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.

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!

Recently we made homemade butter. Stuart looked at me funny when I told him what we had done that day. He said, “You did what?”

Yep, homemade butter.

I talked to Nicholas a little bit about how butter is made. I explained that basically you start with heavy cream and mix it up until it becomes butter. The cream is full of little fat globules but they are all separate and lonely. Once the mixing starts, fat globule Bob bumps into fat globule Joe and they become friends so they stick together. As more mixing happens, they bump into fat globule Mike and fat globule Tom and they all decide to stick together. The little group of friends keep bumping into more fat globules until everyone is stuck together and they have a big party. And then you have butter. Nicholas loved the story and couldn’t wait to start mixing up some cream.

Making Butter at Home with Kids

All we used were some clean baby food jars, a few glass marbles, heavy whipping cream, music, and manpower.

Nicholas started with filling the jars about 3/4 full of cream.

He added two marbles to help with mixing and put the lid on. I double checked to make sure that the lid was on REALLY tight.

Then we put on some fun music and we danced around while we shaking the jars. It doesn’t really matter how you shake them or how hard you shake them but you need to keep them moving.

It’s best to do this with two people so you can trade off and let your arm rest. After 5 minutes, he had a nice whipped topping.

Then around 10 minutes, we could hear a more distinct “thud” sound as a ball of butter was now shaking around in the jar. There was still a lot of liquid that we drained off but in the end we had real butter. It tasted fine right out of the jar but we added a pinch of salt just to make it better.

It was yummy on crackers for an after school snack and would be a great activity or treat to have while camping or traveling.  Check out our KOACampfire community for more ideas of things to do and ways to entertain kids while outdoors.

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How to make your own Learn-to-Read Wheel:

• We used a cereal bowl to trace a medium sized circle
• The kids cups made a great small circle.
• Make an extra small circle and cut it in half, then chop off the ends to make a tab.

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Steps in creation:

• You want to poke a hole through the center of both circles.
• Using the button and the tab, create a sandwich of the pieces.  So that the circle “wheels” are both able to move, but the tab stays stationary.

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Labeling the Reading Wheel with Consonants and Vowels:

We made different wheels with different vowels in the center or with different beginning/ending letters. You can also use letter blends to create the wheels.

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Do you have a favorite homemade learning resource?  Share it in the comments!

This week we read Good Morning, Pond, by Alyssa Satin Capucilli. This book starts off with a frog leaping into the pond and waking up all the animals that live in and around the pond and ends with three children coming to see all the animals in the pond. Emily loved acting out the different sounds and motions of the various animals in this story, of course the frog was her very favorite. I liked that it was written in a semi cumulative story form. It made if a lot of fun to read and easy for Emily to follow along.

I picked this book out because Emily loves frogs at the moment and I thought that she would enjoy reading a book with a frog in it and then making a frog project to go with it. I love projects made out of paper plates so I thought it would be fun to make a frog out of one. To go along with this book.

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How to make your own paper plate frog

First, Emily painted the front and back of a paper plate green.  While the paper plate was drying Emily colored in black circles on the top of two green bottle tops. (We had these in our huge bottle top collection.)  I drew and cut out frog arms and legs on green construction paper. Emily received Do-a-Dot markers for Easter (She was so excited!!) so she wanted to color in the frogs arms and legs a little more with them.

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After all the pieces were dry, Emily folded the paper plate in half and I made a small slit in the middle of the fold to slide the tongue which I cut out of craft foam through. Then Emily glued on the arms, legs….

… and bottle cap eyes.  Isn’t the finished product so much fun!  Thanks again to Mommy’s Adventures for sharing their story+art or “stART” project with us! Do you have a project you’d love to share with the QM readers? Feel free to email it to me! admin@quirkymomma.com

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Grab 4 bottles of bubbles and food coloring. I was fortunate enough to satisfy my obsessive nature by matching my dye to the bottles. You don’t have to be so picky!

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Open the bubbles and squirt half a bottle of coloring into each bubble container. I didn’t take this task outside. It’s messy, so you should go outside before you squirt food coloring all over your dining room table!

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Speaking of messy: do you have an art easel taking up too much room inside? If you want to make your deck the coolest place on the block, move it outside for the Summer! It’s so much easier to clean up paints and chalk dust, and we end up doing tons more artwork if I know we aren’t going to make the house a disaster. We have these: No-Spill Paint Cups With Lids and I use half of them for paint, and the other half hold our chalk. The lid keeps out any moisture, and I don’t have to bring our supplies back and forth.

Back to the bubble paint: take out the wands and change the kiddies into old clothes. The goal is to blow bubbles aimed at the paper, and when the bubble pops it leaves a great design. My kids thought it would be better to take the Jackson Pollock route.

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Looks like they had a blast!  Thanks again, Lawrence Girls and Daddy Too for a fun craft idea!

What you’ll need to create your own buckle clipping toy:

• Plastic Buckles (I found mine for a few bucks off ebay)
• Various ribbon scraps
• Two pieces of fabric – we used canvas as it was sturdy
• Other fun items (we added a pacifier, a bell, a key-chain, a zipper. I can also see this being a hit with various sizes and textures of Velcro).
• Sewing machine and thread.

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How to make this toddler learning toy:

First, I threaded the buckles through the ribbon and affixed them to the right side of the fabric, or the side I wanted to be visible.   Then, I pinned the other piece of canvas (pretty side in) and sewed along the edge, leaving one side open, like a pillowcase.  We clipped the corners and turned the “pillowcase” inside out.  Now the buckles, which had been pinned on the inside of the two pieces of canvas, are on the outside.  I reinforced the seams with another straight stitch along the outside, added a zipper and viola!  I love homemade toys.  Our toddler has had hours of fun clipping and unclipping these buckles!

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Want to see another version?  Miss M from Splendidly Imperfect created her own clipping toy.  She added a snap, and some blocks to hers!  It looks great!  Here’s the photo she sent our way.  Check out her blog for other crafty ideas.

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Selena and I took a little break this week from our postcards. We had a very fun Geography lesson playing with some new toys that Selena received from some friends of ours.

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Selena received all these small doll houses complete with furniture, little people and all the accessories to make her own little town. There is a hotel, beauty salon, candy store, pet shop, cafe, cottages, and a dance studio. There are 8 little houses all together. This comes with a mat that lays on the floor with streets so we had fun making our own little town. We discussed maps, and how this could be any town or city she wanted it to be. She decided it was just “Selena’s City.” With the ice cream truck that came with it and other little cars that she has, she had fun driving from business to business. She can change the look and feel of her city in any fashion she wants to. A great hands on introduction to Geography.

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After our play time with this, she spent quite a long time playing with it by herself. Then she discovered the box it came in. Her box has been everything from a hiding place, batting box for baseball, car, and just a dream place to lay and watch the imaginary clouds on our ceiling.

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Where is Selena?

There she is!  Thanks again Children Grow, Children Explore for sharing your learning game with us and thanks Amanda for sharing a photo with us.

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Lyrics to the Gospel Fuzzies Song:

We’re the Gospel Fuzzies (x3)
and we won’t hurt a flea.

Gold stands for heaven (x3)
where I want to be.

Dark means I’m a sinner (x3)
and I can’t get in.

Red means Jesus died (x3)
On the cross for me

White means I’m forgiven (x3)
as I trust in Him.

Green means I am growing (x3)
when I follow Him.
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What you will need to make your own Word Slides:

• Thin and long paint chips and larger paint sample pages.
• Razor Blades (to cut the slits for the letter slides)
• Cutting board
• Permanent marker

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Making the Slides in this Learn to Read resource:

I wanted the letter slides to have common beginnings and endings.  We make our beginning blends blue, our endings green, our vowels yellow and random consonants red and purple.  This makes it easy for me to find what I am looking for without a whole lot of digging.

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The beginning blends used the letters: f, t, s, p, b, c, g.   The second blue slide had the letters: l, h, r.  With these cards we can now make the blends: fl, br, cl, gl, sl, pl, th, ch, sh, ph, br, cr, gr, fr, tr, pr.

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The ending blends were: st, er, nt, ll, ck, ed, ly, ng.   These encompassed the majority of endings to words.

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There were also two colors of random consonants to make any blend groups that I missed.