Baking Soda and Vinegar Science Fun
We had some fun tonight doing preschooler science – mixing baking soda and colored vinegar to watch the reaction. Here’s how it works:
All you need are three ingredients and a few specialized pieces of equipment: baking soda, white vinegar, food coloring, some sort of baking dish or tray to hold the baking soda, and medicine droppers to add the colored vinegar.
Start by tinting bowls or cups of white vinegar with food coloring. We used four colors because that’s what we had in the house.
 |
| White vinegar with gel food coloring added – before mixing |
 |
| White vinegar and food coloring after mixing |
Dump out the baking soda into the dish or tray so that its basically even, and you’re ready to go!
 |
| Ready to go! Note the little hand clutching a medicine dropper in the background |
 |
| A filled-up tray, before the fingers dug in! |
Crayola Online Fun
Sometime in the past year when we bought Crayola products they included an access code to use the Crayola Story Studio for six months. I decided to activate the account tonight to play around with it and see what I could do (my code was just for the original version – not one of the character or licensed versions also on the site).
Its pretty fun – the main part of the ‘story studio’ is basically a way to make a custom coloring book with your kid as the star. You upload a photo and then its rendered into a cartoon character which you can alter to look more (or less) like your child, then once that’s done you pick one of six stories and add the character to the story. The area I thought was more fun, however, was the section where you could upload a photo and have it turned into a coloring page. I made a few coloring pages:
 |
| posing on the porch |
 |
| cousins at the beach |
I ended up having to go over both pages with a black pen in some parts to have more of a defined line, but they turned out pretty cool – I think the kids will love them!
I’d say the program is worth keeping an eye out for, we got the code from a box of crayons, so it wasn’t like it was on one of the more expensive Crayola items – check the packaging before you toss it away!
Travel Trays
Something that’s always hard for my kids when we’re in the car for a long period of time is having a flat spot on their laps to eat snacks, play with toys or especially color or write on. You can buy special travel trays or lap boards for use with car seats and booster seats, but I figured I could make something serviceable for a lot less money, and I was right.
I picked up two quarter-sheet sized baking sheets (so half the size of a standard home baking pan) from the dollar store for, you guessed it, one dollar each. These trays would probably not work all that well for baking since they’re quite thin (although unhelpfully labeled as “heavyweight”) but the fact that they’re light makes them more useful here, and they’re still stiffer than a disposable aluminum pan.
Next I bought two sheets of felt from the craft store (for a whopping .29 cents each), and glued one sheet to each pan – I did have to trim the long side of the felt so that it would fit a bit better, but I really didn’t even have to do that.
So for $2.58 + tax I ended up with two kids travel trays, and if I get motivated I could even make some little felt games for the kids, since the back side of the trays could double as a felt board. Tic Tac Toe would be a fun and easy one.
Mother’s Day Entertaining, Part One
Today we had Bappa and Nana over for dinner for birthdays and Mother’s Day celebrating. I made a green bean salad from the Simply Classic cookbook (to go along with chicken and veggie skewers and white rice).
I also updated the chalkboard entry table:
Magazine Cutout Collages
Today we worked on art projects – Viv directed us, first to make collages using images cut from magazines, and second that we should make collages of hands. I followed her instructions faithfully – Domi not so much. We each made a collage:
 |
|
| Domi’s minimalist design |
 |
| Viv used mixed media – paper collage and dried out ink marker |
 |
| Most of my material came from the Montana state tourism magazine – can you tell? |
Birthday Karaoke
We had a little birthday karaoke session tonight – some of the songs we sang were real ones with backing tracks, some were made up on the spot.
Here’s a partial list, see if you can tell which ones are which: Happy Birthday, Something to Talk About, One Step At A Time, Everything I Do I Do It For You, Get Out On The Dance Floor, I Will Survive.
Travel Scavenger Hunt
When we go on road trips my kids like it when I give them things to search for on the road – sometimes I draw them a scavenger hunt which they like even better. In advance of our trip, I drew a few sheets of scavenger hunt to entertain them – I might manage a few more before we go, but here’s what I’ve got so far:
I can either give them the same sheets at the same time, or give them different sheets to find. I’ll probably give them the same ones so that Viv can help Domi.
Find It Jars
My daughter’s class made find it bottles in school last week. I collected some small items to add to the bottles but spaced it on the due date so they didn’t get used at school – but I thought they’d be a great addition to my road-trip arsenal so I made two ‘find it’ jars tonight. I happened to have the perfect jars in the fridge – matching plastic relish jars that were empty enough and old enough that I didn’t feel bad dumping the remaining contents. I went on a scavenger hunt around the house to collect items to go into the jars (things that could stay in them forever) and then set to work.
I didn’t want the jars to be kid-specific, so I labeled them Jar 1 and Jar 2 and then divided up the little things equally between the two. I kept a list of what went into each jar so that while we’re on the road I can ask them to find a yellow fish, or a blue monkey, or a Pepsi can, or an orange bead . . . There were a few things that I ended up leaving out because they were too big, but each jar has 24 things in it. After I divided up the items I filled the jars with white rice (from our rice sensory ‘table’) and made sure there was enough room to be able to rotate the jars and have the rice and little toys tumble around inside. Finally I sealed the lids with super glue to hopefully avoid a rice explosion in the car somewhere along I-90.
This project would be very inexpensive even if you had to go out and buy all the little things to go in the bottles, but since I had everything already, it was completely free. I think the kids are really going to love it!
Follow Me
What I’m Reading
