Sharing Saturday 13-16

What a week this has been. Between the Boston Marathon bombing and school vacation week our week has been anything but normal. We live in the Greater Boston area so the bombing was a bit too close for comfort. However, I did have time to visit the amazing posts from last week's Sharing Saturday. If you have not checked them out yet, you should. I was pinning and being inspired by many of them!! There were great recipes, crafts, science experiments, lessons, activities, playdate ideas and so much more! It was hard to choose features or should I say limit the number of features I chose. Speaking of features, make sure you check out my co-host's features at Having Fun at Chelle's House! We always have different ones. Now onto my features. This week I get to present the Most Clicked!! Our most clicked last week came from Gift of Curiosity with Super Sparkly Sensory Bags. I know Hazel would love to make one of these. I think the next rainy day we will!

Next are a few of the great ideas to help children learn about and celebrate Earth Day. (There were many more so go check them all out!)

1) From My Nearest and Dearest: 6 Earth Day Activities for Little Ones (Some great ideas for even the youngest ones!)
2) From Toddling in the Fast Lane: Recycled Tea Set (Love this idea and it is perfect for play and uses recycled items!)
3) From We Made That: Tin Can Planters (So pretty, simple and Earth friendly!)
4) From Learning and Growing the Piwi Way: Save the Monarchs (I had just been reading about the decline in the butterfly numbers and was thinking about adding some more butterfly friendly plants--love getting the little ones involved!)
5) From Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes: Making Your Own Cool Art Paper (Something I hope to try when Hazel is a bit older!)

Plus I had to mention a few of my other favorites. Just because I loved them and found them inspiring and fun!

A Few of My Favorites

1) From Science Sparks: Challenge and Discover: Bridge Building (A new monthly feature of an idea to explore and try something with and then link up. As a former geometry teacher, I know we looked at bridge structure in my classes and even had a similar challenge of building bridges from toothpicks. Oh, and there is still time to explore and link up!!)
2) From Buggy and Buddy: Science for Kids: Exploring Sound with a Hanger and String (This sounds so neat--I want to try it and I guess I'll let Hazel try too!)
3) From Rubberboots and Elf Shoes: Mr. Klimt Trees -- Kindergarten Style (I love these and they are so pretty!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! If you were one of the ones picked as a feature here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

My Week in Review: This week I did not post as much as usual. I shared some butterfly crafts, our Virtual Book Club for Kids post of Duck on a Bike, our vacation week outdoor post on a class at Drumlin Farm and gardening and an Alaskan Cinderella story.

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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Natural Dyeing Part 3

Ok, this is really from my second day of experimenting with dyes and techniques, but it is the third post since I already posted Day 1 and Day 3. On this day we did some experimenting. I tried to make the process easier and a bit more kid friendly. I made a crucial mistake though. I did not pre-soak in the mordant. My colors washed away much more and are not as deep as they could be.

Celery Leaves

We started with Hazel chopping some celery leaves. We were hoping to get some green yarn. Unfortunately, it did not seem to work for us. I don't know if the pre-soak would have affected it or not. Half way through the day I added baby spinach with more vinegar and water, but it still didn't do anything. I actually re-dyed this yarn on Day 3. My new method is to put the chopped vegetable, fruit, flower in the jar with the mordant and then add boiling water. This way I did not have to use the stove (I have an electric tea kettle) and Hazel could help more.

Purple Cabbage

The next experiment was really neat. I had read on Poppytalk (which I found through Pineterest) that using vinegar or salt with red cabbage gave different colors. (She does a neat table runner with natural dyed fabrics--I definitely want to try this at some point!) I wanted to try this. This is actually why I didn't pre-soak. I wasn't sure what to do with the salt at the time. Now I have found recipes on how to do it (on Pioneer Thinking). And the neat thing is I was telling a family I tutor for about the experiment and the student I work with said, "Oh, I know why. We just learned this in chemistry class." She was so excited to see a real life application of it. It has to do with the pH of red cabbage. For more information to use as a lesson or possible understand yourself check out this explanation on About.com (plus it is really a neat science experiment there).

Purple Cabbage 1) Salt Mordant 2) Vinegar Mordant

 Look at the different colors you can get with purple cabbage!! I was so amazed. (It might be worth it to try making the green with the ammonia as the mordant. I just don't know if it will work on wool.)

1) Purple Cabbage with Vinegar, 2) Purple Cabbage with Salt, 3) Celery Leaves/Spinach

Since I did not pre-soak with a mordant, I rinsed with a mordant or should I say post-soaked in a mordant. I do not recommend doing it this way. It is definitely worth taking the 20 minutes to pre-soak. Please learn from my mistake!!

Same order as picture above with original colored skein on top.

As you can see the celery leaves and spinach did not change the color for us. Oh, well. Day 3, I had more success with this skein. Hazel had asked to dye some blue, so I'm glad the purple cabbage and salt worked. Next time I will definitely pre-soak though!! My hopes is for a rainbow sweater for Hazel from all this great yarn! When we went back to Drumlin Farm this week I bought two more skeins. I may retry the red cabbage with pre-soaking and I may buy a good natural green dye since none of my experiments worked.

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Butterflies

Butterflies are another sign of summer to me. Hazel and I have been seeing quite a few and learning about them as well. Between our adventures at Mass Audubon (in and out of scheduled programs) and just in our yard, we have been seeing them everywhere! This summer Hazel has learned to recognize a monarch butterfly and has learned to say monarch. Oh, and I saw the Butterfly Lifecycle pieces at Michaels as well as the frog one we looked at with our program! We have also found a few books to help us learn about them.

The first is The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen. We bought this one at the zoo. It goes through the life of a butterfly from caterpillar to butterfly's eggs hatching. The pictures are nice and colorful.

The second is What's the Difference Between a Butterfly and a Moth? by Robin Koontz. I saw this book on Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational awhile ago and looked for it at the library. I have always wondered how you could tell the difference.

The third is A Butterfly Is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long. This book goes into great detail about what characteristics a butterfly must have for its life cycle as well well labeled illustrations of the different species at all stages.

The fourth is my favorite. It is See How They Grow Butterfly photographed by Kim Taylor. This book starts with a photograph of an egg and its mother and takes you through every stage from hatching to pictures with exactly how many weeks it is old. The pictures are amazing!! I definitely recommend this one if you want to learn/teach more about the life cycle.

Today we did some butterfly crafts. First we borrowed an idea from One Artsy Mama and made beaded butterflies by putting beads on pipe cleaners. (I should add that she posted this the other day which is why I say she inspired it. Looking at my pins I see I had a similar one pinned and the original source is indietutes.) Now I did this from memory this morning and thought about using clothespins, but we didn't. We did it with pipe cleaners and beads. This probably made it easier, but not as great for use.

Next we took the idea from  Creative Play For Your Toddler: Steiner Waldorf Expertise and Toy Projects for 2-4s by Christopher Clouder and Janni Nicol. We used three squares of tissue paper and a pipe cleaner. We added on a wooden bead for the head. The book suggested making a mobile. We have not done that yet, but Hazel is enjoying playing with them.

Some of the other crafts I have done from this book can be found here and here.

We also did a similar one using tulle and a pipe cleaner.

The last thing I would like to share is a gift Hazel picked out for me awhile ago at Drumlin Farm Gift Shop.  (My birthday was this week, so I got to open them this week.)

We will be doing more butterfly crafts as well as dragonflies! Stay tuned!

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Little Quilts and Gifts from Jelly Roll Scraps Book Review

Disclosure: Search Press gave me a copy of these books free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

This has been another one of those weeks where life is getting in my way of what I want to do, but it has been a good week. Hazel has one week of school left so all the end of the school year craziness is happening. Yesterday we enjoyed a field trip to Drumlin Farm. Hazel was the only child who had previously been there so it was fun to see it with new eyes. I have been trying to find time to make a few of the items in this beautiful book, Little Quilts & Gifts from Jelly Roll Scraps by Carolyn Forster. 

Exploring at the Wildlife Sanctuary and Painting

On Wednesday we had our class at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. We skipped our class at Drumlin Farm this week since Hazel claimed to feel like she was going to throw up on our way there, however half an hour later she wanted lunch. I'm not really sure what happened, but she seems fine now. Anyway, at the Ipswich River Sanctuary we jumped in puddles and chased the other 3-year olds. Oh, and Hazel made a friend and held hands with her on part of our walk. I took a picture of them, but did not get the mother's permission to post it on line, so I won't. After a short walk we went back to the vernal pool to see if we could see some frogs this time. And we did!! We saw two different ones. The first one pictured above was pretty brave with all the kids around. Then one of them got a bit too close and he jumped in the water, but he stayed where we could see him with his eyes out of the water the entire time.

A little ways down we saw a big bull frog. He had different coloring than the first and was sitting on a log (again until someone got a bit too close).

While checking out the second frog, we saw a fast moving turkey (many of the kids missed it by the pool) and one of the kids found a slug. He even stuck his eyes out for us!

Then it was time to go back to the Nature House for our craft. On our way back through the field we saw the turkey again.

Then for our craft we made bird nests out of air-drying clay and grass. Then the instructor gave us a bird for it.

Then we ran some errands and came home. After lunch we finished our fairy garden and did some painting.

We have been reading the book Brown at the Zoo by Christianne C. Jones. It starts by talking about the colors--primary and secondary and that brown is a tertiary color. It then talks about how you can make it. The book goes through all the things that are brown at the zoo. It is in a series of books about colors. We decided to try to make brown in the different color combinations with Hazel's paints. Basically you can mix the three primary colors or you can mix any two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue). We tried to make different shades by mixing the different colors. Some combinations worked better than others, but it may be the proportions we (Hazel) used.

Then she wanted to do some more paintings from The Color of Us. So we mixed yellow, white, black, and red in different proportions to explore the colors we would get. I let Hazel have a bit more control with the mixing this time.

Then we started over with some new mixtures and got this.

Then Hazel wanted to paint with blue. She said these were blueberries, but I thought it could also be pictures from The Dot by Peter Reynolds. We kept saying we were going to make some dot paintings, but never quite got to them.

Then she asked to use watercolors and she came up with the following. I think she had blueberries on the mind!

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday will start tonight and you can visit the wonderful posts shared last week still, and Happy Family Times will end tomorrow, so go link up. And I'm still hosting a link party for Mother's Day gift ideas.


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Happy Family Times--Family Game Time

Did you do something fun with your family this week? Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are hosting a link party to share them. Scroll down to share with us!! And make sure you visit Kelly to see what fabulous thing her family is up to this week!

Family Game Time was the motto of our weekend. Hazel has been a bit sick so we needed to take it easy. She wanted to play everyone of her games this weekend (both days). We played seven games many times this weekend! 

Candy Land

 The first game we ever got her was Candy Land (well actually we have a Memory Game but we didn't play it this weekend).  Candy Land is great at practicing colors and teaching them how to take turns and follow the path. (We often have difficulties with which way to go on the board.) She loved playing it when she was younger, but she didn't really get it. Now she gets it a bit better.

 We also bought her Chutes & Ladders around the same time, but I put it away since I knew she wasn't ready for this one. This one involves counting. You could also easily do some addition and subtraction problems while playing since the board is numbered 1-100 for each square.

 This next game I first learned about from I Can Teach My Child. After reading this lovely post, I put several of these games on my wish list and finally bought Hi-Ho-Cherry-O for Hazel. She loves it! We have modified it a bit and play the version where we work together. The goal, in our modified version, is to pick all the fruit before time runs out. The time is based on how you spin. If you get the bird on the spinner you have to pick a piece of puzzle. If the puzzle gets completed before all the fruit is picked you do not win. We work together and do not keep track of which fruit is whose. She loves to play it. The highest you have to count up to is five in this game. (NOTE: I recently saw this game at Ocean State Job Lot so if you want it and have one near you check it out before buying it elsewhere!!)

 The same day Hi-Ho-Cherry-O arrived from Amazon, we had bought Count Your Chickens! at Drumlin Farm. This is another cooperative game. There is only one playing piece--Mother Hen. Your job is to get all the chicks back to the chicken coop before Mother Hen gets there. You get a chick for each square you move and there are some special ones where you get plus one to the number you moved. However on the spinner is a fox. If you get the fox you have to take one chick out of the chicken coop. Again Hazel loves this game! In it you work on counting. The most we have had to count up to I think is twelve. She is definitely better at counting out things. Before she would just say the numbers all together and not count each individual item.

 This game we bought at a discount store. (I think it was Christmas Tree Shops.) It is put out by Cranium and is called Duck, Duck, 1-2-3. The object of this game is for each player to move around the board picking up their matching ducklings which fit (somewhat) into the parent duck's back and then get to the center for the duck party. There is no winner. The game is over when all the ducks are at the party. We got it of course for Hazel's love of ducks! Needless to say she loves it because of the ducks. She is always deciding which color is the mother duck and which is the father duck.

At one of the discount stores (Ocean State Job Lot, I think), we picked up a set of Disney Princess dominoes. They did not have any without characters or I would have gotten them, but these also do not have dots or numbers on them so I think it is a bit easier for the first domino game. She loves it. We have not made a domino train to knock down yet, but will.

We got this one with the dominoes. It is called the Birthday Party Game. Since we celebrate someone's birthday just about every day in my house (often my third but sometimes it is Ducky's), I thought this might be good. You spin a spinner and have to get the invitation first. Then you spin to get all the party supplies: dessert, hat, gift, drink, favor, and noisemaker. The first person to get all of his/her wins. We of course usually play until everyone has all of their supplies since Hazel doesn't like there to be a winner.

 The final game to share is another one I learned about at I Can Teach My Child! I happened to see Zingo at Michaels and was able to use my 40% off coupon to buy it. Hazel loves it. It is a matching game. We play a modified version since she is not quick enough yet to beat us. We help her notice if her board has one. She loves moving the zing piece as well as matching and picking out the card, etc. We all seem to enjoy this one very much.
 

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Creative Play and Felting for Easter

Last weekend we made a deal with Hazel. We would all go through her toys and bag some up to get rid of and then we bought her two new ones to replace the three plus bags we will pass on to friends or donate. One of the toys she picked (we used Kohls dollars to pay for the new toys so it was like getting them for free) was the Melissa and Doug birthday cake. It is a wooden circle that is sliced and decorated as a birthday cake with Velcro to add candles or other decorations. She has been loving it. Remember it is my or Ducky's birthday every day at our house. Well the picture above is her dolls and animals sharing the cake at Ducky's birthday party the other day. I love how she puts them all in the high chair so they can all be sitting to enjoy the one piece of cake she gives all of them.

She has also decided that Ducky is now potty training, so she lets me know when he needs to go to the bathroom as well. We had gotten her a doll that takes a bottle and then goes potty with a potty seat. She never puts the doll on the potty seat but it is Ducky's now. (Did I mention our living room is now Ducky's bedroom since we have the cradle my father made when my oldest sister was born in there?)

Today got up to 60 so we spent some time this afternoon outside. Hazel spent most of yesterday outside between our Drumlin Farm adventure and the afternoon with a babysitter. Here she is using our friend's swingset (we only have it in our yard for about a month more since the friend is finally moving into their own house again).

She wanted to play boat again. She steers up in the clubhouse and I sit on the swing. She informed me she was bringing me to school. How exciting that I take a boat to school.

She also went on her own swingset. We also dug in the garden, played hide and seek and she brought a book out to read. She also pulled out her chalk and a few trucks and her small umbrella table (without the umbrella), but the plates on it blew in the wind.

The Hopscotch She Asked Me to Draw--She Told Me what to write on it

Her drawing of a house and butterflies

Oh, and she brought out her CD player so we could listen to Sesame Street outside. I of course was enjoying the fact that spring has sprung in the yard (oh and I brought out some wet felting to try).

It got too windy for Hazel so we came inside. Plus she was getting tired and hungry. Snack time! I just love how her imagination is developing and listening to her ideas. We also moved her small slide that we have in her family room so she could have a pretend pool. Basically all the stuffed animals and dolls are swimming in the pool all the time now.

I decided to try making this adorable chick in egg that I saw posted at Living Crafts Blog. I'm not sure I had the right size eggs and think that wooden eggs would probably have worked better, but I tried it. My eggs improved with practice. I did two of the chicks following their directions and the other two I did wet felted without using a plastic egg as a mold and then needle felted on the beaks and feet and eyes.

Egg felted around plastic egg (still inside)

A few comments I have is I definitely think the directions had too much soap. I have never wet felted with such a soapy mixture before. Also I really felt the chicks came out better without the egg unless you wanted to make finger puppets. Perhaps mine would have been better with more practice, but I found them easier without the egg as a form and a better size to get in the eggs.

Chicks following their directions

Chicks done as solids

To make my other chicks I rolled some roving to form somewhat of an egg/chick shape and then wet felted it. This method makes a solid chick so they are not finger puppets like the other ones, but I could control the size better.

Miniature needle felted chicks

I also needle felted some animals for Hazel's Easter basket (since I had the roving and needle felting tools out). To make the chicks, I made a ball/egg shape with yellow roving and needled it. Then added some orange to be a beak and feet.

I also did a rabbit and a duck. The rabbit was done similarly but added a tail and ears and tried to form a head a bit. The duck is slightly larger than the chicks.

View from top

I also made a pair of swans. I am imagining Hazel using the chicks, rabbit and swans and possibly the duck with her knitted farm mat that she will get from the swap I organized.

I also played with making some needle felted Peeps. They aren't perfect, but I'm happy with them. All of these needle felted animals will go in Hazel's Easter basket or in the plastic eggs for the egg hunt.

What are you doing for Easter baskets?

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