The Baby Times! 16th Edition: Newspaper Play

Welcome back to The Baby Times! I hope that you are enjoying this weekly post. 

Oh no! Mom caught me!!

Newspaper play? You might be wondering why in the world I would let my child play with newspaper. Well,Little Man discovered it the other day and was having so much fun exploring.  Not the best thing to be playing with, but a neat sensory activity for touch and sound.  Just be sure that baby doesn't use his sense of taste and take a bite!  My suggestion would be to crunch some newpaper at your baby's feet and let them kick away.  Take a peek a Little Man in the video and see how much fun he is having with his new discovery!

Enjoy your day playing with baby!

Jen

Looking for past editions? The Baby Times!

Life at the Pond

Next weekend, we will once again be traveling to one of our favorite spots, our camp up in the mountains.  The kids are looking forward to getting their hands, feet, and everything else dirty while they investigate pond life.  Tadpoles, frogs, dragonflies, salamanders, striders, and more inhabit the pond near our camp.  Using nets, the kids scoop the wildlife out of the water to enjoy for just a small amount of time before returning them to their own habitat. 

As I was looking through my teacher resources, I found this great Pond Animal worksheet.  After teaching the kids about what life is like in a pond, the kids can invent a new animal that has adapted to pond life.  What would the animal eat? How will it fend off predators? How will it breathe? After thinking about these questions and discussing, a great project idea would be to sketch and label their new creature or to create the animal with clay or other materials. 

Pond Animal Worksheet 

Invent an animal that has adapted to pond life. Think about what life is like in a pond.

Name of pond animal:

 _______________________________


What does your animal eat?




What adaptations does your animal have for the following?

finding food:




moving around:




protection:




reproduction:




other amazing facts:







Worksheet above adapted from-
(Challenge Magazine May/Summer 2000 Vol 18 No. 5 Issue 90)
___________________________________________________

Other great resources:

Pond Explorer
Virtual Pond
Ponder This

Other ideas:
Discuss organisms that the kids can't see with the naked eye.  If available, use a microscope to view pond water.  Share PowerPoint: Using a Microscope & Life in a Pond

Discuss senses-What do you hear at the pond? Describe what you see?  What do you feel? What does the critter(s) feel like? Discuss.

Books that look like fun:


Let me know if you investigate pond life with your children.  I'll update you with our finds once we return from our camping trip. 

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Jen

Recycled Creatures? Happy Earth Day!

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of a bunch of recycled creatures. I wanted to see if you could guess what we were going to do with these little guys. Well, they are actually for an activity for my daughter's Monster Mash birthday party: Foaming Monsters!



The activity came from a great book from Usborne- 100 Science Experiments.

Here's what you need to create your own recycled foaming monster-

Materials:
plastic bottle
craft materials from around the house or $ store to decorate: craft foam, google eyes, etc.
vinegar
dish washing liquid
baking soda
tissue
food coloring

Directions:
1. Decorate plastic bottle. I used a glue gun and I chose foam instead of paper to decorate so we could keep monster after doing the experiment.
2. Half fill the bottle with vinegar.
3. Add a good squirt of dish washing liquid.
4. Next, add a drop of food coloring.
5. Gently swirl the bottle to mix. (on baking tray or dish)
6. Put a tsp of baking soda in middle of a small square of tissue. Roll it up and twist ends.
7. Drop the tissue in the bottle and after a couple of minutes- foam will come out of the monster's mouth.

I'm going to be sure to test this out before I do it at the birthday party, but don't you think the guests will love this? In honor of Earth Day's 40th Anniversary, I've been decorating with recyclables as well instead of buying monster decorations-turning formula bottles into monsters!

Have fun celebrating Earth Day with your kids!

Jen

Interview with an Animal

Lately my girls have been getting into creative writing, especially my six year old. She loves making up stories, writing menus, etc. and I'm so glad that she isn't hindered by her invented spelling. So many kids get stuck on the spelling that they don't let the ideas flow.

Anyways, I've been thinking about how much fun it would be for the girls to write an interview for an animal that they are interested in, but don't know a lot about. They can pretend that they are newscasters on a television show like the Animal Planet. In order to write the interview though, they are going to need to research their animal first. What questions do they want to ask their animal?

Okay, my eight year old just came in and is looking over my shoulder as I write.

"Can I interview our new hamster?"
"Don't you already know a lot about hamsters?"
"Yes, but I want to pretend that it can talk back to me."

Funny,we don't even have our new hamster yet. Now how can I tell her no. She wants to be creative and pretend a hamster is talking to her and she wants to write. So now there you have it- another creative writing idea. Have your child write an interview to his or her pet- just for fun, just to be creative!

Fun ideas for publishing the interview-
*newspaper or magazine article
*act it out with props(table, microphone,poster, etc)
*puppet show (puppet making ideas! )

More writing fun:
Writing Activities for Kids at Home

Great Places to Research Animals:
National Geographic Kids
Animal Planet
Enchanted Learning

What animal do you think your child would like to interview?



Enjoy your day!
Jen

An "Eggcellent" Science Experiment!

Yesterday, my sister shared a great experiment with me. I can't wait to try it with the girls. The whole family is off tomorrow for Good Friday, so we are going to have some "eggy" fun together!


Dying eggs with Onion peels

For this experiment, you will need the following:
eggs
brown onion peels
pieces of cloth
rubber bands

1. Wrap your raw egg(s) in onion peels (I researched this and some websites say to soak the peels first. I'm going to try it both ways and see what happens!)

2. Then, wrap the egg in a piece of cloth.

3. Next,place rubber bands around the egg.

4. Put eggs in boiling water until cooked through.

5. Take the eggs out and put in a bowl of cold water.

6. Once cooled, unwrap your eggs to see the surprise.

Before doing this experiment, make predictions with your children about what they will think will happen. Ask questions to get them thinking and discuss. Once the experiment is complete, compare the results with their original hypothesis and discuss.

Extensions/Resources:

Instructables
This website has instructions- a little bit different than the instructions that I shared above. It also has great pictures of the results!

Vegetable Gardener
If you'd like to extend this activity and try different natural dyes from blueberries to spinach, you'll have to visit this site! Great resource.

Curbly
Here you'll find an awesome podcast that shows you how to dye eggs with natural dyes. Watch as eggs are dyed with red cabbage- very cool!

About.com
To learn more about the history of dying eggs, visit this link. Her you'll find Easter egg dying from different cultures as well. Can't wait to share this with my girls.

If you try this experiment with your kids or any other egg experiments, please share!

Happy Thursday!

Jen

The photo used above is from curbly.com.

Leprechaun Linky Party!

It's finally here! Welcome to my Leprechaun Linky Party! Start posting your creative leprechaun traps and other fun activities.

And now for our reveal:



Introducing Creative and Curious Kids' Leprechaun Traps!
Drum Roll, please..............

Peanut's(age 5)


Popsicle stick steps to help out the little guys and gold to tempt them into her trap!










Momma's (age 21-he, he!)



Tempting my leprechauns with a colorful rock wall and lucky charms!










Sunshine's (age 7)


Don't tell the leprechauns about the trap door hidden under the clouds. On the side there is a rope so they can swing onto the top of her contraption.




Here's a fun letter that you can print out for your kiddos! Leprechaun Letter

Have fun catching those leprechauns! Looking forward to seeing your creations.

Jen

Hello!

Hello! I haven't been around lately due to my pregnancy symptoms- having a little bit of a rough time. I'm 12 and 1/2 weeks now, so I'm hoping that things will get better soon! I'm sure my family is hoping the same. We haven't been too busy with a lot of "planned" projects, but the kids still manage to be creative and curious even while Mom is resting or trying different cures for nausea. Here's what they've been up to!

Sunshine(age 7)
-sewing clothes by hand for her baby doll.(the best that she can- fun for her, though)
-playing her keyboard- she taught herself how to play Happy Birthday, Twinkle, Twinkle, and a little bit of Beethoven she heard on tv (I think that she has some natural ability that Mom doesn't have- need to find an affordable piano teacher)
-made a Japanese Koi (she was peeking over my shoulder while I was reading The Crafty Classroom and saw the craft on there and just had to do it. Go to The Crafty Classroom for directions. Fun craft.)
-summer gymnastics- 3 hrs a week
-archery with Dad

Peanut(age 5)
-using her imagination to send her Pet shop animals, polly pockets, Thumbelina dolls, and Tinker Bell on wild adventures!
-teaching herself beginning addition: writing down math problems using her fingers and then working on memorizing them(3+3=6, etc)
-drawing maps for her animals
-making up songs and performing them for me
-fashion shows throughout the house
-planting her cherry seeds outside after she eats her cherries

Also, swimming, fishing, biking, scootering, and church camp! So far a great summer start for the girls!

Take Care! Hoping to get back into the blogging groove soon!

Jen

On the Hunt for Animal Tracks!

Today is the day that finally arrived for my girls- a mini-camping trip with Dad! On their agenda is fishing, hiking, shooting bows and arrows, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows on the fire, and searching for animal tracks! My husband even brought plaster of paris for the kids to make molds of the tracks that they find. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I applaud his effort though in planning something so cool for the kids.

Well, the teacher in me had to help out, so I printed out a two page guide that has just about every animal track on it imaginable. They each get their own guide, even hubby. I'm so excited to hear all about their adventures this weekend. (And yes, I'm staying home. Wooo Hooo! I shouldn't sound that excited now should I? Well, I adore my girls, but right now the silence is wonderful. It's not very often that Momma gets time to herself, so I'm taking it all in.)

As I was researching for animal tracks, I came across an awesome website containing a plethera of ideas, books, activities, you name it relating to animal tracks.
http://www.squidoo.com/animal_tracks

Other resources that may be helpful if you are more interested in animal tracking:
Environmental Education for Kids
Fun School Animal Tracks Game
Bear Tracker: Mammals (cool blown up photos of each track and info about the animal)

Happy Tracking!

Jen

Curious Questions!

Peanut was curious about ants today. (Probably because they are attacking my kitchen like they do every summer!)

"Do ants have a queen like bees? Bees have a queen and the worker bees have stripes. Well, I saw an ant today that had a brown stripe. So I think this is a worker ant and it has a queen."


Pretty cool thinking for a five year old, although I'm not sure I've ever observed an ant with a brown stripe.

Well, she was right about the Queen part. There is a Queen ant and boy are they interesting.

Did you know?

*The Queen is noticeably larger than the other ants in the colony.

*The Queen has wings that stay on for the "nuptial flight" and then taken off or chewed off by workers. (pretty gross! or cool to others, I guess.) Some choose not to mate and can actually produce on their own- and will have all female offsprings.

*After the Queen finds a nesting area, she actually will seal herself in and never emerge in sunlight again.

I don't think I'd want to be the Queen Ant- wings get chewed, never see sunlight, and only use is to reproduce- no leadership involved for this Queen!

Sunshine was curious about Mom's breasts!

"Are you sure they don't get milk yet? Well, than why are they growing? Can you please show me that there isn't any milk in there yet?"

Continues to bug me!!

Mom- "No!!!!"

I'll just leave it at that! Of course, I explained when it will occur. Boy, she can be persistent.

So there you have it- ants and breasts!

Hope you are enjoying your day!
Take Care!!

Jen

An Elmo Analysis

"Elmo's parents must be in England."

"Oh, yeah. Why do you think that?"

"Well, they are never around and Elmo is home by himself. And there is a picture on the wall of this parents."

"Oh, interesting. They could be in England."

"Or they're dead."

Well, after having the above conversation with my 4 year old, I decided to research Elmo's folks and boy are they a mysterious pair!

Hmmm. I wonder why?

Wikipedia states that "As a tribute, Elmo's parents were named George and Gladys in an Elmo's World segment; their names have since changed." (named after the parents of Elmo's puppeteer Kevin Clash).

Elmo as a baby with Dad



I researched some more and I found out that Elmo's father (new name Louie) is away helping people.

From Muppet Wiki:
"Elmo's Mom helps Elmo cope with missing his father in Talk, Listen, Connect, a direct-to-video special released in the summer of 2006 to help military families cope with a loved one being far away."

The mother looks very different than what Dorothy imagined!! But hey, Dorothy is just a goldfish.

Elmo's Mom in Dorothy's Imagination


Elmo's Mom Emailing Father


Okay, so Dad is away, so that leaves us with Mom. Why do we never see Elmo's Mom? Is she in England?
Is she dead?
Naah! She's just busy blogging!! He, He!

Hope you enjoyed the post!

Jen

Buried Treasure!

I had one of my first home shows last night where I had the opportunity to share all of the great books I've been bragging about the last couple of weeks. How much fun is it to share something so wonderful with other Mommies. I had a lot of fun meeting new people,too. Well, enough about me. While I was gone, my husband did a fun activity with the girls. (Actually from Usborne- free plug for me! Yeah!) It was a Pirate Kid Kit that came with a book about Pirates and an excavation kit. My 6 yr. old chose this as her prize for a Reading Incentive Program. The kit included buried treasure that the girls had to dig out of plaster. They had safety glasses and digging tools. My husband seemed to enjoy doing this activity with them, but said that it was messy. My response- it's not fun if it's not messy!!! I remember doing something similar but with dinosaur bones with Sunshine when she was three and she loved it. I couldn't believe that my hyper little one would actually sit still for the amount of time that she did to dig and dig to find miniature dino bones. She just loved it. After seeing that both of my girls were enthusiastic about their pirate adventure with Daddy, I decided to research if there was a way for me to make some of this stuff myself! Here's a neat website that I found that has recipe for making rocks to hold little treasures!

Dig and Play Treasure Rock

Fun, hands-on science!!




Happy Election Day!!

Jen