I recently discovered some fun games and activities that I can make at home for my little girl.

They are called File Folder Games.

There are tons of free templates for File Folder Games on the Internet but this particular one I made is a pattern matching game.

File Folder Games are so easy to make!

I found the Heart Pattern Match Up Game at Preschool Printables.  I just printed the pages on my color printer and cut them out.   Take a look at their sidebar for lots of other fun File Folder Games you can make.

I attached one set of patterned hearts to the file folder which serves as the game board and kept the other set of matching hearts loose.

You don’t have to laminate the pieces but I know how rough my kids are so laminate is my friend.  Office supply stores can laminate but I found a good deal for large laminating at a local school supply store.  They can put all of the folders and little game pieces in the laminate and have it ready for me in just a few minutes while I wait.

The hardest part of making File Folder Games is cutting out all of the little pieces from the laminate.

One the game pieces are cut out you could present the game to your child as is and just let them place the matching piece in the correct spot.

Or if your kids are like mine and have a weird obsession with velcro, you can add a little piece of velcro to your game board and matching piece so the kids can have fun pulling the pieces on and off.

And don’t think that File Folder Games are just for toddlers.  My older son loved using this American Sign Language File Folder Game from File Folder Fun to learn to sign the alphabet.

Here are some other great sites for free templates for File Folder Games:

File Folder Fun

Enchanted Learning

Ideas for Preschoolers

Preschool Printables

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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.

If you think those eruptions caused by baking soda and vinegar are cool, then you’re going to love this one!

What you need:

A bar of Ivory soap (no substitutions allowed)

A microwave safe plate

A microwave

Yep, that’s it!

I first asked my son what he thought might happen if we put a bar of soap in the microwave.  He naturally said that it would melt.  Most soaps will melt but Ivory soap is different because of the way it is formed.  More on that later…

What to Do:

You might want to start with just a small piece of the soap.  We started with 1/3 of a bar just to see what would happen and big this thing would get.

Put the soap on the plate and microwave it for 2 minutes.

The action starts right away as the soap quickly starts to grow.  When it stops growing you can stop the microwave although it won’t harm anything if it runs for the full 2 minutes.  The soap just won’t grow any bigger at that point.

My son was absolutely giddy watching this for the first time…and every time after that.  I must admit I haven’t gotten tired of watching erupting soap either!

When the soap had finished erupting, this is what we got.

What’s going on?

There is a scientific principle called Charles’ Law which states that the volume of a gas directly increases with an increase in temperature.  So the hotter air gets, the more space it wants to take up and the more pressure it will produce in order to take up that space.

Ivory soap in an unusual kind of soap in that it has a lot of air pockets in it.  There is also a lot of moisture in Ivory soap.  When it is heated, the soap softens but before it gets close to melting, the moisture in the bar gets hot and turns to gas (steam).  Add that to the already present air particles throughout the bar and you’ve got a lot of steam trying to get out.  As the steam pushes its way out, it expands the soap.

Here’s a simple animation of Charles’ Law to help explain how volume and temperature are directly related.

Other soaps are not as porous as Ivory soap because they do not have air pockets throughout. Therefore, the steam isn’t able to build up inside it and instead the soap just melts.

We have enjoyed our fluffy soap.  My son has had fun with the little bucket of erupted soap by the bathroom sink.  He enjoys breaking off a piece of soap to wash his hands.

Except for the loss of water, this is still Ivory soap. No real chemical change took place. The soap is puffed full of air so we had fun squishing it back down flat again.

Once the “Wow Factor” died down just a little, we decided to get a little more scientific so we pulled out a scale.

We cut about 1/3 of a bar and weighed it – 1.0 oz.

After erupting it in the microwave, we weighed it again – 0.8 oz.  That’s a 20% reduction in weight, most likely due to water evaporation.

Other Observations:

1. The soap has expanded six or more times its original size but actually weighs less now because of water that has evaporated.  Amazing!

2. If you cut the Ivory soap, the cut side of the bar will expand significantly more quickly and with more force than the uncut side.  In this experiment above, the force of the expansion out of the cut side was so strong that it flipped the bar from its side to an upright position so that the eruption from the cut side was then facing upward.

3. The plate was hot all over after a minute and half.  However, the plate was significantly hotter directly under the expanded soap.  Microwaves focus on heating water molecules so the water in the soap heated quickly and made that part of the plate hotter.

We have been learning with pumpkins!

There are so many wonderful activities to do with young children at Halloween.  We’ve been having some pumpkin fun.

Reading

I stumbled upon this great book, “It’s Pumpkin Time” by Zoe Hall. It is a beautifully illustrated book that teaches children about seeds, planting, growing, and enjoying pumpkins. It’s the perfect book for little ones to get introduced to these concepts in a fun and playful way.

The inside cover of the book is just a green background with lots of pumpkin seeds scattered around.  We had some pumpkin seeds from making our jack-o-lantern so I let Rachel play a matching game by placing her real seeds on the seed pictures.

Color Mixing and Pouring

Pumpkins are orange.  I wanted Rachel to see how red and yellow blend to make orange so I set out some cups of water and red and yellow food coloring.  She squirt a few drops of yellow into one cup of water and a few drops of red in another cup of water.  Then she poured the two colored waters together in an empty cup to make orange.  This is  a super easy way for young children to experience color mixing.

Once we had orange water, I let her practice her pouring skills by pouring the orange water into an ice tray I bought at the dollar store that makes pumpkin shaped ice cubes.  We can’t wait to plop a few of our orange pumpkin ice cubes in our next glass of water!

Counting

I drew a simple template of a pumpkin then used that to make some orange and white pumpkin shaped pages for a Pumpkin Book.  I made pages for 1-5 pumpkin seeds then let Rachel count and glue the corresponding number of seeds on to each page.  There were also a few pages for art work and an outline of her hand.

I stapled the cover of her book on and she smiled from ear to ear as she hugged her pumpkin book close to her chest.

Improving Fine Motor Skills

I’m getting my money’s worth out of my dollar store pumpkin ice tray!  Here’s another fun use for it.

On a tray I assembled a bowl of green pom-poms to serve as the stems for the pumpkins, a plastic tong, and the pumpkin ice cube tray.  Rachel had fun using the tongs to pick up one pom-pom and place it in the pumpkin.  She sorted them by color in different rows several times.

When she tired of that, I showed her how she could make patterns of light and dark green pom-poms.  She nearly snatched the tongs from my hands to give that a try herself.

What a fun activity this turned out to be.  These types of projects are great for impoving hand-eye coordination, as well as strengthening the muscles in the hand and the pincher grip which is used so much in writing.

Owl Mask.  This would be a great addition to a Halloween Costume!  Just add a big paperbag “bird body”.

Fridge Jack-O-Lanterns.  I love how they used magnets to create the faces!  What a great way to help your youngsters learn about emotion and facial expressions too!

Pine-Cone & Peanut Butter Bird Feeder.  We make these every fall!  My youngsters are already asking me when we can go collect pine-cones.  Thanks for the reminder.

 Tissue Paper Trees.  My tykes love gluing.  This is sure to be a loved fall art activity.

Paper Bag Scare Crow.  So easy and simple to make!  Beats a rotting pumpkin on your doorstep too!

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Thanks to all the blogs who linked up some great inspiration.  Check out my co-hosts blogs.  Our kid’s meme is featured not just on Quirky Momma, but also on these great play-blogs:

Let the Children Play – Play Loving BLogs
The Imagination Tree – 40 Ways of Autumn Play
Hands On: As We Grow – 26 Tin Can Activities
Messy Kids – Ideas with Apples

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Happy browsing the great posts collected below.  Link back to let others know about our fun!

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Let the Children Play – Play Loving BLogs
The Imagination Tree – 40 Ways of Autumn Play
Hands On: As We Grow – 26 Tin Can Activities
Messy Kids – Ideas with Apples

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Wax mixes differently than watercolors.  The kids at Child Central Station had fun blow-drying crayons.

Practice mixing by “Squishing Colors” colors with Picklebum.

Preschool Projects has a great idea to send secret messages to your kids through their painting projects.

Science Sparks changes the colors of flowers in a recent science experiment.

Make your own Kaleidoscope with the JellyFish Jelly blog.

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Do you have a kids activity that you’d like to share with the world?  We’d love to hear about it!

Link up (and if you love us, link back).   Note:  All posts must be family-friendly, kid-related and we just might feature you   By linking up, know you are giving us permission to do so.
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Now as a homeschooling family, recess is still the highlight of my day!  We enjoy playing twister outside with our neighborhood (also homeschooling) friends.  We recently made our circles on the driveway with chalk and colored a giant dice with the different options. Roll the dice to find out what color you need to move to next!  Don’t have an empty driveway?  You can spray paint twister onto your yard.

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Children have lost an average of 8 hours of recess a week. Danimals Rally for Recess is a national initiative designed to create healthy competition, pitting school against school.  They are offering a chance to win $20,000 for your Elementary school playground. Plus each day Danimals is giving recess-related prizes to keep kids healthy and active. Go to Rally for Recess for more information on how your school can win!
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What was your favorite recess game?

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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Danimals. The opinions and text are all mine. Contest Rules.

Don’t you just love this picture?  I can almost taste the tartness that he is experiencing.

Why would I have my child drink something that I knew would create such a silly face?

He is learning about strength and concentrations of a solution.  I tried drawing pictures explaining how we can take a can of concentrated orange juice, add 3 cans of water and get a perfect ratio for orange juice.  But if we only used 1 1/2 cans of water with the same amount of concentrated orange juice then that would be too “strong” or too “concentrated”.

His eyes were kind of glazing over after listening to me as I drew it all out for him.

Yes, my eyes glaze over too from just looking at it.

Well, I scrapped that piece of paper.  What better way to teach him about the strength and concentration of a solution than a hands-on activity?  Where he tastes and experiences the differences for himself?

We got out some concentrated orange juice, several cups, a spoon, and a measuring cup and water.

We measured and mixed up 3 different ratios of orange juice…Full strength, 3:2 water and orange juice, and 3:1 water and orange juice.

My son loves sour and tangy foods but as you can see from the earlier picture, he thought the full strength orange juice concentrate was way too strong.  I was surprised that he still didn’t like the 3:2 ratio because he has eaten some really tangy candy before and love it.  He liked the regular 3:1 ratio of orange juice and decided that he would play around with mixing the other ratios together and adding more water to them to try to make them taste better.

I love it when he wants to take an experiment and do more with it on his own.

By tasting the different strengths of a concentration and experimenting with diluting the drinks, my son was able to build on the basic concepts we had discussed.  It really helped him to understand and learn what we were studying.  And when he learns with hands-on projects, he always remembers it so much better than if he just tried to memorize a definition or a list of facts.

What do you need to have a ball of a Friday?

A Beach Ball
A Permanent Marker
Room to pelt gently toss a ball to each other.
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Here are some of the words we have put on our ball (taken from the book Kid Writing – great resource for nurturing our students to literacy):
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a, an, and, but, if, that, the, this, is, was, has, had, have, been, be, by, bye, hi, at, am, are, not, it, its, or, of, to, on, the, in, into, you, your, our, my, me, I, he, she, they, their, there, those, these, other, here, were, for, with, who, what, when, then, than, how, why, from, go, went, no, not, yes, can, say, said, will, each, about, which, would, could, should, up, down, out, in, on, on top, over, under, only, side, some, many, like, see, make, made, very, after, before, little, big, find, did, do, done, don’t
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Ideas on learning with a sight words ball:

• If your child is already reading, have them read the words on the color they catch.
• If your child is not yet reading, have them point to a word and you tell them what it is before they toss the ball.
• If your child knows all the words, have them create a sentence with as many words as they can from the color they picked.

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This game has been a huge hit with my non-reading kiddos, with my newly reading kiddos and with the neighbors who are reading independently!  I got the inspiration from this activity from a reader, thanks bunches Habeebee Homeschooling she advised (in a conversation on the Quirky Momma Facebook page) to help our kids learn to read by writing sight words on a balloon and bouncing the balloons around the room.  A beach ball is our “more permanent” variation.   Thanks Habeebee!