Art & Science Collide: Ivory Soap Experiment

In searching for science experiments to do with the girls this summer, I came across the microwave soap explosion experiment. How cool is that?!! Oh my gosh, the girls just LOVED this! We probably blew up 7 bars of soap! Keep in mind, if you try this project, only IVORY SOAP works. Apparently air is whipped into Ivory soap while it's made. When you microwave it, the air expands making the soap explode!

Hmmm....now, what to do with 7 bars of exploded soap???? Well, you can make your own soaps!!

We broke up the exploded soap into flakes, which was fun in itself!

Then added in some water and liquid watercolors to color the soap.

We then smooshed the concoction into cookie cutters and let it harden.

 Ella drew on some of them with a toothpick. :-)

They popped out of the cookie cutters pretty easily, but we did discover that the wetter I made the soap mixture, the better the soaps stayed together. The mixtures that weren't as thoroughly wet, the shaped soap tended to crumble.

Sidewalk Chalk Paint

I've seen "recipes" for making your own sidewalk chalk paint before and I was always lazy and figured my kids could just use regular sidewalk chalk. BUT, then I stopped and actually read how you make the paint. Oh my gosh, SO EASY!!!

I decided to shake things up a bit for my kids AND have them help me make the paint. All you need is equal parts water and cornstarch. We used 1 2/3rds cups because that's all the cornstarch I had in the house. But that made enough for me to split into four ziploc containers. Use a whisk to make sure the water and cornstarch are well mixed. Then I added a few drops of my gel food coloring to each ziploc container and whisked some more. The girls were super excited about all of this! What an easy way to turn something they do all the time into a new activity.

Even my 2 1/2 year old painted with it outside and had a great time. I was amazed at how he actually painted with it and didn't just spill it or fling it around.

 

 

 

 

The great thing about this is that you can just throw a lid on the ziploc container and save it for the next time you want to use it. You'll just have to whisk it or shake it up again because the water and cornstarch does separate.

2011: Project 11--Mandala Drawings

Playing a little catch up today. I'm spending some free time getting prepped for our art projects this summer and realized I didn't post this mandala project. I did this project with the girls in Summer 2011. It was the last project and school started up. I just never got back to it. They seemed to enjoy this quite a bit. I had come across a CD mandala project on both Art Projects for Kids and Mrs. Picasso's Art Room. 

I gave the girls a little background on mandalas. The wiki explanation of mandalas compares Buddhist and Hindi mandalas with rose windows in Christian churches. That was the perfect thing for me to discuss with the girls. It piggybacked well with the stained glass project we created earlier in the summer. I didn't get into a major discussion on the symbolism in mandalas. I just explained to them that there are other religions besides Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism use mandalas as part of their religion, like Christians use stained glass windows. It was the easiest way I felt I could explain this to the girls. I showed them these examples (sorry, I don't have the sources anymore, but I did find them through a Google Images search for mandalas).

 

 

 

Instead of explaining the symbolism behind mandalas, I spent more time discussing the characteristics of the mandala. The circular shape, the pattern all the way around. I showed them examples from both of the blogs above. And then we got busy!

I started by dividing the CDs up into even spaces for the girls. I just used a permanent marker to draw the lines on.

This is how the girls found their workspace when I started the project:

After explaining to them that they would be creating the same pattern all the way around the CD. I gave them the paper with the "pie" piece drawn on it. I asked them to draw out a pattern, anything they wanted. Since we were using permanent marker on the CD, I wanted them to work their ideas out first.

I even had them color in their pie piece first so they knew what their colors would look like before starting on the disc.

Then I had them repeat their pattern on the disc with a fine-point permanent marker.

Here was my 5 year old's disc before coloring in:

And my seven year old's:

And finally, they colored in their mandalas. I gave them the option of continuing a pattern on paper outside the disc. But they both were tired after just doing the disc so we kept it at that. I used glue dots to adhere the discs in their art journals.

Here are the finished pieces:

Handmade Holiday: End of the Year Teacher Gifts

Here is what our End-of-the-Year teacher gifts will look like this year:

They will receive a small pour-painted flower pot, an alcohol ink painted tile coaster, and a handmade card (alcohol ink stamped onto glossy scrapbook paper) with a note that says:

Thank you for helping me "grow" and "coast" 

through kindergarten this year! 

I had a wonderful year with you!

Craft Project: Pour Paint Flower Pots

What a fun project this was!! Along with the alcohol ink coasters we made, we created some pour paint pots to also give the girls' teachers. This project was sooo easy! Though it did take a tiny bit of experimenting to get the whole flower pot covered, but if you aren't particular about the outcome, it's so easy!

These two posts inspired us from Dilly-Dali Art and In Lieu of Preschool. Both of their projects turned out amazing! They created larger pots than we did. Ours were just 3" diameter terracotta pots, perfect for a pencil holder (or a very small window sill plant).

Here's what you need:

 I got both the metallic and glitter Creatology Tempera Paint from Michael's. This paint worked AWESOME! I highly recommend it.

I taped the hole in the bottom of the pot. You'll see later in the post, but once you start pouring the paint, it seems as if you'd never be able to get the tape off. The paint is so thick. But once it is dry, the paint really thins out and you can easily remove the tape.

 

I learned from Genny at In Lieu of Preschool that suspending the pots works well. And boy does it! We used our Colorations BioColor paint bottles to suspend the pots. You'll see in other pictures, I wrapped a paper towel around the bottle before putting the pot on and it worked really well!

I was able to do this project one on one with my girls, which I think was a good thing in hind sight. Both Aleacia from Dilly-Dali Art and Genny advised that less is more when it comes to squeezing the paint. I think if both girls were doing this at the same time, we would have had more paint poured than we needed. :-)

All you have to do is pick your colors and start pouring them one by one into the center of the pot. As the paint covers the bottom of the pot, it will begin to pour over the side in layers.

 

My older daughter (pictured above) didn't want me to help at all so I just let her go and didn't offer any suggestions or anything. My younger daughter was a little more amenable to my suggestions. Instead of just letting the paint fall where it wanted, we let it pool a bit.

Then I picked up the paint bottle it was suspended on and tipped it just a bit to get the paint to cover the bare spots on the pot. We repeated this technique a few times to get most of the pot covered.

 

We went from this:

To this:

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE how they turned out! We will definitely be doing this project again. Quick, easy, and beautiful result!