Friday, July 22, 2011

A New Veggie and Life Skill practice

After coming home from grocery shopping, Sweetpea asked to eat celery. Celery? She has never asked for celery before. I asked her if she would like some peanut butter to eat on her celery and since peanut butter is one of her favorite foods, we were set!


Sweetpea loves spreading peanut butter!  She did start eating the peanut butter right out of her bowl and got pretty messy.


By the time she was finished, Sweetpea ate two whole pieces of celery!  The only other veggie she eats is baby carrots. Well, an occasional green pea too.  I am pretty happy because our veggie consumption is starting to expand!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Dino Eggs and Rainbow Stew

This morning I made rainbow stew (cornstarch, sugar, water and food coloring). The stuff has a soothing texture when you smoosh it. It is also a great way to teach the results of color combining.


 Two different colors are placed in a bag and the kiddos can smoosh them and find out what the combined color becomes.


Dino eggs were also on the agenda. Unfortunately this didn't turn out as well as I hoped.  I made a dough, placed a plastic dino in the middle and baked them.


I think I made them too big, because they were still doughy inside and didn't smash when Sweetpea hit them.


 She did think it was fun to try and smash them. I don't often give her a hammer and say "go for it!" I finally tore them apart and let her pull out the dino.



Yesterday we visited a friend who gave us a bunch of cool educational toys. Sweetpea really likes the magnetic mosiacs.  It is for ages 4+, but she did pretty well anyways.



Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Rain!

We finally got some rain! Well, a light rain for about ten minutes. Sweetpea immediately ran for her rainboots and we went outside to play. She also brought her wand, can't go somewhere without that ;)


After a few moments of frolicking in the rain, eh, sprinkles, we made a beeline to the butterflies hovering over our greg's mist. Sweetpea started chasing them and yelling "Arthur, come back!" We do read the Angelina Ballerina story about Arthur the butterfly quite frequently.


Sweetpea proceeded to try to catch rain in her mouth, alas there wasn't much rain to catch. She did look awful cute trying.


Maybe we will get some more rain soon. It isn't too likely, but one can hope!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Science Fun

For some time I have been wanting to start a blog about the activities we do.  Last weekend I went to an awesome conference for church weekday educators and it was very inspiring. One of my favorite classes was the sensory science class. So many easy ideas!

Today, I decided to do of the science projects with Sweetpea.  The first was "Exploding Color."  Pour evaporated milk into a bowl, place four drops of food coloring in the middle of the bowl.

Touch the center with a qtip that has been dipped in Dawn dish detergent. I let Sweetpea have the honors.

The next experiment was "Dancing Raisins"

Fill a glass jar half way with water and mix 3 TBSP of baking soda into it. Stir. Pour in vinegar until the mix bubbles over. (Wish I had gotten a picture of that!)  Put a few raisins in the mixture.

Sweetpea looking at the first floating raisin.


After a couple of hours all of the raisins were floating.