Finished Watercolor Collage

He wasn't so sure about ripping the colorful paper he had made, but he finally did, and added some yarn designs, and here is his finished product.

Artsy Fartsy

I'm feeling rather artsy today. This week we are reading a bit about Mozart and listening to some of his music. Today I thought it would be fun to paint while listening to Mozart. I got the idea for this painting project at Art Projects for Kids . I'm making it a 2-day project, so I'll just post our day one pics now, and you can see our finished artwork tomorrow.

Today G painted one sheet of paper in a single color, he chose blue. Then he painted another sheet with all the colors he wanted. We will wait for them to dry and finish the project tomorrow.

On a side note, it's amazing how G's feet couldn't resist dancing when I turned on the music. I'm feeling a little Mozart aerobics coming on...

It Really Is the Little Things...

...that bring such joy. I noticed this in my refrigerator the other day and it made me laugh. Does Nalley not have an editor? How did they not catch this? Ah, well, I'm glad they didn't because it made my day. :-)
Mmmm...now let us all go snack on some Crunchy Dill Wholes.

Ubleck!

G has a friend over today and I thought the boys would get a kick out of Ubleck. It's just a thick mixture of cornstarch and water, but it's fun to play with as it sometimes behaves like a solid and sometimes like a liquid.

I also found this video clip from the Ellen Degeneres show that I thought was great!

Now go out and have fun with Ubleck!!

Now You See It, Now You Don't

We decided to do a science project today and found this in More Mudpies to Magnets by Elisabeth A. Sherwood.

It is a project on discovering what dissolves in water and what does not. We filled five glasses with warm water and chose five kitchen ingredients to try dissolving; sugar, salt, cinnamon, powdered sugar, and corn starch.

We found that the sugar, salt and powdered sugar dissolved while the cinnamon and corn starch just settled at the bottom of the glass. This project gave us the opportunity to discuss such vocabulary words as dissolve, solution, settle, and sediment.

Handwriting Worksheets

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but if so, I think it's worth mentioning again. I've found a great website for making your own handwriting worksheets. You can use whatever words or sentences you want, type them in, and it makes a printable worksheet. G and I both like it!

Pretzel letters!

"Look Mom, a D!" G was excited to find that he could make letters out of his snack this afternoon.

Strawberry Soup

I got this recipe from Lee Binz at The HomeScholar. It's a great treat for Valentine's day or any day.

Ingredients:
1 bag, 20 oz. frozen strawberries
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon vanilla

Puree all ingredients in a blender, and pour into a serving bowl. It is great with plain or strawberry flavored yogurt, and you can use sugar or sugar substitute. Cover and chill 2 hours or more. Garnish with fresh mint leaves.

Valentine Cupcakes

It was G's idea to make Valentine cupcakes, I swear! I'm just going along for the ride. It seriously has nothing to do with my cake fettish. :-)

A New Coat for Anna

This week we are reading A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert. Today we took our measurements like the tailor in the story and compared G's measurements against mine. Then we went out for a nature walk to collect different colored items for dying yarn. We collected grass and leaves for green, we found one dandelion for yellow, we found some unidentified berries for orange, and we used a teabag we found in the kitchen for brown. Here's a picture of our yarn soaking in the hot colored water:

Here are our results:

Top to bottom: Dandelion, grass, berries, tea. The yarn running vertically is the undyed yarn. We concluded that of the materials we used, the tea worked the best.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

G worked for a couple of hours altogether on my birthday present this year. When he was finished, he presented me with a box full of rolled up papers tied with yarn. On each one he had drawn a picture. I loved it! Here are some of my favorites. They are just too cute not to share.

The stages of plant growth:

Monster Jam...he's never been, but wants to go.
A vampire bat, his latest interest.

Shrek

God...he is big!

Of course, "I luv cats".
"I luv Gezus".

Making Valentines

G had fun making valentines for some online friends. I counted this as handwriting time since he had to write the recipient's name and his own name on each one. He has a tendency to write in very tiny letters. It took some coaching to get him to write big enough that his friends could actually read it. :-)