Ocean In A Bottle

Tonight we our own little ocean in a bottle. The idea came from here. This was a easy, quick, inexpensive and fun craft.

 

To make our little ocean we used a funnel to fill a clear bottle approximately 1/3 full with water.  We added a few small shells and a plastic shark, and a couple drops of blue food coloring. We filled the rest of the bottle with some vegetable oil. Clear vegetable oil or mineral oil would have been ideal but we didn't have any on-hand.  I sealed the bottle closed with some hot glue.

Alex was very interested that the water and oil would not mix. I showed him how to lay it on its side and gently move it back and forth to make "waves."

Under the Sea

Lately we've been really busy with a good friend's wedding. Last week we did get a chance to make some sea creature crafts. We made this cute hand print crab. This was another idea that I got from Pinterest. The original post came from here.

After the hand prints dried. I painted on some glue and he sprinkled sand on it to make a beach. He also added some googly eyes.

He also free painted a couple of starfish shapes that I had cut out for him.

We also did a sorting printable and a pre-writing printable from Homeschool Creations' Ocean Pack and we watched a Under the Sea Song clip from Disney's The Little Mermaid on Youtube.

Backyard Camp-out

Last night we had a back yard camp-out. Both Daddy and myself are on vacation and it was a nice night out. Alex was so excited.

 

While it was still light out we made some toilet paper/ paper towel roll owls. I was inspired to make these from Frugal Family Fun's blog post. I simple collected the paper tubes, folded the top to create the owl's ear tufts. Instead of painting them we used colored tissue paper and decoupaged them. After we added some googly eyes, beaks and wings. Daddy's owl is the really tall one with the crazy "feathers," he said his was molting. LOL Even Grammy joined in on the craft. Her's is the cute purple and blue one on the right.

Afterward we built a fire and made S'mores. Alex wanted to eat each part individually.

It was dark out then, so we had some glow stick fun. We made a awesome glow stick lantern that I saw on Pinterest original post by Little Blue Boo. I simply cut open a couple of leftover glow sticks and dumped the contents of them into a jar. Instant lantern.

Alex also had a glow stick wand that made some interesting photos. When I shot them on a low shutter speed.

After a fun night it was time for bed, and we all crawled into the tent and went to sleep to the sound of crickets chirping and a cool summer breeze blowing through the trees.

Dino Eggs

We are hopefully headed towards 1000 Islands tomorrow. Alex has a fever though. Ugh. He has been so excited to see Prehistoric World just over the border in Canada. Every day he asked if we are going to see the dinos. So a couple weeks ago I made him some dinosaur eggs. We just cracked them open today. I have seen it on numerous blogs, but this is the recipe I followed. I'm not sure where it came from.

DINO EGGS
You Will Need:
21/2 cups Flour
21/2 cups Used Coffee Grounds
11/2 cups Salt
1 cup Sand
Up to 1 cup Water
** plastic dinosaurs
How To Make It:
Mix flour, coffee grounds, salt & sand.
Gradually stir in water until mixture holds together.
Use as little water as possible to speed drying.
Allow up to a week to air dry.
** Add the plastic dinosaurs as you are forming the rock, so that
when you crack it open, out pops a baby dino

Add water till it is like a play dough consistency

I think I added too much coffee they were very brown colored.

We let ours dry for little over 2 weeks, since it has been so humid

They were hard to open. Alex needed help.

Salt Painting Fireworks

Alex is getting pretty excited to celebrate Independence Day this year. He is excited to see fireworks and the parade. So today I thought we would try a fun little activity that I had seen on I Can Teach My Child blog. We made some salt absorbing firework paintings. Alex really enjoyed it. It was pretty simple. I drew some firework shapes on a piece of black construction paper with glue. Alex sprinkled the wet glue with salt until it's completely covered, then we tapped off any excess.

Then he used a eye dropper to drip red and blue water (food coloring and water) on the salt. As the salt absorbs the liquid, the water will move along the glue lines and it created our "Fourth of July fireworks".

It was a pretty interesting and fun effect. If you try this be sure to let your child know that the creation won't last. The salt comes off very easily once it is dry.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend!

What Do you do with Broken Easter Eggs?

Make them into grass head eggs, of course! We had a few eggs that cracked when I was blowing out the egg contents. I cracked the tops off and we colored them anyway. We added some soil and some grass seed. We had some "face" stickers that came with a egg decorating kit, that Alex used to created some faces on the eggs. We watered them and put them by the window. In a couple of days the grass began to sprout.

Six days later they now have long "hair." We gave one a haircut and another got a trim and ponytails. Alex really enjoys watering them, checking them each morning to see how long their hair is.

A Yarn Basket

I wanted Alex to make his Grandmother a special little Easter gift. So I came up with the idea to make a balloon yarn basket. I remember making them when I was little. So I blew up a balloon, cut some yarn into strips and mixed up some glue with water. Alex dipped the yarn into the glue mixture and draped it over the balloon. He did a few strands and then decided it was "yucky" so I ended up doing the rest.

Checking out the yarn on the balloon.

We let dry for a couple days and then he popped the balloon. This was Alex's favorite part!

The eggs were just for photo purposes.

We will add a little bit of Easter grass and a few goodies. I really hoping to make some of these.
So there you have it...a cute little Easter gift for "Grammy"

Marbled Easter Egg Garland

I saw the idea to make Shaving Cream Easter Cards at Little Wonders' Days about a week ago and decided it would be a fun, messy project for us to try. Alex had a blast, he loves anything that makes a mess and they came out really pretty. We made our eggs into a garland.

Here is what we did. I spread some shaving cream on a tray then added some acrylic paint. 

 Alex swirled it around with a brush

 Then he laid a piece of paper on the swirled colors, and carefully lifted it up.

We tried different colored papers. All the directions I read it said to use a squeegee to remove the shaving cream. We didn't have one so I just blotted them with another piece of paper to get off the excess shaving cream and whatever was remaining disappeared when they dried.

 

The shaving cream was a lot of fun for sensory play too.

 and it turned a lovely shade of "yuck" brown. :P

 After they had dried overnight I cut them into egg shapes, used a hole punch to put to holes in the top and laced them on a piece of embroidery thread. We had some flower cut outs left over from my birthday decorations so I added them in between each egg on the garland. We hung it up on the beam in the middle of our living room. It added a nice little touch of Easter/ Spring to the room.

Cinnamon Ornaments

Today we did some Cinnamon Applesausce Dough Ornaments. We made 10 little gingerbread men and look forward to decorating them in a couple days. Alex loves pouring and mixing and playing with dough so this was a great project for us, plus our house smells great now.

While I was cleaning up, I gave Alex the empty Cinnamon container, some pipe cleaners and some red and green lacing beads. He laced the beads and put the pipe cleaners in the holes in the container. Great fine motor skill work and I got the kitchen cleaned!

It seem like everyone in the blog world has made these cinnamon ornaments, but just in case here is the recipe.

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

Supplies

• Applesauce
• Cinnamon
• Foil or waxed paper
• Spatula
• Cookie cutters
• Cookie sheet
• Ribbon or jute twine for hanging
• Glue, beads, buttons, glitter and other embellishments are optional

Instructions for Cinnamon-Applesauce Ornaments

1. Mix equal parts of cinnamon and applesauce to make a soft dough. For instance mix one cup of applesauce with one cup of cinnamon.
2. Roll or press the dough out on a foil or wax paper covered cookie sheet.
3. Use cookie cutters to make shaped ornaments.
4. Pull the excess dough away from around the shapes.
5. Use a straw or toothpick to make a hanging hole at the top of the shape.
6. Let the ornaments dry on the sheet.
7. Decorate the ornaments however you wish. Run a piece of ribbon through them for hanging.

Christmas Learning Activities

~Alex is 33 months~

We've been so busy lately with getting ready for the holidays, Christmas shopping, and my insanely late nights at work that we haven't done as many activities I would have hoped but here is what we have done.

I did get Alex to sit still long enough to get a Christmas card photo taken and I got Christmas cards printed.

 

Today we looked at My First Jumbo Book of Christmas

Not much of a storyline but it is interactive, with lots of little flaps to open, textures to touch, tabs to pull and turn,  pop up illustrations and a little present at the end to open with 4 ornaments inside. I got it at a discount store for a couple dollars and it was worth the money.

We also did a bunch or worksheets. We did a Alphabet Christmas Tree Mat We only did the abc one because that is the only letter that we have really worked on. Alex did great with it, we used Do A Dot markers to match the letters.

We did a Do A Dot Christmas Tree printable from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

A Rudolph Color Matching worksheet from Little Piles Everywhere Alex did great with this too, but he still calls colors by the wrong name at times.

and we did some free drawing with markers on a craft foam shaped Christmas Tree.