FOLIO LINE
WRITTEN BY JODI BUTLER,
SCHOOL-YEAR FINISH LINE
Each year on the last day of school, Dini Merz of
Cheshire, Conn., tapes banners that say “Welcome to
Summer!” across two doors leading into her house.
When Asha, 11, and Nina, 8, come home, they each
get to crash through a banner to symbolize the offi-
cial start of summer vacation. “The kids love it,”
says Dini. “Summer can get boring, so it’s nice to
start it off with a bang.” To make the event even
sweeter, Dini usually bakes them a cake in the shape
of a broken pencil, which the girls take outside to
share with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Try this similar cake from FamilyFun.com.
YOU WILL NEED:
A
■ 8-inch square pan B effect, set the pencil
of brownies, uncut
■ Sandwich bag
■ 13/4 cups white frosting
■ 1/4 cup chocolate frosting
■ Yellow and pink food coloring
BUS STOP COOL-OFF
In what seems to be a nationwide trend, a number
of parents told us they start summer vacation with a
blast of cold water aimed squarely at their kids.
■ For the past several years, on the last day of
school Julie O’Hern and the other moms in her
Wall Township, N.J., neighborhood have gathered
at the bus stop by Julie’s house to spray their kids
with water as they get off the bus. “It’s a much-
anticipated event,” says Julie. After surviving the
parental ambush, she says, “the kids hunt for the
buckets of water balloons that we’ve hidden in the
yard, and anything goes!”
■ The Moore-Gordon family of Bothell, Wash.,
FOLIO
PHOTOS BY PETER N.
1. Turn the cooled pan of brownies upside
down and tap on the bottom to remove the brown-
ie square. Cut it as shown (A) and arrange the two
largest pieces into a pencil shape (B).
2. Cover the pointed end with white frosting.
Tint 1 cup of frosting yellow, then spread it over
the middle of the cake.
3. Next, tint 1/2 cup pink for the eraser. Pipe on
a chocolate frosting
zigzag and pencil
point using a sand-
wich bag with the
corner snipped off.
4. For an added
on a piece of foam
core decorated to
look like lined paper
and pipe on a choco-
late frosting message.
has a similar tradition. “When the kids were small-
er, we would buy a new inflatable swimming pool
on the last day of school,” says mom Mary-Leah.
“When they outgrew the largest pool that would fit
on our deck, I had to think of something new. So a
few years ago my then 5-year-old son, Harrison,
and I bought water guns and Super Soakers, which
we filled with water and put in the bushes near the
bus stop. When my older kids got off the bus,
Harrison and I soaked them on their way down the
street! Each child grabbed a water gun and a huge
water fight ensued. It was a great way to welcome
in the summer.”
SCHOOL'S OUT
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
LINE
FOX / FA M I LY F U N MAGAZINE
A BUCKET
OF SUMMER FUN
The Snyder kids — Taylor, 14, and Braden,
10 — of Katy, Texas, have lots to look forward
to in the summer, thanks to a bucket
of fun they get from their mom, Bonda. For the
past few years she’s filled a beach bucket (top
right) with art supplies, sidewalk chalk, books,
a DVD and a gift card to a local ice-cream
store. She also includes homemade coupons
for lunch with Dad, biking to the pool, a kid-
planned dinner, a trip to the library, and other
special (and usually free) activities. “The
coupons are for things the kids would want to
do anyway,” says Bonda, “but writing them
helps me focus on our summer, and lets the kids
be part of the planning.”
T-SHIRT MEMENTOS
Nine-year-old Zachary Contorno of Hoover,
Ala., loves to show off his artwork, so his mom
came up with this hip way to do just that. “At the
end of every year, my children come home with a
stack of art projects,” says mom Diana. “Because
they work so hard on each piece, they don’t just
want to file them away with their schoolwork. So
we pick our favorite, scan it into the computer,
and print it on iron-on transfer paper. This way the
kids can wear their favorite art anytime.” Zac
loves the results, she says. “He wore the shirt he
made in kindergarten for two years straight! It’s
too tight now, but he still asks to wear it.”
McClatchy-Tribune
SCRAPBOOK ON A DISK
For the past several years, the Caldwells of
Tarpon Springs, Fla., have made digital scrapbooks
for their teachers. “I used to be an elementary
school teacher, and I would have loved to get a
compilation of photos to look back on and enjoy,”
says mom Kim. Throughout the school year, Kim
takes pictures at class events and gathers photos
from other parents. Right before summer vacation,
Chelsea, 11, and Andrew, 9, each pick out a special
song for their class and create a disk case with the
year, their grade and a drawing. (We used a collec-
tion of class photos for our example.) Then Kim
and her husband, Sean, load the images onto their
computer and make them into slide shows set to the
kids’ chosen songs. (They use Sony Vegas soft-
ware.) The disks are given on the last day of school
so the whole class can watch them. “Several teach-
ers, amid their smiles and tears, have said it is the
best gift they’ve ever
gotten,” says Kim.
CLASS COOKBOOK
Susan Gronblom of Princeton, Mass., cooked
up a great thank-you gift for her son’s first-grade
teacher: a class cookbook made from an 8- by 8-
inch top-loading scrapbook. She gave each student
in the class a piece of scrapbook paper and asked
him or her to write a favorite family recipe on one
side and a thank-you note to the teacher on the
other. “Each family did something different,” says
Susan. “Some parents typed up a recipe the teacher
could actually use, while others had their kids
write their own. The variety in the recipes gave the
book a lot of character.” When the pages were
returned, Susan slipped them into the scrapbook
and filled any blank pages with photos from class
events. She also made a bookmark by tying cook-
ing-themed metal charms onto a ribbon, which she
glued to the inside of the cover. “The book cost
less than $10 to make,” she says. “The best thing is
that you can collect the pages up until the last day
of school, and then just slip them into the plastic
sleeves.” Tip: For an extra helping of thanks, slip a
gift card for a local supermarket or cooking store
into the first page or clip the card to a bookmark.
PERSONALIZED
STATIONERY
Last year, the Markey kids of Northampton,
Mass., took note of their teachers’ hard work and
made them homemade notepads. To start, mom Ann
(FamilyFun’s creative director) halved several 81/2 -
by 11-inch sheets of paper by drawing a faint pencil
line down the middle. Then Nat, 7, and Sarah, 5,
wrote a teacher’s name across the top of each half-
sheet with a marker. When they were done, she took
the papers to a copy shop and had them made into
51/2 - by 81/2-inch pads. For an added personal touch,
“I asked the kids to write a message or draw on the
top sheet of each pad,” says Ann. “They were inex-
pensive and easy to make.”
For a set of note cards that’s just as sweet,
choose a colorful piece of artwork your child cre-
ated in the teacher’s class and scan the artwork
into your computer. Reduce the image to fit a
blank notecard, print multiple copies on vellum
paper, and then mount the
paper on the cards.