterflies is a called a “flutter.” Butterflies can’t hear — but they can feel the vibrations of sound. They also vary in size, ranging from 1/2 inch to 12 inches in length. AND — and this is our favorite fun fact about butterflies — they taste their food with their FEET! Can you imagine?

 

Chakra Butterfly Craft

Celebrate your ever-changing energy centers with a simple Chakra Butterfly Craft!

Supplies:

  • Coffee filter
  • Spray bottle (with water)
  • Clothespin
  • Pipe cleaner
  • Glue

Instructions:

  1. Color the coffee filer with the chakra colors of your choice.
  2. Spritz the filter with water, allowing the colors to mix together.
  3. Set the filter aside to let it dry.
  4. Once dry, pinch the center of the filter with a clothespin to create the body of your butterfly.
  5. Glue on pipe cleaner for the antennae.

 

 

Chakra Butterflies

Chakra Butterflieschakra butterfly craft

About the Chakras

Have you heard the word “chakras” before? In yoga, the chakras are energy “centers” in the body. There are 7 chakras total and each one is has it’s own color and feeling:

  1. Red (the Root chakra): “I am grounded.”
  2. Orange (the Sacral chakra): “I am happy.”
  3. Yellow (the Solar Plexus chakra) “I am strong.”
  4. Green (the Heart chakra): “I am loving.”
  5. Blue (the Throat chakra): “I am truthful.”
  6. Purple (the Third Eye chakra): “I am smart.”
  7. White (the Crown chakra): “I am whole.”

The chakras move up through you body, beginning with the your feet (the “root” chakra) and up to the top of your head (the “crown” chakra). When your chakras are “balanced,” you feel the positive feelings of each one. For example, if you’re feeling super-smart — you have a healthy, balanced Third Eye chakra.

 

About Butterflies

Butterflies are extraordinary creatures. They begin their lives as caterpillars and change into butterflies through a process called metamorphosis. This is why butterflies often represent change.

There are over 20,000 types of butterflies in the world. They live almost everywhere, except in Antartica and the driest of deserts. Butterflies are like birds in that they migrate to warmer weather during colder seasons. (The Monarch butterfly will travel up to 2500 miles!) A group of butterflies is a called a “flutter.” Butterflies can’t hear — but they can feel the vibrations of sound. They also vary in size, ranging from 1/2 inch to 12 inches in length. AND — and this is our favorite fun fact about butterflies — they taste their food with their FEET! Can you imagine?

 

Chakra Butterfly Craft

Celebrate your ever-changing energy centers with a simple Chakra Butterfly Craft!

Supplies:

  • Coffee filter
  • Spray bottle (with water)
  • Clothespin
  • Pipe cleaner
  • Glue

Instructions:

  1. Color the coffee filer with the chakra colors of your choice.
  2. Spritz the filter with water, allowing the colors to mix together.
  3. Set the filter aside to let it dry.
  4. Once dry, pinch the center of the filter with a clothespin to create the body of your butterfly.
  5. Glue on pipe cleaner for the antennae.

 

 

Springtime Yoga Poses

Springtime Yoga Poses! Spring is such a magical time… and here in the Magical Garden, we LOVE IT so much! The weather gets warmer and flowers begin to bloom. It’s a time for bunnies, butterflies, and flying kites. Join us in celebrating spring with some of our favorite YogaKids poses! Reach for the Sun Begin … Read more

Pot O’ Gold Craft

Pot O’ Gold Craft

St. Patrick’s Day is on March 17th of every year. St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday honoring Ireland’s patron saint. In Irish language, it is called Lá Fhéile Pádraig, or “the Day of the Festival of Patrick,” St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are a way to celebrate Irish culture, where it is a national holiday. In fact, it is observed (celebrated) in more countries around the world than any other national festival.

Ireland is a European country, but it’s not attached to the mainland. Rather, it is an island in the North Atlantic off the coast of Great Britain. It is sometimes called “The Emerald Isle.” The cool climate and lots of moisture from the ocean air is what keeps Ireland so green.

A leprechaun is one type of fairy from Irish folklore. They are usually portrayed as mischief-making little men with red hair, wearing green hats and coats. Legend says, if you catch a leprechaun, he will have to take you to his secret pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Let’s learn about rainbows while we make our own pot o’ gold!

POT O’ GOLD CRAFT

  • Cotton balls
  • Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paint or markers
  • Six popsicle sticks
  • Glue
  • Black construction paper
  • White construction paper or cardstock
  • Shiny gold buttons, paper, or bells – anything that can be glued on to look like gold coins
  1. Color one popsicle stick with each color.
  2. Cut out a cauldron (pot) shape from the black construction paper about 4-5″ across.
  3. Glue the popsicle sticks, color side up, to the back of the pot, so it looks like a rainbow is disappearing into it.
  4. Cut a cloud shape out of the white paper
  5. Glue cotton balls on top to make it look more like a cloud
  6. Glue the cloud on top of the opposite end of the rainbow from the pot
  7. Cut out and/or glue your gold pieces to the top of the pot

*Optional: only make the cloud and the rainbow, and stick the “pot end” of the rainbow into a bowl with gold-wrapped chocolate coins for a tasty party decoration.

About Rainbows

Rainbows are made up of six colors in the visible spectrum of light. Some people use the acronym ROY G BIV to remember the colors: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. Rainbows form when white sunlight enters tiny droplets of water — called water vapor — suspended in the sky, and breaks apart into all the colors that make up what we call “white.”

The area around a rainbow is brighter than the dark sky behind it because the water droplets are both refracting (bending, breaking) and reflecting (bouncing off) the light. The reflection magnifies the white light, while the refraction makes a rainbow.

You can make your own rainbow by shining white light through a prism, which is a type of crystal that bends light and breaks it apart into its separate colors.

If you want to find a rainbow in nature, you should look toward a dark, cloudy, rainy sky with the sun at your back. You will then be at the right angle to see a rainbow if one forms.

Did you know?

A rainbow is actually a full circle of light, but because of where we are on the earth, we usually only see half of it — in a bridge shape. Can you do Bridge pose and be a rainbow?

There are even “moonbows,” which are rainbows that form in the halo of light around a bright moon!

Sometimes you can find rainbows on a perfectly sunny day in the mist that comes off of garden hose sprayers and sprinklers. And of course, with your prism, which you can leave in a sunny window so there are always rainbows when the sun is shining through the glass.

Unfortunately, you can’t touch a rainbow because it is just made of light, and because the light will only be visible from the right angle, there is no end to a rainbow. So if you catch a leprechaun, it might be better to apologize and offer him a chocolate coin before you let him go, because that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just a myth; a trick of light.

Spring Daffodil Craft

Spring Daffodil CraftDaffodil Craft

We’re celebrating spring with a super easy and adorable daffodil craft.

What is Spring?

How do we know when spring begins? Spring falls around March 20 each year at the time of the spring equinox. An equinox happens when the duration of day and night are approximately the same length of time (12 hours day, 12 hours night) all over the world. So even though it might still be snowing where you live, the spring equinox will always happen at the same time of year, all over the world, because of the way the Earth tilts on its axis as it rotates around the sun.

Usually when we talk about spring, we are talking about the seasonal time when the browns and greys of winter begin to give way to colorful spring blooms, and new, green baby leaves and grass begin to unfurl on their branches and poke up from the ground. Even in places that do not reach freezing temperatures in the winter, and places that stay green all year ’round, spring brings big changes in weather.

Where I live now, in Southern California, it is green and cool most of the winter. It doesn’t rain in the summer here; instead, we have a monsoon season, in which most of our rain falls all at once during the winter, over just a couple months. It is mid-February here, and while some of my friends who live to the north of me are still getting snow, the fruit trees are already flowering here, and the weather is warm and balmy. Soon, there will be fields and fields of golden California poppies – the reason California is called The Golden State. Those poppies and many desert wildflowers are the spring flowers Californians enjoy, while you may see daffodils, tulips, crocuses, rhododendrons, or hellebore if you live further north. Do you know the names of the spring flowers where you live? The latitude of where you live affects what kind of winter you will have. Do you know how to find your latitude? 

In the summer here, it is very dry; so much that all the dried up grass in the foothills and mountains turns gold and remains dead until the first rains at the beginning of winter. When I was a kid, I lived in places like Texas and Indiana, where it rained throughout the year, and experienced what we think of as “traditional” seasons: an explosion of flowers in the spring after a long, colorless winter; hot, green, muggy summers; crisp autumns with changing leaves; and cold, sometimes snowy winters.

Those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere (North and Central America, Europe, most of Asia, and northern Africa) call March “spring,” and September “autumn.” Did you know that, in the Southern Hemisphere (Africa, South America, Australia, and some southern islands of Asia), it is completely opposite?  Australians celebrate Christmas in the summer!

What is the weather like where you live? What time does spring come, and how do you know (meaning, do you know because you see specific flowers or animals that you do not see in the winter)?

Colorful Daffodil Decorations

What you need: 

  • Yellow construction paper
  • Paper mini-cupcake holders
  • Scissors and adhesive
  • Wood craft sticks
  • Green paint or marker
  1. Cut out the daffodil shape from the yellow paper.
  2. Adhere a cupcake wrapper in the center, to look like a daffodil’s “trumpet.”
  3. Color your craft stick green on one side and glue it to the back of the daffodil to make a
    stem. You may use more than one stick if you want longer stems.
  4. Curl the edges of the petals forward slightly.
  5. Put your daffodils all around to chase away the winter blues!
  6. Daffodils come in many shapes and sizes. Can you figure out how to make some of the colors of daffodil, pictured at the top of this article?

 

 

Presidents’ Day Cookies (Abe & George)

Presidents’ Day Cookies (Abe & George)President's Day Cookies

What better way to honor some of our founding fathers than with a sweet treat in the likenesses of George Washington and Honest Abe?

Start with Nilla Wafers or Easy-Peasy Sugar Cookies.

Using big cookies, full-size chips and baby marshmallows

You will need:

  • Cookies (fully cooled)
  • Chocolate bar that’s divided into sections (if you need to cut the chocolate, dip the blade of a sharp knife in hot water for a few seconds so the chocolate doesn’t break)
  • Black gel icing
  • Regular chocolate or vanilla icing (homemade royal icing would work the best, but we just grabbed a tub of cake frosting off the shelf for this project)
  • For small president cookies, use mini-marshmallows (dehydrated, for hot cocoa — you can sometimes find these in shaker canisters in the baking aisle), mini-chocolate chips
  • For large president cookies, use mini-marshmallows, full-sized chocolate chips

Use the icing to attach the hats, chocolate chips, and marshmallows to the cookies, then draw on little faces with the black icing. You may need to let the icing set for about half an hour so Abe’s candy bar hat will stay on as you serve the cookies.

About Presidents’ Day

This year, Presidents Day falls on Monday, February 20, 2017. February 22 was George Washington’s birthday, and Presidents Day began as a day to honor our very first president. For what presidential actions were Abraham Lincoln and George Washington most well-known? Who is your favorite president, and why? Can you name the Presidents in order? Here is a list of the US Presidents, from the founding of this nation to the current day.

  1. George Washington, 1789-1797
  2. John Adams, 1797-1801
  3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809
  4. James Madison, 1809-1817
  5. James Monroe, 1817-1825
  6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829
  7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-1837
  8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841
  9. William Henry Harrison, 1841
  10. John Tyler, 1841-1845
  11. James Knox Polk, 1845-1849
  12. Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850
  13. Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853
  14. Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857
  15. James Buchanan, 1857-1861
  16. Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865
  17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-1869
  18. Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-1877
  19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-1881
  20. James Abram Garfield, 1881
  21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-1885
  22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889
  23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-1893
  24. Grover Cleveland, 1893-1897
  25. William McKinley, 1897-1901
  26. Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909
  27. William Howard Taft, 1909-1913
  28. Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921
  29. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-1923
  30. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929
  31. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-1933
  32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945
  33. Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953
  34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-1961
  35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-1963
  36. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-1969
  37. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-1974
  38. Gerald Rudolph Ford, 1974-1977
  39. James Earl Carter, Jr., 1977-1981
  40. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-1989
  41. George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993
  42. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001
  43. George Walker Bush, 2001-2009
  44. Barack Hussein Obama, 2009-2016
  45. Donald John Trump, 2016 (current)

Happy Presidents’ Day!