J-E-L-L-O: Painting with Jello

Mom kind of hates jello, but we had a bunch leftover from Kane's birthday party (mom greatly overestimated how many oranges she could stand to hollow out for the jello boats, which was too bad because they were a big hit) and we've been looking for some different ways to use it up.  When we saw this kool-aid painting, we thought that jello might work well, too.  Although both of us are on a weird ice cube kick right now and mom is getting sick of finding melted pools of water all over the floor (she always forgets to lock the fridge dispenser and Kane is tall enough now to hook us up), she let us have them for this art project.  We sprinkled jello on a watercolor page and "painted" it with ice cubes.  Kane was mostly interested in trying to eat the jello powder -- mom eventually had to take his away from him to avoid overconsumption of the concentrated stuff.  I was slightly more interested in painting, but this wasn't a big winner.  Guess we'll have to find some other uses for our jello -- we might dial up some of these:

- jello sensory tub from No Time For Flashcards 

- jello playdough -- this looks super cool - we just might be tempted to cheat on our favorite playdough recipe for it

- Tinkerlab's jello excavation -- mom thinks we'll save this one up for outside in the summertime

- edible jello aquariums

stealing from mine.

good idea, Kane

Blinded by the Light: Lightbox Water Beads

We recently combined two of our favorite things -- our lightboxes and water beads -- for a fun activity that occupied almost a whole afternoon.  Mom found some better water beads that didn't squish quite as easily as our last batch (we liked these better than these) and we used cooking utensils and silicone baking molds to scoop, pour, and sort water beads for a while.  Nothing too complicated here, just some sensory fun.

This made a bit of a mess, so mom found some small, shallow storage boxes at Target that fit nicely on the top of our lightboxes.  Since then, we've done lots more water bead play on our lightboxes -- it somewhat helps us keep the beads from squishing all over the floor.  Although it is such fun to send them bouncing in every direction -- mom loves it.

You're a Grand Old Flag: GW's Birthday at Mount Vernon

As a result of our frequent trips to Mount Vernon and my penchant for obsessing over random subject matters, I have become quite enthralled with George Washington and, more lately, with his younger sister Betty.  I also recently busted out with the entire song of "You're a Grand Old Flag" during a late afternoon parade through our house, which song I picked up at school (although mom can't quite imagine in what context) and unbeknownst to all of us actually has some relation to GW.  So you can imagine my excitement when KidFriendly DC posted about the President's Day celebration at Mount Vernon this past weekend.  Mom and dad were psyched about the "Top Chef" style hoecake cook-off and I was jumping out of my skin at the prospect of meeting the real George Washington (who I understand is really no longer around, but I liked to insist that both GW and his sister Betty were going to be there for the b-day celebration).

We got there early and met Georgie right off the bat.  I could barely speak, which is really saying something.  Mom asked if George would pose for a pic, to which he replied, "Mam, not even my wife calls me George."  You imagine the list of responses running through mommy's head (so could dad -- he glanced nervously between George and mom), but she just smiled and told him we were really looking for his younger sister.  After George informed us B-dog was in Fredericksburg and had walked away, I matter-of-factly said, "I guess it's a good thing he's not dead."

While daddy and Cami stayed at the hoecake cook-off for a while, mom and I toured the mansion again.  Now an old pro, I immediately asked the docent upstairs "what was missing" from the third bedroom and pointed out that the crib "wasn't for Betty."  But I think mom's favorite of the day was, upon hearing again about George's unfortunate decline (he basically suffocated), I asked mommy "did he not drink enough coffee?"  I just know what happens to mom when she doesn't get her Starbucks and I imagine George experienced something similar.

All in all, the hoecakes were delish, the sun was shining, and we had a blast.  Happy President's Day!

George was a tall dude.

I will give you the double stink-eye, sir.

doneski.

Barely Scraping By: Biocolor Scrape Resist Painting

Mom generally finds packaged art kits to be underwhelming, but we are so glad she sprung for the Biocolor paint kit from Discount School Supply.  It came with a really great DVD that has tons of projects showcasing Biocolor's unique properties.  And although we probably could have found many of the projects online, we've found the DVD to be a really good starting point for lots of fabulous Biocolor ideas (even though the videos are kind of hokey).  We recently did a scrape resist painting and LOVED it.  We did these for Valentine's Day for our daddy, but it could be done in so many different ways.

To make a resist painting like ours, you'll need:
- a few different colors of Biocolor, including white;
- a scraper (we used the ones that came with the kit, but a strong piece of cardboard, credit card, etc. could also be used);
- and some sturdy paper (we ended up putting layers and layers of paint on ours).

Squirt some white Biocolor on your hands and rub them together.  Then make two handprints on the paper and use the white paint to make any other design or writing that you want to show up.  Next, pick another color and make a design, like a circle or heart, and repeat concentric designs with the additional colors.  You could also just place drops of paint around the page.  Last, use your scraper to scrape the colors out over the page and over the white handprints/words/design, etc.  Whatever color of Biocolor you place on the page first, will resist the other colors -- we also tried using silver as a resist color and loved it.  It's so cool that the colors don't mix (which is why they worked so well on our Chinese New Year's squish dragons).

If you don't have any Biocolor, but want to try another cool scraping project, check this out.

Sand in My Shoes: Upshur Playground

We are getting so antsy for the weather to turn - we've already started working on our spring/summer bucket list!  But we decided not to wait for the swimming pool to open and check out Upshur park now.  It was crowded with school kids when we arrived and Kane was in a real mood that day, but he shaped up once he saw that there was a pretty big sand area to play in.  We pretended to bury treasure and mapped out a treasure map in our head.  Mom couldn't get me off of the swings - I wanted to swing higher and higher.  The park is small, but there was enough to keep us occupied for a bit and we will definitely be back this summer for some outdoor swimming!

For a more thorough and multi-perspective review, check out The Playground Review's write-up.

When the Volcano Blow: Mini Volcanoes

So the last time we made a volcano, it turned out a little ghetto.  We didn't have a great bottle to use and we didn't have any baking soda.  We still had fun, but making a proper volcano has been on our list for a while.  So we decided to use a few of the thousand juice cleanse bottles mom saved and make some mini volcanoes.  We used our old snowflake playdough to build a nice mountain around mine -- Cami didn't want playdough on hers, which turned out to be a good way to watch the scientific reaction.  We followed the same recipe as last time (with the correct ingredients this time) and had a blast erupting them over and over again.  And we even added in our water beads at the end to see if they'd erupt out of the volcano.  They didn't, but it was cool to see in Cami's bottle that it was because the reaction occurred at the top of the liquid in the bottle and the water beads had actually sunk down below it.