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Festive New Year’s Eve Mocktails For Kids

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New Year’s Eve tends to be more of a holiday for adults, but that doesn’t mean your little ones can’t have some fun too. Help them celebrate the arrival of 2016 with festive mocktails suitable for kids and teenagers,  made from juice, rock candy, and gummy bear garnishes. Serve the drinks in plastic champagne flutes for an extra special touch. Visit Modern Parents Messy Kids for the details.

Here are some other great ways to serve drinks.

Punch bowl – It’s a little 80’s but get’s the job done.

Inflatable Ice trough – If you are serving individual drinks this is great for keeping them cool

Drink Dispenser with tap – This allows you to make your own drink recipes

 Vintage Drink Dispenser – Decorative and saves the environment on the packaging.

Mason jars with straws – Great for on the go smoothies for school too.

Lighted Punch bowl – I have this exact same one and it is lot’s of fun, we use it for different occasions.

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Moss and Lichen Unit Study

I guess moss and lichen are more things that you see in the spring than in the summer, but there are some deep shady parts of our yard that stay mossy all year, and summer is a fine time to look for plants that like to live in shady, wet areas.

Raising Up Wild Things has a really pretty set of printables to use for a moss and lichen unit study.

And just in case you’re like me and don’t really know the difference, moss is a plant that grows in damp wooded areas, while lichen is a combination of fungus and algae that live together. Lichen can live in different environments but are often found in places where you would find moss, too.

The printable includes drawings of some common moss such as sphagnum moss and wood moss, as well as common lichen shapes (crusty, leafy and shrubby). There are good sized images you can print out and laminate to use to compare to specimens you find when you are exploring nature.

There’s also a forest floor coloring page and a printable journaling page where kids can write or draw their observations and there are a few questions older kids can answer.

You can use these when you go on a walk in the woods (or the back yard) to talk about what you are seeing, or combine them with other resources to talk about things that live in the forest. Check them out at Raising Up Wild Things.

This PDF from the Morton Arboretum has a bunch of pictures of different kinds of moss and where to find them, which could also be helpful in your studies. Learn more about lichen, including what they are and what they are not, in this article from the US Forest Service.

[Photo: Raising Up Wild Things]