Art Time - Painting with Melted Crayons

We did this little art project a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day; I liked the idea of using crayons to paint a rainbow, and it turned out better than I imagined.  M loved this and we’ll definitely do it again sometime soon.   I first saw the idea in a MaryAnn Kohl book (either Scribble Art or Preschool Art) about two years ago, but have since seen it around the blogosphere a couple of times too.

Using melted crayons to paint a bouquet of flowers would make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift, or any spring-time sort of artwork!

We began with a bucket full of M’s “naked” (no paper) crayons.  He loves removing the paper and sharpening crayons, so this step was already done.  Seriously, if you need an activity for a rainy day, have your child peel paper off of crayons and then sharpen them with a crayon sharpener.  M could do this all day!  

Next we chose several crayons in various shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  We broke them up (lots of fun!) and placed them by color into an old muffin tin, lined with paper cups:

I placed the muffin tin in a 400 (Fahrenheit) degree oven.  It took about 10 minutes for the crayons to completely melt.  In the meantime I boiled some water and poured it into a cake pan.  Once the crayons were melted I set the muffin tin into the cake pan too.  The hot water was there to keep the crayons melted, as they tend to harden pretty quickly.  If you have a warming tray you could use that instead.  I really need a warming tray!  :)

I had pre-drawn our design and M used q-tips to paint it with the melted crayons:

    

The crayon went on very thick and created an incredible texture.  I just loved it! 

M’s finished shamrock and rainbow:This looks so much more amazing in real life. :)

It was so much fun, we just had to make something else, so a quick heart was drawn and painted (and Mama got in on the action this time!):

 

Linking to:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Go take a peek…

Take a look at my newest post over at The Homeschool Classroom, where I share some fun ideas for an artsy St. Patrick’s Day!  
Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Science Sunday – Water’s Surface Tension & Exploding Colors

 

We talked about water’s “skin” this week – the stuff that holds water together – also known as surface tension.

We used the following supplies:a bowl of water, food coloring, a small container of dish soap, two pipettes, wax paper, a sponge, a saucer, and some milk.

First to see surface tension, M chose to make the water in our bowl yellow, then he used one of the pipettes to drop the colored water onto the wax paper.  We watched how the water rolled up into little balls: 

Then M used the other pipette to place one drop of dish soap onto the balls of water: The soap broke the surface tension, causing the water to run.  This is how water washes laundry, dishes, dirty little boys, etc. ;)  The soap breaks down the water tension so the water can flow freely into all the crevices where dirt is. (We used the sponge to wipe up after this part.)

Then came the very cool part. :)  Exploding colors!  We poured a small amount of milk onto a saucer, then added one drop of each food color into it.  See how the drops of colored water just sit in the milk? 

Then we dripped soap into the saucer, and wow did the colors “explode” – really!  It was pretty neat to watch, and both M and I were amazed at how quickly the color ran through the milk.  It was lots of fun and M did this over and over again (that jug of milk was getting old anyway ;) ).

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Sunday – Float or Sink

I found this fun book full of science experiments at a local thrift store:All of the ideas in this book are perfect for the pre-k to 2nd grade crowd (in my opinion), and there’s a lot of cool extension activities for the child that may want a bit more.  All of the experiments are quick and easy to do; there’s a list of what you need, and most of the time it’s stuff you already have in your home.  We are really enjoying making our way through this book! 

We’ve done the basic sink or float experiment many times since M was a very little guy and just loved playing in the kitchen sink (mostly making a mess and blessing me with the opportunity to develop my patience).  This time we made it a bit more scientific by making predictions and sorting our items out in a variety of ways.

We used a divided tray with black squares of paper taped to the bottom (it’s a Christmas tray), and M began by writing an “F” for float on one side, and “S” for sink on the other side.

We went through the house gathering items into a basket, making sure to include things made of wood, metal, paper, or plastic, with a couple of other things thrown in too (like a tangerine, which we’ll get to later).  Then M made a prediction about each item and sorted them into his tray based on whether he thought they would float or sink: I’m guessing he really just made random predictions; there didn’t seem to be any sort of consistency! ;)

We tried the “floaters” first, and he was right about most of them: 

Then we added in the “sinkers” and were surprised by quite a few things in this group actually floating, like the glass jar, and the large plastic block:

Funny thing about the jar – it floated when it was empty, but sunk when we filled it up with water! 

A similar thing happened to a folded paper towel – it floated at first, but as it got wet it sunk.

AND – some things that sink will float if they are placed on top of a large floater!

We re-organized our sorting tray so each thing was on the correct side:

Then we sorted them out into another tray according to what kind of material they were made from.  We realized anything that was metal sank.  Most of the heavy or large things sunk, unless they were filled with air; filled with air, these same things floated. We also realized that the things made from wood all floated.  A foam dart and a sponge floated too (until we squeezed all the air out of it under the water), as did most of the plastic items, except for the heavy car, which also had metal on it.

Our “floater” tray, separated by material:

See the tangerine peel?  It has air pockets in it, which make the tangerine float.  We peeled it, and the peeling floated, but the fruit sank:

And then he played:   

I think M really already knew most of what we learned in this experiment, but being more orderly about “discovering” these things really made it stick in his mind.  He had so much fun with this, and his playing at the sink warmed this mama’s heart with memories, and also made me thankful that he is not nearly as messy anymore! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – January

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

The sweet deer that visit us weekly at our nature center.
  We are getting to be good friends with these graceful and beautiful animals. :)

I’m not sure where the time has gone this month!  We haven’t done a ton of learning activities, but we are slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I’m re-thinking and re-planning some things as we go.  I’ll try to just hit the highlights of this month in this post (sorry if it gets too long!).

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES
(independent or semi-independent activities)

Mostly, I’ve been rotating toys on M’s shelves this month.  New toys from Christmas make this easy to do for a while.  I have plans to create a page where I can list all the activities I rotate on the shelves for M, because I think it’s fun to read that kind of thing, but also because I think it gets kind of tedious on these weekly posts to keep listing the same things time after time.  I will, however, make sure to mention any new items that I put out for him.

Folding:

M folds laundry like a pro (towels and washcloths mostly), but has been practicing his paper-folding skills since we got this great little book.  He loves this book, and I let him do as many pages as he wants.  He tends to get obsessed with something until he has mastered it; apparently this is just what makes him happy and how he learns best, so I don’t really follow the rule of stopping an activity while he’s still enjoying it.  Doing that frustrates him and makes him less likely to take it up again.  Here’s a little example of what this book is like:

See the little mouse?

Eek!  It’s really a giant elephant! ;)

It is so much fun – I’m not much of a fan of traditional workbooks, but the Kumon group of books is excellent.

 

Cutting and Pasting – I cut construction paper in several colors to size, hole-punched the edges, stuck it all in a 3-ring binder and gave it to M for his own photo album: He has his own digital camera (an old camera of ours that doesn’t have a memory card, but takes about 20 pictures at a time), so I’ve been printing out some of his photos for him.  He loves to cut them out and place them on the pages.  He actually uses double-stick tape most of the time for the “pasting” part of this.  I think it will be so much fun for him to look back through when he’s older.  It’s not the best quality, but it’s simple, inexpensive, fun, and a good way to sharpen those scissor skills. :)

As you can see, he’s fond of self-portraits, hee hee:

 

Mazes and dot-to-dots - I also made a little book of these for M.  The mazes were from another Kumon book, and the dot-to-dots were something I found on Amazon.  I cut off the binding and placed each page in a page protector, then all of it went into another 3-ring binder:

This has been a big hit with him.  There are, I think, roughly 80 mazes – great for reasoning skills and fine motor skills.  The dot-to-dots each go up to 100, which is a real challenge for him right now, and we normally do those together.  Since the pages are all in page protectors, he uses a dry-erase marker to do them, erases them with a piece of felt, and then does them over and over again.  I think this will be a great car-trip book!

Math: Not much has been done on this front, although M continues to enjoy counting anything and everything.  One day he decided he wanted to count to 100 and surprised himself by actually doing it. :)  He only needs a little help once in a while, and he does not recognize the written higher numbers, but wants to, so that’s what we’ll do next. 

Science: M loves doing this: 

Mixing colors of water in an ice cube tray.  He asked to do this, which he does from time to time.  It’s one of his favorite things.  He likes to watch the colors mix, use the pipette, etc.  Normally he then asks for these ice cubes when he’s taking a bath, and enjoys watching them melt and color the bath water.

We’ve been doing one mama-led science experiment per week, and I’ll post about these at Science Sunday on Ticia’s blog – stay tuned!

As you may know, M is obsessed with all things electric, especially light bulbs and batteries.  He has been itching to know how these things are made, and I found a couple of interesting you tube videos about just that – How Light Bulbs are Made, and How Batteries are Made.  He was fascinated by the machines that make these things and loved the videos, although I’m not sure how much he really understood (the voice over sounds like a computer voice and has what might be a British accent).  I was pretty fascinated too!

 

Literacy:  We’ve been reading, reading, and reading some more these past weeks.  We are content for now for that to be the main thing in this area.  Actually, more than content, we are loving it.  I feel like we’ve found so many great books lately, which I hope to post about soon.  I’ve decided to wait until this fall to start any book units with extension activities – that’s what we will do if M doesn’t go to a “real” preschool then.  We’ve been reading chapter books at lunch over several days, and picture books for about 1/2 hour each afternoon (snuggle time!).  M’s comprehension of the longer books continues to amaze me.  Sometimes he understands things I don’t even catch!  He’s developing a real love of books, which makes this mama very happy. :)

He is also a rhyming fiend.  Everything has to rhyme lately – oh goodness, you can imagine the nonsense going on here.  Things like, “Mommy, did you ever see a bug licking a fug?”  {Sigh}  or “Are you a dishwasher, made out of fishfasher?”  {Sigh again}

I found some great nursery rhyme sequencing cards here.  I made a little cardstock mat to place them on: 

I printed out several sets of sequencing cards, and by looking at the cards, M was usually able to tell which poem they were for.  Then we’d say it together and then he’d say it again, while setting the cards out, in order, on the appropriate square.  He really enjoyed this.  I’ll probably set this out on his shelf with more cards for him to do independently.

 

Karen at Prekinders has these fantastic rhyming mats and cards, which we also did.  M always enjoys doing these!

 

Art:  We’ve started going to a weekly music class – it’s very informal – lots of playing around with a great assortment and variety of instruments, some movement songs, and lots of rhythm activities.  We enjoy it a lot, but I’ve noticed it’s the same activities, in the same order each week.  Occasionally there’s a new song thrown into the mix, but there just isn’t enough variety to keep us interested in going each week.  There are only 6 more sessions, so I think we’ll try to make it to 2 or 3 more.  It could be such a wonderful program if a little more effort went into the planning.

As far as other art – this drawing cracks me up:

It’s just a regular drawing of him, but see the rectangle drawn around him?  And how his feet aren’t touching the bottom?  It’s M jumping!  Hee hee, I love it.

We’ve also been doing one planned art project per week.  Most recently, we colored on white construction paper with crayons, then rubbed over it with mineral oil.  This was an idea from one of Mary Ann Kohl’s books (can’t think of which one right now), and it was supposed to make the colors brighter.  It didn’t really seem to be working, so I showed M how to make a loopy design and then color in each open area, hoping that with more color all over the paper it would work better.

It worked okay, and actually the oil made the paper seem more like a thick vellum, which was pretty neat.  We hung the finished artwork in the window to be a suncatcher, but unfortunately we haven’t had much sun lately.

 

Miscellaneous:  Lately I wander around my house, seeing things like this:

M has definitely mastered his screwdriver skills, and I realized that I really don’t need to worry about providing many fine motor skill activities for him anymore. :)

 

This is a little old, but every year, once Christmas is finished, we set our tree outside and make treats for the animals:

We also read The After Christmas Tree, by Linda Wagner Tyler:   which talks about the tree’s “second season of giving”. 

 

Finally, I’m not sure what category this falls into, but it was fun!  I filled a bowl with water, added a bunch of small objects, and let it freeze outside overnight.  The next day M chiseled away at it to get all the little things out.  He really enjoyed this!

 

Hope your winter is full of coziness! 

 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner, Friday Wrap Up,and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)