DIY Lava Lamps

We made Lava Lamps today.  They super easy and the kids love them!

You need a bottle, vegetable oil (or baby oil if you want clear oil instead of a yellowish color), water, food coloring and Alka Seltzer tablets.

Since we were doing 4 bottles we did 2 where we first put the water in and colored it.  Then we put the oil in.  Then the other 2 we put the oil in first, then the water, then the food coloring.  You want it to be about 2/3 oil and 1/3 water.  Leave 1/2-1 inch space at the top.

When we did the oil first, then water and food coloring it took a few minutes for the food coloring to get to the water and mix with it.  The boys enjoyed watching it, well JJ sort of got impatient waiting.  But he got pretty excited when it started to mix.  The top left picture below is when it first started mixing with the water.  The other pictures are bubbles that form when you drop in an Alka-Seltzer tablet.  I read to break it either in half or quarter pieces.  Then someone told me you can do it whole, but we found when you do it whole, it stays on the bottom for a little but then floats to the top.  The smaller pieces stayed on the bottom making more bubbles for the kids to watch.  The loved watching the bubbles coming up!  When it stops and the tablet is dissolved you can put another piece in.  You can close up your bottle and re-do it many, many times, until it gets cloudy.

Top Left pic is the dye mixing with water.   The others are bubbles from the Alka-Seltzer tablets.

JJ putting the dye in.

Mackenzie and Kolin got so excited to see the bubbles!

Mackenzie

Tanner putting an Alka Seltzer tablet in.

Tanner putting the dye in and watching it mix with the water.

Kolin watching the bubbles.

Grass People

The kids got to give them their first hair cut!  They were so excited!

Jayden and Mackenzie with Grandpop

Tanner

To make the Grass People...
You can find the idea here on Family Fun's website.

Basically all you did is clean a yogurt container.  We had the kids color a paper to glue around the cup, ideally they were decorate it like a shirt.  Then you use those stocking socks, put about 1-2 teaspoons of grass seen in the toe then fill it with soil.  Tie a knot and leave the end hanging down, it will act like a wick for the water.  Then you can glue eyes on and draw a mouth.  Then put fill the cup with water and put it in.

Painting Canvas

I bought some canvas and had the kids pick out some new acrylic paints.  I taped their initial on the canvas using masking tape.  The painters tape wasn't really sticky enough, so I used masking tape.

Then I let the kids paint them!

Again, I only let them have one color at a time.

They had so much fun!!!!

Jayden

Tanner

Mackenzie

Kolin, I babysit him.

Before they were totally dry, I pulled the tape off and then let them finish drying.  Here they all are...

Mackenzie, Tanner, Jayden and Kolin

Super cute!!!  I sure love them!!!  I should have taken a picture of my kiddos hanging up in their room. I love looking at them in their rooms!  And Mackenzie loves her's too!  She'll point to it and say "my M, for me!"  I just LOVE the kids art work!!!!!!!

Painting Our Baking Soda Clay

The kids were with me at AC Moore when we picked out some new colors of Acrylic paint.  They were super excited to paint!

To hopefully not mix the colors I put each color in a bowl and each color had it's own brush.  The kids could only have one color at a time.  And too keep the paint off their clothes I just had them go shirtless since it was summer.  The smocks I have don't cover their sleeves, so I figured it'd just be best to go shirtless.

Instead of spreading lots of newspaper out, I just put a cheap $1 plastic table cloth on the table.  It worked great!  And after the paint on it dried, I folded up and used it again when we did the second coat of paint.

Jayden

Kolin

 Mackenzie got pretty messy, so I was glad I took her clothes off!  She had so much fun painting and was really into it!  She also did a great job!!!

Mackenzie

Tanner

 Tanner is so serious when he's painting.

Here are the finished paint pieces drying, and waiting for a second coat of paint or painted designs on them.

Here are the finished pieces, after I sprayed them with clear acrylic, except Kolin's because he took his home.

Egg Carton Caterpillars

We save our egg cartons and then give them to my sister in-law, who has chickens.  There was a huge pile and I just thought we'd make a craft with them.  So we made caterpillars!  The kids just LOVE them!!!  Such a simple thing and they love it!!!

I had them color with markers because I didn't want to wait for the paint to dry.

Father's Day Super Hero

For Father's Day my kids made their dad a Super Hero Mask and Cuffs...

"Daddy, you are my super hero!"

Egg Carton Flowers

Here are the Egg Carton Flowers Tanner made for mother's day.  He gave his to my mom.  And Mackenzie gave hers to Dave's mom.

Kolin's mom told me that Kolin gave it to her right away on Friday, he just couldn't wait.  He was so excited!
You just cut slits or petals from an egg carton, have the kids paint them, put a pipe cleaner in for a stem and glue some beads or gems in the middle.

Frog Cupcakes

Jayden had treats at school and I wanted to do something fun instead of just a bag of pretzels.  They are talking about spring this week, since it is the first week of spring.  So I looked on Familyfun.com for some ideas.  Jayden really wanted to bring in cupcakes.  I had seen these cute frog cupcakes but I just didn't understand why the icing was blue instead of green.  Finally after like my 5th time looking for something I realized... it's blue because it's the water and the frog is peaking above the water.  So we decided to make these.

When I was shopping for some of the stuff and just groceries in general I wanted to get some blue food coloring because I didn't think we had enough at home.  Where I was you can only buy blue in the pack of 4 colors.  Well, I knew we had a big bottle of red and yellow at home so I didn't want to buy the blue in the pack and have more red and yellow.  So I grabbed the big bottle of green thinking "I can just make blue because I have yellow at home."  It wasn't until on my drive home that I realized, green and yellow do NOT make blue!  I couldn't believe I even thought that!  I blame it on the pregnancy hormones.  Luckily my sister in-law had some I could borrow and we were going to her house that night to celebrate my nephew's birthday, Rhett.

When I put the green food coloring away in my cabinet, I realized that I also had a big bottle of green too.  So now I have plenty of green food coloring.

Instead of making cupcakes, especially because a girl just brought them in yesterday for her birthday, I made Hershey's Triple Chocolate Chunk Brownies in cupcake wrappers.  My original thinking was that the brownies don't make as many crumbs as cake does, and they are yummy!

Jayden helped put the icing on about 3-4 brownies and then he was done.  He couldn't get it as smooth as he wanted too, so he was done after only a few.  I also think he just wanted to lick his knife and I told him he had to wait until he was done.

 But he came back to help me do the eyes.  He placed almost all of them on the brownies and then I added the black dots.  (The website tells you to buy a small tube of black icing.  I just saved some of the white icing and died it black with black food coloring, put it in a small baggie, cut a hole and squeezed it on.  No need to spend like $2.50 on a tube of icing when you spent half that on a jar of icing.)

Spiders

I took the kids to story time at the library and they read about spiders and then they made their own.  They were so cute!