Mixing Colors

 I've been wanting to try this experiment with Scientist for awhile now, so I made a bunch of red, yellow, and blue ice cubes using food coloring and froze them. But things kept coming up and we never got around to getting them out. Then the other day we went to the library and by chance, Scientist picked out a book called Blue Goose. It's about animals that paint their farmyard different colors while the farmer is away, and it talks about mixing two colors together to make a new color. Scientist loves the book, and asks to have it read to him all the time. So I decided it was time to pull out the ice cubes. We did red and blue first, because those are the first colors they mix together in the book. I put a red ice cube and a blue ice cube in a plastic sandwich baggy and taped it shut (I didn't have any zip locks). I gave one bag to Scientist and one bag to Sponge. They played with the ice cubes while they melted, and then I pointed out how when the ice melted the different colors mixed together to make purple water.

I didn't know if it would be over Scientist's head or not, but he really caught on quickly. Now, whenever we read the book and I ask what color you get when you mix red and blue, he says purple every time. And I think he really does understand the concept, instead of just spitting out a memorized answer. We only did red and blue, because of attention span, but another one of these days we'll try out yellow and blue, and red and yellow to see what happens. :) Also, I think once we've done all the different variations in ice cube form, we'll mix paint to solidify the concept. Anyone know of anything else you can mix?

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Shaving Cream Paint

I decided we'd do some finger painting so I could try something I've been hearing a lot about lately. That is to mix your poster paint with shaving cream. There are various reasons for doing so....it makes your paint last longer (as in because you only have to use a few drops each time), it gives kids a new texture to work with, it takes away the awful smell of the poster paint, it makes the paint easier to clean up...are the reasons I've heard, and I wanted to give it a try. So I put some shaving cream into two different bowls and then added just a few drops of poster paint to each, one orange and one blue, and stirred it up with my finger so the shaving cream and paint mixed. Then I gave one bowl to each boy. For Sponge, he gets a little wild, so I taped his piece of paper to his high chair tray so it couldn't go anywhere.

The kids had a good time with it. And I will say that most of the above mentioned reasons to mix your paint with shaving cream, I found to be true. I used less paint on this project than when we do straight finger painting, the texture turned out really cool and 3-D which I really liked, after mixing in the shaving cream I could not smell the paint at all which I hate the smell of and it usually takes over my whole house whenever we get the paints out, AND my favorite part of all...the mess was a cinch to clean up. Sponge got paint all over my kitchen table, his high chair tray, himself, his onsie, and in his hair, and just rinsing all those things with water took the paint right off, no scrubbing whatsoever. My real only "concern" is that I'm not sure this mixture will ever actually dry all the way. I might have to spray it with hair spray to keep the "paint" in place, but that wouldn't be too bad.

Pirate Crafts

During the summer months, instead of story time, our local library does craft time for kids 12 and under. Today they had the kids make these adorable pirate hats and pirate hooks. I thought they were so cute and easy that I would share them.

To make a pirate hat all you need is a piece of black construction paper, a white crayon, and some tape. Turn your paper the long way and cut about an inch think strip off the bottom. Then on the rest of the paper trace this shape:

and using the white crayon, color in where all the white parts are, or designs of your own. Then cut it out. Next tape the inch thick strip to either side of the front of the hat so that it fits the child's head. Done and done.

To make a pirate hook you'll need 1 pipe cleaner, tin foil, and a large plastic or paper cup. Make a square out of tin foil that's as long and wide as the pipe cleaner is long. Lay the pipe cleaner on the edge of your tin foil square and tightly wrap the pipe cleaner in tin foil. Poke a hole in the bottom of your cup and feed the tin foiled pipe cleaner through the hole. Bend into a hook shape. Leave enough on the inside of the cup that the kids have something to hold onto.

My boys had such a fun time doing this project. And both were able to help making it to some degree (Scientist my 2 1/2 yr old obviously could do a lot more than Sponge my 1 yr old.) and they loved the finished projects even more. In fact, they wore them all over town while we ran our errands today. :) But I think these ideas are simple as easy enough for a wide age range of kids. They would make great Halloween costume ideas, a good activity for letter P, or just for some fun an old day.


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Dryer Sheet Box Entertainment

Found another Sponge appropriate activity today, that only took about 3 seconds to put together and provided a half hour or more of entertainment. I took an empty dryer sheet box and cut a round hole in the lid, just big enough for a ping pong ball to fit through. Then I gave Sponge the box and a few ping pong balls (you can buy a 6 pack of ping pong balls at Target for $1.98 and they make great toddler toys) and showed him how to drop the ping pong balls into it, and then how to open the lid when he wanted to get them out. He played with that, and I folded laundry. It was a beautiful compromise.

Masking Tape Town

Scientist woke up 45 minutes before Sponge at nap time today. I wanted to keep him occupied and quiet at the same time, so I got down on the floor and played cars with him. The only problem was that after driving all around the living room on my hands and knees, my pregnant back was telling me to call it quits. I decided I'd have an easier time playing if the cars could be contained to driving in a small area. So, I got out the masking tape and made Scientist a little car town. We even set up blocks to be the different places we go, the gas station, Target, Costco, Macey's House (Macey's Grocery Store, Scientist calls it Macey's House for some reason), The Mending Shed, etc. It wasn't my intent to make it look like a face, but that's how it came out. Scientist deemed that the "mouth" was a big sandbox and had all the cars/trucks pick up sand from there and go dump them at different locations. He also spent a lot of time filling up each car with gas. He was so into it that I didn't even have to play, I just watched. He played really well with the little car town, until Sponge woke up and promptly began pulling all the tape off of the carpet.

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Toddler Train

Since Sponge started walking he's been a lot more insistent on being part of things. So I've been trying really hard to do a few activities each week that target him specifically, and then also finding ways to involve him in what I'm doing with Scientist.


This morning while I was trying to get ready for the day, Sponge was on a rampage and needed a distraction. So I took a 5 minute break from getting ready and made him a toddler train. I got the idea out of The Toddler's Busy Book: 365 Creative Games and Activities to Keep Your 1 1/2 to 3 Year Old Busy by Trish Kuffner. I like this book a lot, I'll do a review on it one of these days.

To make a Toddler Train you'll need:

3 or more assorted boxes (I made boxes out of sheets of card stock, and I only had two)

String, ribbon, or yarn

Plastic straw
Scissors

Use scissors or another pointed object to poke small holes in the ends of each box. Insert about a foot of string, ribbon, or yarn, into the back hole of the first box, then tie the end of the string around a short piece of plastic straw to prevent it from pulling through the hole. Insert the other end of the string through the front hole of the next box and fasten it in the same way. Use more string to continue connecting boxes until the train is finished. Use a longer length of string for the front hole of the first box. Tie a cylindrical wooden block or small plastic vitamin bottle to the end of the string for a handle.

I couldn't convince him that it would be cool to pull his toys in his train, but the empty train kept him busy for the next 25 minutes while I finished getting ready, so I'm not going to complain.


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Fine Motor Mania

This week we've been working with Scientist on his fine motor skills. We've taken ideas for games from different places and also come up with a few on our own. I was a little bit surprised at the positive response I got from Scientist. He loved the games, and would ask to play them over and over. He never suspected we were working on a skill :)

For our first game we used marbles. I filled a small bowl full of marbles and gave Scientist a spoon and told him the game was to pick up the marbles with the spoon and put them in the other bowl. He went back and forth between bowls several times.

Then we decided to take it up a notch. I put the full bowl of marbles on a chair at one end of the kitchen, and the empty bowl on a chair at the other end of the kitchen, so Scientist had to go a lot farther, and do a lot more balancing, to get marbles from one bowl to the other.

After several rounds of that, I tried making a course that was a little bit harder, requiring Scientist to walk a circle around a chair before putting his marble in the bowl, but by that time his attention span was at an end. He did start inventing his own games though, that involved making the marbles make as much noise as possible. :) And that kept him entertained for another 10 minutes or so.

Another game we played this week was to place colored stones in different patterns on a board. For this I just used colored floral stones that I bought at Wal-Mart for $3. For the board I made up my own in Microsoft Word and printed it out. The game was for Scientist to pick out of three different colors, white, light blue, and dark blue, and place the stone on the corresponding color on the board. This game was a little bit more challenging for him. It was interesting for me to see how he chose to meet the requirement. He did all the dark blue stones first, then the all the white, and then the light blue; instead of picking stones at random. After he'd done the whole board a couple times, I turned the board upside for variation.

Scientist's favorite activity was the easiest to come up with and to prepare for. I just gave him an empty cereal box and a pair of safety scissors and let him have at it. He stayed busy for a long time, and this activity is the one he asks to do again most often.

Scientist also really enjoyed our marshmallow game, probably because he got to eat the marshmallows when we were through. For this game we added a little math into the mix. I dumped out a big pile of mini marshmallows and separated them into several different piles with a different number of marshmallows in each pile. I had Scientist count the number of mallows in each pile. Then I gave him a pile of tooth picks and we counted how many of those we had too. Next I let Scientist spear the mallows with the tooth picks, and showed him how to make different shapes by hooking the tooth picks together with marshmallows. We talked about and counted how many sides and how many points each shape had. Before I let him eat the marshmallows, I had him count how many was on each tooth pick as he pulled them off.

A few of the other fine motor activities we did this week were coloring with sidewalk chalk, threading large wooden beads onto a shoelace, and painting both with fingers and with brushes.

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Sorting Jelly Beans

It snowed today, and it was freezing, so going outside was not an option I was willing to consider. Instead we decided to have some fun with our Easter Candy.

I gave Scientist a handful of Jelly Beans (I had to presort them so there were only 4 colors, because I only had four different colors of bowls) and four bowls that matched the color of the Jelly Beans. Then I told him that the game (he's been really into games lately) was to put the green Jelly Beans in the green bowl, the red ones in the red bowl, etc.

He did really well. I've never had him sort anything before except laundry (into whites and darks, and he does ok with that, but not wonderful) so I wasn't sure what would happen.

It was interesting to watch how he chose to sort the beans. If it were me, I probably would have just picked up a bean, decided what color it was, and then decided what bowl it went in, and then moved on to the next bean. Scientist on the other hand, looked through the pile and picked out all the red beans first and put them in the red bowl, then the yellow, then the green, and was left with only orange beans, which he could scoop up quickly and put in the orange bowl. After he'd done it one time, I dumped out all the beans, mixed them up and had him do it again. I tried to get him to pick out a red bean to put in the red bowl, then a green one, and so on, in a pattern. He didn't want anything to do with doing it that way, he wanted to pick out all of one color first and then move on to the next color. I was telling Aaron about this later in the evening, and Aaron said that the way Scientist was doing it was really a more efficient way of sorting, because he only had to sort three colors instead of four, because the last color was already sorted by the time Scientist got to it. So I guess that proves that Scientist has Aaron's brain. Engineers...gotta love 'em I guess.

Happy Easter!

I generally only decorate for Christmas, but Princess and I had a great time making these eggs today. You can cut out any shape you want so this project can be done anytime. Plus it's super easy and fun!

1. Crush up several old crayons in a zip lock bag.(Lighter colors work better.)
2. Place an old towel on a hard surface, lay down a piece of wax paper with your design drawn on it.
3. Sprinkle the broken crayons on the wax paper.
4. Cover with another piece of wax paper and another towel.
5. Iron with a hot iron for about 15 seconds or until the wax is melted. (Be careful not to scrunch up the wax paper while you're ironing)
6. Cut out your design!

Here's another fun idea for Easter. I haven't tried these cookies yet but I have a friend who swears by this recipe/activity and I'm really excited to try it out this year. You mix all the ingredients Saturday night, put the cookies in the oven and Sunday morning you have hollow white cookies - how cool is that!

Easter Cookies

1 cup whole pecans (or almonds)
1 tsp. vinegar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
Ziploc baggie
wooden spoon
tape
Bible
2 cookie sheets
parchment paper

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place pecans in zipper baggie and let children beat them with the wooden spoon to break into small pieces. Explain that after Jesus was arrested He was beaten by the Roman soldiers. Read John 19:1-3.

Let each child smell the vinegar. Put 1 tsp. vinegar into mixing bowl. Explain that when Jesus was thirsty on the cross he was given vinegar to drink. Read John 19:28-30.

Add egg white to vinegar. Eggs represent life. Explain that Jesus gave His life to give us Life. Read John 10:10-11.

Sprinkle a little salt into each child's hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus' followers, and the bitterness of our own sin. Read Luke 23:27.

So far the ingredients are not very appetizing, are they? Add 1 cup sugar. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him. Read Psalms 34:8 and John 3:16.

Beat with a mixer on high speed for 12 to 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. Explain that the color white represents the purity in God's eyes of those whose sins have been cleansed by Jesus. Read Isaiah 1:18 and John 3:1-3.

Fold in broken nuts. Drop by teaspoons onto wax paper covered cookie sheet. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus' body was laid. Read Matthew 27:57-60.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF. Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door closed. Explain that Jesus' tomb was sealed. Read Matthew 27:65-66.

Go To Bed!! Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the oven overnight; however, Jesus' followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed. Read John 16:20 & 22.

On Easter Morning open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice the cracked surface and take a bite. The cookies are hollow! On the first Easter Jesus' followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty. Read Matthew 28:1-9

Sick Day Websites

We have been sick at our house for the last week. Someone forgot to tell Scientist that you are supposed to take it easy and rest when you're sick, so that your body can use its energy to make you well. One of the ways I found to get him to hold still for a small amount of time was to let him play toddler games on the Internet.

We did a google search for "toddler games" and came up with lots and lots of responses. Most of them I was not impressed with, but I did find a few that we will probably visit again. I think they have some educational value to them.

Minimops.com is the first website. It has five different games. The first is putting together dinosaur puzzles. The second is a band and you click on the different instraments to make them play. Third is drawing music. Fourth, and this one is my favorite, if a flower pot game. You get a picture of a seed, a flower pot, a watering can, and the sun with some clouds covering it. You have to pick the right order for planting the seed, watering it, and chasing the clouds away to give it sun. If you do, then a flower will grow in the flower pot. The fifth game is a dot to dot picture. All the games you can play with simple clicks of the mouse. Scientist seemed to catch on to all of them pretty quickly except the puzzles.

Fisherprice.com is the other website. This website has three different categories for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. The only one we've been to is the Toddler section. They have about 27 different toddler games. We haven't tried them all out yet, but here are a few of my favorites. The ABC Zoo. You push buttons on the keyboard and a cooresponding letter pops up. It says the name of the letter and then an animal that starts with that letter. So for example, "A, allegator begins with A" and then the little animated allegator chops it's teeth at you. Another one I liked was the Animal Sounds game. Two animals pop up on the screen and then you hear an animal sound. You have to click on the animal that makes that sound. There are also several different "Click and Color" games that Scientist really liked.

These aren't activities that we would do all day everyday, but when you're sick or just needing something "entertaining" that's still educational, we found that these websites were a lot of fun.

Hole in your Hand

Here's a fun experiment we stumbled onto today. Roll a piece of paper into a tube, place the tube up to one eye. Keep both eyes open and focus on something across the room. Now place your hand in front of your free eye so that it touches the side of the tube. Ta-duh! There's a hole in the middle of your hand! The kids thought this was a hoot and kept playing with it for quite a while. They tried using different colored paper, poking something into the hole and seeing if they could see holes in other solid objects. It was a great chance to discuss how our eyes process images and a hole lot of fun!