Exploding Fun

Popsicle stick bombs are held together by nothing more than the force of the interlocking sticks under pressure. When they hit something, they burst apart in a satisfying but safe little explosion. While they can be challenging for small hands to construct, everyone loves throwing them, and older kids feel great about mastering the skill of building them.

We also made homemade ice cream. Put some whole milk and/or cream into a small Zziplock bag with a little sugar and some flavoring (we used vanilla one time, and mint extract, green food coloring, and chocolate chips the second). Then put that Zziplock into a larger bag that has a bunch of ice and salt, seal that, and play catch with it for ten to fifteen10-15 minutes. Pro tip: double or triple bag the components.

Elisheva Appel

It’s a Zoo Out There!

We made a salt dough using 2 cups of flour, 1 cup salt, 3/4 cup water, and 1 tablespoonT of oil. (You may need to play around a bit with those proportions or add a bit of water.)

The kids molded animals out of the dough, using silver foil to hold things together and wetting pieces to join them, then we baked their sculptures (at 200° F, till hard — this may take a while).

Once they’d cooled, we were able to paint them — another activity!

Miller Family

Silky, Smushy, Sensory Fun

If you have any leftover potato starch, stick it in a Ziplock bag and add some hair conditioner. (One part conditioner to two parts corn or potato starch. Food coloring optional.) Smush it together until it becomes a deliciously soft ball. It’s smoother and silkier than play dough, easier to clean up, and it smells good!

We bought some diamond art kits, and we’ve been having a lot of success with those. They’re highly addictive, very calming and soothing, and they make a nice finished product. (We got little kits for the younger ones and adult kits for my 10 and 13-year-old.) We also bought a huge paint-by-number painting that the whole family is doing together. You’d think, it’s a paint-by-number, how hard can it be? The answer is — hard. But they’re also super calming. (Next time I’d opt for a small painting, though, not such a massive one.)

Rachael Lavon

In the Shadows

We made negative shadow paintings. Take a small white canvas and wash the background in color, ombre-style, with strips of different shades seeping into each other. Once the pretty background dries, take a stencil (my kids used a row of birds sitting on a branch) and fill it in with black paint. You end up with a stark black drawing on a blended-color background. Because you use a stencil, even the little ones’ pictures will come out impressive!

Esther Teichtal

Pasta Pride

Inspired by Esti Vago’s amazing day camp ideas (email recipes@mishpacha.com for a full weekly schedule!), we “visited Italy”— i.e. used Google Translate to learn how to say some basic phrases in Italian — and then made homemade pasta.

The recipe we used called for 7/8 cup flour, 1 egg, and 1 tablespoon of oilflour; each kid made their own batch. Make a well with the flour, pour in the egg and oil, and mix by hand., W then wrap the dough in saran wrap and let rest for at least half an hour. Then comes the fun part  — rolling it out! I don’t have a pasta machine, because under normal, non-corona circumstances, I would never, ever, ever make pasta, but rolling it out by hand was a fun and energy-burning activity (plus rolling kept the kids busy for over half an hour, which is the equivalent of four years these days).

It was definitely worth buying a couple of extra rolling pins so that each kid could have his own. Once the dough is see-through thin, roll it up cinnamon-bun style, slice into thin-ish strands, and cook in salted, boiling water. How do you say voila in Italian? My kids were so proud.

Miriam Milstein