Art & Science Collide: Watercolor Salt Paintings

We actually created this project months ago. The girls had a no school day back in February and I kept them busy with art projects that day. One of them was watercolor salt paintings! This is a relatively easy project to do and the girls really seemed to enjoy it! It would be a short quick-drying project to do as a birthday craft as well.

What you need:
--watercolors (I like liquid watercolors, I think they are much more vibrant)
--table salt
--watercolor paper
--blue painters tape (optional)
 
Start by having the kids block off a design on the watercolor paper with the blue tape.

Here are their taped off designs:

Then just fill in a section with watercolor paint. We found being liberal with the paint/liquid worked best. After doing a small section, sprinkle a little salt on the paint and move on repeating the process in the next area.

And here are the finished wet paintings with the tape still on:

My nine year old's:

 My seven year old's:

 Here is the one I made. :-)

 And here they are with the tape removed:

 And just for fun, here's a close-up:

This was a really fun project because not only is it artistic, but scientific too! I explained to them about how salt is a dessicant and sucks up the water/liquid. They thought this was such a neat thing to see! You can see the speckling happen as it dries.

Once the projects are dry, just remove the tape, brush the salt away and enjoy your beautiful artwork!

Sensory Activity: Playing with DIY Flubber

My son LOVED the slime we made together so I thought it would be fun to try something else similar. I had pinned this post from Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds. The flubber post shows a lot of great ways to play with flubber, including coloring it with markers! I love that creativity and color can mixed in with sensory play. This is a very well-rounded activity as you can also practice cooking skills by letting your child help you mix up the flubber.

What you need to make Flubber (goop, gak, etc):
--Borax
--Water
--Elmer's Glue

Mix 2 cups Elmer's white glue with 1 1/2 cups cold water in a bowl. In a measuring cup, mix 1 1/2 cups cold water with 3 teaspoons Borax. Mix two solutions together until your flubber(goop) is mixed well. Store in an air tight container.

My son really enjoyed playing with this. The gems and plastic circles easily came out of the flubber when he was done playing with it.

This stored really well. We didn't play with it again for several weeks. My kids had Martin Luther King Day off of school. We got to the point in the morning where we needed to turn the tv off and do some sort of activity. My oldest daughter asked me if I had any fun sensory stuff for her to do. I thought of the flubber and brought it out along with the markers. My son joined in right away.

Even my middle daughter who usually doesn't join in on our sensory play for very long (she doesn't "need" it as much as the other two) had a great time with this activity. They really liked using the markers with it.

 

 Ella decided to try blowing into the flubber with a straw. It took a bit of experimenting to get it to work. She found she had to really wrap the flubber around the straw so no air could escape.

 Here it is at the end all mixed back together.

Honestly, this activity has a TON of applications. All sensory, part cooking, part science experiment, part art/creative project. LOVE IT!

Art & Science Collide: Mad Scientist Experiments

 I like to do science experiments with the girls in the summer and even though we created baking soda volcanoes the previous summer, I came across several posts that inspired me to do a Mad Scientist play experience with the kids. You can see where our inspiration came from in these posts from Growing a Jeweled Rose, and this post and this post from Play at Home Mom.

Here are all of the supplies I gathered:

--vegetable oil

--vinegar

--baking soda

--alkaseltzer tablets

--liquid watercolors

--bubbles

--pipe droppers

--turkey baster

--straws

--measuring cup

We started off with a bin on top of our light table and added some bubbles and liquid watercolor. The kids used straws to blow big bubbles in the solution. We also watched to see how the liquid watercolor moved in the container. We also experimented with smaller straws and bigger straws to see if the bubbles were different sizes.

I cleaned out the bubble solution and added some water. We added vegetable oil and alkaseltzer tablets to watch the liquid watercolor bubble up and make lava lamp type bubbles.

After that, we started making mini baking soda volcanoes in clear plastic glasses. They just kept adding baking soda, vinegar and watercolors over and over again.

Here is a time lapse series of images to see what happens when you pour the vinegar into the baking soda. It worked great because the bin was large enough, the girls could have their own corner and do their own experimenting.

After awhile we picked the cups up to see what they looked like on the bottom:

We didn't realize all that baking soda was still in the bottom so we mixed it up and poured more vinegar in until it was all gone.

I think they could have played with all of this for quite some time. They really had a blast with this activity. And the light table really added to the sensory experience of it all. Highly recommend this!!