We started out with a kinda cool cloud art project. It is at the Techy Teacher if you want to give it a go on your own!
You take equal parts shaving cream and glue, mix it up and start painting your clouds.
Cinco and The Princess LOVE IT! When the pictures finally dried (and mind you, this takes a little while) they had a lovely texture–somewhere b/t silky and velvety. I couldn’t stop feeling the pictures.
But, beware it gets messy fast especially with a four-year old and a seven-year old. Cinco even got it on his nose! They got the cloud mix all over their hands and started making hand prints instead of clouds. Cute and why not, right? The mix washes off easily so its really no big deal.
I wanted them to add some food coloring to the mix to start making rain clouds or a sunset, but they were having too much fun. Still, I think you could add some food coloring in yellow and red to made different shades and see if you could create a sunset picture!
Clouds by The Princess
Clouds by Cinco
So next it was on to some weird science! On the net, I found a number of blogs suggesting you nuke Ivory soap. Really? Nuke it? I was a bit worried that this was going to set my microwave on fire–and we just bought a bought a new one less than four months go–. You can see why I was a tad nervous, right? But, I am sucker for a Mom Camp project and it fit so nicely with the cloud theme and if it worked it promised to be really cool. I got out a paper plate and we did it!
It was really cool. All of a sudden the Ivory soap started growing and morphing into this thing that really truly looked like a cloud. Even The Captain was impressed– AND THAT TAKES ALOT. He even suggested the kids smoosh up the soap in a glob and try it a second time. It did work the second time and even a third with the same bar of soap. Although, the subsequent attempts were less impressive.
I assume it works with Ivory soap because of the same reason it floats– the soap has air in it! In the microwave the air heats up and expands and then pushes the soap apart. Clumping it back together doesn’t really do anything to make it happen again. It is simply expanding any air left in the soap that was not freed during the first or second attempts to nuke the soap. Or at least, that’s what my middle school science knowledge is telling me. I could be 100% wrong and I welcome ANYONE to correct me.
Next it was on to this cute Winnie-the-pooh activity pack from our friends at Disney Family! The pack was actually a good combination of activities for Cinco and The Princess. The Princess did the dot-to-dot beehive and color page. Cinco worked on the word search and crossword puzzle. Both worked together on the Pooh Mad Libs (with a little help from mom).
Then off for swimming lessons and some play time at the pool.
was a dance party around the family island. We played Winnie-the-pooh music and went round and round in a dancing/marching circle to look for a Woozle.
was my bedroom. We cuddled up and read some stories.
We bought this solar power kit (I got it for $4 new @ Goodwill– go figure) The kit was not quite as easy as they suggested it would be on the box. We had to use the glue gun to make sure all the parts stuck together, especially the Eiffel Tower–which would NEVER have stayed together without the glue gun!
We also made a wand for the fairy princess! But sadly, we did not have the time to make the bow and arrow. I guess that has to wait until tomorrow!
Even mom campers have to eat, so we went to Trader Joe’s. We didn’t let that car ride go to waste.We listened to Shakespeare for Children by Jim Weiss. It’s a children’s version of two of Shakespeare’s plays on the disk narrated by Jim Weiss. I love his CD’s and now you can you can get audio downloads of his work on Amazon, which is new and great! We listened to Midsummer Night’s Dream on the car ride. The story is a little confusing with so many changes in the love triangles.
I think reading the book with the kids and listening to another version of it will help them to figure out what is happening in the story.
. This book fit so perfectly with our activities today!
Cinco read The Circus Ship by Chris von Dusen. We read this last year for Circus Day as well. I simply adore it. It has beautiful illustrations and the story is written in rhyme which helps with children who need to improve their fluency. The story is a delightful tale about some circus animals who are shipwrecked and end up joining a small community living on an island in Maine. The author even provides an interesting historical note about his insperation for the story. Additionally, the author uses some great vocabulary words (bedraggled for example) that you can discuss with your kids to improve their own language acquisition.
I decided on the disney classic, Dumbo!
The Booky Mom 