Final Favourites - Outdoor Activities

Wow, this final week is really plummeting the depths of unenthusiasm.  On Wednesday we went to Port Franks playground for outdoor activities where the kids spent most of the time on the skate park running from one ramp to another and sliding down them, it was like kids circuit training and it did cross my mind that if I joined in it would be good for my heart and my fitness levels but there were adult witnesses so I stayed firmly on the bench.  The kids were so pink and sweaty by the time we left I bought them ice cream.

On Thursday we went to the beach, I think it was the most perfect beach day this year, the temperature and the breeze were just right and because we were there later than normal the lake had got all shimmery by the time we left.  Jacob and Rose built a 'hot tub' and I sat on a towel in she sun.

Final Favourites - Nature and Water

I wasn't intending to do Nature on Monday but there were cheap white carnations on sale in No Frills and it seemed like a sign.  I read up on how to dye flowers with food colour and got some top tips for success from here, but if you don't have time to read it there are 3 key things

1. Choose daisies or carnations
2. Cut the stems diagonally, quite short
3. Use 20-30 drops of food colour per half cup/120ml

We tried blue and red and mixed colours to make green and purple.  Here's before

And after (24 hours)

They are much more impressive in the flesh

The red and blue have worked really well, the mixed colours didn't, perhaps the 2 different food colours cancelled each other out?

Jacob did some microscope work too, this time we collected some pond water and looked at a drop of that.  I thought I could see some tiny things scooting about but Jacob said no.

Yesterday we revisited water.  Our property manager came and put sprinklers on the lawn for an hour so the children opted for water bombs, squirters and running about under the sprinklers.  It looks grey in the photos but it was really humid and actually felt like about 30 degrees.

We also tried a different method of making marbled paper.  They really liked this, there's plenty of info on it if you type it into google but I used this one.  The only things I would add are cover your trays with something first because its a pain getting all the residue off when you're done and have hand washing facilities very very close by.  Here's the method in a nutshell (illustrated).

Spray cheap shaving foam on a lined (see above) baking tray and smear it around, Rose really like this bit.

Drop food colouring on in patches.

Spread with cocktail stick, toothpick, finger or other extremity.  Try to avoid wiping noses or flicking hair at this point.

Press paper quite firmly onto marbled mess, remove and layout to dry.

They're quite nice aren't they!

Bit of a Summary and Final Favourites

This is getting a bit haphazard isn't it.

First Sun and Recycling.  I've just been looking back at our antics over the past couple of weeks and we did more than I thought, especially for Sun, the only activity we missed out was light sensitive painting which I'll save for another time as it looks quite cool.  We actually did make the sundial over a couple of days last week but the children decided it would be a good idea to rub it out when they were water fighting on Saturday and it never got tested or photographed.  We didn't get around to much of Recycling but perhaps that's a project for March break.

So to final favourites.  We had a look through the blog this morning at all the things we've done and came up with a list of 17 things they'd like to do again.  I don't think so do you? but we'll give it our best shot.

I think the way we'll play it is doing a weeks chosen activity/ies each day and see how we go and this is how our schedule looks...

• Recycling  Make more stylish cuffs and do the magnet experiment we missed.  Jacob also wants to make paper but I'm not sure I can cope with the mess.
• Sun  No chosen activities, Hurray!
• Outdoor Activities  Go to Port Franks playground and take a picnic.
• History  Play marbles, make paper dolls and bake Brownies.  Rose wants to go back to the museum but I'm inclined to agree with Jacob when he says we've done that.
• Nature  Get out the microscope, try again to turn flowers a different colour and make jam jar animals.
• Food  Make your own pizza and the baking soda balloon demonstration.
• Water  Resurrect the water bombs, magic upside down water in a cup and marble painting.

In amongst all this it is Jacob's birthday so there will be frantic cake baking and decorating and we have to find time to get into Exeter again to pick up his new school shoes.  Well, here goes.

Sun - Day Three

Today was a busy day of ferrying Tom back and forth and visiting the library for a very special reason (see The Parkers Abroad) but we managed to fit a couple of activities in between.

We wrote messages in invisible ink and revealed them with heat, another Science Kids activity.  The invisible ink we used was lemon juice, the sort that comes in a plastic lemon that lives permanently in the fridge, we wrote on copier paper with cotton buds then left it to dry.

The words should be revealed when the lemon juice oxidizes as it heats up so for that you need a heat source, we tried several

• The sun, which revealed a bit but wasn't hot enough
• The instructions on the site said a light bulb but that didn't work either
• The iron on maximum heat with guess what, no luck
• A candle, this just about got the lettering showing and almost set the house on fire

this one says 'hecky peck said Nana'

Jacob and I had a talk about why it didn't work, we came to the conclusion that light bulbs in New Zealand (where the Science Kids is published I think) are very hot and you shouldn't skimp on made-from-concentrate lemon juice and squeeze a fresh one.

We also started a sundial on the patio, it is a work in progress because of all the running about we did today, hopefully we'll finish it on Friday if it doesn't rain first.

Sun - Day Two

And another "50 Things".

Today we set out to see if different colours absorb light at different rates and we set up the still again.  The basic idea for our absorbing/reflecting light experiment came from Science Kids again.  We filled two glasses up with water (the same amount in each) and placed specially scientifically prepared, identical (mmm) paper cases around them, one white and one black.  Then we left them in the sun for a couple of hours.

While that was doing its stuff we set up a new still, this time instead of using salt water we dyed our water green with food colouring.  Then we left that for a while too.

We checked on everything just before dinner and the heat absorption/reflection had worked a treat.  You could feel the difference in temperature between the glasses quite clearly but just for luck we also took the temperature of both with a digital meat thermometer.  The glass under white paper was 85 degrees f and the one under black was 92 degrees f.

I know it's not beef, honest

As for the still, it's a good job I'm not trying to manufacture moonshine is all I can say.  I wondered if it is actually too hot right now and the clingfilm surface is not cold enough to cause condensation so we put blue plastic penguin shaped ice cubes on the top and Hurray, a small amount of colourless water appeared in the glass, Jacob drank it before I could get the camera out so I have no proof.

This morning we went to the beach and Jacob buried Rose in the sand, this happens to be in the "50 things" book so it seems like I organised a really action packed day.  We didn't leave her there but it was tempting.

Sun - Day One

Today the sun is out, the sky is blue and the cicadas are singing, this afternoon we will be on the beach but we spent this morning exploring rainbows as Rose has been asking for a rainbow day for ages.

We managed to pack in three activities with varying degrees of success.  First we made our own mini rainbow by refracting light through a glass of water.  This is pretty simple, you can get an explanation here.  Just take a glass of water and put it in sunlight in front of a piece of white paper, tilt it about a bit until you get the angle right and voila.  We made it an experiment by using different sized and shaped glasses to see which produced the best rainbow and we proved it was the water not the glass that refracts the light by trying to use empty glasses.  Here is our best one, you'll have to look close its tiny and try to ignore the hairy arm and chipped toenail varnish.

Next we mixed the colours of the rainbow using only primary colours and painted pictures of them.

Finally we tried to make a rainbow in a glass, I found this on About.com.  It really has nothing at all to do with light but is all about separation of liquids with different densities.  You make up four sugar mixtures with equal quantities of water but different amounts of sugar and use food colour to make them blue, green, yellow and red.  Then pour them into a glass (over a spoon like a barista) heaviest first and lightest at the top so they float on top of each other.  There was lots of measuring and stirring for this activity.  I don't think the kids were really impressed, it made this neat final photo though.

Recycling - Day Two

Yesterday we made paper, I believe this counts as proper recycling.  I thought it might yield some really good action photos but although the process is relatively simple it is quite involved and a bit fiddly, especially for four year olds, so I had wet hands for most of the time and couldn't make much use of the camera.

First we shredded up all the written and drawn on paper that we didn't want from previous weeks camp and put it into a blender with some water.  This resulted in a greyish pulp that Jacob described as 'like sick', I thought it had a really odd texture, sort of icky but pleasantly silky at the same time.

Then we slid a frame (picture frame with mosquito screen stretched across it) underneath the pulp and shook it about until it was evenly covered.  Next, we pulled it out and let it drain off for a few seconds, covered it with a piece of felt and pressed some of the moisture out with a flat hand.

Then flipped it over and pushed as much water out as we could with a sponge.

Finally we peeled the wet paper off the frame and put it out in the sun to dry.

Our first attempt was plain, then we added some bits of tissue paper, glitter and food colour to the pulp to see what effects we could create.

This was something I've been wanting to try for a while, I meant to do it last year but never got around to it.  Once you've got all the bits and pieces together (mosquito screen might be difficult in the UK) it's pretty simple, the tricky bit is getting your pulp fine and thin enough to make paper, most of ours is more like cardboard but I think we'll make use of it somehow, I imagine that it might feature in a number of greetings cards over the next year.

Recycling - Day One

Today we got crafty with a couple of old plastic water bottles.  A few months ago, before I'd read so many craft and sewing blogs I would have said that we recycled the bottles, but now I'm not sure if we 'up-cycled' them or 're-purposed' them.  I feel I should use one of these two terms as they seem to be much cooler than plain old recycling, perhaps I'll go for both.

Rose definitely 'up-cycled' hers into bejeweled cuffs for the style conscious four year old.  Here they are with our inspiration picture from Chatelaine magazine.

Can you tell which are ours?

And here is Rose  modelling them.

Still not worked out how to get rid of red eye

Unsurprisingly, Jacob didn't want to make sparkly bracelets so he' re-purposed' his as spywear for eight year olds.  One is a multipurpose device with a camera, screen, keypad, microphone and lots of ON and OFF buttons and the other is a watch.  I feared he'd think this was just a bit of rubbish fobbing off but he really enjoyed it and wore them all afternoon.

Beam me up!

It's amazing what you can do with a plastic bottle and a bit of old duct tape.

Week Six - Sun/Recycling

I'm having a bit of trouble with this week, I can't decide what to do, don't know what the weather will be like and haven't really got my act together.  It's a good job I don't do this for a living but maybe I could blag it better if it was really necessary.  Our activities this week might be as follows

If it turns out to be a Sun week

• Try the (insert appropriate expletive, "Booping" according to Rose) still again but turning coloured water into clear
• Make our own sun dial
• Make rainbows
• Invisible ink with lemon juice
• If I get around to ordering the right stuff, printing T shirts with light sensitive paint
• Testing whether different colours absorb heat at different rates

If it is a recycling week (this will mostly be crafts)

• Have a meaningful discussion about reducing, reusing and recycling and relating it to grocery shopping so we can look at packaging
• Bracelets from drink bottles
• What to do with hot chocolate/coffee drums that can't be recycled
• Make waste paper baskets
• Make our own paper
• A magnetic interlude, hopefully making them (magnets not the kids) float in a recycled clear plastic tube

I think it will probably turn out to be a mixed week depending on mood and weather so you'll just have to do your best to follow what's going on.

There may also be some more "50 things".  Today we bought a fishing net at the dollar store and went to try to catch a fish in a net, we didn't have any luck for a number of reasons

1. We chose a white net and fish aren't that stupid
2. We have no patience
3. Rose can't keep still or quiet

It's a shame as according to the sign by the boat dock we could have caught a "Pugnose Shiner" or a "Lake Chubsucker".  What genius came up with those names?  Chubsucker is definitely going into my offensive, under the breath insults list.  Anyway, here are the kids fishing, it's good to have a camera again.

Outdoor Activities - Summary

Actually this isn't really a summary but I think I can add some photos from last week.  I don't have anything to edit them with yet (ideas for free photo editors gratefully received) so you get them just how I took them with no tweaking, here goes.

This first lot is from the "50 things to do" day in the Pinery

playing a grass trumpet

balancing on a fallen tree

looking in a hole in a tree

Next I have some playground photos

playground number 1

playground number 2

playground number 3

Some monkeys

And Jacob's Aquafest picture

In brief summary, I think it was a popular week and I don't think that had anything to do with the enormous volume of ice cream consumed!