Let the Projects Begin!

This is the first summer where I've had to adjust to having a child back home from school more often. It hasn't been too hard except that I feel guilty that I'm not doing more with them. When Ethan was in school every morning, Miles would take a nap and Isaac either played well by himself or watched a movie and I could get almost everything I needed to done during that time. Then the rest of the day I felt like I really was spending good time with all 3 of them.
So a few weeks ago when I started feeling like a bad mother I put a plan into place. I set some basic goals of things I wanted to make sure got done every day with them (read scriptures together, read books together, spend time working on school things, etc) and then I searched the internet for fun, short activities we could do together so that I wouldn't always be cleaning or doing projects and feel guilty for sending them to play outside or downstairs.
I only picked 20 activities so we won't do one every day but I figure on days when I have lots of house or personal projects I need to do, I'll first get all the must-dos done, then do a project together, and then I won't feel guilty for ignoring them while I do my things and they play. I typed up a list of the activities and cut them up and put them into a jar so we'd randomly pick one out, then I collected lots of supplies- glue, paper, glitter, etc, and lastly printed off explanations of how to do each activity so I'd have easy directions to follow.
It worked great today. We read scriptures at breakfast, got dressed, cleaned up, played outside a little, did some school workbooks, and then I let Ethan pick a paper out of the project jar to see what our "surprise" project would be. He picked fireworks so that's what we did! I'll try to post each activity, the items you need, and how to do it in case you want to copy.

FIREWORKS
Need: straws, black or dark construction paper, glue, glitter, old newspapers

Give each child an old newspaper to keep the table cleaner, then a piece of black paper and a straw. You can let your kids put large dots of glue on the paper (I didn't cause I'm a mean clean-freak kind of mom) and then show them how to blow the glue to make it bigger and then use the end of the straw to make the explosion part. Let them add glitter and let dry.
One suggestion: my kids (both surprisingly) would get one end of the straw sticky with glue and then decide they wanted to blow again so they'd flip the straw over, stick the glue side in their mouths, and then blow. Maybe Elmer's glue is not bad for them but it grossed me out, not them apparently.
The finished product! Very cute and festive and done in under 20 minutes but a nice together project. After this I went off to cleaning out closets and washing windows and they happily played together. Here's to hoping this will make the summer easier and less guilt-inducing.