Candlelight Dinner

For awhile the girls didn't really want to eat as a family, which wasn't a big deal really, but one day we really wanted them to so we broke out the candles and asked them to join us. They willingly obliged. :)

Popcorn

These things are a blast to make. They always think that it is going to explode like it does in the movies.

Movie Fort

This was a blast and the girls really enjoyed it.

Before:





















After:

Plant *anything*

It was my idea to do the Tomatos, but Lilly decided to go for Maple trees (I think, I am really not a plant person). We will take pics of those on Sunday.

Have a "floury" day

This was fun.

Make a word

We printed & cut these letters out last September. Then we taped them to posterboard with heavy duty packing tape so they were "like laminated".















This was Lilly's idea and it is one of her imaginary friend's (who are usually aunt's or grandmas and are sometimes hard for me to pronounce) names.











































Then we had to spell out Marti's name.

Writing Haiku

Marti was reading Spiderwort and The Princess Of Haiku, which is a story in The Fairy Chronicles, recently and came downstairs to ask if we could write Haikus. We looked up "the rules" on wikipedia and discovered that it is 5 sylables, 7 sylables, then 5 sylables and lots of other interesting things.

So, I wrote two off the top of my head to "warm us up".

Marti
Beautiful Marti
She is my pride and my joy
I love her a lot.

Lilly
Her hair is so blonde
Her eyes are beautiful hazel
My little Lilly.

Then, Marti and I wrote one together

Marigold
Fairy Chronicles
Marigold is so pretty
Her gift is special.

Marti wrote one herself.

Pizza
Pizza and Ice Cream
They are very delicious
I like them a lot

Lilly and I wrote one as well.

Horses
I love them because
Horses are very pretty
I want to pet them

Woodworking

My husband decided one day to collect wood to make staffs and wands with. The girls wanted to help. So far, all they have done is chop a few pieces with a hatchet, but they are enjoying it anyway.

Easter Egg Hunt in May

Lilly asked, pretty much out of nowhere, if we could do another Easter Egg Hunt.

Sure!

So, we walked the 10 minutes to the nearest non-scary store (we don't live in a great neighborhood) and bought airheads, laffy taffy, and bazooka gum. Came home, filled the eggs together, I hid them then we hunted and ate :)

Filling the eggs...




Hunting





And Eating...

Slime

Today we attempted slime


Definitely 5 stars. They turned down playing with the neighbor kids to make slime with mom. I know that Sunday is mother's day on the calendar, but in my world, I beg to differ!


Here is the recipe we used and we got it from here

What you'll need:

• Wire whisk
• 1 cup all purpose glue
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon tempera paint, your choice of color
• Borax

How to make it:

1. Mix together with wire whisk the all purpose glue, water, and tempera paint. I used the powdered tempera, but the liquid works just as well -- just don't mix the powdered too thin.
2. Mix separately 1/3 c. water and 1/2 tsp. borax. Slowly pour borax mix into glue mix.
3. Let stand a few minutes, then knead. Pour off any remaining liquid. Store in plastic bags.
4. Repeat for different colors.

Notes:

As in all recipes, results can vary depending on humidity, conditions, etc. Please try any recipe out before attempting in a group setting.

Then, of course our pictures from the event...





Look at that face!




In this one you will notice that I circled a peice of slime in the process of falling off the table. How cool is that capture? A priceless smile and a priceless moment in time captured "on film".

Krampf Experiment and Homeade IceCream

I think we are going to start rating these days as to what my kids find the most fun. I will go back and edit the other posts at some point. This one gets 5 stars



We started with this Krampf Experiment.
http://www.krampf.com/experiments/Science_Experiment56.html

We are a member of his group on yahoo groups and get an experiment per week.
http://www.krampf.com/news.html

Here is the directions and ingredients.

Robert Krampf's Experiment of the Week
Ice and String

Imagine that you are given a full glass of water with a couple of ice cubes
floating in it. You are given a string and told to pick up the ice cube with
the string, without touching the glass, or the ice, or the water with your
fingers. Could you do it? Of course you could, if you knew a little science
and had a little salt.

For this experiment, you will need:
a glass of water
a couple of ice cubes
2 feet of thread
salt

To pick up the ice cube, lay the end of the thread across the ice cube. You
may want to loop the thread a couple of times, to give it plenty of surface
area to stick to. Then sprinkle about 1/2 teaspoon of salt on top of the
thread and wait about a minute. Then lift up on the string. You will find
that the string has frozen to the ice.

What happened? Pure water freezes at 32 degrees F. Adding salt to water
lowers its freezing point, allowing it to remain a liquid when it is colder
than 32 degrees. The surface of the ice cube, where the ice is beginning to
melt, is just below 32 degrees, so the addition of salt causes it to become a
liquid again. To make the change from a solid to a liquid, the ice must absorb
heat from its surroundings. That chills the water around it to the point
where it will freeze, freezing the string to the piece of ice.

The same process is used in making homemade ice cream. The ice cream mix is
placed in a container which is surrounded by ice and salt. This lowers the
temperature of the water enough to freeze the ice cream. You can quickly
make some homemade ice cream by placing 1/2 cup of milk, 2 tablespoons of sugar,
and a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract into a zipper sealed sandwich bag.
Seal the bag tightly and then place it into a larger plastic zipper sealed bag,
along with 3 cups of ice and about 1/2 cup of salt. Seal the larger bag and
start shaking and squishing it to make the ice cream freeze evenly. After
about 3-4 minutes, the ice cream should become about as firm as homemade ice
cream gets. Open the large bag and remove and rinse the smaller bag, so that no
salt gets into your ice cream. Now grab a spoon and enjoy!

Have a wonder-filled week.

To join the list on Yahoo Groups, send a blank e-mail to:
krampf-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To join the list on Topica, send a blank e-mail to:
krampf-subscribe@topica.com

And our pictures from this experiment, which the girls *loved*!

Here they are trying to pick up the ice with the string before the salt.


Salt...


And finally...




Then of course, the ice cream making. We didn't have big plastic baggies so we found some old peanut butter jars and some jars bigger than the PB ones and used those to shake it up and it worked really well too.





And Finally, the *sweet* rewards (which they loved, ate a few bites, and put away for later)

Free Movies

Today, we went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium for free. It was especially exciting for the girls because we got to go with my parents whom they haven't seen in 5 weeks.

Every spring and fall our local theater has 8-10 movies that they show for free on Saturday and Sunday mornings, one per week.

http://www.gqti.com/freematinee.aspx

I would do a goodsearch (we do goodsearch because it raises money for our favorite charity, Miracle Diapers) for your town and free matinees to see if you can find any in your area.

Sidewalk Chalk

This was actually from yesterday (no, I haven't been keeping up with this daily, but I *have* been trying to make little sparkles in my kids lives on a daily basis) .

Lil and I spent some time out in the front yard on the sidewalks with sidewalk chalk. We drew pictures and even spelled a few words. I wrote "Lilly", "Marti", "Daddy" and "Mommy" because those are some of her favorite words to read (and she had been reading them for a year or so now).

The other words began with "Mom, how do you spell cat?". Then I wrote a few rhyming words for fun. She wrote a few words and asked me to tell her what they said. When I sounded them out she proceeded to tell me I was wrong, they said something else. Usually it was the name of an imaginary friend that I had mispronounced. When she was done she got up and walked away.

Before that though, the last pic we drew was this one. I don't know if you can see it very well, but Lilly enjoyed coloring in a cloud over the sun. It was very cute! Oh, and you can see our pretty hyacinth's in the upper left corner, too.



BTW~ Sidewalk chalk is extremely inexpensive and lasts forever. We have a bucket of chalk on our porch and some of the pieces have been there for at least 5 years.

Here are some of our pics from yesterday.