Candle Warmers (Safer for Cats & Kids!)

My cats are kind of crazy, so lately I’ve been into using safer options such as candle warmers or metal/glass covered lanterns.

A steel screen on top of a lantern or metal container will work as a barrier for lit pillars, votives, tapers and containers. It also creates a beautiful centerpiece!

If you’re going to make a cover, make sure the screen is strong metal and that the smoke can still escape through the small holes. This is an example of a simple yet beautiful candle lantern from the Candle Lantern Store.

You can use warmers for any container candle so that you still get the scent without the soot or flame. Of course the warmers will also work for candle melts or oil burners. I have a plain plate candle warmer, which works fine. Another attractive option is a candle crock from Candle Warmers. I like the fact that it’s enclosed and it comes with a lid.

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My daughter’s school has project-based finals instead of tests in the spring, and in her geometry class last year the students constructed a scale model of a town complete with three-dimensional buildings.

Of course building a paper town doesn’t have to include a geometry lesson (they also calculated the volume of their buildings) but it is a fun way to get kids to express their creativity by decorating the buildings and talking about the things they would want to include in their own town.

Putting buildings together is a test of fine-motor skills, and if kids are working on a town together they’ll need to negotiate what goes where and why.

Get started with the house printables from Kids Activities Blog. They’ve got a “plain” roof house and a “fancy” roof house to choose from. Just print, color, cut out and assemble.

You might want more than just houses in your little town, though, so I went hunting for some more printable templates you can use to make different kinds of buildings.

Brother has printable skyscrapers, cars, people, trees and lights (shown above) that are meant to be printed in color buy you can do them in black and white so kids can color them in if you want.

Printablee has another colorized set of paper buildings including different kinds of houses and something that maybe looks like a church or school.

If you’re willing and bale to pay for printables to use in your paper town, there are lots of great ones available on Etsy. Ludlow Prints has a collection with a school, grocery store, bakery and other buildings, while Paper Fun By Yumi includes things like a hospital, fire department and police station (essential if you’ve done a community helpers unit!).

Tiger Bee Learning has a printable set with 20 different buildings, including a bank, library, museum and zoo to name a few, as well as a blank template for kids to design their own buildings. Once you have the basics of making a piece of paper into a 3D building down, kids are sure to want to make their own buildings to add to the town.

Older kids can also write about why they picked the buildings they did, and littler kids will have fun building their town over and over again.

[Photo: Brother]

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