Today we’re excited to inject a bit of science into this ingredient series!
You may know this as the “Naked Egg Experiment”. You may have even done this experiment as a kid. In this post we take that basic experiment and add a few more fun steps.
Since the start of the year, we’ve been focusing on monthly initiatives. A theme that sets the stage for some of the posts we’ll be sharing throughout the month. In January, we focused on good habits. During February we kept those good habits going with a particular focus on taking care of our mental health. This month, we mentioned in the Monthly Welcome that we want to put the focus on relationships, and in particular, to something called “friendraising” like fundraising, but with friends, ya dig it?
The communities we love to insert ourselves into are usually built around shared interests: cooking, hiking, parents, etc. Normally we find out about these groups through friends, community calendars, our city’s free weekly paper, or the internet, and sometimes we start our own groups.
Sarah started this series by discussing how and why to start a meetup group and do a little friendraising for yourself. Today’s post is very similar in nature. I want to talk about starting a Facebook group. BUT as you’ll see, my group is NOT about hosting events…
Unless you’re hiding under a rock, you’ve likely seen the headlines and reports that getting outside and into nature is good for us… and if you’re under a rock, then getting outside is the least of your problems.
This past fall, we did a mini-series sharing ideas, big and small, for getting outside. Our first post shared a few ideas for getting outside at every energy and adventure level. Sarah followed-up with suggestions for week-day doses of outside time. We also wrote another post that suggested taking advantage of the awesome national and state park programs.
Today we’re encouraging you to create your own park adventure…
Have you ever used potato stamps before? The idea is super simple : carve a shape into the smooth side of a cut potato, dip it in paint, and print it on paper!
Today we created a simple project inspired by Swimmy, a book written and illustrated by Leo Lionni.
Lionni is said to be the first children’s illustrator to use collage as his main medium. In this book, the illustrations are printed. And, on many of the pages, you can see that the same stamps are used over and over again, as in these examples with the fish.
Swimmy’s story is relatively simple. He stands out from his school of fish, but sadly one day they are all eaten (except him!). He ventures out into the ocean and sees many wonderful sites. Eventually he finds another school of fish, and this time he teaches his new family a way to work together and protect themselves.
If you’ve never read it before, we’ve included a video of the story above. But really, there’s nothing better than reading aloud to your kids, and it’s nice to have the book on hand to discuss the artwork and how to use a couple of stamps to make a complex image, so we suggest picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore or the library.
You’ll see that we focused our work on the pages of Swimmy and his school of fish. But there are many beautiful illustrations in the book that you could recreate (my other favorite is the seaweed printed using doilies).
I prefer keeping projects simple, because I often believe that that helps little kiddos create beautiful artwork without too many complications, confusing steps, or accidental blunders (like mixing all of the colors and just getting brown!). In an effort to keep this project simple, we used just two stamps and two colors, EXCEPT at the last moment when we added a black Swimmy to our pieces.
The nice thing about using Swimmy as inspiration for these projects is that the kiddos can stamp a school of fish going in any direction. As you can see in the original work, fish are swimming up, down, and all around.
And as you can see from our pile of work above, stamping takes a bit of practice. At first the boys wanted to stamp and slide the potatoes. Similar to how they would slide a paintbrush across the paper. It took a little bit of help and some practice to get them comfortable with stamping and lifting the stamp straight up.
This is a great project for making a book “come alive” for the kids. Imitating art found in books is a great way to expose kids to different techniques. It encourages them to start questioning how different pieces of art are made and gives them the tools to start making their own original pieces!
Today we’re sharing some of our favorite games for preschoolers. I’m on a mission to start family or family+friends game nights in our house. It hasn’t happened yet, mainly because I’m (almost) all talk and no game (hah!). I haven’t invited anyone over, and I haven’t opened an adult game box in years. But behind the scenes, I’m cultivating a few young game-lovers and am slowly building my game-night momentum.
With a 4yo and 2yo in the house, we’re still slightly new to the kids’ game section. Fortunately, I think we’ve already found some great ones. Sometimes we play in the evenings as a family, and I love the together time. But the mom in me also loves that playing games can be used to reinforce other skills that they’re learning. Read on to see what I’m talking about.
This guide contains a few games that we’ve played and liked. If you’re looking for a last-minute gift for a 3-5 yo, I really don’t think you can go wrong with anything on our list. A few are card games, making them perfect stocking stuffers.
**Quick note – all of the items below include an additional 15% off coupon on Amazon, but we’re not sure how long it will last.**
Last Christmas the boys received a play kitchen, and it’s become one of the most-used toys in the house.
Kitchens are such a great toy for creative and make-believe play. Sometimes our boys are making us coffee and toast for breakfast. Other times they are serving me ice cream cones for an afternoon treat or acting as waiters and chefs in their own restaurant.
I love big ticket toys like this kitchen because it’s a themed toy that you can slowly can add to over time. For us, this meant buying a few items to play with Christmas morning, and then letting our family give them additional kitchen elements on Christmas and again at their birthday.
The slow giving method is also a great plan if you’re not sure about how much your kiddos will love the big toy. For us, the kitchen’s a winner, and we’ve been happy to buy them quality items for it.
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Below is a list of the exact items in our play kitchen with info about why we like them. *Notice that our list contains more items than are pictured above. It’s all so good!
Ugg, our first Cooking with Kids post was exactly two years ago this month! Look at that wee little two-year-old Alex! I can hardly handle it. I’m also realizing that there have not been nearly enough of these posts, and we really have to get Luc in on the action.
Putting my nostalgia aside, this post is definitely a hack in the whole Cooking with Kids series. We aren’t making anything from scratch and you may say that we’re barely cooking, BUT I think this simple cooking exercise has some serious independence value for impressionable kids.
I’m so excited for summer with the boys. They are 2 and 4 years old, and I can already tell that this is going to be a really active summer for us. From the moment they wake up until they pass out, we’re riding bikes, playing in the baby pool on the back porch, and going for hikes in the woods. All that time outside in the sun requires good gear, and a dip or two in the water to cool off. So, below we’re sharing our favorite sun and water gear, because the two go together like peanut butter and jelly (obviously).
Mamas and Papas, I’ve decided that fall through spring is the perfect time to investigate bugs!
You’re confused, I know, but hear me out : I spend those seasons vacuuming up all sorts of insects in our house. There are stink bugs, green lacewings, some wasps, flies, and sometimes lady bugs. So, rather than toss the dead bugs in the trash, they are the perfect specimens for learning.
Have your kiddos collect a bunch of bugs, and then start asking them probing questions that get them observing.
I try not to hammer them with questions. Instead, I like to sit back and let them explore, but the questions can help to get them thinking and/or they’re just handy to have in mind if you’re having a conversation about the insects and want to keep it going.
Introduce your kids to scientific tools. We have a few magnifying glasses and the kids’ microscope that you see in the photo above. We also happened upon a super easy trick – use a macro lens on your phone to shoot a zoom-in photo of the insects. If your kids are like mine, they will be amazed at the detail! While they love using their tools, I’ve found that the tools don’t come with the strongest lenses and it can be hard for shaky/excited hands to keep everything in focus. Using the macro photograph is one of the easiest ways to expand your kids’ awe and curiosity about bugs – they can’t believe all of the details that are on the bug sitting there on the table (the fuzzy hairs, the patterns that just looked like stripes now are something else, etc.).
For better or worse, seeing the bugs magnified to this level makes it easier to anthropomorphize the insects, which can lead to some awesome learning conversations. My guys like to talk about the bugs families, what the different members of the family do, where they get their food, etc. And then this can lead to more detailed discussions about the social structure of some bugs, their lifecycle, the predator/prey relationships, and on and on.
When it comes to bug-related tools, we have a bug box that’s handy when we’re catching and analyzing live insects.
We also like to pull out the insect field guides to look up the insects we’ve found. The first time I pulled out this book, Alex went bonkers! He couldn’t believe all of the different insects that were in the book. So, I gave him plenty of time to just browse the book. Then we narrowed in on the insects we had, once we were on the right page, I had him find the specific insect, and then we read about them.
My goal is for us to do activities like this over and over again whenever the interest arises, with the intent to increase the boys’ depth of knowledge each time. Some examples include teaching them the correct names of insect parts, the lifecycle of the insect, their role in the ecosystem. And here are a few other simple ideas for extending this activity:
… want to make their bug observations really come alive? You could order butterfly or ladybug larvae, raise them to adults, and release them in your backyard!
If you’re a bug lover, a parent, or just someone with an idea, I’d love to hear from you! Do you have any other ideas for introducing kids to insects? Do you have any favorite insect facts?
It’s Christmas week!!! We’ve been having so much fun with Alex this year since he really understands that Christmas is something special, but he’s still asking a lot of questions and trying to make sense of what’s going on around him. “When can we open the presents?” “We get to put the tree in our house?!” “It’s Christmas season, but not Christmas day, right?”