Five Minute Father's Day Gift:
Daddy Word Cloud
(with full tutorial)
I'm very much a last minute planner when it comes to holidays of any kind....
They always seem to creep up on me unexpectedly. But sometimes those last minute gift ideas turn out to be the best - like this Daddy word cloud we made!
This week was the last week of school, which, as any parent or teacher knows, is absolute madness, and multiply the madness 10-fold when you are both a parent and a teacher! With the class parties to prepare food for, the gifts to make or buy, the report cards to write, Sports Day, field trips, paperwork to complete, etc. etc. etc. times forever .... plus on top of that we also had kindergarten graduation this week, and Princess Pea has her birthday next week, so we always have her party the last weekend before school is out (post on that later), and her school birthday celebration was on the last day of school, which I had to bake a cake for, we're heading out on vacation tomorrow and - oh yes - it's Father's Day this weekend! Whew! (Scrape me up off the floor sometime next week, please. Just leave me be until then.)
All of this is why this 5 minute Father's Day gift idea came to me in a moment of panic! And also why you're getting this post just the day before Father's Day. But not to worry - it's not too late! You, too, can do this right now and likely be done with it 5 minutes from now.
Here's what you do:
First, ask your kids to describe their father. Make a list of adjectives and nouns that sum up the essence of Dad. Is he a 'pancake gourmet', like Daddy Pea? or a 'Mr Fixer'? Is he 'silly', 'fun', or 'strong'? Try to keep each description to single words or maximum two words.
Then, go to http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm. In the box, type all of the descriptions in a list, with no punctuation. If you have two-word descriptions, use a ~ between each word, like this: Pancake~gourmet. That will ensure that both words stay together in the final word cloud. (Don't use a - as that will join your words into one word, resulting in Pancakegourmet).
Then, choose which words you want to make bigger. Copy and paste those words a few times. For example, if you want 'Best~Dad' to be really big, copy and paste it maybe 6 times. The more times you paste a word, the bigger it will be, so you can rank order the words and paste them differing amounts, if that makes sense. Like this:
Be sure to leave spaces between each one. Then paste 'Daddy' (or whatever your children call him) the most times of all, so it will be the biggest in the word cloud. Then hit the forward arrow and it will give you a word cloud.
Then just pop it in a colourful frame (or have the kids paint or decorate one), and you're done!
Daddy is sure to love it! Perfect for hanging in his office (or in our case, classroom)!
Note: Another great site for making word clouds is http://www.wordle.net. It has more options for customizing, but it can't be saved except to their online gallery.
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