Glue--Salt--and Watercolor Art

 I don't know how we missed this art project...but kids number 8, 9 and 10 got to enjoy it.

It's very simple but I just loved the results. 

 We made designs with white glue and then liberally sprinkled salt over the glue.

Some kids were more liberal with the salt than others...pour the excess salt off of the glue.

We then used liquid watercolors to "paint" the salt.  Really, you just need to touch the paintbrush with paint onto the salt

 It was something we had never done before, and it was fun to see what the paint would do on the salt.

Luke was very patient with his intricate design.

 Kimberly's pretty flower.

 Grace was in the Olympic mood...

After art, Kimberly made us delicious chocolate chip cookie bars with an Olympic flair.  

Stained Glass Art

 We have been studying the Middle Ages and yesterday we learned about the importance of stained glass windows.  The windows didn't just present the most beautiful artwork most people would ever see, but they were used to tell the stories of the church with pictures of bible stories and saints for the illiterate. (Which was the great majority of people during this time period.)

We started by finding a picture we liked in a coloring book.  

Next, we covered the back of the picture with a thick layer of pencil.

 Tape the picture onto watercolor paper with easily removable tape.

Trace the image onto the water color paper.

 Luke's shark

 Next, we took regular Elmer's white glue, emptied 1/4 of the glue into another bottle and then added black tempera paint.....shake well. (It took a lot of shaking to get the black paint mixed into the glue).

Trace over the picture with black glue.

 Luke's shark outlined with glue. It took several hours for the glue to dry.

 Kim chose a monkey.

 We then added straight glue lines, freehand, to the paper around the main image. 

 Using watercolors, fill in the spaces...we used bright colors for the border.  The black glue is a barrier between colors. 

 These came out so awesome!! The kids were able to make them all on their own.  

Here you can see the raised glue....This was a fun project which we will definitely make again.  

I'm thinking a heart in the center with warm colors in the heart and cool colors for the border.

Which is more dense, salt water or fresh water?

 This is a quick and easy experiment to test the theory that salt water is more dense than fresh water.

All you need is:

salt

clear cups

ice

food coloring

water

 For a simple control, we filled on cup with fresh water and then watched while we added the food coloring.  The colors mixed pretty quickly.

 Then we took another cup of water and added salt....Luke wanted to add a lot of salt, so we discussed the difference between a saturated and super saturated solution.

 He mixed and mixed the salt and water....after a while we decided it was so super saturated we needed to dump off the saturated water into another clear cup, leaving a lot of salt in the bottom of the original cup.

 We then added fresh water ice cubes to the salt solution.  They floated at the top of the salt water and began to slowly melt.

 Next, drop about 5 drops of food coloring into the cup....the food coloring remained entirely at the top of the cup in the fresh water and ice cubes.

At this point I felt we needed another "control"...so we got a glass of fresh water, added ice cubes and then food coloring. 

 The kids were amazed at how fast the food coloring squeezed between the ice cubes and colored all the fresh water blue.

 Conclusion, salt water is much more dense than fresh water, in fact, the salt water never allowed the food coloring to reach below the ice cubes, and as the ice melted the blue color remained at the top of the cup in fresh water.

Another successful science experiment!

Groundhog's Day Fun

 We have been getting ready for February 2nd this week...Groundhog's Day.

Kimmy made this simple cut and paste project for our calendar wall.

I love the DLTK craft site for all sorts of fun and easy projects.

 I printed off this shadow matching game...It came from the Hands of a Child goundhog project pack.

 The kids are just loving making lapbooks right now.  In fact, Luke doesn't like to see them completed...he wants to just keep adding things to them.

Most of the elements for this lapbook came for free  from Homeschool Share.

 We enjoyed these books as we completed our lapbook.

Our favorite was: Groundhogs. It was a very readable book full of groundhog facts.

It was very helpful in answering the questions in our lapbook.

 The first section of our lapbook.

The next flap of our lapbook.

We will eagerly be watching the news tomorrow to see if we can look forward to an early spring or have to endure six more weeks of winter.

Our Australian Lapbook

 We have had a very enjoyable time creating a lapbook, filled with all the facts we have learned about Australia.

 Many of the components of our lapbook came from Homeschool Share....my very favorite resource for FREE lapbooks and activities.

 We tried our hand at Aboriginal dot painting.

 The artwork turned out lovely.

 We enjoyed many great books...the "meat" of our study.

 We learned all about marsupials, and found another free lapbook at Homeschool Share.

 Our favorite book from the above photo was Wombat Stew.  Many activities for this book can be found here.

 Some fun fiction Australian books are shown above.

 Our "meaty" Australian book was Australia by Ann Heinrichs.

 We spent a whole week learning about the Great Barrier Reef.

 Another resource (which is not free) is from Hands of a Child.

This lapbook is very indepth.  I just picked out what we were interested in.

 I did have to add another file folder to our lapbook because we keep running out of room.

 

 The Australian animal wheel came from Enchanted Learning.

You have to be a member, but I find that Enchanted Learning is a great addition to all our schoolwork.

 

We have all learned alot and enjoyed putting together this lapbook.

We are now looking forward to our next study.