Seashells from the Seashore

Aidman has been really into shells lately. On Sunday he collected an entire bucket of shells at the beach. Today he sorted them into about 5 different groups. Then I sat down with him and showed him more differences between the shells and we ended up with 10 different types of shells. We found this website and Aidman held the shells up to the computer screen to figure out the names of each shell. I then wrote the names of the shells on a sentence stripe and taped a shell to it so that we could always identify them.

Then Aidman wanted to sort the shells again by putting them on the sentence stripes, Lyssy had fun doing it too.

Then I asked them if they wanted to make chimes with their shells. I had seen this at Read 'Em and Leap and thought it was super cute. The only problem we had was that after it dried, our washable tempera painted flaked off the bowl while I was trying to tie on the strings.

The thing that surprised, impressed, and made me proud the most was that all of this AWESOME learning was prompted and led by Aidman, but I guess the best learning is always child led.

C is for Clouds

Today we read It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw. I love this book because of it's repetitive nature and how easy it is to identify the pictures. The kiddos feel like they can read it all by themselves which is a big self esteem boaster.

Then we went outside to look at the clouds.

The girls enjoyed talking about what they looked like.

Then we made out own clouds. We squirted glue onto blue paper.

And added cotton balls to it.

They said that AB's (top) looks like a basket, Lyssy's (middle) looks like a pig, and Aidman's (bottom) looks like a baseball.

Tubes and Tunnels

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine gave me about 3 cups of marbles. We've been putting them to good use, but Aidman has told me over and over that we needed to roll them. Today he finally got his wish. We used tubes to make tunnels for the marbles.

This was a GIANT hit with all 3 kiddos!! They played with it for an hour straight!! WOOHOO!! Aidman must have told me 10 times that this was "SO AWESOME"!

So simple, yet such a big hit! I LOVE those types of activities.

BTW...I taped cups to the wall to catch the marbles so that wouldn't be all over my kitchen, I would recommend doing that!

Sink or Float

Every kid LOVES to do the classic sink or float activity. Today I let the kiddos choose which items they wanted to test.

Next, we predicted what was going to happen.

They really liked seeing if they we right or wrong.

And here are the results.

Afterward, they continued to retest all of the items over and over. It's just FUN to play in water!

Check out more Kid Friendly Friday Post at I Blame My Mother.

Yeast Experiment

Today we decided to do a Yeast experiment for the letter Yy. We made two batches of rolls, one had yeast and the other did not, other than that they were exactly the same. When Aidman added yeast to the clear bowl, he bent down and said "Yum, that smells like bread".

From the start you could tell there was a difference. The one without was very sticky.

This is after the first rising. The one on the left has yeast.

Lyssy and Ab thought it was so much fun to play in the flour.

Ab was not interested in the rolls because she just wanted to play with flour, so Lyssy and I did all the work. Lyssy kneaded it.

Lyssy cut the rolls into circles.

Here are the rolls getting ready to rise again. The yeast rolls are on the left.

Here they are after the rising.

Now the yeast rolls are on the right. The non yeast rolls spent an extra 5 minutes in the oven and are dark on the bottom and very light on the top.

Visibly, yeast made a BIG difference. Tastefully, yeast made an even BIGGER difference. I wish I would have gotten a picture of Aidman's face when he bit into the non yeast rolls, he was disgusted.

We all LOVED this experiment!! Cooking is one thing, but figuring out why you should add a certain ingredient adds so much to the already awesome cooking experience.

BTW, the yeast rolls were wonderful! Here is the recipe.

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons shortening

1 pack active dry yeast

1 cup water

1 egg

Dissolve yeast in water. Mix dry ingredients, crumble shortening into dry mix. Add egg and yeast water, mix. Place a damp cloth over and rise for 45 minutes. Knead dough, flatten out and cut into circles. Lay on buttered pan touching, lay damp cloth over and rise for another 30- 45 minutes. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Oobleck

Today we made Oobleck for the letter Oo. Aidman decided he didn't want to participate, so we didn't make him. Laneybug and Lyssy made it by themselves.

They wanted purple so they mixed blue and red food coloring together.

I LOVED that Lyssy called it "Gooey Gooey".

They had a really good time playing with it. Again Aidman didn't even touch it, don't know why.

Here's the recipe.

In a small bowl mix 3/4 cup water and 1 cup glue (2- 4 oz bottles)- add food coloring if you want it colored. In a larger bowl mix 1 teaspoon 20 mule team borax (got it at Wal-mart) and 1/2 cup hot water. Pour the glue into the borax solution and let it sit for a few minutes. Stir together- the more you mix the water will absorb- we used our hands once most of the water was gone just to get a good consistency. Pour off any remaining water and enjoy!!

Our Nest Is Best!

Today we read The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman (one of our favorite authors!).

Then we went searching for a nest. We have 3 REALLY big squirrel nest in our trees. We also walked our entire street on the hunt for more nest, we found several.

Next, we decided to make our own nest. The kids said that we needed leaves, moss, sticks, and grass, so that's what they looked for.

Then they got busy building the nest. We found that it was easiest to keep intact by putting the sticks through the moss and connecting it that way. I asked them if they could build a nest without using their hands like birds do and they said that would be too hard.

Our nest looks pretty good!

Snail Shells

Today we were outside enjoying the beautiful weather and Aidman found a ton of empty snail shells under our tangerine tree. There was no digging needed because the shells were just everywhere.

We collected a bunch and he is just so proud of them.

Evaporation Experiment

Ok so I know this post isn't very mind blowing, but my kiddos LOVED this and wanted to check on it every day.

We took two jars and put the same about of water in each. Then we put a lid on one and not the other. We drew a line to mark the water line. Ever day we checked to see what happened.

First Day

Second Day

Four Days Later.

Look at Aidman's face! He cracks me up!!!

Eggcellent Eggs!

This afternoon was all about the egg! First we went outside to see what would happen when you drop raw and hard boiled eggs.

Aidman's raw egg cracked.

Lyssy's hard boiled egg actually bounced, the pictured captured it bouncing.

Then we dropped a raw egg on a pillow and talked about why it didn't crack.

Then we all wrapped the eggs in Soft toilet paper to see if it would crack. They all did, but AB wrapped the most tp around hers and it did not crack much.

Then the kiddos thought it would be funny to crack their hard boiled eggs on their heads for snack.

After that yummy egg snack we went inside to play with the egg activities that mama put in the table top games.

Aidman matched the upper case to the lower case letters.

All the kiddos REALLY loved this spooning activity. I got this idea from My Montessori Journey.

AB and Lyssy matched the correct color eggs.

AB started stacking her eggs and called it a "castle".

Then the kiddos laced eggs. I cut and egg shape out of a cereal box and punched holes in it. They used a plastic blue needle with ribbon to lace.

It was an Eggcellent Afternoon!