Artistic Endeavors

One of the reasons we chose homeschooling, or more specifically unschooling, was to have time, big chunks of time, for thinking, creating and exploring various interests. Having whole days or weeks devoted to a certain interest or activity lets the kids explore it as far as they want to go without losing momentum. Interests come and go, are left off and then picked back up again naturally, without an artificial time table dictating when to move on to the next requirement. For the past week or so we have been heavily involved in art projects around here.

Among the many drawings and paintings they've done, the kids have been working on illustrations for a children's poem my mom wrote when my brothers and I were small.

 In this poem, fish ride in boats

 the buildings are upside down

 and mothers sit on the laps of their daughters. 

They've had a lot of fun coming up with the artwork.

 Aravis explored color and texture with paint.

 The girls made animals out of polymer clay. 

There were more but Aravis sold them to the neighbors for Chuck E. Cheese money. In fact, I had to buy these from her because I thought they were so cute, I didn't want to lose them all.

We made oodles of clay beads for bracelets and necklaces.

And, of course, Dominick has been working on his origami skills. 

Aside from art, we also started this cool naked egg experiment.

 The acetic acid in the vinegar is reacting with the calcium carbonate in the shell which dissolves the shell and releases carbon dioxide bubbles. It will take 48 hours for the naked egg transformation to be complete. So far, the eggs are bubbling and  will spontaneously spin on occasion due to the release of the carbon dioxide. I'll let you know how they turn out!

 

Shaving Cream and Glow Bath

This picture makes me happy.

I thought Xury would enjoy playing with shaving cream but, as you can see, everyone wanted in on the fun.

,

Xury loved smearing it around the table and squishing it through her fingers

but once she started washing her hair with it, she left to have a bath while the others stayed and played.

 They used paint, water and medicine droppers to create swirly, twirly shaving cream art.

We marbleized paper by adding paint to the shaving cream,

pressing the paper onto the it,

 

and then, scraping off the excess.

We've done this at the Children's museum before but this was the first time we tried it at home.

I added cornstarch and made a squishy, doughy concoction but everybody else was too busy squirting and mixing paint to care very much.

I thought it was cool.

Then, last night we decide to have a glow bath. 

Set up was as simple as throwing glow sticks in the tub, adding bubbles and turning off the lights.

Again, this was intended for Xury but everybody wanted to join in.. However, due to tub capacity (and weirdness factor) I had to limit it to just the younger two. They put on bathing suits so everyone could come in and check out the awesome effect. It made for some really cool pictures too.

Xury was a little hesitant at first but changed her mind once she discovered the glow sticks buried beneath the bubbles.

They played til their fingers and toes wrinkled.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

Inventions, Experiments And A LIttle Bit Of Plumbing

I feel like life has slowed down long enough for us to just "be" for a little while and it's been wonderful. There's been a lot of creativity and learning going on. Dominick came home from Home Depot the other day with an itch to build something. He wanted to build something out of PVC pipe but couldn't think of anything so he sat down at the table with a pen and paper and decided to invent something instead.  He came up with two ideas. One was a redesigned screw with a head that the screwdriver locks into to prevent stripping

 This was his design. On the right is the screw head and on the left is the drill bit.

The second was an smart phone case with a small compartment for a credit card or money. He made a prototype out of Legos (of course!)

And when the delivery guys who installed my washer broke a pipe, he finally had something to build with  PVC pipe too.

 Leaky pipe fixed!
(I got to clean up all the nastiness behind the washer)

Then we had some more late night science. Apparently science only happens after 9 p.m. at our house.We got this science kit at a garage sale a few months ago and Aravis wanted to try some of the experiments.

 We learned about the primary colors of light, red, green and blue. We also learned about color addition and subtraction and why we see the colors we see. We did this experiment to see how a beam of light travels.

We went into a dark room with a flashlight. Then we sprinkled some baby powder in front of the flashlight to see the beam of light. It was pretty cool. The light pushed the baby powder forward in the straight line you see here. 

Reorganizing the K'Nex for packing led to LOTS of K'Nex building. (Dominick is building as I type)

Xury and her toys loved the carnival.

   

And Aravis had lots of fun with sidewalk chalk and water.