Easter Party

On Friday we threw an Easter party for the kids! We had so much fun with all the projects but I have to say - it took almost 4 hours to finish! Take a look at some fun activities we prepared:

The big boys practiced some spelling words using Easter foam stickers

 

The little kids were using Easter sensory box to count to 20. We placed some Easter objects in there such as foam eggs, plastic eggs, foam bunnies, baby chicks...

 

Then we spray painted egg doilies. That was a big hit! But open your windows or do it outside - it can get smelly!

 

Let's make Easter egg monsters! This is what you will need:

 

Make sure that your plastic eggs have pre-made holes. Some of them are sold like that already.

 

Meet our new friends.

 

We came up with a board game - "Which chick will bring the most eggs to the Easter egg hunt"

 

Yes, we drew it ourselves and it wasn't too much work. This is based on addition and subtractions - the players loose and gain eggs as they walk on the board. They have to tell us how many eggs they have in their basket after they loose or gain the amount of eggs listed.

 And of course we colored eggs. We used oil pastels before we submerged them in the colored water.

 

They turned out very cute!

 

Happy Easter!

Jupiter's Storm Experiment

What is the red spot that we see on Jupiter's surface? It is a powerful storm that seems to be never ending. We used some kitchen supplies to reenact this fenomena.

What we used:

bowl

milk

dishwashing soap

food coloring

 

 Pour milk into the bowl and drop couple drops of 2 different colors of food coloring into it, in the same spot.

 

Carefully using your hands swirl the milk around.

 

Then drop one drop of dishwashing liquid right in the middle of the color spot. See the cool reaction.

 

Swirl the bowl one more time and you have an image of the swirling storm on Jupiter!

The kids didn't stop there - they kept on playing with the food coloring and dishwashing soap effect - they loved that!

Saturn's rings experiment

Our next science experiment that involves the Planets was all about the Saturn's rings. We wanted to show why we see the ring as a whole ring and not just icy particles floating around. For that we need:

a record player

black construction paper

chalk

small particles such as - ice cream salt (which is perfect because it looks like ice crystals), sand, glitter, rice

glue

camera

 

Take the black paper and place it on top of the record player, making a hole through the middle part. Take the chalk, place it sideways, and carefully trace the circle shape of the record player. Older kids can do this themselves.

 

 Have the kids cut the circle out.

Give each kid a bowl with the small particles.

 

Have them glue it on the outer side of the circle. When they put the glue down, smudge it a bit with the finger to create bigger surface that the particles could stick to.

 

Let it dry.

 

When it dries, place it on the record player and talk about the particles being visible as individual particles when they are not rotating around the planet.

 

But what if you turn the record player on and make them rotate, just like the actual particles rotate around the Planet Saturn? Place your camera on the tripod and set your exposure on longer time.  This is one of our result pictures.

 

We tried several different variations of materials, thickness of the rings, and speed of the record player. See another picture, where the ring is thicker.

 

Result picture...

Have fun experimenting!

Snow coloring

With all the snow outside, we couldn't resist and we brought some in! The kids had fun coloring the snow! Here is how they did it!

We used:

food coloring

water

fresh snow

droppers

The kids got their know in a bowl.

And they simply colored it using the dropper. They had a lot of fun and they also worked their fine motor skills while squeezing the dropper.

And finished product!

More about money - pennies and nickels

The boys have been learning more and more about money. We have covered nickels and dimes. They have been a bit confused about the relationship between all the coins so we are trying to come up with new activities that would help them solve the confusion.

Here we put together a sheet with pictures and prices and gave the kids bowl with pennies and nickels. 

 

The goal was to build the prices using different coins. In how many ways can you make 18 cents? Another fun activity was - "Buy something for your sister" or "Pick what daddy would like". They love to hide it and surprise me.

 

This has been a winner with the boys so we made some more for nickels and quarters as well.