Have you ever bribed your kids to entice them to enjoy the outdoors?  I know I have!  Dan from Dad Does has tips on how to encourage your kids to get moving with a step counter.

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Ever want to take your kids camping for the weekend ti stay in a Tee-pee, how about a Tree House or in a Rail-Road Box Car?  There are a bunch of crazy kid-friendly, memory building places to camp.

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Come give your tips on when and how to get your kids involved outdoors!

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Anything that makes your trips Oh. So. Much. Easier??  Come tell us about it!

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Many thanks to bloggers Dad Does, RedTedArt & Hands On: As We Grow for contributing discussions.

I thought long and hard about how we could incorporate a hands-on activity for mummification. Someone suggested we mummify a chicken, but I opted not to do that mainly because it sounds nasty, but also because we don’t eat meat and therefore don’t buy it. Then I heard about a project in which you can mummify fruits or veggies. Sounded a bit more like my kind of thing, but ultimately I really I wanted to do something that had more to do with the ritual aspect of mummification. So, we decided to mummify Barbie!

First we gathered our materials:

I cut out little organs from pieces of paper. I taped the heart to her chest because that was one of the only organs that got to stay with the body. Egyptians believed that the heart contained the soul and in the afterlife it was judged accordingly.

We started with the removal of the brain – which was pulled out through the nose with a special tool (we used a seam ripper)……

The brain was deemed unimportant by Ancient Egyptians and discarded immediately. The other organs, however, were preserved in specially designated canopic jars.

Izzy puts the intestines in the falcon jar…

After salting (which really would have taken weeks) we anointed the body with scented oils and started wrapping. A real mummy would have had special amulets and jewels included in her wrappings….

All wrapped…..

Good bye dear friend…..

Then it was time put on the death mask and pray over the body. Izzy really got into this part….

We kind of fudged a bit on the whole sarcophagus/tomb thing, but hey you gotta work with you got and what we had was an empty shoe box.

Izzy pays her final respects….

Barbie is ready to be welcomed into the afterlife accompanied by her favorite things and her beloved cat (also mummified)…..

This amazing idea came from Chandra over at Josh, Chandra, & Izzy: At Home and Abroad.  I loved the use of Barbie as the mummy, & performing the ritual would really cement in a child’s mind what it was all about!

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Hands on: As We Grow
The Imagination Tree
Let the Children Play
Messy Kids

As always, by linking up you give us permission to use your images if we choose to feature you in an upcoming post.

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Creativity my Passion had fun with her daughter as they explored how water is trasnported up the cells of celery.  They also made art prints with the celery stalks.

If you are looking for a fun looking lunch go no farther – Miss G has a TON of fun and artistic lunch ideas!

The momma over at Happy Little Messes enjoyed encouraging her son to be independent as he made his own morning tea.  My son would love to do that each morning.

And who would have thought that spices can be for more than eating.   Play Create and Explore had fun with her preschoolers as they painted with spices.
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Like talking about food?  Come join our live chat next week – Wednesday, January 25th at 9pm CST on the Horizons Healthy Families Community.  We will be discussing ways that we can encourage our kids to make better choices with food, and encourage an active lifestyle.  Hope you can make it!
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Chemistry doesn’t have to be intimidating or limited to older kids.  There are lots of fun experiments for the whole family to participate in!

Today, you’ll see what happens when you put an iron nail in a penny-laden cup of lemon juice.

Materials:

1/4 cup lemon juice

pinch of salt

plastic or paper cup (you must throw cup away after you’re finished)

20 dull pennies

salt

iron nail (not galvanized)

steel wool scouring pad

What to do:

Pour the lemon juice into your disposable cup.  Place all the pennies in the lemon juice.  Add a pinch of salt & set your timer for 3 minutes.  While you’re waiting, rub the pointy end of the  nail with the steel wool & rinse it off.

Put the rubbed side of the nail into the lemon juice & wait for an hour.

Pour off the lemon juice & rinse off the nail.  Do you notice anything different?  Use a magnifying glass and observe the difference of the two parts of the nail.  Why is the bottom darker?

You’ve copper-plated your nail! 

The copper from the pennies dissolves a bit in the lemon juice, which produces copper ions.  When you put your nail into the lemon juice (acid), the copper ions are attracted to the iron in the nail and build up over the hour, layer by layer. 

Now your nail has a new, fancy copper coat!

This experiment came from the book  Fizz, Bubble, Flash by Anita Brandolini, PhD.  We are using this book for our Chemistry for the Grammar Stage & the experiments are all quick, little-kid friendly, & most of them use stuff you’ve got around the house already. 

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Here are a few of the ways we learn math with our colorful blocks:

Sort them.  Gather all the pieces of a certain size and color.  Make piles.

Make comparisons.  Which pile is bigger than another?  Sort the piles in descending order.

Make place holders with the legos.  Example: 1423 = a tower with 1 white lego, 4 red ones, 2 blue and 3 yellow.

Get out your flash cards.  Re-create the problem on the card with the lego cubes.  Solve the math equation.

Build a structure, and have another person try to mimic or re-create the structure – identically.

Count by twos.  How many “dots” do you have in your lego?  Counting by twos is easy with legos!

Talk while hunting for your a particular piece with word problems – ex: If you have 2 red pieces, how many more will you need to complete your project?

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How have your kids explored and learned with legos?  I’d love to hear about it!  If you liked this lego post, you might also enjoy reading How to Make a Lego Table or our tutorial on How to Make Lego Costumes.

Jena made a massive fort out of old sheets and bungee cords.  Like her, we have been interested in the fort kits which are flying around pinterest.  I love how she created her own fort kit collection of items – and the finish product revolutionizes a living room into an adventure.

Who said all tents/forts had to be made out of sheets or pop-ups?  I love what Ellie did with her girls and a box that was destined for the curb – it became a “home” for her gals!

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Thanks to all who make our linky a success each week!  And thanks also to my co-hosts for faithfully organizing this each week.  Happy linking!

Let the Children Play

Messy Kids

Imagination Tree

Hands On: As We Grow

(P.S.  if you have a pinterest account, leave your link in the comments.  I am looking for more inspiration to follow )
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Thanks to KOA for sponsoring QM! Check out the fort suggestions (and add your own) on our KOA Campfire Community!
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1. Looking forward to bookmaking and puppet shows – The Imagination Tree
2. Building a life sized Noah’s Ark in the backyard. My son even drew up plans - ObSeussed.
3. Coming up with and playing Balloon games – MamaSmiles
4. I want to make an indoor inflatable ball pit (or balloon pit) from a tarp – Rachel, a Quirky Momma.
5. We want to try more paper mache – MamaSmiles.
6. We all want to build an elaborate water wall… like a domino run but for water – Se7en Hoods.
7. I once saw someone let her kids paint right on the floor! Then mopped it up…I’ve been scared to try – Two Bears Farm
8. Shaken art is on my list to try with my toddler – Hands on: As we Grow
9. I want to try all of @nurturestore’s play dough ideas! – My Creative Family.
10. How about a giant PVC pipe sprinkler course – Golden Gleam
11. We want to make ice ornaments as soon as it’s cold enough – inspired by Red Ted Art.
12. I want to try some stop motion animation projects with my kids - Frugal Family Fun
13. I want to try toilet tube sculpture with my daughter inspired by Chocolate Muffin Tree.
14. Our kids want to create and paint garden stones this year – Juiles Rose
15. We enjoy riding tricycles in the garage and use sidewalk chalk on the garage floor. Not really outside, but a change. - Just One Mommy.
16. Make more tall paintings - The Imagination Tree
17. I have tons of outdoor play ideas I want to try when we move to house in Feb: water wall, DIY teepee, chalkboard, music area. -  Mama Pea Pod
18. Put up blackboard paint on the walls, with a border around it so kids know not to draw anywhere else – Utterly Scrummy
19. Make booties out of wax paper & masking tape. Skate on carpet! – Frugal Family Fun
20. We love to turn their playroom into all different places like grocery store, vet office, pizza parlor. House of fun! – No Time for Flashcards
21. We try to convert some outdoor play to indoor ex: hopscotch, hide & seek, races – My Creative Family
22. Make a giant sensory tub out of summer old inflatable pool – The Imagination Tree
23. We also own a giant cardboard house that I set up when the weather turns bitter cold…indoor mail delivery fun begins! – Kitchen Counter Chronicles
24. Draw directly onto the tabletop – dry erase crayons work great for this. – Make Do and Friend
25. Scavenger hunts! Either with a “map” or I just say, “find something yellow, red, square….” you get the idea. – Just One Mommy.
26. Emergency activity to amuse the kids? Give them a cardboard box and some marker pens and let them go! – Green Mums.
27. For my toddler, sensory tubs are an easy way to keep her absorbed and independently playing for ages! – MamaPeaPod
28. My friend has an indoor bouncy castle in their spare bedroom! – Nurture Store
29. Blocks, all shapes and sizes, even tupperware cups/bins – Sense of Wonder
30. Building forts and indoor picnics are also quite popular around here. - Frugal Family Fun
31. Create with normal packing maize. It sticks to itself with water and can be cut/squashed by kids. No mess! – LittleHen

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Leave your twitter handle in the comments and I’ll send you an invite a few days before our next chat as a reminder to join the fun!

What could make a child squeal with joy about an old toy she has played with a hundred times?

ICE!

For years I’ve borrowed little trinkets from my children’s toy box and froze them into a block of ice for them to play with.  My 7 year old son still gets so excited about trying to rescue all the treasures from the ice.

When you are ready to start the activity, run a little bit of warm water over the side of the container to help release the ice.  Place it in a plastic tub that has sides big enough to contain all of the water as this thing melts.

Now the fun begins!

My kids couldn’t wait to get to those toys!  Usually I let them go to it on their own but this time I talked them through some different ideas for getting through the ice.

They discovered that this was a lot of work for little return.  I’m sure they could have been more successful if I had let them use sharper instruments but I wasn’t taking any chances on someone poking themselves with a sharp object.

Next we talked about increasing the heat.  My son got out his flashlight and tried to concentrate the beam onto the ice to warm it up.  That was painfully slow but I loved that he came up with that idea on his own.  I hinted at another tool that might warm up the ice that is usually used for drying something. 

A hair dryer!   The hair dryer would really well at melting the ice but I couldn’t let my 3 year old use a hair dryer so close to water so I gave her some salt and let her experiment with melting her ice that way.  Here is a neat animation on how salt melts ice that helped explained the process to my son.  My daughter didn’t care why it worked.  She just loved pouring the salt and rubbing it all over her block of ice.

The salt worked well but both of these processes were starting to wear on my kids who still hadn’t gotten enough ice to melt to actually rescue a toy.

Finally, we tried pouring warm water over the ice.  This worked wonders!  Not only did the warm moving water melt the ice but the ice stayed soaking in the warm water as the kids pouring more water on it.

Finally the kids were able to melt enough of the ice that they could start prying out a toy or two.  They got so excited each time they rescued one.  It wasn’t about the toy because these weren’t new.  They were straight from their own toy box.  But they had worked long and hard to get these toys in their hands and they felt a sense of pride in their accomplishments.

Make Valentine Ornaments.  Mommy Labs made a batch of pink salt dough and then rolled lace over the dough to create a relief impression with her girls.  I just love the finished product!  Lace would be a great addition to a playdough table!

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We made a paper mache moose just a few weeks ago… and this looks like a much more manageable kid-friendly project - paper mache snowmen.  Love her recipe for paper paste!

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What is life without music?  These DIY Casranettes look incredibly simple and easy to make with items commonly found in recycle bins.  Thanks Childhood List!

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Happy browsing and thanks to all of those who have linked up – Myself and the other playtime hosts (hands on: As we grow, Messy Kids, and The Imagination Tree) we appreciate you!

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P.S.  Tomorrow night is a chat on the KOA Campfire community to talk about our vacation dreams and plans with our families.  I hope you can join us  – 1/5, 9pm CST

My laurel leaf headband was construction paper leaves & a paper sack headband, and my outfit was a sheet with a hole cut in the middle and a rope around my waist.  I read multiple accounts that women did not wear togas unless they were prostitutes (!!) so this is NOT a toga! It is a traditional drapey-fabric thing women wore.

Our togas/drapey-fabric things lasted all of about 15 minutes and we decided they were uncomfortable for cooking & eating & playing…but they made for a fun picture!

Our Greek feast included roasted chicken (food of the peasants & land owners…for city folk, meat was too expensive with the exception of pork), cheese (goat cheese was what they ate, we ate colby jack because Mommy forgot to buy the Feta), grapes (grapes & raisins were popular fruit choices), and Goldfish (fish was a staple of their diet but Reese said a big “no!” to fish, so Goldfish were our substitute)!

During meals, they used bread to wipe their fingers instead of napkins, so we used tortillas as our napkins. The Greeks would then throw those pieces to the dogs after they wiped their fingers, but Reese liked bread too much and ate them! And no forks, so we dug in with our fingers.

The Greeks drank wine (although they watered it down because to drink it straight up would be barbaric!) so I bought some sparkling red grape juice for our feast. Reese also thought it was cool that he didn’t get to drink milk with dinner because the Greeks thought drinking milk was also barbaric, as they saved the milk to make cheese & a thick yogurt-type drink.

While we ate dinner, we watched a Wishbone episode called Homer Sweet Homer, & it told just a bit about the Odyssey (although we had read much more about Odysseus already).
For dessert we made Loukoumades, which are a sort of Greek donut (although I don’t think these were an ancient Greek treat…but whatever!). We made the dough (flour, yeast, salt) and let it rise. Then we took balls off the dough & fried them. After cooling a bit, we poured a syrup over them made from honey, sugar, & water (cooked down into a syrup) and sprinkled with cinnamon. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I would like them because I don’t like honey, but Reese pegged the flavor just right when he said they tasted just like a cinnamon roll! The texture was more like a little dinner roll but the taste was really, really good.

It was fun to do something out of the ordinary to conclude our studies!