Making Crystals

Bekah has been getting some fierce cabin fever lately, so I've been trying to do a variety of fun projects with her. She absolutely loved this project and we still have our crystals on our windowsill.

All we needed was a jar, borax, boiling water, pipe cleaners, and string. Bekah made her first pipe cleaner into a snowflake shape while I boiled some water. We tied a string to our "snowflake" and attached the other end to another pipe cleaner. I poured the boiling water in our jar and we stirred in Tablespoons of borax until we couldn't get any more to dissolve (saturated solution). We lowered our "snowflake" into the water and waited for our crystals to grow.

Puffy Paint Snowman

I found this easy idea for a puffy paint snowman on MeloMomma. First, I made a mixture of white glue and shaving cream. (Our kitchen ended up smelling like an old man, but the craft ended up being very cute!)

I set up Bekah's art easel for this project, which she loved. I had also cut out black dots and an orange triangle for the nose.

I love simple crafts like this!

The Biggest Snowball

This week for our stART project we have been reading The Biggest Snowball Ever! by John Rogan. When I requested this book from the Library I had no idea this was Christmas related. However, I have a little girl obsessed with Christmas, so it worked fine for us.
This book is a lot of fun to read and Bekah wanted to keep looking at the silly illustrations. We decided to make no-bake snowball cookies to go along with our book. Here's the recipe:

Here's what you will need:
2/3 cup butter -softened
1/2 cup sugar
1T. water
3T. cocoa
1/2 t. vanilla
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Mix the butter and sugar together. Add the water, cocoa, and vanilla. mix well. Add rolled oats, mix well. Roll about 1 tsp. of the mix in your hands to form a ball. Roll in powdered sugar.

Mixing the butter and sugar.

Stirring in the oats.

My official "taste tester".

Bekah's snowball cookie!

You can see what others are doing at A Mommy's Adventures.

Cotton Ball Polar Bear

We continued our polar bear week by making a cotton ball polar bear from here. We made it into a bit of a math lesson by using the numbers to go along with it.

First thing I did was to cut out all the numbers. I then put them inside a paper bag and had Bekah pull out a number.


She would then find the same number on the polar bear and glue a cotton ball on that number. (I cut my cotton balls into 4 pieces to make them go farther).


It was a great introduction to numbers 20-31, since she's not too familiar with these numbers. However, this takes awhile and I could tell I was losing her attention, so I joined in and we made it into a little game by taking turns.

I think it turned out pretty cute!

Polar Bear Book

This week we are learning about polar bears. Our first activity was to make a polar bear book. Bekah has been really into coloring, so she loved making this. I found the pages for our book here.

I love how the book gives facts about polar bears. When Nathan came home last night Bekah read the book with him and told him about how polar bears live in the Arctic. Does't it feel great when your kids really get it?!

Bekah colored the pages and then asked for glitter. So, I broke out the glitter glue and she went nuts covering all her pages with glitter. She spent the longest time with this....it was great.

Here are some pages from her polar bear book.

Penguin ideas

Bekah and I had so much fun with penguin week. We finished up and are now getting into a week of polar bear projects. I'll start posting our polar bear adventures tomorrow, but wanted to finish up on the penguin posts I didn't get to. Here are some simple, yet fun ideas to do for a penguin lesson:

*Roll and Color Penguin - This is a fun little game. Bekah would roll the dice and add up the dots. She would then color in the number that was rolled.


*Make a penguin book. I actually got this idea from Mailbox Magazine. However, all you would need would be some cute penguin coloring pages, have your child color them (and add glitter, if you're brave!), then staple them together to make a book.


*Tracing penguins.

Macaroni Penguin

To continue our week on penguins we made a macaroni penguin mask. I'd been trying to get Bekah to make this mask all week, but she DID NOT want to trace her hand for the penguins feathers. Finally, what I did was trace a hand print she had made in church to use for his feathers. It was a perfect compromise and we had a blast putting this together.
The idea came from Making Learning Fun. They had a ton of great penguin ideas!

We used the pattern to trace onto white, black, and orange construction paper.

We used her hand print to make the orange feathers and glued that on the top of the penguin mask.


Then, I added two Popsicle sticks for Bekah to hold onto and we pretended to be macaroni penguins.


We also had fun singing the song that goes with this:

(Sung to the tune of Are You Sleeping)
Macaroni, Macaroni,
Penguin, Penguin,
You have orange feathers, You have orange feathers,
On your head, On your head.

Penguin Fish Cracker Count

Bekah and I have been discovering all about penguins this week. One of her favorite activities was this Fish Cracker Count game that I printed off from Making Learning Fun.

After laminating all the penguins, I gave her a bowl of goldfish crackers and showed her how to put the correct number of fish on each penguin.


I wasn't sure if she would stick with this, but she loved it!

We were even able to talk about subtraction when she would eat a goldfish cracker off of a penguin. It was such a fun learning tool.

More penguin activities to come!

stART - The Snowy Day

Last week I was able to get the book, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats from our library. It is such an adorable book about a little boy who discovers snow outside his window one day. After enjoying our own snowy day we used this book for our stART project.


We took white paint and mixed it with some flour (I didn't measure this out, I just mixed until it was a nice consistency).

Then, I put the paint mixture on a piece of blue construction paper and smoothed it out to look like a covering of snow.
Daddy went outside to get a stick for our project. When he came back, Bekah went to town making tracks in the "snow".




We also took some of her animals and made footprints in the snow. She really had fun with this!

You can see what others have done over at A Mommy's Adventures.

Snow Play Doh

Although we have a lot of snow outside our door, it has been so frigid that we haven't been out to play in it lately. Bekah is fascinated with making snowmen, so I decided it was a wonderful time to make some snow dough. I made the mistake of telling her I was making it, so every few minutes she was asking if it was done yet! This play dough recipe was easy to make and turned out nicely.

We were able to roll it out and use cookie cutters.


And also got to make some indoor snowmen!


Here's the recipe:
Snow Playdoh

2 cups water
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp. cream of tartar
4 tsp. oil
glitter
-Combine ingredients in heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with wooden spoon until it thickens and pulls away from sides. Form into a ball, place on waxed paper and cool. Knead in glitter.