We Love Experiments

The boys started asking to do "Volcanoes" this morning, which is basically a pie pan full of baking soda and then I make four small bowls of different coloured vinegar. They use tiny measuring spoons to make mini colourful volcanoes. Today I said "Why don't we make a really big volcano?" 

So we did. I put 3/4 cup of baking soda in a bottle and shook it up with some red food colouring. Then we added 3/4 cup of vinegar. Their reaction was awesome. 

"Bubbles!" That is what the boys kept yelling. I felt smart putting the bottle inside a dish... Good thing too!

We added vinegar three times before the baking soda ran out. Measuring spoons joined the fun.

Next we added some canola oil to see how it didn't mix. This was not smart, since I did not foresee oil stains on their shirts.

Next we added blue food colouring because I had no more ideas. We needed about four more cups of water to make it a fun adventure. They made Pepsi Pudding... Which to me sound delicious.

They played with this for about 1 hour and it was awesome.

Oh yeah... There was also glitter glue involved... When squeezed in it didn't mix and made glitter snakes, which was really cool.

Beanbag Monster

Sorry the pictures are all sideways... I can't seem to make them flip! 

Anyways... Awhile back I made beanbags for the boys out of a bunch of scrap fabrics. These are great beanbags... kind of pyramid shaped, good for throwing. We kept waiting to get a big enough box to make a monster to throw our beanbags at. I had found a few on pinterest I liked (Can you tell I use that site a lot?) and the boys both loved the open mouthed monster. The boys helped design and paint this guy.

After about 2 days of using it for its proper purpose they discovered it was also good for climbing...

 For the record, the monster was also used as a chair by Jacob to watch an entire movie. And then they had a BLAST destroying it. Monster is now in the recycling.

I was going to be annoyed and then I thought- painting, throwing, climbing, resting, and breaking... all before recycling. That's alot of activities for one box that before I had kids would have just been recycled. Good times.

Tangrams Rule

I love tangrams. If you've never played with one, it is a square divided into 7 shapes. These 7 shapes can be arranged into an infinite number of designs. I found a website that showed how to make every letter of the alphabet and another site that specialized in tangram zombies. However, this was a project I devised for my MOPS (Mothers of PreSchoolers) group, so it needed to be appropriate for 4 year olds. This was my practice version, to save ink the boys and I coloured the shapes ourselves... The final project looked more professional but I gave them all away since this one works just fine! The square is 6"x6" on a peel-and-stick magnetic sheet. I also made a little cheat-sheet with a couple of designs for the kids to follow.

A bunny... the cheat sheet is to the right.

A house

Doing it himself: Jacob's Fish

A Doony... don't worry I don't know what that means either.

Daniel was so proud... he made a Lady.

Wishing For Spring

I often let the boys pick a craft off of the internet to do. Jacob found this particular one. And guess what? I had an ice cream tub full of lids because I have issues with throwing something out that might be useful someday.
I had the boys create their colourful caterpillar without any glue first, then I gave them the go ahead to touch the glue once they were satisfied. Googly eyes and legs added and they were done. (Daniel's is the one on the left, I did the first four legs and then he took over. Tallest caterpillar ever.)
And the best part about this craft? The next day they had a blast ripping all the caps off the leaves and destroying their caterpillars. Good thing I took a picture!