How To Make Ecofriendly Natural Homemade Holi Colors With Kids

Are you looking for a super simple recipe on how to make natural ecofriendly holi colors at home this year? Check out this tutorial where I tell you how to do that with kids from your kitchen ingredients. This year, let us play Holi with natural colors & refuse synthetic toxic colors!

Holi is a festival of colors & being a North Indian, I have enjoyed this festival immensely all these years. But in the recent past, I have become more aware towards nature & I really hate to see artificial synthetic toxic colors being used to smear each other. The water & soil are being polluted in the name of the festival & our skin and bodies are prone to so many issues if we use these colors. 

Last year, my son was 2 & I gave him plain simple water with a pichkari to play Holi with his friends. I also made a simple mixture of flour & turmeric to make yellow natural Holi color. This year I decided to make some more natural colors with my son.

So here are few eco friendly, natural homemade Holi Powder recipes that can be safely used for kids too.

Using Rice Flour & Food Grade Colors

Watch this video below to see my 3 year old son making his own natural Holi colors (dry Gulaal). All you need is rice flour, water & food grade colors. Instead of food grade colors, you can also use turmeric for yellow, beetroot for red & spinach for green. 

You might like other fun activities me & my son are doing this Spring season here in this YouTube Playlist.


Using Real Flowers 

You can sun dry rose or hibiscus for dry red color, tesu for dry saffron color, grind them & mix some flour to make the consistency nicer.

You can boil marigold flower in water for wet yellow color.

You might like this Holi song that describes the story of Holi in simple terms. Click here to watch.

Using Leaves/Vegetables

You can mix turmeric powder with any flour to make dry yellow color

You can mix heena powder with any flour to make dry green color

You can boil pieces of beetroot in water and strain the water for wet purple/maroon color

You might want to check out these simple fun activities for Holi that you can do with your kids. Click HERE to browse.

Do you have any more ideas, suggestions or recipes to make natural Holi colors? I would love to know! Please share with me in comments below.

---

Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori & Waldorf inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

---

Read More »

CForCat Kids Educational Products - Flash Cards, Organic Crayons, Good Habit Busy Book - Review & Discount Code (VLOG)

I love exploring kids products that are fun, engaging & facilitate learning seamlessly. Recently I came across this brand CForCat and I happened to browse their products. In this post I am reviewing three products by this brand - Flash Cards, Organic Crayons & Busy Book. You can watch the unboxing & product closely in the videos too. These products can be used for babies, toddlers, preschoolers & kindergartners. The brand boasts of organic, eco-friendly & educational toys for developmental milestones. Find an attractive discount offer on all CForCat products at the end of each review.

---

About The Brand - CForCat 

Ensuring an exhaustive approach to the early childhood development stage, CforCat works to familiarize parents with the developmental process of young children and its distinctions of developmental milestones and delays. They exist to provide a helping hand to parents who wish for active involvement in their child’s growth. Their dynamic facilities include activities in all nine core skill fields: social-emotional intelligence, linguistic ability, pre-mathematical ability, science, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, cognitive ability, dexterity, and creativity. Though developmental milestones and delays are a common concern, CforCat stresses the notion that each child is unique and advances at their own pace and in their own time.They seek to conceive a world of play and learning for children where they are positively engaged off-screen. CforCat also strives to leave a minimal carbon footprint while standing for sustainability in all its ventures.

---

Product Review - Flash Cards (Alphabets & Farm Animals)

To watch the unboxing, product details & how to use these flash cards in various different ways, check out this video below. Do not forget to subscribe my YouTube channel so that you do not miss any future videos!

How To Use Flash Cards - Covered exhaustively in the video above.

What I Liked

• Perfect size for the small hands to hold & explore
• Sturdy material
• Little glossy to touch which makes it easy to flash through quickly
• Alphabet cards have both uppercase & lowercase variants

• Farm animals cards have shadow on the back & that makes it more engaging & versatile

• Good for practicing starting & ending sounds & spellings later on

• Good to use as storytelling prompts
• Pretty much versatile & can be used in many different ways as the child goes through his learning journey from a baby to a kindergartner

• Nicely packaged

What Could Be Improved

• I would have preferred having pictures of real animals in the farm animals cards rather than the cartoonish versions that it currently has
• For alphabet cards, I would have preferred the words corresponding to the letters according to phonics rules. For example, there is icecream on the I letter card & it is phonetically incorrect. Something like an igloo would have been better on the I letter card. Having said that, I would like to mention that most of the cards does have words that adhere to phonics rules

You might also want to read about early childhood brain development & my review on Quantum Cards (Flash Cards) by Brainsmith HERE. 

Buy Links

Official website of CForCat - Use this discount code "Kjunc" to avail 10% discount on all cforcat products when you buy from their website directly - www.cforcat.com.

Amazon

---

Product Review - Organic Crayons

To watch the unboxing, product details & look & feel of the crayons, check out this video below. Do not forget to subscribe my YouTube channel so that you do not miss any future videos!

What I Liked

• The fact that they are organic. There are so many brands of crayons in the market these days but when we give our little child that piece of crayon, we often are concerned if he puts them into his mouth. These are 100% organic & non-toxic

• They are made of wax from soya & palm oil & food grade colors are mixed

• Nice texture while coloring. They of course do not feel the same way as normal crayons when used but I really liked this different experience

• Super cute cloth bag in which they are packaged

What Could Be Improved

• More range of colors. The current pack of organic crayons contains five of them
• I would prefer all the primary colors to be present in the pack 
• Thicker crayons would be better for toddlers & preschoolers as their grip is still not fully developed 

• Perhaps it is a good idea to have two variants of these crayons - a pack of 6 & a pack of 12, just like any other brand in the market

You might like THIS article on open-ended art for kids & how to encourage creativity in kids at home.

Buy Links

Official website of CForCat - Use this discount code "Kjunc" to avail 10% discount on all cforcat products when you buy from their website directly - www.cforcat.com. 

Amazon

---

Product Review - Good Habits Busy Book

To watch the unboxing & product details of this busy book, check out this video below. Do not forget to subscribe my YouTube channel so that you do not miss any future videos!

What I Liked

• It has a theme that a child can relate to & hence it engages the child a lot
• Children can be taught this healthy routine of bedtime using this busy book. My son repeatedly played with the teddy and put him to sleep following this routine. So he is now more willing to follow the bedtime routine for himself

• The pages include various activities to develop fine motor skills 

• The material is all cloth so pretty much safe & sustainable
• It has a wonderful look & feel to it

What Could Be Improved

• Few pages have no activities as such to build a skill but it does have the thematic relevance to it. For example, pages of reading a story and saying a prayer. I would have loved if these pages also had some activities for fine motor skills

Buy Links

Official website of CForCat - Use this discount code "Kjunc" to avail 10% discount on all cforcat products when you buy from their website directly - www.cforcat.com. 

Amazon

---

DISCOUNT COUPON CODE

Use this discount code "Kjunc" to avail 10% discount on all CForCat products when you buy from their official website directly - www.cforcat.com.

---

You should also check out the blog by cforcat, it has some wonderful articles about early learning & parenting. 

Follow cforcat on their social media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

---

Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

---

Read More »

How To Make Eco-Friendly Ganesha At Home With Kids - Workshop

This Ganpati festival, I conducted a workshop for kindergarten kids on how to make eco-friendly Ganesha at home. I used the ingredients available in the kitchen to make these idols. 

Ganpati Festival in Indian, specially in Maharashtra is very popular among kids as well as adults. People bring Ganpati idols to their homes and offer Him prayers everyday for 10 days before visarjan into the water. Now a days with the environmental crisis all over the world, it is necessary to be more aware of what we put into our water bodies.

You can check out this video on how to make your own eco-friendly Ganesha & do not forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!



Here are some lovely moments that were captured during the workshop that I took. Kids loved this sensory experience!

There were kids from Nursery, Junior and Senior KG and I loved how they enjoyed and chatted all the way making their own Ganeshas.

 

Here I am giving finishing touches to all the idols.

Check out all the 18 imperfect yet beautiful Ganeshas!

After few days, these kids did the visarjan of these chemical free Ganeshas by putting the idol in a tub of water and then using the water for plants. Absolutely sustainable, right?

I would like to thank Little Wings International for helping us with the venue & logistics!

Hope you like this version of the beloved Lord Ganesha. Do share how you made your eco-friendly Ganesha. I would love to see the pics!

---

Do not forget to follow us on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

---

Read More »

How To Make Eco-friendly Ganesha Using Kitchen Ingredients At Home (With Kids) (Vlog)

For the upcoming festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, I made an ecofriendly and totally compostable Ganpati idol at home using kitchen ingredients along with my 2 year old son. Watch the video for the recipe of the dough and step by step process to make the idol along with your child. Kids love such activities & it is a great sensory experience for them.

This is the first time I did sculpting and that too with a toddler helping me out!;)

We did not just create an idol, we created beautiful memories to cherish in the years to come :)

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi :)

---

Do not forget to follow us on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

---

Read More »