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Rubber Band-Powered Paper Airplanes

I was flipping through one of the activity books I added to our collection over the summer, The Usborne Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do, and found instructions for making catapult planes. The girls love making and flying paper airplanes, so I knew they would love this project.

As you can see, you [...]

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Gunk, Slime, and Other Gooey Stuff

Besides making our favorite homemade playdough, we had not made any fun sensory concoctions in a long time. It was time to pull out some recipes!
Our most recent gooey creation was Gooey Gunk from The Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions. This is a two-solution recipe using Elmer’s glue, borax, water, and food coloring (we used [...]

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Metamorphosis

What fun it was to watch our tiny caterpillars grow and grow and make their debuts as butterflies.  The girls were enthralled with the whole process – it is quite magical, isn’t it?

The timing was just right – we were able to release three of the butterflies at our old house, on our last day [...]

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Science Play: Simple Experiments

{Color Changing Milk – Steve Spangler Science}
We always seem to have a lot of science play going on – experimenting, making concoctions, building inventions, exploring outside, etc.  In addition, our homeschooling studies this year included learning about the basics of the scientific method – asking a question, making a hypothesis, experimenting, observing, and discussing our [...]

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Magnet Painting Activity

Yesterday, the girls had fun with magnet painting. This is something they both remember doing at preschool and were excited to experiment with it again!  You will need:

magnetic marbles
magnet wand
washable paint
a shallow box or tray (not metal!)
paper

I think you can see the basic set-up in the picture below.  You want your box to be propped [...]

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Exploring Apples

We have been celebrating the arrival of fall with some fun apple exploration – I love apple season!  We are planning a trip to the apple orchard soon.  In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to:

sink or float?

How many teddy bears does your apple weigh?

sketching the inside of an apple

apple printing
Yesterday, we brought home [...]

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Experiment: Sink or Float?

Here’s an oldie but goodie from the archives – have a great weekend!
Our girls have been very excited about doing experiments lately. To feed this interest, and to motivate me and my husband to keep providing these opportunities on a regular basis, we’ve started having “Sunday Night Science.”
This week’s experiment involved exploring if certain [...]

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More Fun with Paper

We set-up a fun “paper-testing” experiment. On a large piece of cardstock or cardboard, glue pieces of different types of paper and other materials: printer paper, construction paper, foil, wax paper, plastic wrap, corrugated cardboard, paper towel, fabric, etc. Choose one medium, such as crayons or watercolors, and see what happens as you draw or [...]

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Fun With Foil

During one of our backyard camp-outs, I brought the box of foil out to the tent and let the girls explore ways to create and play with it. They had such fun! Delaney is especially taken with the foil and asks for it all the time. Here’s a few things we have done to explore [...]

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Weather Charts

Hi everyone! Hope you had a nice July 4th weekend. Looks like we will be trying to stay out of the heat and smoke again this week – I better start thinking of things to do now!

This week’s theme over at Unplug Your Kids was sky. My girls love to talk about the weather, so [...]

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