Our Peep Experiment

Since Peeps are on sale for pennies right now, we went and bought lots of them just so we could do this experiment over and over again.  It is so fun to watch them grow and grow and grow! The science of it is that Peeps are basically water and sugar.  When the water heats up, it begins to melt the sugar and the combination creates a gas inside of the contained microwave causing them to grow. If you have left over Peeps you should give this a try. These were the best pictures I could get of our experiment.  We tried different times, different colors and different amounts of the Peeps. 

Craft Stick Bracelets

   My daughter loves to play dress up and loves her accessories.  I saw these cute bracelets at

Suzy's Artsy Craftsy Sitcom
 and had to give them a try.

They were really easy to do but the first part I did by myself.  I soaked the craft sticks in water over night.  Then I gently bent them to make them fit into a little cup.  I let them sit and dry over night inside of the cup.  Then I put paint in little cups and let the kids paint them. We used markers and stickers for decoration too.  I had to get into the decorating on this one.  When the paint dried, we added a coat of craft glue.  Cute....ehe?

Neon Pancakes

My kiddo's looovvvee pancakes.  We don't only eat them for breakfast.  We eat them for snacks, dinner, lunch (not all in the same day).  I make them "silver dollar" size so they can just pick them up and eat them.  Today we made them super bright as well.  Just add a few drops of food coloring to the batter before cooking them.  We often add stuff to them too.  A scoop of peanut butter, bananas, applesauce, orange juice, blueberries, chopped up apples, wheat germ, a bit of vanilla, chocolate chips, etc. 

                                                                          Yumm-O!

Mini Wind Socks

I saw these in Family Fun magazine and thought we could give them a try.  We didn't follow the instructions exactly but probably should have.  Anyway, we glued a piece of tissue paper to a square of construction paper. Then we cut the tissue paper into fringe.  We added a line of glue and glued the square into a cylinder shape.  We used clothes pins to keep it together while it glued.  We glued a strip of paper to the top and put a piece of yarn through it.  Then we taped the yarn to a straw.  That was it.  When we do this again, we will try a glue stick instead of Elmers glue.  Less wait time!  Just a hint if you do try making these.  R played with it all afternoon!

Felt Ice Cream Creations

I made felt cupcakes a couple months back and since the weather is suppose to be warming up soon (come on warm weather!), I thought the kids would have fun creating ice cream creations.

All you need is a couple different colors of felt.  I cut out half circles to represent bowls, triangles for the cones and "scoops" of ice cream.  I used the scraps to make sprinkles.  We cut out some yellow cresent shapes so we could make bananna sundaes.  Kept us creating for awhile!

Sock Toss

It was a little tough to get any good pictures of this fun game.  Actually, my son came up with it and I just expanded on his idea.  His idea was to take his socks off and ricochet them off the TV.  So I grabbed a big tub and a bowl, put a collection of balled up socks in the bowl and had him practice his aim and hand/eye coordination by tossing the socks into the tub. When we mastered tossing into the tub, we tried aiming for the smaller bowl.  We played this for a long time, good times!

What We Did With Plastic Eggs

This time of year you can find these eggs EVERYWHERE, and for really cheap.  So, we have an abundance of them and we found sooooo many things to do with them, besides fill them with candy and hide them!  I decided to just do one post dedicated to what we have done in the past few days with them.

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 I hid little objects in the eggs, like a paper clip, button, piece of a straw, etc.  Then I lined up a matching object on the floor.  The kids shook the eggs and tried to guess what object was inside.  They set it next to what they thought was in the egg.  When all the eggs were shook and matched, we opened them up to see if our guesses were correct.

 We used rice, beans and pasta to fill up the eggs and make musical shakers.  I added a couple dots of hot glue before I closed them so they wouldn't open all over the floor.

                                                            We sorted them by color....

                                                             made patterns with them.....

                            we scattered them all over the floor and picked them up by color, T picked up the           green, R picked up the pink and purple (of course!)

    We had races with them, first pushing them with our noses, then blowing them to them to the finish line!

So much fun and great learning experiences too!

Egg Shell Art

We saved our egg shells from breakfast this morning.  I washed them out and let them dry.  Then we broke the shells up into tiny pieces.  We divided them up into little cups and added a couple drops of food coloring.  We mixed them up  but you could put the shells in a baggie and color them that way too.  I cut out the center of a paper plate because it is a little more sturdy than regular paper.  R just squirted her glue on and then sprinkled on the egg shells.  T painted his glue on and sprinkled the eggs.  I think they came out beautiful!  Such a great sensory experience.



3D Sticky, Drippy Corn Syrup Fun

We poured corn syrup into some cups and colored it with food coloring.  Then I made cones from white paper so that the syrup would drip down them.  We used spoons to pour the corn syrup onto the cones.  It was really messy but the kids had so much fun watching the colors mix and drip. The syrup dries hard and shiny but takes awhile to get there.  We put the cones on wax paper overnight.  Definitely a process not product experience! 

Looking in the Mirror

The other day my son was asking me if I could see his forehead? his chin? his hair?  We discussed why he could not and then we went into the bathroom so he could see his full face.  He ran and grabbed some paper and the markers so he could draw himself while looking in the mirror.  It was a great experience. 

Awesome Aluminum Art

We did these the other day and the kids had so much fun making their aluminum pictures.  They kept asking for more.  I gave them small pieces of aluminum and they tore it into the sizes they needed.  Tearing and squeezing the glue bottle is a great way to strengthen those little muscles needed for writing.



Through a Child's Eye

T figured out how to use our camera and we let him go to town.  It really is amazing to view what he saw through the lens.  If you can, hand over the camera to your kid for a bit.  You will be pleasantly surprised, not to mention it will keep them entertained for a minute or two...that is always priceless!  Here are a few that T took recently.

                                                                        His Sister

                                                                          His Socks

                                                                         my food
                                                  

                                                                       his fork

                his face