Fizzy Hearts

The baking soda and vinegar reaction never gets old.  Even I still enjoy watching it fizz up.  In honor of Valentine's Day, I mixed some baking soda, food coloring, and a little water in my silicone heart mold and stuck it in the freezer.

I popped out the hearts and presented them to a very excited Katelyn with a muffin cup full of vinegar and a dropper.

She went right to work.

After a few minutes, she decided a spoon would work faster.

She used about four cups of vinegar, and would have used more but we were all out.  That ended up being okay though because she proceeded to smash the remaining ice with the spoon and move it around in the vinegar that was left on the tray.

Mittens and Pom Poms

One day this week, Kate and I looked at a few crafts on Pinterest, and she chose to make stained glass mittens.

I cut out the black mitten outline and stuck it onto contact paper.  She tore pieces of tissue paper and placed the pieces within the mitten outline.

 After finishing one pink mitten, she decided the other mitten should be a different color.

Then we moved on to mitten math.  I cut mitten shapes out of white card stock and added numbers with the corresponding number of dots.

Kate found the correct colored pom poms and placed them on the dots, counting each time.  She has known all of these colors for a long time and she is also pretty good at counting; we mostly worked on number recognition.

Our next activity was to help Kate develop fine motor skills and hand strength.  We have these neat tools she used with the pom poms.

 I enjoyed the most wonderful pom pom ice cream treats made just for me by Kate.

Fruity Turkeys

Acorns and Squirrels

 Kate made handprint acorns.

 I drew an acorn and ripped up a paper bag for Kate to glue onto the paper.  She tried to rip some of the pieces herself, but grocery bags are very strong and not easy for little hands to rip!

The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game is super cute.  We have played it many times this week.  It's a great game to teach young children colors, number recognition (only 1 and 2), strategy (which color acorns do you need), and fine motor skills (squeezing the squirrel grabber to pick up acorns), plus it is well made and quick to play.

I helped Kate make acorn treats using Hershey's Kisses, chocolate chips, and Nutter Butter bites. 

While out on a walk, Kate found many acorns and placed them in her felt autumn pail.

We will spend some time over the next few days counting the acorns, but so far she has just enjoyed playing with and examining them.

A Squirrel's Tale is definitely Kate's favorite book out of this bunch because it comes with a little squirrel that you slip through slots on each page - super cute!

Ice Tunnels

This morning, I set up a fun science activity for Collin, Reagan, and Kate.  We used blocks of ice, rock salt, and watercolors to create ice tunnels.

I put a different watercolor (you can also use food coloring) in each of the six muffin cups and added a heaping tablespoon of rock salt to each cup.

I had filled a few small containers with water and put them in the freezer earlier this week with this experiment in mind.  I put the blocks of ice in our water table, and gave the kids eye droppers to use with the salty watercolor mix.

Boo was interested in this activity for a minute or two, but luckily he decided a nap was in order. There was obviously a lot of salt used in this experiment, and salt is very dangerous for dogs.  I was happy he decided to nap and I didn't have to work extra hard trying to keep him away from the salt.

This is an experiment that takes time and patience.  At first, the color is just dripping down over the ice, but as the salt starts to melt the ice, tunnels are formed and the color drips into the tunnels.  It is a good experiment to show why salt is used on icy winter roads, and it is just a fun activity.  All three kids enjoyed this, mostly because they just like using eye droppers and pretending to create concoctions!

 Here you can see the tunnels forming.

 Kate continued to play LONG after Collin and Reagan had stopped!  She really liked using the eye droppers, and it is great fine motor practice!

In the end, I was probably the person most impressed by the tunnels of color in the ice, and that is okay.  It's all about the process and learning a little about the effects of salt on ice!  Plus, it's a very cool art activity with some fine motor practice thrown in, and even a sensory element with the ice!  All around cool!

I almost forgot to mention that we have done this before with regular table salt.  The rock salt works much faster, and I think it creates better tunnels!