Outdoor Easel 07/17/2011
 This is an outdoor art easel. It has a piece of 32 x 44 plexiglass. The kids can paint for hours and then we wash away the paint with the hose. (which is also fun) The most appealing part of this to me is that they can be as messy as they want outside and no paint mess in the house. I want them to be creavtive and messy but I shy away from painting inside sometimes because of the mess. With this new toy, everybody wins! I nailed it all together while my husband was at work and he made it A LOT more secure and stable when he got home with screws instead of nails. The wood is simple 2 x 4's and smaller bits from the clearance bins. I had no idea there were clearance bins until last week! The plexiglass is secured by wood on either side on the three sides. There was no big plan, I just looked at the pictures from Play at Home Mom and tried it out. It is AWESOME! Add Comment Daddy's Birthday 07/13/2011
 This was an arts and crafts idea I found before Father's Day. We used it for our daddy's birthday. Follow the link at the bottom for detailed instructions. We started by making the shirt, but tucked in the pockets are love notes and birthday wishes. My little girl cut out a heart and decorated it and drew a picture of herself on green paper and cut it out.  Tissue Paper Bowls 07/04/2011
 Tissue Paper Bowls I wanted "girly" bowls for my daughters birthday but didn't want to buy and store all the princess bowls. I found this craft idea to make our own bowls. 1. Oil a bowl. We used several sizes. 2. Place cling wrap over the bowl. 3. Put glue or mod podge all over the cling wrap on bowl. 4. Cover with tissue paper and add more glue / mod podge. 5. Let dry and add more layers. This does require a few sessions or days to make durable bowls, but it is worth it and a FUN project.  The kids found this easy to do. They were not able to make the bowls as smooth as needed for actual use, so I ended up adding more glue and smoothing down tissue paper when they were finished. See photo below. They helped me make around six bowls that we filled with candy and chips for my daughters princess birthday party. After they party they wanted to play with them and they didn't last long, but it was a fun project and they were quite pretty on the tables. Failed Ideas: I didn't realize that the cling wrap was to help you get the tissue bowls to separate from the real bowls you use for a mold. This lead to two "fails". 1. You must use oil under the cling wrap. 2. (I hate to admit this one...) Don't use press and seal and have it sealed to the bowl. It is impossible to get the tissue paper bowl off the mold with out ripping it. If you do have to rip it off, as we did, then you can add tissue paper and glue while it is standing to reshape it and no one would really have to know.         Melted Crayon on Rocks Art 07/03/2011
 We first created a solar oven. We used a small cardboard box and aluminum foil. I was originally going to try and cook something to eat in it but we were out of hot dogs and s'mores... So, we decided to use it to help "cook" our wax art. It worked perfectly. I grated the wax crayons by myself because it was harder than I thought it would be for the kids and more dangerous. They helped me sort through our crayons and find all the ones without paper. Then they sorted colors onto paper plates for me to grate. One plate had multiple colors and I think it made the prettiest rocks. They placed the rocks inside the oven and decorated them. They started melting immediately because it was around 100 degrees today! They also made pictures on paper, which I will show you in the next blog. We went out after nap and they were done. One of my favorite things to listen to is the kids tell my husband what they did and how it was done when he gets home from work. They did a great retell! Play ideas inspired by: My husband's 6th grade science project. and http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2011/06/touch-feel-learn-solar-oven.html and http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/2011/06/hot-rocks/ Marble Maze 07/02/2011
 Recently we bought new patio chairs. On each side there was a protective plastic piece, which after reading The Chocolate Muffin Blog, was the perfect marble maze! I couldn't get the idea out of my mind until we tried it! The kids play a game called Feed Gnocchi on Pbskids.org. I never really liked the games but was amazed at their ability to make the mazes based on this game. They knew how to place the pieces so the marble would roll onto the next one and if it did not work, they had the ability to fix their mistakes. I was impressed and have a new found respect for the site and Curious George.  We taped the pieces up with Scotch tape and then when they felt the maze was complete I used packing tape to make it very secure. We had two different weights of marbles. One marble from our plastic marble maze game and another from our magnets. We had fun seeing which worked better. There are four sides and a different marble run/maze on each side. A few days after we made this it ended up in the sand box and has been used as a sand slide. It worked great there too!         Play idea inspired by: http://www.thechocolatemuffintree.com/2011/06/seven-sensational-ideas-for-creating.html  We have done an experiment like this before with vinegar and baking soda. Today I gave them many things to choose from. Some bowls had water and some had vinegar. They also had baking soda, cornstarch, sugar, and small jars with spice mixtures. I did walk them slowly through the different ingredients and how things interacted before I "let them loose" because I wanted them to notice the reactions or lack of reactions. The bowls of water also had food coloring for color mixing. The spices for were for pretending to cook. I really enjoyed watching them figure out how to make things bubble up and change colors. I was thrilled when the words, "Hey mom, what do you think will happen when...." continually came up. I responded, "YES!, Try it! What happened?" and numerous small experiments were conducted. After they lost interested with the mixing then we painted with the left overs. The pictures were not show worthy but the process was fun and messy! I don't think they "got" that the sugar dissolved. This reminded me of a science experiment I have done with my upper elementary students where they try different amounts of sugar in a Kool-Aid type mixture and then actually taste them. So, dissolving will wait for another day. I have not tried the slide show feature before, feel free to leave feedback. | Summer 2011
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