Month: September 2017

Dancing Salt

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Did you know that salt likes to dance along to music? Neither did we until we tried this cool experiment! Sound waves might be invisible, but because they create vibrations, the dancing salt allows kids to see sound in action!

You don’t need to dye your salt with food coloring for this experiment, but it will make it easier to see as it moves.

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Besides, Travis enjoyed smooshing the color into the salt. We placed 3 portions of salt in zip-top plastic bags and added blue, green, and red.

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Next you’ll need a bluetooth speaker to make this experiment work. Tape 6 popsicle sticks around the speaker at intervals to create a frame, then top with plastic wrap. Place on a flat surface.

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Now sprinkle on the salt and watch it shimmy and shake! We found that loading too much salt on the plastic wrap made the action harder to see. Even the amount below was too heavy:

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So a light sprinkle was the most interesting. Here is our salt grooving to the Beatles – who knew salt had good taste in music?

Definitely a fun one!

Clay Charms

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With a big batch of clay in the house, we decided to shape some into charm necklaces – they’ll make the perfect gift for the upcoming September birthdays of several relatives!

You can shape your charms in one of two ways. First we tried a butter knife to cut out simple squares or rectangles. This was definitely Travis’s preferred method.

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Alternatively, you can use cookie cutters to fashion your charms into circles.

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We found a bunch of old buttons in our craft box, which made perfect imprints into the clay, like flowers or hearts.

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Once you’re happy with your designs, let the clay set. If you have oven-dry clay, bake according to package instructions. Ours was air-dry clay, so we left it out overnight. While the clay is still soft, poke a hole through each with a toothpick or wooden skewer so you can string it onto a thread later on.

The next day it was time to paint! Watercolor works very well on clay, but you could also use acrylic paint.

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After a swipe or two with a paintbrush, Travis decided it would be much more fun to do watercolors by hand. I laughed and decided why not! The results were surprisingly beautiful.

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Let the charms dry again, then thread twine through the hole in each charm. Voila! A charm necklace.

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Harvest Pasta Salad

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This make-ahead pasta salad, recipe care of High Five magazine, is chalk-full of veggies like late-summer tomatoes and fresh corn. Bonus points if you make your own pesto with the last of summer’s basil, though I confess we used a jarred version (made with kale leaves instead!)

Ingredients:

  • 8 ounces penne pasta
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/4 cup pesto
  • 1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise
  • 1 tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup vegan Parmesan sprinkles
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
  • 3/4 cup cooked green peas
  • 3/4 cup cooked corn
  1. Cook the pasta according to package directions; drain and toss with the olive oil. Let cool
  2. Meanwhile, whisk together the pesto, mayo, and lemon juice in a large bowl – definitely a kid-friendly step!Harvest Pasta (1)
  3. Add the cooled pasta, then sprinkle with the Parmesan, salt, and black pepper.
  4. Fold in the tomatoes, peas, and corn, and serve cold.

A is for Apple

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Kids have the jitters before meeting a new teacher or as they’re heading back to school? Sweeten the deal with this adorable homemade lollipop.

I used Yum Earth’s vegan hard candies to replicate a recipe that originally called for Jolly Ranchers. Yum Earth colors won’t quite be apple red or leafy green, but I came close with colors from their Citrus Grove variety pack, a pink-ish red for the apple and a pale yellow-green for the leaf.

First came the excitement when I announced to Travis that we were going to make homemade lollipops!

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Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and place 4 of the red candies in a square.

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Bake at 275 degrees F for 4 minutes – they should be just slightly soft. Let cool for 1 minute, then push into the shape of an apple. Push a lollipop stick down into the center of the apple.

Place a green candy at the top for the leaf. Return to the oven and bake an additional 4 minutes. Shape the “leaf” at the top of the apple, once out of the oven, then insert a piece of pretzel stick as the stem.

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Yup, Travis thought this was the neatest lollipop ever!

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Music Sheet Banner

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As we continue to decorate Travis’s room in our new home, this upcycled craft was the perfect idea for a kid who loves music. The banner would also make a fantastic party decoration, if you cut out enough triangles to spell a larger message like HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

I have lots of piano sheet music at home, which made ripping up a few old songs a simple matter. Otherwise, look for second-hand sheet music at a garage sale or music store – no matter what song you pick, musical notes and clefs will be a pretty backdrop!

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Travis loved helping cut the music sheets into triangles…

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As well as ripping the scraps into ever smaller pieces for quite some time afterwards.

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He can’t write his name on his own yet, but he and I did hold a marker together to form T-R-A-V-I-S. He was so proud!

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For final assembly, I simply attached the triangles to a piece of twine with a little bit of scotch tape, and that was it!

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A new banner over his new big boy bed.

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Making Moon Craters

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Some games are educational, some games are artistic – but for this one I confess we basically just wanted to take advantage of our new backyard and have some messy fun!

That said, the moon has been on our mind since the eclipse, so I asked Travis if he wanted to see an example of how asteroids and comets made craters on the moon. That was the extent of our “science lesson”, but older kids doing this project might want to look at videos of the moon or research craters a little further.

For our moon surface, I filled a bin with about 2 inches of white flour. A little cocoa powder sprinkled on top added contrast.

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Three “asteroids” of dried clay made the perfect asteroids. Hold them at about chin level, then drop down onto your moon surface.

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There was a very satisfying puff of flour and cocoa with each impact!

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And very neat holes left behind.

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Because this activity was so action-based, here’s a quick video!

 

Straw Flute

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We’re on a musical instrument kick lately, and realized we needed to add some woodwinds (er, plasticwinds) to our collection, which was heavy on percussion! This “flute” won’t really make separate notes, but it is adorable and fun to put together.

Perhaps even better than playing with the final product, Travis loved helping select which color straws we should use. We counted out six, although you could make your flute larger or smaller.

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Next, we snipped the straws into varying lengths, about 1 inch shorter each time. Great scissor practice, before preschool starts tomorrow!

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I arranged the straws in height order and taped them together before handing the instrument over to my little fifer, who soon was tooting away a melody.

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The flute practically begged for an Irish jig to dance along to!

Bucket + Tape = Drum

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If your child needs a toy drum to bang on and quick – no time for drying glue or paint here! – then this is the craft for you.

All you need is packing tape and any old bucket (we had the perfect tin one from a trip to feed animals at a sanctuary).

Travis was very intrigued as I started taping over the top of the bucket.

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And thrilled when the hole on top was completely covered (I recommend two layers of tape), and realized that the bucket now had a drum head.

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That’s it, a drum is born! Pencils make the perfect, no-crafting-required sticks, though if you want to get fancier, you might try rubber ball drum sticks.

Travis loved that he could start drumming right away. I took advantage of a later nap to glue on ribbon as embellishment.

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In no time at all, we had a drum circle!

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Salt Shaker Noise Maker

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After an evening out at a kids’ music concert, Travis began the next day making believe he was a drummer in the band – at 6.30 in the morning. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well with a sleeping daddy… and likely the neighbors as well!

The solution? Throw together an instrument for your child that is (slightly) quiet! I was lucky enough to have an empty salt shaker on hand, and some dried rice as well. If you don’t have dried rice, dried beans or even unpopped popcorn kernels would work well.

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Travis enjoyed the challenge of fitting the rice into the salt shaker, little by little. Once we decided it made just the right shake-a-shake-a-shake-a sound, I taped down the spout of the container to prevent spillage.

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Travis gave it a few shakes without waiting for any decoration at all!

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For a simple decoration, cover with colored construction paper and then adorn with markers or glitter paint.

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For something a little more elegant, we tried one covered in scrapbook paper and ribbon.

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This is a great instrument for all – fun for the kids, and sanity-saving for the adults!