Making Ice Cream

Yesterday we enjoyed a beautiful sunny day at one of our favorite parks, Wildwood Park. But to make the fun even BETTER we hosting an ice cream making day with our homeschool group - it was fun!

This is such an easy and fun little project that can be done anywhere. You take a gallon ziploc bag and fill it about 1/4 full of ice and six tablespoons of ice cream rock salt. Then you take a quart size ziploc bag and fill it will 1 tablespoon sugar, 1/2 cup cream and 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla. Seal this ziploc bag really well and place it inside the gallon size bag of ice & salt. Seal the gallon bag up really well and start 'working' the bag - shake it, shimmy it, roll it and wiggle it. Shake all the ice cream makings around in that ice until it is frozen... about five to ten minutes. Then open and enjoy the ice cream ~ DELICIOUS!!!

Rainbow Batik

I saw this wonderful project at this great site Pink and Green Mama (a favorite of mine)- as soon as I saw the project, I just had to try it out with Holly as this was right up her alley. When I showed her what we were doing, she was very excited. We started with a white cloth napkin and if she enjoyed this project we would later tackle something larger like an apron or book bag. This was just the right size for now though.

You take your Elmers Gel Glue and draw a design all over your fabric. Let is sit and dry for a couple of hours, we set ours in the sunshine. Then you paint your design with acrylic paint - rainbow colors for us. Again, let this dry for a couple of hours, we set ours in the sunshine. Once the paint is dry you will then soak your fabric in a sink of hot water for about 15 minutes and the glue will begin to dissolve. You can scrunch/rub the fabric together to encourage it to happen quicker, this will not ruin your paint job. Once the glue has fully dissolved from the fabric it will reveal the design you created, a batik.

This project, though it looks fancy, was amazingly easy and quick! Holly truly enjoyed this - we'll be doing more I am sure! A fun art project!!!

Place Value Review

As we are gearing up for the upcoming school year I have decided to a bit of review work with Holly on subjects we didn't cover as in depth as I'd have liked last year. She had a great year in math and is a natural at it I think, however we did not do a whole lot with place value in her Kindergarten work - I wanted to get a jump start on that for this year.

I picked up this great book that is completely on place value and we broke out some of our manipulatives. I was worried it would take a bit for her to get it... not at all. She picked it up immediately! Once she picked up the pattern and made the connection she moved right on to connecting the place values of  1s,10s, 100s and 1,000s. We'll still do some more review to really solidify it for her, she enjoys playing with it all. I think being pretty quick at adding has already helped with grasping this concept - but now I want to reverse it for her and show the approach of breaking her math into tens and hundreds for quicker calculations.

Weekly Cooking ~ Mini Pizza

We do at least one cooking experience a week with Holly, often times more! This week she was able to pick a menu for dinner one evening and her choice was mini pizzas. I took her to the store where she chose all of her ingredients, she even selected to use Jiffy pizza dough mix vs making it from scratch - which is fine with me as we've done both. She then shopped for all the toppings and did the transaction at the cash register. I am going to start including the shopping/planning portion more this year with our weekly cooking experience.

We came home and she set to work reading the directions and making dough. She then divided it to personal portions and created the pizzas. I am bummed as I took photos along the way... but forgot to take one them baked. I can promise you though that they turned out wonderfully! A fun little cooking project!

Art Club Fun

Today Holly attended her first ever Art Club function through our home school group that we adore. Today they worked on Modigliani Inspired Self Portraits. The kids learned how to break down the project based on sectioning their paper, did a self portrait on black paper and colored in with pastels ( a favorite medium of Holly's). She did a fantastic job of listening to her instructor, taking her time and being pretty complete in her work. I really enjoyed that she was able to see other children completing art along side of her, how their styles differ so much and how they complete their work. She is looking forward to her next session in a few weeks with the Art Club, I am too!

Nature Club - Ponds, Turtles & Micro Organisms

Today we met with our Nature Club friends once again at the Tacoma Nature Center for a wonderful talk on Painted Turtles. The gal did a fabulous job with the children keeping them engaged, sharing a turtle shell, skull of a turtles head and more. When they discussed the diet of a turtle she fed the turtles - very fun! We also did a brief talk on the Western Pond Turtle which is quiet threatened, she shared on the local rehab program being used in conjunction with Woodland Park Zoo. It was very interesting and for Holly a good connection because just last week we discussed the Western Pond Turtle at the Woodland Park Zoo when we were there.

After a talk in the nature center the host then guided the kids to the first bridge at Snake Lake where they searched for Painted Turtles. We found quiet a few on a log and several swimming about. She spoke a bit more, answered several questions and then left the kids hard at work in their nature journals. They all drew amazing drawings of turtles and their habitat.

To round out our visit we got permission to dip water from the pond for each kid. So, they all took turns getting a little jar full and one master tub full. We then brought this back to settle and we all searched for various micro organisms in the water. We used magnifying glasses and microscopes - the kids LOVED this part! They spent a lot of time during this session and were probably not quiet done when we decided to wrap up and enjoy some play. The kids found several bugs that we were able to identify and some that we could not. It was a great experience for them... some even asked to come back and do this again very soon!!!