After looking online a bit for how to make some powder colors for pictures I decided to wing it. I didn't want to buy anything with who knows what in it, and I didn't want to use a million things to make it. So corn starch, food coloring and water. This is also the same thing you can use to make Oobleck! If you haven't made it with your kids yet..you should. Its really fun and not as messy as it seems. Put the corn starch in a bowl and a few drops of food coloring. Slowly add water and mix. Its not really easy to mix, when you push on it, the mixture because pretty solid, when you let off the pressure it turns back into a liquid. Its fun to put in your hand and squeeze and then let it "melt" back down. To make the powder you do the same thing. Just slowly add water and a few drops of coloring to get the shade you want. The first few I made I added way to much water and it was still fun to play with, but too wet. If you do it too just keep adding more starch back in until it crumbles and is in smaller pieces and not big chunks. If you add the water really slow and mix with your hands breaking it all apart, you shouldn't have to add more starch. , I made 4 colors, one for each kid. I'm going to let them dry over night, mixing it up every so often to dry evenly. If its still a little chunky I'm going to run it through the food processor to get it a really fine powder. The kids don't know anything about it yet, just that I made colors and are already excited. I just need to figure out a good place to do the pictures now :)
0 Comments
Fall is slowly creeping up and for a lot of kids that means back to school. We homeschool, and we school all year so its not a huge deal for us. The deals on school supplies is nice though ;) However the one thing that is a slight disadvantage to homeschooling is school pictures. My kids are crazy and I would love to see what silly faces they made each year and let them go right into a yearbook to show every person that stops by the house. Since, ok, mostly me is missing out on this, I decided last year to do pictures myself. Since it doesn't have to fit any ones standards but the kids it was really fun. I fail horribly though and never had them printed! Its on my to-do list though, last years and this years all at once! Here are some of my favorites from last years photos. I have the idea this year on how to top it. I love taking pictures and don't do it enough, so i spend a lot of time looking at the photography board on pinterest. Some of my favorite pictures are from color runs and the festival of colors. It looks fun (besides the running..) and the colors are so bright! So I think I am going to make myself some DIY color powder and let the kids go wild. Just need to figure out a good backdrop for the photo shoot and we should have a great time :)
If you don't do the normal school photos each year, what do you do? I would love to hear more ideas!
This week we have been working on the Nervous system for our human body unit. We have went over nerves and how they send messages around our body. I had each kid pick what neuron to be, Sensory, Motor or Connector. Sage was our sensory neuron and I would poke him in the arm, or tickle him. His job was to tell Mallie, our Connector neuron who lives in the brain and spinal cord, what he was feeling and where. After that Mallie told Zak, our Motor neuron what we should do about it. Zak then told the right body part the message and acted out the movement. It was a really fun way to get the kids to really understand how our nervous system works and how each part has a very important job.
We added lungs to our bodys from last weeks Respiratory system lessons. I ran out of black ink to print out the brain for this weeks lesson. Never fails. Once we finish up our Human body unit I plan on having the kids use their log books to label the whole body as a 'final project'. We also used watercolors for art. The kids have painted a bunch of times but I think this is the first time they have used watercolors. They each picked different things they wanted to paint and first used watercolor pencils to draw it out. Sage picked a seahorse (left), Mallie picked shapes, she overlapped them and colored each part a different shade (middle) and Zak picked a butterfly. I also had the kids make yarn eyes (also known as god eye) with popsicle sticks and yarn. They loved this craft and have made them a few more times on their own. It took Mallie a little while to get the pattern down (shes 4) but she did great! When she made it again she used 3 popcicle sticks instead of just two and made a whole new shape. She has plans to use even more, and make it much bigger next time.
The kids are also learning how to knit (loom and needles) and crochet this summer. The girls are making cowls. I figured it would be a bit easier then a scarf with a lot of going back and forth. This way they can just keep going around until its a good thickness. Sage is making a hat, also using a loom.
Sage has taken a big interest in drawing. This has been a bit of a challenge. He was getting very upset about it not turning out the way he wanted it, or it looking exactly like the picture. Once we were able to get him to understand the point of art is having it be different, put a spin on it that you like, he started getting very excited and doing an amazing job! I made the mistake of telling him about a Pokemon how to draw book so he is pretty excited about getting that now, like right now... ;)
Besides moving the house around, putting up new shelves, I have been working on a headband for myself. The lighting isn't that great to see the colors but I mixed gray with a rainbow yarn. I love it and can't wait for it to be done.
And of course no week can be complete without a movie night or two ;) Sage picked a star wars book from the library and was really excited to see the movies. Even Korra was excited to watch.
Starting our summer studies with the human body! Kids are loving it so far and learning so much! We traced everyone out on butcher paper I bough off amazon 3 years ago and just getting to the end of the roll. We use it for all kinds of things! Covering tables for big time coloring, gifts, cards, table mats.. All of the body parts are from a fun book about the human body with large cut outs for major parts. When we learn about each system we add the new part to our body. Its a great hands on way to see the body parts and where they go. Each new part we fill out a page in our science book.
When we first started our garden this year I ended up with a ton of mystery seeds in the bottom of my seed bag. I was pretty sure they were carrots seeds, but put them in a container anyways. Today we dig them out. The kids loved it and I was surprised how many fit in it! I have a lot of ideas on how to turn this into a fun year long project with the kids next school year. Tomorrow we will clean them up and have eat them for a snack. I was also able to pick a few sunflower tops to dry out for seeds. Hopefully next year I can grow them a bit bigger.
Summer is almost over! In a few weeks we will be starting our first official year of homeschooling! We also get to spend next month, on top of homeschooling, looking for a house, buying a house, packing, moving...again, un-packing...and keeping up with schooling of course. I think if we can get through this first month of schooling we can handle it long term.
We also have a yard sale coming up this week. Its also going to rain every day up until the yard sale and in the 2 days its set up... Hopefully things turn out just a little easier then they are looking right now. I did go ahead and knock out school pictures for the year early though. So thats a plus... Enjoy! |
AuthorTrina: Mom, Wife, Person. Archives
August 2017
Categories |