Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

Kaia and Mikey love wearing our shoes. Last Night they put on a shoe fashion show!

Rainbow Pasta

We made rainbow Pasta it is super easy. Just Boil the Pasta till al dente. If the directions say to cook for 12 minutes I usually cook for only 10min etc

As soon as you are done cooking the pasta run it under cold water. I get my hands in there and flip it around make sure the pasta is cold and has completely stopped cooking

Next separate pasta in baggies and coat in oil just enough to coat pasta NOT so much that the pasta is swimming in oil

Add food coloring or liquid watercolors

Let the kids enjoy! I threw some googly eyes in ours.

Shaving Cream Roads

I used to do this project every year with my class when we would talk about occupations and construction/road workers.

This works better if you have a colored table or placemat. We did not so we used our white table and tried coloringthe shaving cream like a road.

I gave the kids spatulas to "pave" the roads. Then they could drive the cars through on the safe roads

Really Mikey just liked exploring and scraping he was to excited about that to worry about where his car was going

Kaia got it and was happy to make her road ways

Playing with and spreading the shaving cream was so much fun. It is definitely one of our favorite sensory activities!

Balloon Art

iwas trying to think of a fun craft for the kiddos to keep busy since we have been on a complete no TV kick. Why just because, I felt like trying it out for awhile and it has actually been kind of nice.

Anyway awhile ago like two years (almost exactly) we did balloon art and I thought why not do it again

Like the first time the kids were totally into it they loved it from start to finish. Which was over an hour!

Splat and Spray Painiting

We used those little sponges for makeup that are shaped like a triangle for applying foundation. Soaked them in paint and swatted them with fly swatters.

We also put liquid watercolors in spray bottles and sprayed a hanging white sheet. Both were messy and fun!

Kid Wash

We made a Kid Wash for the kids to enjoy all summer long.

It turned out even better than I thought it would n

I took a ton of pictures of the kids playing in it but the camera was on the wrong setting so onlya few of them turned out. And even then they are hard to see.

iwill take more pics later so you can see the kids playing in their kid wash

Our Waterwall

I have been wanting to make a water wall for the kids for a while now
I was very excited that our water wall was not only perfect for water but also for all those ball pit balls we have
the entire water wall cost a little over $10
I bought the gutter for $4 at home Depot and two 7ft packs of clear clear tubing. I also got 3 funnels at the Dollar store for $1. Everything else we already had
The gate that I attached it all to is what started it all. A friend of ours redid her backyard, fence and gate too. Since she was throwing it in the dumpster anyway I asked if we could have the gate. I knew I could do something with it. It became the inspiration for our water wall
I attached the gutters and clear tubing first and then arranged our recycled bottles around it all
I now have another use for the gatorade bottles they were by far the easiest to work with
I have a feeling this waterwall is going to be a work in progress. I don't think it will ever really be done I keep thinking of things to add to it... like a waterwheel I think that might be our next purchase
The kids need a step stool to get to the top area which I knew was going to happen they are really careful and it actually created some interesting conversations
Mikey started talking about how he needs to balance and careful
Which lead to Kaia talking about how agile ballerinas are and how you need to be like a Ninja ballerina
I love the way the colored water looks going down the gutters and through the tubing

One of the things I loved was watching them work together to get water to the top level
The water did start out yellow, blue and green but that only lasted about a second almost instantly it was all green
Watching the colors mix and talking about what colors make what when mixed together

Stretching
This was an awesome project and really I am surprised how quickly it all came together
it took me less than an hour to put it all together start to finish and that includes cutting and drilling

This is how I started it and then of course I added all the cool stuff you see above


We made a few changes to our water wall It is now a little more colorful and has siome fun new aspects to it Remember how I said I wanted a a water wheel. Well I started looking around for something I could use like a water wheel and I found the kids pinwheels we had set around the garden. Turns out they work fantastically as water wheels And the other change I put the caps back on the bottles (after drilling a few holes in them) with the caps on the water flows in a slower and more direct current. Which made it also possible to put the ball pit balls in the bottles the kids can fill the bottle and watch the bottle float until all the water drains out.