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Rock Painting Ideas for Kids

August 14, 2020 | Leave a Comment

In our area, we’ve had the pleasure of stumbling upon a painted rock more than once, to the delight of whichever one of my kids finds it.  In fact, our city has its own Facebook page where people can share the rocks they’ve found around town as well as the rocks they have painted and placed around town.  There are over 13,000 members in the Facebook group!  If your family would like to get in on this fun hobby for kids, there are many easy rock painting ideas for kids.

Painted Rock Ideas for Kids

Rock Painting Ideas for Kids

If you’re looking at rock painting ideas, I’d encourage you to first see if your town has a Facebook group.  You can simply search the name of your town and rock painting; if there’s a group, you’ll find it that way.

However, Facebook rock painting groups can be a bit intimidating because there tend to be so many fabulous artists there.  If you or your kids’ skills are a bit more elementary, I’ve found YouTube to be a good place to search.

Ideas for Those 10 and Younger

To get kids excited about rock painting, try to pick designs that are easy enough for young kids.  The best ones seem to be designs that involve painting the entire rock as something like a ladybug or a strawberry, for instance.

There are so many tutorials on YouTube that will spark your children’s creativity!

For younger kids, Missy Maker has a tutorial showing kids how to make rock ladybugs, and giving examples of rock painting bees, minions, Shrek, and Nemo.

Ideas for Tweens and Teens

For older kids, rock painting can be an even more engrossing hobby.  Once kids’ artistic talents are a bit more developed, there are so many designs to pursue.

Tweens and teen can start using more advanced supplies like acrylic paint markers for more fine-detailed work like outlining and writing phrases on the rocks.

If your teen is a beginner, this video explains the whole rock painting process as well as designs for tweens and teens.

Rock Painting Ideas for the Whole Family

If you have children of varying ages and abilities, you can use a YouTube video like this one.

This video doesn’t show specifically how to paint the rocks, but it gives ideas for many different designs for all types of abilities.  I also enjoy tutorials with painting ideas for every season and holiday!  My kids who are 10 and under love painting simple flowers.

Final Thoughts

Rock painting can be a fun, low-cost hobby for everyone in the family, especially when you take the time to hide the rocks around your city.  It’s even more fun when you join a Facebook group and look to see if anyone has found your hidden rocks.  This hobby is also easy to start using some of these fun rock painting ideas for kids.

Melissa Batai
Melissa Batai

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in Arizona where she dislikes the summer heat but loves the natural beauty of the area.

Filed Under: Family Time, Parenting Blog at KidsAintCheap Tagged With: Activities For Family, hobbies

how to evaluate the cost of extracurricular activities

December 23, 2019 | Leave a Comment

the cost of extracurricular activities

As my children grow older, I’m beginning to explore the need to keep them busy while 1) allowing unstructured time for them to play and 2) providing them with moderate access to technology. It’s an art, and I’m often wondering if I’ve found the best recipe. What are the optimal measurements of each?

Part of this exploration also involves determining how much my budget allows for extracurricular activities.

Because – like kids, extracurricular activities ain’t cheap. And it continues to rise.

Choosing The Right Extracurricular Activity

My daughter takes to things reasonably easy. She’s a quick learner, prone to beginner luck with almost every activity I’ve signed her up for – ballet, soccer, gymnastics, cheerleading, karate, art, piano – to name a few. But once it gets hard and she has to make an effort, she doesn’t enjoy it, and it becomes a power tug of war between the two of us. It’s a juxtaposition of forcing her to stick to her commitments vs. allowing her to explore her real interests.

However, to my delight, riding horses has proven to be something special. It wasn’t love-at-first-sight, but I watcher her desire to learn blossom a little each day. 

The Cost of Extracurricular Activities

What was not to my delight, equestrian hobbies come at high expense. Between weekly riding lessons, show clothes, and show fees – I spend approximately $300 a month, on average. And we don’t even own (or lease) a horse. (yet)

I could buy a car for that. Not a Testa, but a reasonable car – something like a Honda Civic. 

Once I realized that riding horses was something she was going to stick with, I realized I needed to adjust my budget. But truth-be-told, I wasn’t sure how – our budget is pretty tight, and I would prefer to pour all my money into paying off our mortgage. 

Is the Cost Worth It? A Cost / Benefit Approach

At this point, I wrestled with whether the cost of riding horses was something I was willing to bear. What value was this adding to her life? The merits can be debated, but where I landed was that riding a horse requires caring for a horse. 

She has to groom her horse before she can ride. Horse camp involves mucking out stalls. Caring for an animal like a horse develops responsibility, as well as respect for an animal. She’s also building her confidence as she showcases her skills in front of her peers and judges. 

I hope that her relationship with horses continues to grow and as she enters junior high and high school, she chooses to spend her time at the barn, rather than out partying (as I did at that age).

Making Adjustments To My Budget – Now and in the Future

Ultimately, I decided the cost was worth it. I took on some additional writing assignments to offset the cost, and I cut back on the amount I was allocating to my mortgage-free fund.  

My son, on the other hand – he’s a different beast. He has little to no interest in extracurricular activities, and he’s an introvert. This combination is something I’m aware needs special attention in the current society we live in. I need to make sure he develops his social skills, but balance this need with respect for his personality. 

He’s also extremely bright. Over the next few years, I believe I will find myself becoming a chess or Mathlete parent. I’m okay with that. Time will tell. And when it does, I’ll need to adjust my budget again.

 

How do you approach the cost of extracurricular activities for your children? Have you found them to be more expensive than you initially expected?

Read more:

Paying for Extracurriculars Without Breaking the Bank

Teaching Kids the Value of Hard Work

Four Money Habits You Need To Teach Your Children

Kate Fox

Kate Fox is a former CPA, with twenty years of experience in public accounting and corporate finance. Born and raised in Alaska, Kate is currently based out of southeastern North Carolina.  She loves coaching others on personal finance and spends her free time traveling with her family or relaxing by the pool with a good book, probably about money.

Filed Under: Education, Money and Finances, Parenting Tagged With: after school activities, extracurricular activties, hobbies

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About The Author

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in Arizona where she dislikes the summer heat but loves the natural beauty of the area.

Basic Principles Of Good Parenting

Here some basic principles for good parenting:

  1. What You Do Matters: Your kids are watching you. So, be purposeful about what you want to accomplish.
  2. You Can’t be Too Loving: Don’t replace love with material possessions, lowered expectations or leniency.
  3. Be Involved Your Kids Life: Arrange your priorities to focus on what your kid’s needs. Be there mentally and physically.
  4. Adapt Your Parenting: Children grow quickly, so keep pace with your child’s development.
  5. Establish and Set Rules: The rules you set for children will establish the rules they set for themselves later.  Avoid harsh discipline and be consistent.
  6. Explain Your Decisions: What is obvious to you may not be evident to your child. They don’t have the experience you do.
  7. Be Respectful To Your Child: How you treat your child is how they will treat others.  Be polite, respectful and make an effort to pay attention.
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