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Showing posts with label color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label color. Show all posts

Adventures Outside Using our Senses and Imaginations


We spent much of the day outside on Saturday. Hazel has decided that the stuffed llama I got for my first Mother's Day (Heifer fundraiser--Buy a Llama for Your Mama) is a dog and it is Ducky's dog to be exact. Well she has me tie a string on to it as a leash and she drags it all over the place inside and out. Above she is running with Doggy. She would do this and then say Mommy needs to take a break now Doggy and come sit with me for a few minutes and then be off again.

As I have posted we are taking a class at Drumlin Farms on using our senses around the farm in the spring. This week we discussed sight. So today while outside we decided to pay attention to our senses. The first thing we always discuss is the sky--at least ever since we read Blue Sky by Audrey Wood. This book just shows different skies and labels them like blue sky, cloud sky, rainbow sky, etc. So now we always notice the sky and label it. Today was definitely a blue sky day.

Then we got to see a bird's nest--a sparrow's nest to be exact. We have a sparrow family that always nests on our house. So I pointed out the nest to Hazel today.
We also saw and heard lots of birds especially after we filled the birdfeeder.
Taking an idea from Living and Learning at Home (I featured this at Sharing Saturday this week), we drew pictures of what we saw, what we heard and what we felt today. I labeled all of our pictures so we would know what they were--especially Hazel's.
Hazel decided to go barefoot so she felt the grass on her feet as well as the woodchips. She didn't like the feeling of the woodchips.
She had fun filling the birdfeeder and carried the birdseed bag herself. She also liked walking on her stumps in her bare feet. I thought it would hurt, but apparently it didn't.
When we talked about what we see she mentioned the clothesline. I guess that is because we hung the clothes out when we first came outside.  Here are the pages from our journal.

 Then it was lunch time, so we had lunch outside.
Nothing like bringing in another sense to the day. Daddy wasn't home so he wasn't there to complain about having to eat outside. Hazel really wanted to so we went for it. After lunch she wanted to go for a walk. She decided she wanted to go in her stroller. I'll share in another post about our walk.  Then when we got back, Hazel was still a bit tired so we made her a place to rest.
After resting she wanted to play train. So we took the train to the zoo.
Hazel spots a red kangaroo out the train window...apparently we are visiting her pen pal in Australia.
She warned me it would be a long train ride and thought I should bring a book. I won a giveaway over at This Cosy Life which included a book, so I grabbed it.
I read the first chapter aloud with many interruptions to ask "Are we there yet?" per Hazel's request. Then she wanted to hear the first chapter again. Then I read the second chapter and at the end of it we were there and got off the train.
Then she played hide and seek with the sun. The sun went behind some clouds and she asked me where it was. I told her it was playing hide and seek so she went off to seek it. When it came back out she claimed to have found it. Then she went to hide from the sun.
I guess since she is in shade she is hiding from it.
Hazel's Talking Electric Toothbrush--or at least that is what she said it is

Next the chalk came out. She had fun drawing and then asked me to make 3 hopscotches for her. One for her, one for me and one for Daddy. She told me what to put in each box. She also drew two squares. It is the first time her squares actually looked squarish.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Mallard came for a visit. (Hazel had been asking me all day if they would.) We fed them some bread.
Hazel loves feeding them!
They were still out there when Daddy came home so we fed them some more. In fact they may be nesting out there. They seemed to not like us seeing them in one part of the brook.
After that we went out for ice cream--but I'll share that for Tuesday's Happy Family Times post. Hope you had a great weekend!!

Playing with Flowers

Well last Sunday, there were flowers left over from a funeral the previous day at church. I got to bring some home including a purple rose. Having been inspired by Happy Little Munchkins: Petal Play which was shared at Sharing Saturday #5. I decided to try it with our rose even though it wasn't white.

I put the rose petals in a bowl of water. I didn't have any rose water to add, but the scent of the petals was strong enough for us. Hazel played with the petals in the water, swirling them around and feeling them. Then we added drops of food coloring (this is Hazel's favorite part). We watched the food coloring swirl around on its own. It was pretty.
Hazel taking a picture since I was. This is her new kids' digital camera she got for Christmas!
Then we added even more food coloring this time purposely getting it on the petals. We were hoping for results like Happy Little Munchkins, but we did not have any luck. I guess we will have to wait until we have a white rose to try it again.
We just got dirty looking water around our rose petals. Oh, well. Our petals did not absorb the color at all. We were hoping for a result like this.
From Happy Little Munchkins: Petal Play
This week there were some white carnations and white snap dragons leftover from a funeral at church. So I brought them home to try coloring a different way. Yesterday when we got home from church we filled vases and jars with water and Hazel added food coloring to the water. I then cut the ends of the white flowers we brought home and stuck them in the different colored water. We made red, yellow, blue, green (directly from food coloring) and mixed purple and orange.
The start of our experiment
Then we just let them sit there. Last night when I got home from tutoring, I found they looked like this.
Blue Water
Red Water
Yellow water
Green Water

Purple Water
The snap dragons had not changed color at all, so I cut the stems much smaller and went to bed. We woke up to see this:
Our discoveries, the colors we mixed did not really give them much color and often just one of the two colors showed up (the purple looked blue and the orange looked yellow). The snap dragons took longer, but also needed to be cut much shorter than they were. We still have them in the water to see if more time will make a difference. However I moved the carnation that was in the purple water into the red water to see what will happen.

That is our flower experiments thus far. It feels good to be playing with nature again.

Have a great day!!

Leaves, acorns, pine cones and crafts!

Hazel's handprint
Today I adapted a recipe for No-Bake Craft Clay from The Arts and Crafts Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. When it was ready, we made nature impressions from the things we gathered on our nature walk on Sunday. We also did one of Hazel's hand. Hazel really enjoyed this craft and my hands smelled of cinnamon for quite awhile afterwards even with washing. We are going to try new scents next. I'm thinking I will add some vanilla extract the next time and may play with other extracts and essential oils. It adds a whole new sense to play dough.
Oak leaf and acorns
Oak Leaf
My oak leaf and acorn
No Bake Craft Clay Revised:
Food coloring (I used red and yellow to make orange and the dots are the cinnamon)
1 1/4 cups cold water
1 cup cornstarch
2 cups baking soda
Cinnamon (or other scent of your choice)
Saucepan
Plate
Damp cloth (that you don't care if it gets messy)

Add the food coloring to the water and then put in pan. Then combine the water with the cornstarch, baking soda and cinnamon (I probably used about 2 teaspoons, but didn't measure it). Mix over medium heat until it becomes the consistency of mushy mashed potatoes. The original recipe said about 4 minutes but I found it took much longer like 15 minutes. Then scoop onto the plate and cover with the damp cloth until cooled. (It does solidify while cooling.) When cool knead the dough and shape. To do the nature impressions take a small ball and make it into a disc big enough to take your piece of nature. Press the leaf or whatever you are using down into the clay and then lift up. You may want to let the disc set a little before pressing to make sure you get more details.

The other craft we did today was leaf rubbings. I found this idea on Michaels website...well actually an email they sent me. I printed out a few copies of their leaf shaped book and gave some to Hazel and kept some. I showed her how to do leaf rubbings. My original hope for this project was to keep her busy while her toe nails dried, but she decided she did not want to try the Piggy Paints with me today after I touched her toe to apply the base coat. So my toes are pink and hers are not. However she did have fun doing some rubbings and coloring in general. You can definitely tell which ones I did and which ones she did. We did not cut them out and I probably won't since several of them went outside of the outline. Hazel has not learned to color in the lines yet.