Homemade Face Paint

We have been making homemade face/body paint at least once a year for the past three years or so, and it is always a lot of fun.  Making face paint is on our Summer Bucket List this year, so we mixed some up this past weekend.

Ingredients:
corn starch
water
mild lotion
food coloring
stirrers - one for each color (we used popsicle sticks)
applicators (we used cotton swabs)

Directions:
I use a six cup silicone muffin pan to make the face paint.  I think this keeps everything contained and makes for easy preparation.  In each muffin cup put: 1 tsp cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon - 1 teaspoon water (enough so that it mixes well), 1/2 teaspoon baby lotion or whatever you use on your children (something mild), and 2 drops (or desired amount) food coloring.

Use separate stirrers to mix each color.

We use cotton swabs to apply the face paint.

It was 100 degrees and C decided to wear long sleeves!

Face paint fun is always followed up with bubble baths (a rare treat around here), and it washes off pretty easily.

T is in the UK

T (age 14) is traveling with the student ambassador program through People to People this summer.  He will spend nineteen days in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.  While he is there, he will meet with a member of Parliament, explore the Tower of London, view the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, ride on the London Eye, spend three days with a family in England, explore castles, receive a lesson from a golfer at St. Andrews, search for the Loch Ness Monster, learn about Gaelic football and Hurling, train as a soldier in a recreated medieval encampment, abseil 70 feet off a tower wall at Penrhyn Castle, complete service projects, and more!  It is an amazing opportunity for T, and I am so happy that he was selected for this experience.

I am hoping that he takes a lot of pictures, and if he does, I will share some of them here.  Mostly, I just hope he stays safe, has a wonderful time, remembers to brush his teeth, and doesn't lose anything. 

Kelly insisted on lots of kisses before T left!  She already misses him so much.

Fun With Food - Day 3 - Popcorn Science

C and R love to make popcorn, so when I saw this popcorn experiment in The Science Chef  by Joan D'Amico and Karen Eich Drummond, I knew we had to try it.

The purpose of the experiment was to determine whether dry or wet popcorn pops better.

These are the materials we used:
1 1/2 cups unpopped popcorn
cookie sheet
bowls
1 cup water
colander
Whirley Pop stovetop popper (you can use any method to pop the kernels)
oil

This is what we did:
1.  We placed 1/2 cup popcorn on the cookie sheet and left it in a 200 degrees oven for sixty minutes

2.  We placed 1/2 cup popcorn in a bowl with 1 cup water for sixty minutes.

3.  After sixty minutes passed, we drained the popcorn in a colander and removed the kernels from the oven.

4.  We popped three batches of popcorn - the kernels that were in the oven, the wet kernels, and 1/2 cup of kernels that were left unaltered.  To pop the kernels, we used 2 TBSP canola oil for each batch and we popped them in our Whirley Pop stovetop popper (you can pop them however you usually pop your corn).

Before we began, I asked C and R whether they thought the unaltered kernels, oven dried kernels, or wet kernels would produce the greatest amount of popped corn.  They both said the oven dried kernels would produce the most popped corn because it would get hot before popping.

Once all three batches were popped, we examined them to determine which batch produced the greatest amount of popped corn, which batch produced the largest kernels, and which batch tasted the best.

C and R love to record their findings.

Here are the results:

• wet kernels - 11 cups of popped corn, biggest popped kernels, tasted the same as the unaltered
• unaltered kernels - 10 cups of popped corn, tasted the same as the wet
• oven dried kernels - 7 cups of popped corn, smallest popped kernels, not as tasty as the unaltered and wet kernels

The reason for the results:
The soaking process added water to the kernels, and the more water there is, the more steam is created in cooking, making the kernels pop better.

C and R were happy to eat this experiment!

Thanks for the notepads Papa and Grandma!

Stay tuned for my review of this cookbook!

For more science experiments, check out Science Sunday hosted by Adventures in Mommydom.

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.

Summer Bucket List - Mini Golf

I think I enjoy checking things off on our Summer Bucket List just as much as C and R enjoy it.  Yesterday, we went to play miniature golf.  Mini golf with young children is always funny with balls going everywhere and a par 3 becoming a par 36, but luckily we had the course to ourselves.  T and his friend also played, but they finished about fifteen minutes before C, R, and I!

C and R were also thrilled to go on the bumper boats and play some video games at this family fun center.  They were lucky that T and his friend were happy to take them on the bumper boats because I am way too pregnant for that!

Fun With Food - Day 1 - Dirt Pudding

My kids love dirt, especially C, but they both enjoy digging in it on a regular basis.  When I saw the book, Dirt by Steve "The Dirtmeister" Tomecek at the library, I figured it would be a fun way to sneak in a little bit of learning in the summer.

The book explains how soil is made, how soil changes as you dig deep, and what each layer of soil is called.

Dirt pudding is the best dirt themed snack, and Almost Unschoolers has the coolest soil horizon pudding recipe.  We decided to copy that for the most part.  It begins with a sugar cookie bedrock, followed by smaller sugar cookies for weathered parent rock, topped by pudding topsoil and Heath bits gravel (Almost Unschoolers used cookie crumbs),  with a final layer of pudding and "organic material" (we used more Heath bits, but Almost Unschoolers used nuts and butterscotch chips).  We happened to have some gummy worms in the house, so we topped our dirt pudding with some of the most important creatures found in the soil.

Yummiest dirt I have ever seen.

We are having fun with food over the next few days; it should be lots of fun!

Day 6 of Fizzy Fun - The Root Beer Float

I thought ending our fizzy fun with root beer floats would be perfect, and it was.  My favorite activities are those that attract all three of my children, and T (a big fan of root beer and ice cream) was happy to join us for this science lesson!

The science behind the root beer float is the same as the Mentos/Soda Fountain, but not as messy and definitely tastier!  You can click here to read more about the science.

Before making the floats, I asked all three children whether they thought adding ice cream to already poured root beer would create more fizz than pouring root beer over ice cream in a glass.  C and R both thought more fizz would be created by adding the ice cream to the soda, but T thought the opposite.

Root Beer poured over ice cream

Ice cream added to a glass of Root Beer

T was right!

Fizzy, frothy, fantastic fun!