Pepper Paints

Colorful Ice Blocks To Play With Outside

When we finally had enough empty milk and juice cartons to make blocks I cut the tops off the cartons, the kids dripped various combinations of food coloring into the cartons and we filled them with water and put them outside to freeze.

A couple of days later we peeled the cartons away from the ice blocks…some were frozen a little more solid than others.

The colored water that dripped out made for pretty snow to play in

Colorful snow balls!

Now I am back to hording the empty cartons and yogurt containers to make more colorful ice blocks!

Salt And Watercolors

I first saw this idea at Irresistible Ideas For Play Based Learning.  I LOVE this blog and get so many great ideas from them!!

First we drew a picture or design with a glue stick on some paper. Then we covered it with salt and shook off any excess.

Next we used eye droppers or pipettes to drip some color over the salt. We used liquid watercolors but I am sure food coloring would work too.

It was so exciting to see the salt absorb the colors.

We loved making these. A project I am sure we will be doing again really soon.

DIY Watercolor Paints

Did you ever wonder what those little watercolor cakes are made of? Well I am sure the factory makes them out of something different than these but I must say I was very impressed with the way these turned out. The colors are so bright and beautiful—and custom designed!

We doubled this recipe and it made a ton. You definitely need shallow little containers–I happened to have some empty paint trays that I picked up at a recycling shop and some empty film canisters which are a little too deep but worked OK-just took longer to dry.

Mix the following together:

3 Tablespoons baking soda

3 Tablespoons corn starch

3 Tablespoons white vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup

Pour into your containers —bottle caps, pill boxes, any tiny, shallow container will do.

Add food coloring. We used both neon and regular colors of food coloring

Be sure to mix or shake well

Now let the cakes dry—this takes a while. We let ours sit for about 30 hours.

But look—–totally worth the wait!

Magical Bottles

These magical bottles are filled with different oils and/or corn syrup and/or water. Back in my school teaching days we called these waves in a bottle or ocean in a bottle— Oil and water and corn starch and water don’t mix but they sure do make pretty “waves”.

3 warnings before you go any further! 1. This is a messy project perfect for outside.  2. Make sure you have enough bottles and oils to make several of these. It becomes addicting-trying different mixtures together! 3. BE SURE LIDS ARE SCREWED ON TIGHT–you can even glue them closed-because if they open, believe me-it is a HUGE mess!

What you need:

several empty bottles with tight fitting lids, food coloring, water, funnels, mineral oil (I like to use mineral oil because it is clear), veg oil, corn syrup, treasures and glitter to put in your bottles.

Here is a closer look at our treasures–marbles, sequins, dice, little plastic animals or people, beads and buttons—anything non absorbent that will fit in the bottle.

I know there are actual directions for these but I just let my kids figure it out on their own–like what happens if you add water first vs. oil first what happens if you color the water or just the oil etc… Have fun there is no right or wrong way. Any way you do it your discovering something! That’s why it’s great to have several bottles and lots of supplies on hand.

You can do just corn syrup and because it is so heavy when you turn it upside down the treasures slowly float back to the top.

You can mix oil and water food coloring and treasures-shake it up and watch it separate

Or move the bottle slowly and watch the wave move around in the bottle.

We discovered if you add too much food coloring it gets too dark to see what’s going on inside the bottle.

We have made these several times and now have a collection of about 15 or so magic bottles. I often pull these out and put them in a sunny window. They are so pretty!!

Aren’t they?!

Thursdays Recipe …….. Hamburger Cake

Molly wanted a Hamburger Cake for her birthday. We trolled around the Internet and looked at lots of photos and ideas. This is what we came up with. It might look like something difficult but let me be the first to tell you-I am not much of a baker and if I can put this together anyone can! I don’t have any photos of the cake in progress.

I bought 2 cake mixes-1 yellow and one chocolate. I made the chocolate in a 8×8 brownie pan-square patty like Wendy’s burgers!

I made 2— 8 inch rounds out of the yellow cake but filled one with more of the batter (bottom bun smaller-top bun larger.)

After they cooled I trimmed the patty to make it nice and flat as well as trimming the bottom bun. Then I took the extra chocolate cake and added it to the top of the top yellow cake bun to make it more dome like. Make sense?

I bought 3 cans of frosting 1 chocolate and 2 white

We took some frosting out  and divided it into 3 bowls for condiments and added food coloring –red for ketchup, green for lettuce and yellow for mustard. You don’t need much. After you reach the desired color put each into a plastic bag and squeeze down to one bottom corner. set aside.

Take more white frosting into a bowl and add color to look like American cheese—use this to frost graham crackers to look like cheese slices on the burger.

Take the other can of white frosting and make it bun colored-we added a bit of the chocolate frosting for some color plus some food coloring.

Now to put it together

bottom bun cake first with burger patty (chocolate cake) next. Frost the chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting-making the edges look burgery!

 To that we put the graham crackers already frosted on the edges of the burger cake-hanging over a bit. We didn’t go all the way into the middle of the burger with these I wanted it to stay stable and thought this might make it tippy and too sweet. We did use more of the cheese frosting between the graham crackers and on the edges to look like melting cheese.

Then top with top bun. Use the bun frosting to glue the dome shape together. Try to smooth the frosting out as much as possible. Now get your condiment frosting’s and cut a tiny bit off the corner (a little larger for lettuce) and pipe lettuce around the bottom edge and squeeze squiggly ketchup and mustard on the cheese frosting.

We added a few slivered almonds on the top for seseme seeds.

This really wasn’t too hard. And it was surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be way too sweet-but it wasn’t. It was a little hard to cut but no one seemed to mind!

The Making of a Polymer AKA Flubber or Silly Putty

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.

Holiday Scented Playdough

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.