Here is a messy but clean recipe for bathtub crayons.

You will need several bars of ivory soap or glycerin soap, a grater, measuring cups, warm water, food coloring and cookie cutters.

First grate the bars of soap

slowly add up to a cup of warm water to 1 cup of grated soap. Add food coloring and stir until stiff.

add more water to thin or as we did more soap to make it thicker. Almost a whole second bar of soap!

Spoon into cookie cutters.

Freeze until solid- freezer time depends on how thick you make them.

Pop them out of the cutters and let dry at least over night. Again, it depends on how thick you make them.

After they are dry-you can use them to color on tub/shower walls.

This weeks unplugged theme is WRINKLE.  I thought about doing some batik but it sounded way too complicated for 10 AM this morning! So we looked through THE USBORNE COMPLETE BOOK OF ART IDEAS and picked the  Cracked Wax Effect.

First we got out our wax crayons and did some coloring. We tried to cover the entire papaer with crayon.

Then we wrinkled our paper up really good!!!

Then we smoothed out our paper and painted over them with poster paints. Be sure to fill in all the cracks with paint.

Then we quickly rinsed off our paint!

And left them to dry between newspaper.

First a peek inside my deep freezer

Desperately in need of defrosting! But this is were I have been keeping a secret from my kids. Hint-it’s in the topless milk cartons.-No, not frozen milk! I have been freezing various tiny treasures in colorful layers of water!

First, cut top off of milk carton. Next add about 1 to 2 inches of water and food coloring along with a few treasures. I used coins, bells, beads, buttons, crayons, tiny plastic toys etc… After that layer freezes, repeat, over and over until close to the top! This was a great activity to combat the heat of the day! I put my kids and their ice blocks in to the baby pool to find their frozen treasures.

First peel back the carton.

The Unplugged Project theme for this week is Rough and Rough is what you need to be to find your treasures!

Then don some eye protection!

Then get out your little hammers and chisels and I gave my kids nails also. This helps to break apart those tough (rhymes with rough-the unplugged theme!) little frozen goodies.

The food coloring will stain your kids skin as the colored ice melts-just remember that when you wonder were your kids got such horrific bruises!

This weeks unplugged project is STONE.  This is a project we did last summer that my kids want to try again soon.

Materials needed:  Rocks with a flat spot, crayons, grater,  the worlds second biggest magnifying glass, (’cause we obviously have the first biggest),  and sunshine.

Grate the crayons onto the flat spot of the rock.

place rocks with shaved crayons in the sun and use the magnifying glass to catch the sun and melt the crayons.

And as a let down I do not have a photo of a finished rock-sorry!!  The first photo has a  semi-melted , semi-finished one in it.

I have been tagged by Dawn at www.thiswomanswork.com
Lessons from the Tortoise: Meme: Passion Quilt
# Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
# Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
# Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
# Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I tag julie persons
artful parent
brownie vanmorrison
souel mama
lifes grand buffet

This was really hard for me! I looked at this more from what I want my kids to know from Me, their Mom.

I want them to love freely.

Live creatively.

Never loose their sense of wonder.

Never be afraid to question.

Learn all that you can.

Stay true to yourself.

Happiness is a choice.

You can accomplish any thing you put your mind to.

Enjoy all that this big world has to offer.

Live life with reckless abandon.

Of course I couldn’t pick just one!

We have a grocery/discount store in our neighborhood called Marc’s. I LOVE Marc’s. Not only do they have a decent and cheap organics selection but the have a close out section. You never know what treasures you will find! I picked up a set of books called A FIRST LOOK AT ART. There are four books in the series and they were each $1.99 each. Score!! I really like them and today we did an activity out of the CREATURES book.
We looked at THE BIRD by Eileen Agar and talked about patterns. We also looked at several other works by other artists that also use patterns in their work. We have a game called Art Deck and a great set of art cards from a UNICEF game my mother in law bought me years ago. Both have small works that we can handle and move around to compare and contrast.
Back to the activity-so we took a piece of paper and folded it in to 16 equal squares and filled each square with a different pattern. We used colored pencils and metallic crayons and these really hard crayon like things that I don’t know what they are. I don’t know where thy came from, probably Marc’s. They have no paper wrap on them. They are harder than a crayon, and they mold into a square shape at the end. I will photo them tomorrow and please let me know if you know what they are called! They were a big hit. We will use these sixteen patterns as a guide to fill in one of our own creatures soon-hopefully tomorrow!

We also spent some time outside. It was a beautiful day and great packing snow! After we built our igloo the kids spray painted it with a spray bottle, that I probably bought at Marc’s, filled with a strong solution of food coloring and water.

Tomorrow preschool and circus and possibly/probably a trip to Marc’s!

We spent most of today outside in the 60 some degree weather. We walked to the library to look for some books on Miro’. On the way we found some other interesting things.

We looked through some of our books and used cray-pas to draw some creatures and oddities and then painted over them and inside the spaces with watercolors. Hint-using watercolors with paper made specifically for watercolors, makes all the difference. Also, you can use oil pastels or even crayons and get the same results.

I love to spend time at the library flipping through books looking for ideas. I will try to link to a few good ones tomorrow-I have a sleeping 3 3/4 year old sprawled over me at the moment.