Color Mixing with Play-dough

Wednesday we were stuck at home with cold, rainy weather and feeling a little cabin-feverish.  Thank goodness it’s no longer snowing, but still… we would love a little nice, sunny, beautiful autumn weather before winter really comes.  I’ve gone outside just to be outside one time so far this fall. 

Anyway, since M coughed, breathed, and just generally snotted (Check-spell is telling me that’s not a word.  Hmph.  It doesn’t know my kid.) all over his play-dough a couple of weeks ago when he was sick, it had to be thrown out.  And today we made a new batch.  :)

I love making play-dough at home – it’s all nice and warm when you knead it and the colors can be so vibrant!

We made two batches actually – one yellow, one blue: Then we took a little chunk of yellow, and a little chunk of blue and kept squeezing them together and mixing them up.I asked M what color he thought they would make.  He alternated between “dark blue” and “kinda brown”.  He always says this, no matter what colors we are mixing.  Anyway, if you are wondering – they made…. GREEN!  Just amazing, isn’t it? ;)

(Thanks to whisperingwhispers at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn for this idea in an email!)

Then he played.  2 hours straight.  I’m not kidding.  He even skipped lunch. 

Here’s the best play-dough recipe I’ve come across.  I don’t even remember where I first saw it (it was at least 3 years ago).  We’ve tried lots of others, but always come back to this one:

1 Cup white flour

1/4 Cup salt

2 Tbs cream of tartar

1 Cup water

1 tsp food coloring

1 Tbs vegetable oil

Mix flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a medium-sized pot.  Add water, food coloring, and oil.  Cook and stir over medium heat 3 – 5 minutes.  When it forms a ball in center of pot, turn out and knead on lightly floured surface.  Store in airtight container or plastic bag. 

It lasts several weeks!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our ABC Book – Letter Aa

So, here is our first post for our ABC book! Since we were doing apple activities this week, it just made sense to start with “A” is for Apples!

I saw this cute craft at Izzie, Mac & Me and knew it was perfect for our book.

M glued the big “A” , the little “a”, and a rectangle (for the tree trunk) to a piece of blue cardstock. Then he used his markers to color the pieces. I wrote which color each should be, as he has enjoyed being able to “read” the color names in other projects. He was apparently not that thrilled about coloring this time around:He put his head down like he was bored to death, but it did get colored… barely.

Then he glued “apples” to the apple tree – these were simply red holes I punched.

Next he cut some clip art of things that begin with A out and glued them to another piece of paper: (Yes, this was a different day, different jammies.)

Here’s what our A pages look like in our book. Aa craft page:

Collage page and tracing page:

There is a dry-erase marker attached to the front inside of the book, and a piece of felt to use for an eraser.

Have a beautiful day! :)