First, I filled some jars with vinegar and water (I didn’t double check the recipe, you’re not actually supposed to add water; it seemed to work fine though besides being a bit slow to start), a squirt of dish soap, and food colouring. Fiona chose the colours and squirted in the food colouring. Then she scooped in the baking soda…

And was thrilled to see the foam rise up and out of the jars.

I think she really loved having a chance to do this on her own. We have been doing lots together as a family, but often now they are geared more towards Meredith’s age and not always things Fiona can do without help.

Afterwards, she used the spoon to play around in the bubbles, swirl the colours together, and scoop the foam.

I am going to have to think of some more (or go back through my old blog posts) for other times when Meredith isn’t around.

We have been so busy. Almost every single day this month there is something going on. So much for home schoolers not being social! I have lots to blog about, and not enough time to blog it. But I do want to make a habit of blogging more and seem to be keeping it up much better again. I love having this record to come back to and look at what’s going on in our days.

First she built up the base around a jar.

We added red food colouring, a few drops of dish soap, and some vinegar into the jar. Then she spooned in some baking soda…

And was thrilled to see the “lava” explode out immediately afterwards.

She had a blast playing with the “lava”, spreading it around, watching it soak into the dirt and mud. She noticed that it always went in one direction only, and thought that might be because the jar was a little crooked. She then scooped everything out of the jar and we did it again. I think this instantly became one of her favourite experiments we have done. Definitely one we will be trying again. It reminds me of this project which we have done twice now, and I think will be repeated again this summer for sure too.

So instead, I asked her what she thought might happen, and she said she thought the apple would float.

She was right! Then she wanted to gather more materials and see what else would float and what might sink.

Close at hand, we found a magnet, a foam bead, a bag clip, and a penny. She guessed what each one might do, then tried them out in the water.

We then found some more materials, including a paper clip, a thumb tack, a piece of paper, an onion peel, and various other objects we found around the house. She also put a shot glass in the water and observed on her own that it floated, but that if she filled it with water it would sink. Fiona had fun with it too.

Afterwards, Meredith told me it was fun to ask questions and find out the answers. A true scientist!

She told me she wants to do lots more experiments, so we will likely try some others over the next several weeks.

Basically, you mix up two parts of corn starch and one part water (it works best to mix it slowly and with your fingers). You can add food colouring if you want but we don’t have any so I didn’t bother.

Once it’s all mixed, it becomes something not quite a solid, but not quite a liquid either. It pours like a liquid, but when you smack it with a spoon or try to stir it quickly with your finger, it is a solid.

The girls had a lot of fun squeezing it, letting it run over their fingers, smacking it with spoons, stirring it slowly and quickly, and just generally playing with it to see how it reacted to various different things. While I mostly just set this up for fun, Meredith ended up asking some pretty insightful questions about solids and liquids, and made some observations about how this corn starch mixture is different and similar to both other liquids and other solids.

They actually took it up to the bath tub and played around in the bath tub with it for a while too, pouring it on things and experimenting. Despite how messy it looks, it actually cleans up very easily with just soap and water.

Linked to Science Tutorials at The Homeschool Coop

One of my goals when we moved here was to be able to identify the plants and flowers that grow on our property (and in the area). I’d love to create some sort of journal or scrapbook with the various flowers and plants and insects we see. I haven’t decided yet if I want it to be photographs, or pressed flowers, or a little bit of both. Meredith seemed interested in learning about pressing flowers though so we decided to try it out.

Pressing flowers is really easy. We just put the flowers between two sheets of wax paper and then put them in a book. You can position the flowers so that specific parts are facing up, but Meredith wanted to do it so our first attempt is pretty helter skelter. Then we put the book with the flowers in it under heavier books and we’ll check on them in 2-4 weeks, or whenever we remember. If your child is really impatient this may not be a good activity for them.

Some flowers will work better than others. Sometimes the colours will fade a lot, while in others the colours will be preserved.

Another way to preserve flowers is to hang them upside down somewhere dry, but that doesn’t work for our purposes of maybe using them in a journal. It is something else I might try with Meredith though, as she would probably enjoy it.

I will update in a few weeks with how ours turn out!

We’ve planted our fruit trees, and the ground they’re in is just solid clay in some areas. I have sheet mulched one area, but realized very quickly that there is no way I will get the entire area sheet mulched this year. A friend suggested a way to kill the grass naturally and help the soil rejuvenate somewhat, but even that seemed like a lot of work considering everything else we need to get done. So I’ve decided instead to use green manures in an effort to bring nutrients to the surface, break up the clay, and provide some organic materials to the soil.

That side of the house always has a lot of birds (unlike the other side, where I’ve hung our bird feeder, go figure), so it seemed like a good time to try seed balls. I will mention now that though I will write the “proper” way to do it, we didn’t technically do it correctly. The seeds are ones I happened to have on hand from a couple of years ago, and I’m not certain they’re still viable anyway. I also miscalculated how many seeds I had and didn’t make enough of the clay/compost mixture for the amount of seeds, but didn’t have room in the bucket for much more. Oh well, we had fun making them and if these ones don’t sprout we’ll do a real batch a little later.

Seed balls

Mix together 5 parts dry red clay*, 3 parts dry compost, and 1 part seeds**. (My materials were all soaked since it’s been raining here, which is the biggest way we didn’t do it “right”.)

Once the dry materials are all mixed together, start adding about 1-2 parts water. You want the mixture to be wet enough it will stick together, but still easy to work with and roll into balls. I’ve seen pictures of people using cement mixers to make these, and when the right amount of water is added they will actually form into balls on their own. This probably doesn’t work as well doing it by hand though. We skipped this step since our materials were more than wet enough.

Next, pinch off pieces of the mixture and form them into balls. The balls should be about pea to marble sized. Lay the balls out in the sun to dry out. (We skipped this step too, and it is fairly optional if you are getting a lot of rain at the time you make these.) Then spread them around the area you are trying to seed. About one ball per square foot is the right amount. Once you get enough rain, the seeds should germinate and sprout.

I wasn’t sure how much Meredith would be interested in this, but she actually seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. She has been asking a lot about the various soils and mulches I’ve been using, wanting to know the differences between compost, top soil, bark mulch, etc, so we talked about about why we were using the materials we used and what they would do for the seed ball. Then she helped roll all the balls and had a blast spreading them around.

This could be a fun thing for kids to make at a party with a butterfly flower mix or something, and then bring some home with them (if you can think of a way to dry them out faster without killing them), or make them ahead and send them home in the favour bags.

* The clay from your garden won’t work as well as potter’s clay. Part of my garden actually has red clay which is what I used, since I didn’t want to go to the expense of potter’s clay if the seed wouldn’t even germinate. I’m sure it’s not the same as the benzonite clay most of the instructions recommend.

** I used some Dutch clover, a revegetation mix meant for our area, and some mustards and greens.

The only part she didn’t at least help with was the cutting. I cut out a body that was as tall as a toilet paper tube and would wrap around it for each pig. Then three round circles (I used the tube as a guide) for the head, three smaller circles for noses, and two ears for each pig.

As is often the case, Meredith did this in the buff. So most of the pictures of her doing the gluing aren’t safe for the internet. Here she’s showing me a tube she’s in the process of gluing. I squirted some glue on a little dish and let her spread the glue with a paint brush. Then together we wrapped the large piece of felt around. She wanted to place the head and face features on herself. Unfortunately, the craft glue didn’t hold the pieces together well. If we had been a bit more patient about letting it dry it may have worked, but as it was I got out the glue gun. I could see where the craft glue was though, so I tried to keep the pieces where she had placed them. And of course she wanted to help with the glue gun too.

She loved them!

I suggested we add faces, and again she wanted to do it all herself. She’s in a very independent phase right now. To the point that if she wants to do something by herself and can’t, she will get very frustrated and still refuse all help.

I have to be honest, I was pretty impressed with the faces when she was done. I did suggest she give each pig two eyes, two dots on the nose, and a mouth, but she wouldn’t let me even touch the pen while she added the faces. I sort of expected them to end up a lot more scribbly.

Here she is huffing and puffing the finished pigs.

And putting on a puppet show. We have another toilet paper roll now, so we’re going to make a wolf if I can figure out how. And I need to figure out something for the houses. This morning’s puppet show featured a big bad Tyrannosaurus Rex huffing and puffing the houses down though, so she can certainly make do without all the correct characters. I really need to find the fabric that got packed away for making her a real puppet theatre. She is loving the puppets right now!

These can be made very cheaply too. I reused two old jars, and got the ornaments on clearance. One of the other moms got her ornaments for $.50 each from a thrift store.

I also managed to get the words on both jars to end up directly in front of the people in our ornaments, so I couldn’t take a good picture of either one of them without the words in the way. Hence, the funny angles. These are pretty easy and I think if done without blue trees and with more care about where the words on the jar end up, they would make good gifts. Basically, choose a wide-mouthed jar and matching lid. Use waterproof silicone glue to glue the lid parts together, and to glue the ornament onto the lid. Silicone glue normally says to wait 24 hours before getting it wet, but we only waited a couple of hours and so far they are fine.

Fill the jar with distilled water. You want it mostly full but leave a little room for air. Add a small amount of glycerin (I think we added about a teaspoon). We’re not entirely sure what the point of the glycerin is. One of the other moms forgot the glycerin in one jar and it was working just fine (if not better than some of the others).

Here’s the part where the kids come in (and they did have fun with this step). Add the snow glitter (just large, white glitter). We also had silver glitter, and snowflake shaped beads. Don’t be too stingy, especially with the snow glitter. You can swirl the jars around before you put them together to get an idea of how it might look and whether you might need more glitter. Then glue around the lid and the threads and shut the jars tightly.

Now that the jars are together, we can decorate the bottoms with ribbon or paint. I may actually take these ones apart again to rinse the trees more, replace the water, and try and get them back on so you can actually see into the jars to the ornaments, and then reglue them. Even with the blue though, they’re pretty and Meredith loves them. If we didn’t have to ship our gifts so far, I’d consider making them again next year for gifts.

Luminara began in 2000, when the City of Victoria asked the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA), to produce a community celebration in Victoria.

Luminara has elements of both worldwide celebrations of light and local community connections. It is a celebration of light that has taken root here in Victoria, like other traditions that have come here from around the world, and become part of our local identity.

We met up here to start out with. One of the moms brought homemade candied apples, which were delicious.

For some reason Meredith decided she didn’t want hers. She told me she doesn’t like chocolate. More for me. We made their lanterns from glass jars, coating them with tissue paper, glitter, and feathers, and using pipe cleaners for the handles. (Notice the big bowl of chocolate chips next to my daughter, who had just told me she doesn’t like chocolate? I guess those don’t count.) Meredith was able to do a lot of it herself.

Fiona ate her pants, which is about her favourite thing in the world to do right now. That and her shoes.

Then we put candles in the jars and walked around our co-op with them. It was pitch black out, and I think pretty neat for the kids to wander around with their lanterns. Meredith found holding her jar by the pipe cleaner too hot so her and Kris improvised.

A few of the houses were decorated with tissue paper on the windows and windows all lit up for the kids. I took pictures but because of how dark it was and I didn’t have my tripod, I didn’t get any really nice ones. One of the neighbours had put out some of her own lanterns around her walkway for the kids though, which was neat and I did get a decent picture of that.

I think it was a pretty fun time for the kids. Next year I think it might be fun to also go to one of the communities that celebrates it. Apparently this year some of them had stilt-walking, a barn dance, music, shadow puppets, and more.

To my surprise, the “control” apple was already getting mouldy. I guess that’s the humidity here working! We probably could have left it longer for more of an impact, but we go with the flow. We checked the apple out and Meredith spent a little bit just looking at it. I’m not sure what she was thinking but she seemed very engrossed so I made sure not to interrupt.

Once she was done with the control, Meredith carefully spooned our natron mix into a bowl. I asked her if she thought the mummified apple would be mouldy and she said no, though she wasn’t sure what to expect. The mummified one had shrunk and gotten very dark. “Like the mummies!” She did connect that to the game she’s been playing on the computer and the book about mummies that she likes to look at, because they all say fairly clearly that mummies get smaller and darker. That’s the salt/baking soda left on the apple, not mould.

After she was done examining and comparing both apples, she turned to play with the natron mix. “Mama, it’s very wet!” And so it was. I was actually surprised at just how wet it was.

She asked me if it was because of water from the apple, which is kind of neat as obviously she is retaining a lot of the information she’s been asking me about and we’ve been reading together. At her age, I try to keep things simple and not overload the information, so I just told her it was partly from the apple and partly from the air. She seemed satisfied with that and went on playing with it for a while.

Over all this was a very fun project for her, and one that she could do a lot of the steps fairly independently already. She loved setting it up and checking on the apple. I think if she’s interested in things like this again in the future, we will definitely repeat it, though next time I’d like to leave the pieces longer.