Kitten's First Full Moon--Color Changing Milk

Today we enjoyed the wonderful picture book, Kitten's First Full Moon.
Little kitten sees the full moon for the first time, and thinks it is a beautiful bowl of milk.
While reading it I wanted to have the kids do a project that could be tied into the story.
I thought of Steven Spangler's experiment Color changing milk.
A very simple experiment with great results.
You need:
2% or whole milk
plates
food coloring
q-tips
Dawn dish detergent
Pour the milk onto the plates and let is sit and settle.
This is a great time to practice lapping milk like a kitten.
Carefully drop one color of food coloring into the milk, trying not to "mix" it up.

Dip the q-tip into the Dawn dish detergent

Dip the q-tip into the milk and watch the wonderful swirling colors.....

The first "dip"!

I love the looks on the kids faces as they did this---it works over and over.

Try not to mix the milk though, or it will all turn gray.

I hope you enjoy this sideways video....sorry about that!

Have you done something fun this week.....Head on over and "Show and Tell" at ABC and 123.

stART-The Trickster Tales

This week's stART project just jumped out at us this week.

While reading "The Trickster Tales" by Gerald McDermott, we noticed the bright colors and geometric shapes he uses in his illustrations.

I asked the kids what were some similarities in the artwork from book to book and we immediately noticed the artwork in the titles of his "Trickster Tales" books.

I thought it would be a great way to decorate our own names---using this artistic technique.
We simply printed out everyone's name, using block letters. (Amy was able to make our names pretty fancy)

We then colored them in. I had each child pick two or three colors and we used the books to give us inspiration.

Gracie's final product---along with Amy's fun computer graphics.

Some of our finished products.

I think I will have the kids cut out their names in one piece and mount them on black construction paper. Then we will use them to decorated the "schoolroom" walls.

Check out more stART projects at A Mommy's Adventure.

StART--King Solomon and the Bee

This week for our kindergarten work we are concentrating on the letter "Bb". When I saw the book, King Solomon and the Bee, I knew it was just the thing for keeping with this weeks theme.

The letter "Bb", bugs and bees. A perfect fit.
"In this adaptation of the traditional legend, King Solomon is not only wise, but also able to talk to animals. After being stung on the nose, he summons all manner of insects to appear before him and demands to know who dared to attack him. A small bee confesses and begs forgiveness, promising to do the king a favor later. Solomon laughs, but the bee later helps him pass a test put to him by the Queen of Sheba." School Library Journal

The obvious choice of craft was a bumble bee craft.

We used:

craft sticks

black permanent marker

pom pom

wiggle eyes

black pipe cleaners

This is a super easy craft!

The first step is to draw black "bumblebee" lines on the craft stick.

I used yellow craft sticks, but you could paint them yellow.

Glue a pom pom to one end of the craft stick as seen in a picture below.

Glue wiggle eyes onto pom pom.

Use a black pipe cleaner to make wings and a "stinger".

The kids have been playing with these all day---and they were super simple to make.

Make sure to check out other stART projects here and

We Made It projects at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

stART--The Very Hungry Caterpillar

For this weeks stART project, we enjoyed the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
This is the perfect springtime book. It celebrates the little caterpillar as it eats its way through the book, and then becomes a very beautiful butterfly.
I found these great story sequencing cards at DLTK crafts.

I just love these cards. Our book came with a cd, so I have tucked these cards right into the cd pocket in the book, so that they are always handy.

For a craft to accompany this book we made our own version of the handprint butterfly.

Each of the kids picked their own color of construction paper for the butterfly's body.

I traced the head and body shapes onto the construction paper so the littles could cut it out themselves.

Big google eyes and pipe cleaner antenna finish the head and body.

The next step was the messy step. Let the littles stamp 4 handprints onto cardstock.

Kimmy is an expert 3 year old cutter.

Kimmy's beautiful butterfly!

Let your handprints dry and then cut them out into wing shapes.

Glue the handprints onto the back of the butterfly's body.
You can be done with your butterflies at this point, but these are such special butterflies, I decided to have the kids embellish them

We used peel and stick foamie shapes to decorate our butterflies.

Our finished butterflies.

Check our more stART projects over at A Mommy's Adventures.

stART: Mmm Cookies!! by Robert Munsch

One of the authors we enjoy the most is Robert Munsch, and this week we read Mmm Cookies!! over and over again. In this story a boy makes cookies out of "play clay" and then tricks his parents into eating the cookies. Their response is an amusing, "YUCK!PWAH!SPLITCH!PLAY CLAY! GLA-GLA-GLA-GLA!!" As in most Robert Munsch books, my littles love the repetition, and are soon "reading" along with great gusto!!
The boy eventually get tricked into taking a bite of a "play clay" cookie and learns his lesson, but in the end, he and his classmates make a real cookie--which his silly parents are afraid to eat.

While the kids were preoccupied, I made a batch of real sugar cookie dough and then colored it with food coloring. Boy, did it look like the playdough I often make. When I showed it to the kids, Luke kept sniffing it to make sure it was edible.
I divided the dough between the three kids and then they proceeded to make their colorful cookies.

Luke and Kim pressed pieces of dough into pie plates. Make sure to spray the pie plate with non-stick spray--I didn't and it was hard to get the cookies out of the pan.

I loved the colorful look of the cookies.

We then liberally sprinkled sugar crystals on our creations.

Some of us sprinkled more liberally than others.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes--I just kept checking on them for doneness.

They just looked sooooo cool!!

"It's not time to eat our cookies yet, Grace! We need more decorating!"

I frosted Luke and Kim's cookies and then provided the embelishments.

You can't have too many toppings, especially after seeing the great cookies in the book.

Gracie frosted her own cookie----I love the tongue of concentration!

Now THAT IS A COOKIE!!!

Make sure to check out more stART activities at A Mommy's Adventure.