Flubber is a homemade version of silly putty. It’s cold, slimy, a solid that flows and incredibly fun to poke, stretch and play around with. Especially for those tactile loving kids!! And it’s a nice break from playdough.

You will need 1 1/2 cups warm water

2 cups white glue

1 1/3 cups warm water

3 tsp Borax

food coloring

mixing bowl and spoon

This could get messy –so be prepared

In a large tubby combine food coloring, glue and 1 1/2 cups warm water

In a smaller container, combine 1 1/3 cups warm water and Borax. Mix ingredients in each container thoroughly.

Pour contents of smaller container into larger container. Gently lift and turn the mixture with a metal spoon until only about a tablespoon of liquid is left.

Flubber will be sticky for a moment or two. Let the excess liquid drip off-then it is ready. Stretch it, bounce it, roll it!

Flubber is an example of a non-Newtonian substance-appears to be a liquid and a solid at the same time. Here is some science behind it.

Store tightly covered for up to 3 weeks.

Peppermint and/or Pine scented Playdough

In a pot mix together

1 cup flour

1/2 cup of salt

2 t cream of tarter

add

1 cup water with many drops of red or green food coloring

2 T oil

several drops peppermint essential oil to the red batch and pine essential oil to the green batch

cook on medium heat until a ball forms and pulls away from the sides of the pot.

Put this into a plastic tubby with a few holiday cookie cutters attatched and this makes a great gift for a little person.

One of the great things about summer is taking the mess outside. Sometimes when my kids start pulling out various things for a project my blood pressure goes up a notch or two because I either just cleaned or more than likely the place is a wreck and the thought of more mess sends me over the edge. So I tell them to take it outside!

One of there favorite messes to create is just mixing up different concoctions.

You don’t need anything exotic. This days ingredients were salt, sugar cubes, baking soda, spices,  extracts, water and lots of food coloring. Different size small “vials” and containers (film canisters work great as do baby food jars) and “tools” for stirring and measuring. (craft sticks work great)

On this particular day, I was busy cleaning inside so this kept them busy with out needing any help from me.

When they were finished -over an hour later-I just turned the hose on them and there mess. Easy!

Ok, so I am a little late posting our activity for this weeks unplugged SCIENCE project. We have been busy around here!

We actually did a few experiments, all using coins or money. First we washed some pennies. This was super easy and worked really well. 1 teaspoon of salt to 1/4 cup of vinegar. Add your dirty pennies and with in seconds they are shiny again!

Next we checked to see if our dollar bills were counterfeit! We folded the bills in half and used a strong magnet to “move” the bill (slightly). This works because real bills are printed with magnetic ink.

You may notice that there is some red printing on these bills. These are two bills that we have had sitting near our computer waiting to be tracked at WWW.WheresGeorge.Com One of these bills is from Michigan and the other from West Virginia. This is a neat little experiment!!

Next, we mad a submarine using coins to weight down the sub. First you need to make 3 dots on an empty water bottle and then cut holes at each of these spots. Next you will need 4 quarters and 4 nickles stacked and taped together.

Now tape the stack of quarters on the back hole and the stack of nickles on the front hole. Now wad up a ball of modeling clay and stick a straw through the middle-cleaning all the clay out of the end of the straw. Now mold the clay and straw around the opening (top) of the bottle.

Now fill up the sink with water, fill up the bottle with water until it sinks.

Now the fun part-blow all the water out of your sub through the straw and watch it rise back to the surface.

Ginger liked this so much she took it in to the bathtub tonight!

Today was all about eggs. The girls cracked a bunch and made omelets. What kid doesn’t love cracking eggs?!

Then we checked on the brown egg we soaked in a jar of vinegar over night.

The vinegar dissolved the shell and left a rubber coating on the egg. You could feel the yolk inside. These sensory loving kids couldn’t get enough of this tactile experience!

Next we tried the  sure to please experiment of sucking a hard boiled egg into a bottle, 2 different ways.

For the first experiment you will need a  peeled hard boiled egg, a glass bottle with an opening that is smaller then the egg-like a milk or juice bottle, and 3 matches.

Light each match and quickly put it inside the glass jar one at a time

Then quicly place the egg on top

It will get sucked into the bottle. But I think the girls had more fun trying to get the egg back out! Blowing into the jar is supposed to push the egg back out-but it didn’t seem to be working.

They resorted to skewers

Then we tried the same experiment by pouring boiling water into the jar, swirling it around the sides, then pouring it back out and again placing the egg on top.

And it worked again!  And again they spent more time trying to get the egg out of the jar!! There are a million sites that explain the science behind these experiments. Here is one. Here is another. And one more.

We couldn’t end with out something pretty! So we cut out the bottom of a cardboard egg carton to make little pots and painted them. Then cut out the bottoms of the Styrofoam cartons to make pretty flowers and then stuck a craft stick through both! Happy Spring.

Now is the time most parents are signing there kids up for camps and making sure their summer vacation is accounted for.  Keeping kids busy so they don’t get “bored.” Hmm. I don’t remember ever being bored in the summer. We played out side all day, rode our bikes where we needed to go, went to the pool, played board games on rainy days and generally stayed busy with out adult direction or direct instruction. We didn’t go to camp or take classes 3 days a week. We played.

I know-that was a different time. Things are more dangerous now. At least that’s what so many people think. I don’t buy it. I  think that now we have so much media telling us all about all these bad things that happen that we have became afraid.  It seems common place. When really, bad things always happened-you just didn’t hear about it as much. Now that doesn’t mean I send my kids out in the woods by themselves at night. But I do let my kids play out side by themselves, out in the park with friends or siblings with out me. They ride their bikes places and get this-they don’t have their own cell phones!!

I look so forward to summer time. Playing outside all day and really being tired at night. My kids usually take a class or 2 or 1 or 2 weeks of camp during the summer-but not this year. I am not spending the money and I plan to offer lots of fun around here along with lots of chances for undirected play. Abby and her family moved into our backyard a few weeks ago. So I am looking forward to lots of kids running around the park  this year, making forts, digging in the mud and investigating the woods.

This weeks unplugged theme is BOOKS. I have several books checked out from our library that are choked full of outdoor, summer activities.

First off, if you need anymore reasons to throw your kids outside this summer you should read the national bestseller, LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS-SAVING OUR CHILDREN FROM NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER. By Richard Louv.

The next book is well worn and tattered for good reason. It is loaded with activities and games. I have lots of book marks in this one! GO OUTSIDE by Nancy Blakey.

THE BOOK OF FAMILY NATURE ACTIVITIES  By Page Chichester has 50 projects and activities. These are a bit more complicated but not too difficult. Also, a bit more scientific, but great for older kids.

THE KIDS GUIDE TO NATURE ADVENTURES By Joe Rhatigan is full of colored photos and practicale how to activities.

Great environmental book that answers lots of WHY questions.

NATURE’S PLAYGROUND By Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield covers outdoor activities for all four seasons. And what I like best is that the activities don’t have a list a mile long of things you have to gather or go and buy. Mostly they are found, natural objects.

HANDS ON NATURE put out by The Vermont Institute of Science, is more like a manual but again,  full of useful information and environmental science projects.

These are just a few, I am sure there are many, many more great books out there full of ideas to make your summer in the back yard a great one!

This weeks Unplugged theme is Balance.  Molly immediately thought about making a balance scale and I immediately thought about finding balance in my life. Something I constantly struggle with.

I often use essential oils around our house. Adding tea tree oil to cleaning supplies, eucalyptus to a pot of hot water for a steam tent, lavender and chamomile to soothing baths. We also have a few aromatherapy spritzers. One is a “sleepy time” spray and the other is a “to get jazzed up” in the words of Ginger. We love to spray these, they smell so good. So when thinking of blance I thought it would be nice for the girls to each make their own spritzer made up of scents of their choice. So we went to Earth Elements

and began the daunting task of smelling and sniffing many different essential oils. I thought they should choose the scents that specifically are for balancing but realized that whatever they found appealing would act as a balance for them.

Molly ended up with a grapefruit, lemon, tangerine spray and Ginger with a grapefruit and peppermint mix.

It was great fun and fairly inexpensive-about $5 each. It was really empowering for them to choose what they liked best and couldn’t wait to share their spritzers with everyone in the family-dogs included!