St. Patrick's Day Craft

We are not actually very big into St. Patrick's Day. In fact I usually completely forget about it because my brother-in-law's birthday is the same day and I think of it as his birthday instead! However, this year my son has some things going on in school that have to do with it including a leprechaun that is coming to give "luck".

Well this has me thinking more about St. Patrick's Day. I was doing a rainbow craft with the kids anyway so I decided to add a St. Patrick's Day theme to it. 

We started out talking about rainbows and how they occur. We talked a lot about rain splitting the light of the sun and how it is necessary to have both sun and rain to get a rainbow (yeah for science!).  

We also talked about the colors in the rainbow (leaving out indigo we will have to go into that more later). We did all of this talking while were actually doing the craft itself. 

When we were making the pot of "gold" for the end of the rainbow (making it St. Patrick's Day themed) and how some people think that if you can find the end of the rainbow you will find a pot of gold. We talked a little about St. Patrick's Day coming up and how it is a kind of Irish myth that this can happen. I decided to talk this time to talk with them about what is most important to us, and it is not gold. 

Friends, family, and love are more important to us than money/gold because it is something that makes us feel really good, so we talked about that. I feel like really important to talk about this due to how materialistic our surroundings are and this was a great way to fit this talk in with a craft. 

My daughter is a little young to actually get what I was telling her and my son was a bit skeptical but talking about it is so important. Due to love being what we find more important we put hearts at the end of the rainbow. 

Here is the finished craft: 

 What you need:

White paper
Yarn
Hole punch
Scissors
Cotton balls or tissue paper
Paints/markers/crayons 
Egg carton
Pipe cleaner
Glue
Foam Hearts (or some other "gold" for inside the egg carton)

What to do:

1. First you need to prep. I cut out the clouds from two pieces of copy paper holding them together and then punched holes around the outside of the cloud while holding the two pieces of paper together. This helps to keep them lined up and matching in size, shape, and location of the holes. I am sure that older kids (even my sons age) could do this but that is not what we did this time. 

2. We drew lines for each of the colors of the rainbow on a piece of white paper so that the colors would end up in the correct shape. 

3. Paint the colors on the page (or color with crayon/marker). 

 4. While the paint dries cut a long piece of yarn, tape one end up so that it can be more easily threaded through the holes. Tie the other end through a pair of holes on the clouds. Sew the cloud up leaving a few open when you get close to the end. 

5. Stuff cotton balls or tissue paper into the cloud. Finish sewing up the cloud and tie it off. 

6. Glue the cloud to the rainbow (you can cut the rainbow out so there is not any white on the edges of the paper if you like, or use blue paint to make sky behind the cloud). 

 7. Next using one egg carton section create the pot by using green or black to color it. 

8. Glue your "gold" inside the "pot", we used foam hearts. 

9. Punch two holes directly across from each other on the egg carton and one hold at the bottom of the rainbow. Put a pipe cleaner through one hole, then through the hole at the bottom of the rainbow, and then through the second hole on the pot to make a handle. 

10. Hang it up! 

This craft is great for fine motor skills, vocabulary building, learning colors, science awareness, cultural awareness, and talking about the importance of family/friends. 

You can find the dot paints we used at the link below:
                                          

A great rainbow book is this one:
                                                               





Or if you are looking for one that is more science oriented but very kid friendly I recommend this one: 
                                             


One of my absolute favorite children's books for spring and rainbows is this one:
                                             

What kinds of things are you doing with your kids for St. Patrick's Day? What are your family traditions surrounding it?

A Science Museum Outing: OMSI

In Portland, Oregon finding a good indoor activity for the winter is essential. Our family has found that over almost all other places OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) is the best place to go if we are spending our day inside. OMSI has something for every age group, and I do mean every age group, from infants to adults. 


OMSI has been around for as long as I can remember, in fact I can remember going there as a child with my Father. It used to be located by the zoo but moved years ago to increase the space inside. There are two stories of great educational but fun interactive science exhibits showcasing biology, engineering, chemistry, physics and more. We have two main places that we love to go and visit every time we are at OMSI. These are the Science Playground which is designed especially for kids ages 0 to 6 and Turbine Hall. 

Turbine Hall has water rockets, orbit tables, both a physics lab and chemistry lab, a room where you build ball launchers, a few water tables where to create and test out different types of boats (sail or paddle), and more. The Science Playground was recently given a makeover of sorts and now contains a brand new water play area and quite reading tent. It also has a forest discovery area where kids can pretend to be a chip monk dressing up and hiding acorns in a tree, play with puppets, and check out the inside of a cave. There is a sand play area, block building, a shopping and cooking area, and a craft area that also always features either play-doh or gak. There is so much more in this area, I really could go on for pages. 


There is one more permanent exhibit area full of things ranging from live animals like rats, turtles, and snakes, to information about nanotechnology. There is a lot of stuff in this room about the importance of staying healthy and it does a good job of giving hands on ways to help this message sink in while still being fun.


OMSI also has a Submarine tour (you have to be at least 3 to go on), a planetarium featuring a wide variety of shows, the OMNIMAX Theater, a special exhibit that changes every couple of months and a cafeteria that actually has pretty good food.


Our family highly recommends OMSI especially for these dreary winter months.

Winter Flowers

I don't know about you but I am ready for spring. I am ready to see the new leaves come out on the trees, have a sunny and slightly warm day, I am ready to plant some seeds with the kids and start watching them grow and I want to see plants sprouting and turning into flowers. Well I can't make any of those things happen, but I can get the kids to make me a bouquet of "flowers" for my table to add a little color and a big smile to my face every time I see them.

Today's craft is simple and yields very fun results. I encourage you to add or take away any elements from this that you would like.

What you need:
An empty egg carton with the individual egg places torn apart from each other (see the picture)
Glue
Paint
Paint brushes
Pipecleaners
Any odd and end craft decorations you have we used:
        Beads
        Buttons
        Small pieces of tissue paper
        Glitter and glitter glue
        Little fuzzy colorful balls
        Small pieces of cut up yarn

What you do:
First you make a hole in the bottom of the egg carton cup

Second you put the pipecleaner through the hold about 1/4 of the way down the length of the pipecleaner leaving enough room to secure it.

Either fold the pipe-cleaner so that it will reach back around to the "stem" and twist to secure or fold it in the center of the flower to crimp it and secure it. We also tried making a spiral by wrapping it around a finger.

Now you get to start the fun part of decorating the flower. There is no right or wrong to this part just let the kids go for it. This is a great activity to help with fine motor skills and to discuss colors, shapes, sizes, and textures. You could check out a book about plants and flowers and talk about the parts of a flower and compare it to the flowers that your child makes learning science. All of these things will help to increase vocabulary as well as increasing awareness about many concepts. I love how a simple activity can be so developmentally rich.

This craft would be perfect for the upcoming Valentine's Day working as a very cute Valentine to someone who lives near. It also would be good for engaging in a discussion about Earth day and recycling (reusing the egg carton). Mayday would be another great day to give these out, hanging them from the doors of loved ones.

What to do With Left Over Smoothie: Zoku Pops Maker Reviewed

After making the smoothie recipe in my last blog you may have been left wondering what you could do with left over smoothie. Well the answer that we have come up with in our household is to make popsicles. We started using the Zoku Pop maker about a year ago when my son got it for his birthday.
                                                              

Here is what you do. Make  sure you keep the Zoku in your freeze all the time that way it is completely ready to use when you want to make a popsicle.  Once the Zoku has been frozen you take it out and add the popsicle sticks. Then you pour any juice or mix to create your very own version of a popsicle. They even have extra tools so that you can make fun designs or do things like make vanilla cream filled orange pops. So to make a smoothie pop just add in enough smoothie to fill to the stop line and allow to sit for about 7 minutes.


At this point you will want to check to see if it is done by looking at it.

If it is solid at the center towards the white stick you can take it out.

Now you get to enjoy it! It is that quick and easy.

Assuming you make three pops in a batch you can start right over and make another batch and then store them in a Zoku pop container.
                                                     




When you are done you can pop the maker back into the freezer again or let it thaw out completely before washing with warm soapy water.


What my kids love about the Zoku maker: it is fast and easy to use so they can easily help and have very quick pops to eat without having to wait over night or all day. They can use their imagination to create designs using different color juice and experiment with what it might look like if they change how they are positioning the pop maker.


What I love about the Zoku maker: it is fast and easy. My kids get to be independent and make decisions about how they each want their pops to look and taste. They get to measure learning math and science. They develop independence and motor skills. When designing their pops they have to use planning and experimentation, we can discuss how an action will cause a reaction and make hypothesis about what those will be. This is a perfect time to talk about liquids and solids and how when something gets really cold it turns from a liquid into a solid. They get to see it happen right before their eyes! It allows for vocabulary building when discussing what they want to put in the pop, how they want it to look, and how they will achieve that. All while making a popsicle. Although this thing is a bit pricy for a pop maker it has been put to good use in our house and I recommend it.