Some Unique Ideas

• Make personalized garden steppingstones for the grandparents' garden. Get a small bag of plaster, and follow the mixing directions. Mix in food coloring to tint the plaster, and pour it into a mold. Round, disposable cake pans made of aluminum are just right. Once the plaster starts to harden to the consistency of cake frosting, have your children put their names and hand prints, along with the date, in the center. If they have allergies or sensitive skin, have them wear disposable gloves. Let the mold dry completely by following the time directions on the plaster package. Once it is dry, you can turn the pan upside down to release the stepping stone. You can leave it just like this and spray it with shellac, or you can decorate it with paint and then spray it.
  
  Buy a magnet printing kit (from an office-supply or stationery store) and help your children make personalized magnets. This is an easy project that's fun. Have each child do a special drawing or painting for their grandparents. Scan the images into your computer. Shrink the images so they are small enough to print as magnets.
  
  Design T-shirts. Ask the children to draw special pictures for their grandparents, and scan the pictures into the computer. Print them on iron-on transfers and press them onto the shirts. If the children want text, print out words such as "#1 Grandma" and "#1 Grandpa," to be transferred on to the shirts. If the children want their photos on the shirts, you can blow up the images to transfer. Children can do the ironing, too, with supervision.
  
  

More Unique Ideas

• Grandparents would love a homemade scrapbook that you can make with your children. They can offer artwork, photocopies of report cards and letters or notes to their grandparents. You can ask the children to write a short story about a good time they had with their grandparents and include this in the book. One child may want to write a poems; another, a paragraph about what she likes best about her grandparents.
  
  You can have the children decorate a frame that can be presented to their grandparents with their picture in it. Buy plain wooden frames and have the children decorate them with beads or mosaic tiles using a glue gun.
  
  Kids can gather small stones and paint them. with designs words. Spray shellac the stones and let them dry. Purchase a cactus plant and arrange the stones around the base of the cactus.