This past week, I enjoyed recovering from the Half Marathon I ran last Sunday.  I was just a little sore for a few days and I look forward to starting back to early morning runs again this week to stay in shape as much as possible.  


Last week was busy as always and we did a fun "R" craft as my 4 year old continues with her Preschool Alphabet Boxes.  I got this "R" craft idea HERE.


Below are pictures of the colorful craft:

I posted recently about the Milk Art I did with my cupcakes in my post HERE.  This art went along with the "Mm" activities I did to incorporate the Preschool Alphabet Boxes I have been doing with my 4 year old (and my 7 year old always likes to jump in on the fun too!)



Last week, we did another Mm activity that I got HERE.  This time my daughter made a Mountain with snow capped peaks, trees, cotton ball clouds, and pictures that started with Mm.  Here she is holding her mountain.

Then it was onto the letter "Nn"....I had a feeling, when I was in my college education courses dying TONS of pasta different colors, that I might happen to use the colorful pasta if God blessed me with children one day.  Well, I'm happy to say my project from so long ago came in handy as my daughter glued the various shaped Noodles onto her letter "Nn".  :)  And I thought I didn't have time to do such projects when I was single in college? :)  Now, I'm wondering if dying pasta would ever get done these days? :)   

For more "Nn" activities go HERE and HERE!

How did my children make this awesome art?


The answer may surprise you!  It is Color Changing Milk, a science experiment we did yesterday morning!  

This was a super easy and fun experiment with milk, food coloring, and liquid dish soap!  Since my 4 year old is doing "Mm" this week in her Alphabet Boxes, I thought this would be a fun activity to do with all my cupcakes!  I got this idea from the Sun Scholars program that I purchased, downloaded, and printed.  



We put milk into a shallow dish and put one drop of different colors of food coloring into the center:


Then each child touched their plate of milk with a clean cotton swab and watched what happened:



We then added a drop of liquid dish soap to the other end of the cotton swab and put it in the milk.  These are some of our results...Beautiful Milk Art!


The Sun Scholars Program then had information about how this worked with a note that stated that the Milk Changing activity was found at Steve Spangler Science.  My children were more into the colors than the actual science behind it, but it was such a fun, easy and fascinating activity!  Go ahead, give it a try!

Last week for my 4 year old's Alphabet Box we did some activities with the letter "L".   When I got the idea to use handprints to make a Lion and a Lamb from Our Crafts-N-Things, I thought this would be a fun and easy craft for my 4 year old (and my 7 year old always loves to jump in on the fun too!) Here is the post for the Lion and the Lamb that I used to make our own versions.

Last week my daughter got her tonsils out due to excessive step and soar throats.  Well, she is doing much better and resting.  She has been eating soft foods like this plate of mac and cheese I made for her.

And she has been drinking lots of Gatorade and Sprite to stay hydrated.  The nurse said flavored drinks are better than water after tonsil surgery to try to get as many calories as possible into her body.

Last week, we also continued to work on the Alphabet Boxes with my 4 year old.  We made kites for "K" using cardboard box, construction paper kite, paint and marbles.  My 7 year old also joined in on the art project helping her younger sister roll the painted marbles around to create a fun design on the kite.  Here are some pictures:

Last week was a busy week as always and especially with the many fun projects we were able to accomplish!

For my 4 year old daughter's alphabet box we learned the letter "J" last week.  I had my daughter color a "J" template that I got here and I drew jigsaw pieces on the template.  After I helped her cut out the pieces she glued the letter back together and I cut out a border to look like an outline of puzzle pieces.  So it looked like this:


One thing she made, along with my 7 year old, was a jellyfish.  They were super easy and fun!  We used 1/2 of a paper plate, chenille sticks, glue, tape, googly eyes and markers.


I also read books about Jesus and Jonah while they were doing their jellyfish craft.


We hung up their creations on our alphabet wall which is really on an "A frame" ceiling, hence the slanted look in this picture :)


We also continued our Apologia Astronomy studies with 2 experiments about the planet Mars.   The first experiment was suggested by Anna-Marie at Our Life's Adventures when she was studying astronomy with her children.   So I got the same book out of the library, Mars by Steven Kipp, and tried making our own martian sand to explain why the sand on Mars is red. 





After a few days the wool started to rust in the pan with water while the other dry pan did not have rust.  We explained that the dust on Mars is red due to the iron oxide which is rust.  According to our Apologia text there is some evidence that there was liquid water on Mars at one time, but currently scientists believe there is none now.

Another fun experiment we did was build the biggest mountain peak in the entire solar system on Mars, and this volcano is called Olympus Mons.

We first made the salt dough recipe that was suggested in the Apologia text that was used for our volcano.
Our volcano is in the background with rocks around it with the text in the forefront that explained the experiment.


We then erupted our Olympus Mons by combining red food coloring, baking soda, vinegar, and dish washing liquid.

We are continuing to study ancient Greek history and this past week we made theater masks as I read information about how the Greeks only used male actors because females weren't allowed to perform.  So the men also played women's roles and usually used 2 sided masks to show 2 different emotions while performing.  Before my children began their masks, we looked up images on the computer of all the different kinds of masks to get ideas.  We stumbled upon a fun game on the computer called "Face Memory" that explained how Ancient Greeks had exaggerated features on their masks to entertain several thousand people in a big theater. This memory game tests how well your children can remember features on a mask.  My children enjoyed testing their memory skills!  Click HERE to play.  Here are some pictures from our mask activity:

My 4 year old insisted I take this picture of her with her mask as she looked into our bathroom mirror :)