Summer Fun Kids' Projects

I intended this summer to be full of reading with Five-In-A-Row, but my library card expired and I haven't felt like paying for a new one yet (because we live so far out, we don't qualify for the free membership). Instead this summer has so far been filled with science and art projects.

This was a simple, cheap and fun thing to do.  We took an empty cleaning bottle (or a 2L bottle would work) and I let Silas drill a couple dozen holes in it.  Then we simply duck taped it to the garden hose, and voila!  We made a sprinkler!  

We have sturdier and more interesting sprinklers, but sometimes it's fun to take a piece of trash and make it worth something.

Note to self:  next time make sure the garden hose is dry before wrapping it with duck tape.  

As promised, an update to our ivory soap experiment.  This is Eli playing in the bath with it. He loved it (although it's obviously not tear-free and he did get it in his eyes).

 I was a little worried it would stain his skin because of the food coloring, but the soap washed it right off.  I did have a blue ring around my bathtub, but it just gave me motivation to actually clean the tub.

We've been doing a lot of art projects.  This was a birthday banner for a family friend.  Silas did an excellent job painting in the letters.  For Eli, I painted a bunch of glue onto the right side and let him stick all sorts of things on it: feathers, confetti, sequins. 

Our latest project was cloud dough.  A mixture of flour and baby oil, it's intended for sensory play for toddlers.

And this toddler had loads of fun with it.  It's kind of like wet sand, in that you can mold and form it into things.  And as it's been too hot to really enjoy the sand box, this was a good substitute.

I was glad that I put a tablecloth underneath the box.  I just took it outside and shook it off.  The dough made some mess, but most of these projects do.  Or should I say, Eli made a mess.  It wasn't the dough's fault that he couldn't keep it in the box (i.e. see picture below of Silas with bits in his hair).

Silas has issues with getting his hands dirty but he loved this one because the dough is really soft and smelled like babies (clean babies...). 

This was a fun experiment that was easy and cheap to make.  The boys played with it for about 45 minutes, but they could have gone on longer if I let them.

I'm sure we'll be doing more things before the summer's over.  Although I am getting excited about starting my new job as a first grade teacher...of one.