DIY guide for kids: Weekend Special Ideas Quick message Whiteboard; Italian Risotto; Origami Tulips & Hugging Butterflies

Weekend Special Ideas

Quick message Whiteboard; Italian Risotto; Origami Tulips & Hugging Butterflies
TINA KHATRI
Close to winter vacation, end of mid-term exams… this definitely calls for a celebration on the weekend! So, let’s send out our playdate invites and enjoy fun crafts, cuisines, creative messaging and experimenting!
Have you ever dreamt of enjoying authentic Italian cuisine while sitting in a cosy café on the side of rock-built streets in the Eternal city of Rome? Well, look around, your city is getting cleaner, better and has a cosy corner in your house. Most of us imagine Italian cuisine as pastas and pizzas, but there is much more to it. Italians love to cook and eat a sumptuous meal with their families. So, tweek into your Italian side and prepare authentic Risotto quickly and easily using your microwave!  
It’s incomplete if you don’t share with family and friends. While you are hanging out with your family and friends, why not surprise them with a magical trick using static electricity! Try preparing butterflies that will hug your balloons and lift up their wing.
To do something without screen, you can prepare origami tulips and give them as tiny memoirs of this awesome weekend. To leave some nice, cute messages or reminders, you can prepare whiteboard that is a must-have utility.

Easy Whiteboard
• One frame
• One piece of fancy scrapbook paper
• Dry erase markers
• Black Marker or Stickers
Let’s get making our Board
1. Put your patterned paper inside the frame. Replace the back. That’s pretty much it.
2. If you wanted to stop here, you could hand-write your days of the week on the glass, or use it as a message board / to-do list. I love that these frames can stand or hang on the wall so you can do whatever works best in your space!
3. Use a paper towel or cloth to easily erase dry-erase marker off the glass.
4. If you want to get fancy and go a step further, you can add vinyl lettering for the days of the week.

Easy Risotto
Ingredients
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 1/4 cups Arborio rice
• 3 tsp reduced-salt vegetable stock powder
• 3 cups boiling water
• 1/2 pumpkin, peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes
• 1 cup baby spinach leaves
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 100 g Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1/4 cup flaked almonds, optional
• Salt to taste pepper
Let’s get cooking!
• Combine onion, garlic and oil in a large microwave safe bowl. Microwave on HIGH for 2 mins until soft.
• Add rice, stock powder and 2/3 of the hot water. Cover with cling wrap and microwave on HIGH for 5 mins. Be careful removing cling wrap - steam will be very hot!
• Add pumpkin and remaining water, cover and microwave on HIGH for 15 mins.
• Add spinach and peas, gently stir through. Re-cover and microwave on HIGH for 5 mins.
• Remove from microwave, and taste. If it's not cooked yet, microwave for 2 min or until cooked.
• Stir in cheese and pepper and sprinkle almonds on top.

Static Electricity: Hugging Butterfly
Supplies you will need:
• cardboard
• tissue paper
• cardstock paper
• pencil
• scissors
• googly eyes
• balloon
• glue stick
Directions:
1. Start by cutting a square of cardboard. I made mine about 7 inches x 7 inches.
2. Use your pencil to draw butterfly wings on your tissue paper. Since my cardboard square was 7″ x 7″, I just made sure to make them smaller than my square. Cut them out and set them onto your cardboard. DO NOT glue them onto the cardboard!
3. Cut a butterfly body out of your cardstock paper and glue it down the middle of your butterfly and overlapping it onto your cardboard. Again, DO NOT glue the tissue paper wings down. You will want the wings loose like shown in my picture below. Glue your googly eyes down onto your butterfly. I should have drawn antennae on our butterfly but I just didn’t think about it at the time. You can add those if you choose.
4. Now comes the fun part. Blow up your balloon. We used water balloons that we had leftover from this summer so they were small in size, but using regular sized balloons would have been even better.
5. Rub your balloon in your hair to give it an electric charge. Now hold the balloon on top of your butterfly, close but not touching it, and watch the wings raise and lower as you move the balloon closer and farther away.
Results: Why did the butterfly wings move?
When we rubbed the balloon onto our hair, electrons were lost from our hair and gained by the balloon giving it a static charge. When the negatively charged balloon gets close to the positively charged tissue paper they are attracted to each other, and the pull of attraction is so great that the lightweight tissue paper moves toward the balloon.