St. Patrick's Day

Kate made a rainbow with a puffy cloud for St. Patrick's Day.

I drew shamrocks on a few coffee filters, and put them on a tray with droppers in cups of blue and yellow liquid watercolors.  Kate loves using droppers, and this was a great opportunity to work on color mixing; blue + yellow = green.

Don't they look pretty in the window?

Edible rainbow necklaces were also great for fine motor skills practice!  

I gave all of the kids a little extra Irish love.

And, of course, even though we never got around to making a leprechaun trap this year, one of those mischievous little creatures still stopped by to turn our toilet water green, knock over some chairs, write on our bathroom mirror, and leave behind a shamrock trail to the annual gift of Lucky Charms.

I did my best to balance out that sugar with the very best rainbow treats.

R is for Rainbows

 A rainbow snack.  Is there a better way to eat the rainbow?

 I made Kate a rainbow scope by coloring rainbow stripes on a sandwich bag and attaching it to the end of a cup.

Seeing the world in rainbows is pretty cool!

Kate loves the rainbows that dance around the kitchen each morning thanks to this gadget and the sun.

The grand finale was rainbow foam in the water table.  Kate was a whole different child with the rainbow foam this time.  She thoroughly enjoyed the sensory aspect.  It was fun watching her experience it this way.

Rainbow Foam

 Kate was a bit out of sorts today as she is recovering from a bit of a cold.  I thought this beautiful rainbow foam would be the perfect antidote for all that was ailing her, and made it mostly to cure the grumpies.

It was super easy to make.  For each color, I mixed 2 TBSP dish soap (I originally assumed that clear or white dish soap was necessary, but I was wrong, the dye in the dish soap will not interfere with the color of the foam.  I found that Dawn makes the best foam!), 1/4 cup water, and a few drops of food coloring in my mixer on high speed for 1 - 2 minutes.  That's it!  Then I scooped the foam into an under the bed storage bin.  I made one color at a time, and Kate really enjoyed watching the soap foam up in the mixer!

 Kate is averse to touching anything like this, so she used spoons and cups to play in the foam.  I know that somewhat defeats the sensory experience, but Kate enjoyed it in her own way!  I'll have to make this again because I know Reagan will LOVE it.  I bet Reagan will climb right in and enjoy every bit of the foam!!

  Kate had a rainbow foam tea party!

 Her face in the above picture is so precious!  I'm SO ridiculously happy that I was able to capture that expression!

 Here's a cappuccino with extra foam for you Mama!

 Obviously, Kate did get foam on her hands, but I had a small container of warm water and a towel nearby for her.  Phew.  She's not my first child to flip out over sensory issues, so I am usually one step ahead of her!

This was so pretty and all of the soap made my kitchen smell nice and clean.  I am planning to repeat this during our Rainbow week for the letter R.

Milk Rainbow Science

Reagan read Leprechaun in Late Winter over the summer.  At the end of the book, there is a rainbow science experiment that we finally got around to doing today.  We have actually done this experiment before, and I'm sure it's on the blog somewhere.

To do the experiment, we put a thin layer of whole milk in a shallow bowl.  Then looking at the bowl as a face of a clock, we put two drops of red food coloring at 12, two drops of yellow food coloring at 4, and two drops of blue food coloring at 8.  Then we dipped toothpicks in dish soap and Collin and Reagan poked the toothpicks into the areas with food coloring.  This breaks the surface tension and causes the food coloring to move and swirl.  I always expect it to work better than it does, but it's still fun.  Also, the actual experiment in the book says to put a squirt of dish soap in the center of the bowl, but I think our bowl is too big because this did nothing.  I went online (what did we do before the internet?) and found the idea to dip the toothpicks in the dish soap and penetrate the food coloring areas.  It worked.

Fun With Food - Day 2 - Rainbow Pops

It was over 100 degrees yesterday, so our food fun activity just HAD to be making popsicles.  We made two different varieties of rainbow pops.

For the first kind, I made vanilla pudding and separated it into six bowls.  I used Jello instant vanilla pudding and followed the directions on the box to make the pudding.  We then used food coloring to make each bowl of pudding one color of the rainbow.  Then, we spooned the pudding into our popsicle molds, layering the colors of the rainbow.

The nice thing about pudding is that it layers without blending, so we could make the entire rainbow before freezing.

We used fruits and juices to make the second kind of rainbow pop.  To avoid color blending, we had to freeze each layer before adding the next layer. 

 This is what we used:

• red layer - strawberries blended with a little yogurt 
• orange layer - orange juice
• yellow layer - lemonade
• green layer - mashed kiwi
• blue/purple layer - blueberries blended with a little lemonade

C thinks the pudding pops are the tastiest; from what I can remember, they taste like Jello Pudding Pops.  I really like the fruit/juice pops; they are very refreshing.  R thinks they are both okay, but not a treat she would like to eat again.

Another activity checked off on the Summer Bucket List!!

*We use, and LOVE, Tovolo Popsicle Molds to make all of our popsicles.

Rainbow Toast

C and R made their own rainbow toast for breakfast yesterday morning.  I put a tiny bit of milk into three little cups and added two drops of food coloring to each cup (one red, one yellow, and one blue).

I gave C and R brand new, clean paint brushes and a piece of bread and they began creating their masterpieces. 

Obviously, they did some color mixing to make orange, green, and purple on their rainbows. 

When they were done painting the rainbows, we put the rainbow bread in the toaster oven until toasted.  Then we added a little butter and a little cinnamon sugar.  I was afraid that spreading the butter would ruin the rainbows, but it didn't. 

Quick and pretty!  We managed to do this on a school day, so it really was a quick and easy treat.