Bouncing off the wall: Make an ideas board

“That’s a big to-do list!” people say the first time they come into my kitchen. Then they look a bit closer. “Oh, no, it’s not a to-do list, is it?...What's lock-hopping?!”

Nope, this is absolutely not a place to scribble down drudgy things like ‘Milk, bread, bananas’ or ‘Fix toilet roll holder’. This is an ideas board. Inspiration for future fun and life-to-be-lived. Somewhere to put good ideas magpied from magazines or websites or the outside world. Somewhere to put those ideas that ping into my head when I'm in the shower or that boing out of a conversation with a friend. 

The board is divided into sections: Places to go, Things to do with Little Kid, Things to do with Big Kid (an incredibly shrinking section now that doing stuff with your mother is so not cool), Food we could make, Holidays we could go on (or dream of going on!) and Random, the section for all the things that don't fit any other section. And of course, what's on the board constantly evolves as I rub off the things we do and new ideas come bobbing along.

Making it was easy. It’s a piece of MDF painted with blackboard paint and screwed to the wall. Simples. But its more powerful than the sum of its parts. Here's what it does.

1. It gives us a grab-and-go idea whenever we need one. Having a family day out? Rainy day and want to do something arty-crafty at home? Half-term coming up and want to go away for a few days? Feel like cooking something new for dinner? It saves us starting from scratch and scrabbling around for an idea every time we need one.

2.It makes things happen! Having these ideas constantly hovering in front of my eyes when I’m unloading the dishwasher or getting peas out the freezer keeps them fresh in my mind and makes them much, much more likely to happen. It turns a ‘we could do that one day’ mentality into a ‘let's do it today’ reality.

3.It empties out my head. I don’t have to carry around all those ideas like a big black scribble inside my head anymore – or have little lists on scraps of paper all over the house like I used to. In fact, I sometimes joke that this board is the contents of my head.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering what 'lock-hopping' is, it's a half-baked idea that came to me while sitting by a canal lock one sunny day. 

Lock-hopping: Hitching a ride on a canal boat at a lock, changing boat every time you get to the next lock. The aim is to see how far you can get and to meet and talk to as many people as possible.

Moany, groany kids? Get them to keep a Gratitude Diary

I’d noticed my 9-year-old daughter was turning into a right old Moany Joe. According to her, everything about her life was rubbish. Why didn’t she go to Florida on holiday like her friend ? Have a bigger bedroom? Get Coco-Pops for breakfast?

It was draining. Disheartening. Irritating. It also seemed like a really bad habit to slip into. An unhelpful state of mind to embark on life with. I remembered reading that – incredibly – only 10% of our happiness level actually depends on our circumstances. 50% is 'pre-set' by our genes. And a big, fat 40% is under our control – what we do and how we choose to think. Best nip her negativity in the bud right now then.

“How about trying a Gratitude Diary with her?” I thought out loud to my husband. Get her to write down three good things about her day at bedtime. I’d kept one myself, a few years ago, when they were all the rage. Feeling grateful, research shows, is a powerful mood-booster. Although the effects had crept up on me subtly, after a few weeks I was undoubtedly more upbeat, more glass half-full than empty. "Worth a try," he said.  

I introduced the idea to my daughter in my best isn't-this-going-to-be-fun voice. Then took her to the art shop to choose a pretty, glittery notebook. She was sold.

The effect on her was almost instant. I guess kids' supple, squidgy, absorbent brains can be re-trained quicker than ours. Three days in and she was noticeably chirpier, springier. Already giving more mind-space to the positive, lingering less on the negative. 

She loved writing in it and wanted to add pictures. (I suppose a younger child or a reluctant writer could just do pictures and you could do the writing for them.) Yes, there was frequently gratitude for the obvious and the instantly gratifying...

Though sometimes done quite mindfully...

But there was also appreciation of people...

Moments of achievement...

And funniness...

The feel-good factor that comes from being kind...

Things she'd ordinarily have taken for granted...

Or might have even complained about... 

Plus pleasure in other people's pleasure...

In fact, she often found it hard to limit herself to just three things. "Can I have extra ones?" she asked.

A few weeks in and she was spontaneously saying things like, “Now, what have I got to look forward to tomorrow?” and “That was a great weekend...what did you like best?”

I've since read that if you write in a Gratitude Diary every day, after a while the effects can wear off because you start to go through the motions without really 'feeling it'. So now we just do it randomly, about once a week. And it's still working.

Nothing had changed in her life of course. You still can’t swing a cat in her bedroom and our next holiday is a week in a caravan in North Wales – in winter for goodness sake.

It’s just that somehow she's managing to find the good in all this awfulness [insert winky face].

Make their brains hurt: Get 'The Little Book of Thunks'

by Rita Kravchuk/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Kids never stop asking questions. Random and sometimes very hard questions. 7.30 am, weekday mornings, when my face is still scrunched up from sleep and my brain is not yet open for business, is my daughter’s favourite time to ping them at me ... 

Why do flamingoes stand on one leg? 

How did the second world war start? 

Why do men have nipples?

... are just some of the beauties I’ve had recently. It’s like her subconscious thinks them up overnight to test me at my mentally weakest point of the day. 

“I just need to concentrate on making the packed lunches right now, sweetheart,” I too often hear myself replying. But my fully-awake self fully appreciates her child’s curiosity and inquisitiveness. And the last thing I want to do is kill it off.

This dinky little book keeps it very much alive – and takes it even further. It encourages children to look at the world and question everything. 

Inside its deliciously old-fashioned, hard-backed cover there are only questions. And not a single answer.

Very tricky questions ...

Questions which encourage children to think sideways, upside down, in circles ...

Questions which push them think to hard, think deeply ... 

Questions which have no right answer ...

Questions which trigger discussion and invite them to argue their case ...

Questions which delve into all the fuzzy areas ...

It's like beginner philosophy for kids.

I first used our well-thumbed and sticky-fingered copy with my son, when he was eight or nine. I remember taking it on a long ‘walk and talk’ session with him the weekend we got it. “Give me another one,” he’d say and we’d go off into another round of debate – or “verbal fisticuffs” as the author calls it – until we were all thunked out.

Now my daughter, just turned nine, also likes to get stuck into a good thunk. “I like the way your brain has to zig-zag its way through things you've never thought about before," she said. We sometimes do thunks to break up a long car journey or just pluck one to ponder together at a random moment of the day. Though recently she's been asking if we can do a thunk at bedtime. ("Er ... wouldn’t you prefer a Peter Rabbit story?" I say. I’m rubbish at that end of the day too!)

She’s even started making up her own thunks now. She says she likes trying them out on her friends at school. The secret of making a really good thunk, she told me, is to get it “exactly in the middle” so the other person really can't decide which way to answer. Here are some of hers:

Do you own your shadow?

If you have a tattoo, is it part of your body?

If you listen to an audio book, does that count as reading the book?

Maybe it will even boost her confidence in class discussions at school. She told me a while ago that sometimes she wants to put her hand up but doesn't in case her answer sounds silly and isn't the answer the teacher wanted. Thunks teach kids that opinion and fact are not the same thing. That sometimes there is no wrong answer. 

Of course, the downside is it isn’t make my mornings any easier.

“Is zero an odd or an even number?” I got this morning as I was scraping burnt toast and hollering at the Teenager to get out of bed.

Ouch. 

The Quirky Parent has FIVE copies of The Little Book of Thunks to give away ... 

For a chance to win one, all you have to do is: 1) Be a 'Liker' of The Quirky Parent Facebook page. 2) Email the word 'Thunk' to quirkyparent@gmail.com. The five winners will be randomly chosen and announced here on 29th May, 2015 and contacted by email. This competition is open worldwide. 

This competition is now closed. The winners are: Tracy Whys, Sally Maynard, Haidee Mazaheri, a Novice Mum and Claire Duncan.

'The Little Book of Thunks' is published by Crown House Publishing (£10.99) 

Kids say the funniest things: Keep a 'What they said' book

Tucked away at the end of a shelf in a corner of my kitchen are two battered, tea-splattered, hardback notebooks. You wouldn't even notice them. But if my house was on fire, they would be one of the things I would try and rescue.

They are my son's and daughter's 'WHAT [insert name of child] SAID' books: Inside are recorded the funniest/strangest/most adorable things they have said over the years from when they first started to speak. 

The books have sat here through the years ready to grab and write in every time a wonderful, precious soundbite came out of their mouths. Or just when they got a word deliciously wrong. 

I mean there’s no way I would remember otherwise that my daughter used to call meringue "marangatang" or that my son said he had "fizzery feet" when he got pins and needles. Next to each utterance I have recorded the age they said it, down to the nearest fraction.

As time goes by, these books just get more and more precious. The kids love to look back at the funny things they said when they were little once in a while too. And although The Teenager's book doesn't get added to anymore, my daughter, just turned nine, still comes out with the occasional gem.

Here are five of my favourite quotes from each of their books.

What The Big One said ...

After he'd been to a friend's birthday party: 

“I had ham and potatoes and cake and a treacley tart thing but I didn’t really enjoy it because the smell of dog had melted into the food.”  (4 ¾)

Feeling poorly with a tummy bug: 
“Poos and burps, that’s what’ll help me get better.”  (5 ¼ )

He’s been out with daddy for the day. I ask him what he had for lunch.

“Bikini and chips.” [= panini and chips]  (5 ½)

The day we bought a DVD player for the first time:

“I can’t believe it’ll be ours forever!”  (5 ¾)

“I was telling my friend Jack about daddy’s operation.” I ask him which operation he means. He replies: 

“The one on his tentacles.” [referring to my husband's vasectomy!]  (7¼)

What The Little One said ...

I am getting her dressed and I accidentally put both her legs in the same trouser leg. Trying to alert me to the situation, she shouts out desperately: 
“Help, help! I’m a mermaid, I’m a mermaid!”  (2 ½)

She climbs onto daddy’s lap and says to him:

“I think it’s time you knew how babies are made."  (3 ¼)

"When I’m a big girl, can I have a betweeny?" [= a bikini]  (3 ½)

She asks me when she is going to start school. I tell her it's September. She thinks for a while and then says: 
"Ooh, I go the school when the blackberries grow!"  (almost 4). 

"Mummy, where did you get that top? You look like Cinderella ... in scene one!"  (7 ½) 
(To see how my daughter would like me to dress, look what happened when I took her shopping and let her choose me a whole outfit!) 

That second to last one I liked so much I turned it into a painting, to capture that special time in her life.

Now I am off on a trip with my naughty little sister to celebrate a Very Big Birthday I recently had. Back in a couple of weeks ...

Move over bread and butter: Make “rice sandwiches”

I have a friend from Taiwan. Whenever we go to her house, whatever the time of day, there is a constant flow of delicious and interesting foods coming out of her kitchen and into our mouths (which always makes my return offer of a cup of tea and a slice of cake – if I’ve got any – seem very pinched and English).

Our favourite time was the day her 6-year-old daughter opened the door and announced to my daughter, “You and me are making rice sandwiches today!” We had no idea what they were, but they turned out to be a whole lot of squidging, squodging, grunting, giggling, gobbling fun. 

Her mother explained they were a version of Japanese onigiri, but we loved the daughter's name for them and ever since that day we have been big fans of the "rice sandwich". 

They're a great kids' activity-and-meal-all-rolled-into-one for when friends come round to play or for a birthday party. They're also good for lunch boxes, picnics, gluten-free kids, or any old time you want a change from bread-and-butter sandwiches.

You need one key thing: A RICE MOULD (one per kid). These are bascially triangular containers (the deeper bits) with lids (the shallower bits). These 'double' ones were brought back from Taiwan for us by our friend, but it's easy to buy single ones online. 

This is what you do with them:

The 'outside' of the sandwich
Cook some ordinary long-grain rice in this incredibly quick and easy way that makes it come out sticky and oriental, not loose and separate like Indian rice. 

Put 1 part rice, 2 parts water in a saucepan.
Put the lid on and bring to the boil. 
As soon as it boils, turn to the very lowest heat.
Leave until all the water is absorbed (don't stir at all). 

Simples! Leave it to cool. You can season it with salt and a few glugs of Japanese mirin (which will help make it even stickier) but it's not vital. 

The 'inside' of the sandwich

Prepare a choice of fillings for the kids to pick n' mix as they wish. As my daughter says, part of the fun is “You can choose ANY middle you want!" We usually use tuna mayonnaise, fine sticks of cucumber, grated carrot, pieces of ham, pieces of omelette – and dried shredded pork from the oriental shop which our friend introduced us to (tastes like meaty candy floss!). 

But you could choose anything that goes in a conventional sandwich. You might want to draw the line at Marmite and peanut butter and jam – or maybe not? There’s no rules! 

Then just lay out the rice and the fillings for the kids and let the chaos fun begin! 

The sandwich making 

Spoon rice into each mould to over the halfway level (= the first 'slice of bread').

Put in the fillings. 

Spoon in a load more rice on top of the fillings (= the second 'slice of bread'). Put more rice in than you think – above the level of the top of the mould. It needs to be a really tight squeeze of compacted rice when you put the lid on, otherwise the rice sandwiches will fall apart when you take them out the moulds. 

Then put the lid on and push with all your might.

My daughter really enjoys this bit “'cause you have to push really hard and it’s all squelchy.” Use your elbows, your knees, your feet if necessary! 

Now take off the lid and gently push the little flap that is at the bottom of each mould to help ease out the sandwich. 

And dah-nah! Rice-sandwiches! 

A very satisfying moment. In my daughter's words again, “It's like that feeling when you're making sandcastles and you lift the bucket up and it's come out really good”. 

Finally ...

This is entirely optional, but if you want to be traditional you can wrap the sandwich in a piece of sushi seaweed before you eat it. (My daughter adores seaweed so much she’d probably scoop it straight out the sea and shovel it in her mouth, but it’s a bit of an acquired taste for many of us.)

Then dip it in soy sauce (if you fancy) ...

... and tuck in.

If you like this, you might like Make Bubble Tea.