Rainbow in a Jar

I came across this book while browsing through the library and thought it would be a great little activity to try!

Here is what you will need......

.....plus a spoon, measuring cup, and a large mason jar or glass cylinder that can accommodate 2 1/2 cups of liquid.

Purple - mix 1/2 cup corn syrup with 1 drop blue and 1 drop red food coloring.  Pour into jar.

Blue - slowly pour 1/2 cup of blue dish soap down the side of your jar.

Green - mix 1/2 cup water with 2 drops green food coloring.  Tip your jar and slowly pour the water down the side of the jar.

Yellow - slowly pour 1/2 cup olive oil down the side of the jar.

Red - mix 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol with 2 drops red food coloring.  Tip your jar and slowly pour the alcohol down the side of the jar.

Here is the finished product!!!

This is a great little science lesson on the density of different liquids and on how some liquids don't mix (water and oil layers).  This book has easy, kid-friendly pictures, instructions, and explanations.

Have fun making your own liquid RAINBOW!

Linking up to Funky Polka Dot Giraffe, RedTedArt

Oobleck

Have you ever read this book?  Have you ever made oobleck?

It is the   cRaziesT stuff!

It acts like a liquid when being poured and like a solid when a force is acting on it.  So you can pick it up out of the bowl but then it will ooze out of your fingers!

Here is how you make it:

1 cup water {with some food coloring mixed in}

1.5-2 cups corn starch {if you want runnnier oobleck use 1.5, harder oobleck use 2 cups}

mix it up with your hands

Then have LoTS of fun!

A great way to combine book reading with hands on fun.

Have you Filled a Bucket Today?

Have you ever read this book?

It's such a wonderful book that helps kids visualize how their words and actions affect other people.

It talks about how positive words and actions will 'fill' someone's bucket with happiness and good feelings and how negative words and actions will 'empty' buckets.  It encourages children to be 'bucket fillers' and not 'bucket dippers'.  These simple words, descriptions, and pictures seem to really connect with children and we frequently use these terms to encourage positive behavior with our kids. 

I had the opportunity to read this book and do a 'Bucket Filling' activity with Sarah's Daisy group last week.  All the girls were so attentive to the book and were more than willing to contribute bucket filling ideas.

After the book was read they each decorated a silver bucket with their name and some colorful stickers.  

Finally, they filled out these note cards for each member of the Daisy group so that every girl would bring home a bucket full of positive 'bucket filling' notes. 

You can find this printable and more at What the Teacher Wants.

Remember to ask yourself at the end of each day.....

"Did I fill a bucket today?"

Counting to 100

It's way past the 100th day of school but I thought I would still talk about this fun book.  It's filled with great pictures and ideas to encourage kids to count to 100!

After reading the book Sarah immediately wanted to try a few of the ideas.

The first one she wanted to try was the snack.  She picked out 10 different snacky items from the pantry and counted out 10 of each.  A great way to practice counting by 10's.

And a very yummy reward for her efforts!

The kids also wanted to try making the playdough hedgehog with 100 toothpicks in it.  They actually became quite attached to their prickly little friends which were displayed for a few days before I tossed them into the garbage.  Naturally, Jillian asked where her 'Hedgie' was later that day.  There were even tears when she learned that Hedgie had been tossed, but as you can see it was quite a dangerous little 'toy' to have around!!!

Shared at Sun Scholars

The Corner Store

We have played 'Corner Store' a few times now.  The kids LOVE IT!  They help pick out what will be in the store and then take turns purchasing their items.  We usually fill the bowls with a combination of food and non-food items.  The items in the store today were: fruit snacks, granola bars, marshmallows, squinkies, gumballs, crayon erasers and stickers.

It is so interesting to see their little personalities come out in this activity......Jillian will use up all of her $2.00 to the very last penny.  She would also buy all gumballs if I would allow her - I enforce a strict 5 gumball rule.  {The gumballs were left over from our gingerbread house building at Christmas, in case you are wondering why I even have gumballs in the house!}

Sarah, on the other hand, is our healthy eater and often forgoes the sweets and usually has a bunch of money left over.

Once the kids have picked all their items I have Sarah add up the total and then count out the change - a sneaky way for her to practice her math and money skills.

Sarah also read {and really enjoyed!} the following 2 books by Loreen Leedy.

This is a great book that introduces money concepts such as: buying, selling, earning, saving, investing, donating, budgeting and interest!  It has 'kids humor' too which had Sarah laughing out loud. 

This was a cute book about a quarters adventures at the mint, bank, store, vending machine, garage sale and more.  It held Sarah's attention and was another way to help her learn about money math without knowing it.  Love that!

Polar Bears

Snow Day #7

The theme today is Polar Bears!

We started with a Polar Bear Pancake Breakfast.

{1 large pancake and 2 small ones for the nose and ears, a grape nose and chocolate chip eyes}

I asked Jillian to put a light dusting of powdered sugar on her polar bear.  Somehow it became more like a SNOW STORM of sugar, but I think she looks quite happy about it!

We have been reading books on polar bears and once again an "Adventures of Riley" book is a huge hit.  We have previously read an 'Adventures of Riley' book during a Penguin themed snow day and the kids loved that one too.  So far they have asked to read this book 5 times!  It has lots of great information and it holds the kids attention.

We also read Ice Bear.  Another great book to learn more about polar bears.

We also checked out a few polar bear videos on you tube.

Click here to watch a video of a polar bear and her two cubs in the wild - my kids love how the mama bear toboggans down the hill.

How do Polar Bears stay warm?

This was an experiment that I was really excited to try with them.  In the above books we were learning how polar bears stay warm in the freezing tempertures.

This experiment shows how the bears thick layer of fat helps to keep the polar bear warm.

1st  Make 'ice bergs' by freezing crumpled up paper cups filled with water - as seen in this post.

2nd  Fill a large bowl with water and 'icebergs'.

3rd  Make a 'blubber glove'.  Put one cup of shortening into a sandwich bag.  Then turn another sandwich bag inside out and put it into the first bag - attach them together so that your hands will not actually touch the shortening.

First the kids first put their hands into the freezing cold 'Arctic water'.

Then they put their hands into the blubber glove and tried again.

Wow!  My hand is not cold anymore!

That's how polar bears stay so warm!

They all had so much fun with this and were amazed by how they could not feel any cold when their hands were inside the glove.  My cute Sarah even suggested that they should make winter gloves out of blubber!

Polar Bear Snack

After the experiment the kids wanted to make a polar bear snack.  They thought of using an apple with marshmallow legs and even thought of putting the goldfish all around for the polar bear to eat!  It was great to watch their creativity!

Puffy Paint Polar Bear

For our polar bear craft I drew out a polar bear shape and gave them a few options of how they could fill it in.  I knew they would pick the puffy paint option - they love this stuff.  We have used it before (here) and the results were really cool.

To make the puffy paint just mix elmers glue and shaving cream!  You could even add some food coloring to it if you wanted some colored puffy paint.

......and here are the Puffy Paint Polar Bears!

And of course, I needed to add a picture of our favorite little

polar bear cub!

Linking up to ABC and 123

Penguins Penguins Everywhere!

Another Penguin themed day!

Are you getting tired of these cute little birds yet?

I've almost reached my saturation point and am looking forward to posting some Valentine themed crafts soon!

Here is a cute little Penguin Glyph.  You can print it from here.

And here is a little Penguin song I found.

Jillian LOVED it since one of the penguins is named Jill!

On Top of an Iceberg
(Tune: On Top of Old Smokey)
On top of an iceberg,
All covered with snow,
I saw my first penguin,
And I wanted to know.

Oh, is it a bird,
Or, is it a fish?
I looked at his feathers,
And knew which was which.

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
Which species are you?"
He said, "I'm an emperor,
And not a gentoo."

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
What's under you patch?"
He said, "It's an egg,
It's ready to hatch!"

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
Oh, where is your wife?"
"She's out in the ocean,
She'll be back tonight."

Said Mr. Penguin,
"Her name is Jill.
She's out in the ocean,
Feeding on krill."

The next thing I knew,
I heard a small peep.
And I saw a chick,
At the emperor's feet!

Tonight we had a PENGUIN themed dinner!

The kids waddled to the table and really got into the whole PENGUIN idea!

Sarah called her milk 'sea water' and {when she accidently dropped some food on her clothes} said, 'oh no - not on my nice tuxedo!'

We started with an appetizer of 'krill'.

 {cream cheese spread on ritz crackers with shrimp on top}

The main course was fish followed by.......

Penguin Pie for dessert!

We filled out this Penguin Pie worksheet that you can find here.

This worksheet teaches kids about similes......

My penguin pie is as COLD as ICE

My ice cream is as WHITE as SNOW

{I never knew that these popular sayings were called similes - I love learning with my kids!}

If you would like to read more about similes, idioms, and popular sayings check out this fun book by Loreen Leedy and see how many similes you get right!

{Chris got 12/14 correct - smart man I have!}

And that ENDS the week of PENGUIN posts!

More Penguins!

  South Pole Penguins is a wonderful book that is quite interesting.  It had lots of facts in it that included some geography, biology, and ecology.  The best was it talked about penguin poop (called guano).  We all know that kids love potty talk - so Sarah thought this book was hilarious!  Jillian, however, was very sad to find out that the food web for penguins is changing due to global warming and that the penguins are not finding enough food.

{The Adventures of Riley is a series.  Some of the other books take him to Madagascar, the Amazon and South Africa.  We will definitely be checking out these books too!}

 Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Penguins

I attempted to make a fun penguin snack with things I had in the house. 

Yes, these penguins look a little bit sad, but the kids thought they were great!

{I was just happy the kids could tell they were penguins!}

1 cut a large marshmallow in half lengthwise and stack it on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet

 2 cut some of the sides off the top marshmallow to form a thinner head 

3 covered them with melted chocolate (the backs will not have chocolate on them)

4 take the marshmallow 'bits' that you cut off the head and use them for the white bellies

5 some fruit snacks we had in the house formed the feet, beak and eyes

6 put in the fridge (once out of the fridge you can trim off the excess chocolate)

Penguin-licious!

Penguin Math!

I'm going to make the next week of posting all about PENGUINS!  There are so many penguin related books, activities and crafts that I figured I would dedicate a whole week to that cute little bird in a tuxedo!

365 Penguins is really a math book.  It was a lot of fun to read, and if I can make math fun it will engage Sarah.  We both enjoyed this book.

Continuing with the math theme, I sat the kids down with some great penguin math and activity printouts.

As anyone with more than 1 child knows, it can be next to impossible to get a picture with all involved children looking and smiling at the camera.  I tried and tried and here is what we got!

Once the kids settled down they enjoyed the math sheets.  Sarah needed a little help to figure out the concept of Pascal's Triangle......

......but once she understood she was thrilled!

Matthew worked on counting the 'goldfish' in the penguin's belly.

Until Jillian changed the game and helped Matthew eat all the goldfish!

See you tomorrow for more PENGUIN fun!