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Showing posts from June, 2012

Milk Paint and Melted Crayons

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On hot summer days we rarely feel like doing any schoolwork. Often we'll find fun activities to keep us occupied and while the boys don't realize it I do count all of our activities as part of school.  Today we had fun with art and science and combining the two.  We made our own paint and tried our hand at melting crayons in the sun. I quickly made up a batch of paint from sweetened condensed milk and food coloring. Once painted, it dries nice and shiny and it's an unusual consistency to paint with.   They tried painting some of the stuff they had found on a nature scavenger hunt and they tried making prints on the paper and then they just painted with paint brushes. We put our broken crayons in the sun and watched them melt bit by bit throughout the day. Some of them melted completely; others hardly melted at all. Ian told us that "the dark colored ones melted first because dark colors attract the sunlight more."  We'll probably keep them outside another day

Old Sturbridge Village Field Trip

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Though Alec was a bit sore this morning, we decided to stick with our original plan to go to Old Sturbridge Village.  We arrived right for opening time and the rain stopped. We had a great time.  The place is HUGE. I don't remember it being that big; in fact I didn't remember much about it at all.  They had lots of hands on things for the kids and tons of live demonstrations. I'm sure much of it was more than they could truly grasp and understand but they enjoyed it and the two older boys said they'd like to go back another day when it wasn't so hot. We went on a horse drawn wagon ride. They got to pump water from the well. They practice weaving and use a spinning wheel. They pet live animals and learned to stretch wool into fiber. Carding the wool to make it soft and fiberous. The two older boys made a tin candle holder. Making tin candle holders. We had a snack, played on the children's playground and checked out t

Never a dull moment! Crafting and Spending Time In Nature

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We've had a pretty busy couple of days.  We spent lots of time crafting, playing, and exploring nature.  One thing I have learned is that life with three boys is never dull.  It's messy, loud, and always keeps me on my toes.  Even a simple trip to a nature center is never quite so simple. Last night I took the boys to the 7th Annual Reading In The Park... what a fabulously fun night all centered on reading! They had 10 (yes, 10!) different craft stations set up where the kids were able to participate in crafts related to different books. There was entertainment , a wonderful children's singer named T- Bone who was very lively, funny and entertaining.  Here is a link to his page  http://www.t-bonemusic.com on which you can find his touring schedule.  Each child received a free book at the end of the night and they handed out water bottles and snacks.  Oh and did I mention this was all FREE?! My kids loved it. We met my sister and nephew there too.  Then we started right in

Bubble Painting, Mystery Writing, and Melted Wax Suncatchers

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 Our day started out pretty good.  After the usual coaxing from me to turn off screens and get ready for our day, we jumped into our homeschooling. I get some grumbling but usually once I mention a few of the day's projects that quickly turns to excitement. Every morning when Ian gets up he asks if we can do science first today.  I find this funny since we've been doing science first almost every day.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and our activity was outside so I, of course, said sure! We headed outside where we, once again, played with bubbles. This time they used a tin pie plate and a regular drinking straw to make a mound of bubbles. I put a tiny bit of paint in each tray in the hopes of making bubble prints too.   However, it seems like you need a ton of bubble solution in each tray (or else it was the wind messing us up). The bubbles kept popping before the mound got over the lip of the plate and making prints was just too hard. So, I ran in the house and grabbed

Making Bubbles and Puff Paint; Activities galore today!

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We had another fun day filled with activities today.  I'm really trying to ease us into homeschooling and find that fun hands on lessons work best.  The boys think we're playing and having fun and I know we're learning.  Continuing w/ our bubble unit we tried making our own bubble solution. Found on, yep you guessed it, Pinterest! All you need is 1 cup dish soap  12 cups water  1 cup cornstarch   2 Tbsp baking powder Mix all ingredients together gently trying not to cause any bubbles. I didn't have a cup of dish soap though but I did have 1/2 a cup of dish soap so we cut the recipe in half and really it made  more than we needed for a morning.  I made the boys figure out how much of each ingredient we needed if we only needed half of each and they easily figured it out. (math!)  It was super easy to make and once we had it all put together we headed outside.  I wouldn't recommend using this solution inside since it does leave that chalky cornstarch residue everywher

Making Snake Bubbles and Decorating T-Shirts

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We've been having so much fun learning! I found a non- fiction book at the library all about bubbles on Friday and I couldn't resist checking it out since I've had so many ideas about cool bubble projects I wanted to do with the boys. Most of them I found on Pinterest and they include everything from bouncing bubbles to giant bubbles, to snake bubbles, to painting with bubbles. So this week our science unit is going to be all about bubbles!   We started out with making snake bubbles, which are super easy!   Just cut the bottom off a plastic water bottle, attach an old mismatched sock (or a face cloth would work well!) and dip into bubble solution or soap & water and start blowing.   I had them make their own bubble blowers, I know it would have been easier to assemble them myself but figured there had to be some sort of learning taking place while assembling them.   To make the bubbles more colorful we added food coloring directly to the sock then started blowing.   We