Printable

Fun Friday: Art is Science plus printable

October 27, 2017 By Annette1 2 Comments

As you may or may not remember I’m teaching a class called mudworks where we are experimenting with making different types of doughs out things you might not expect.

Up this week were doughs from bread, starch, shampoo and toothpaste. Four stations with children at each of them. Stay tuned for printable below.

I told the children that doing art like this was also doing science. You have the basic ingredients, but things like weather and humidity can affect the amounts that you use.

Shampoo dough… I have to admit.. I LOVED the feel of this dough. Like a silky smooth playdough. Forms flat objects nicely, takes FOREVER to dry out. 🙂 This recipe took a lot more flour than expected. I could roll that nice smelling dough around in my hands all day long felt so delectable.

Starch dough. The recipe we used called for cornstarch, but the scientist in me had us also try out potato starch and tapioca starch. They all gave a different feel to the dough. Tapioca gave a very stretchy feel to the dough. Potato starch felt like homecooked playdough with an extra solid feel. Cornstarch was very moldable. All three of these dry quickly.

Bread dough takes ALOT of working and proved to need a bit of fiddling with. One person found added a touch of water made the dough more workable, some of the children gave up, and another added a touch of flour and made a lovely sculpture from it.

Toothpaste dough proved to be the bane of most of the youngsters who tried it out. The recipe needed ALOT of fiddling, and it could have been the toothpaste I bought or the weather or .. I dunno, but it proven the perfect ground of experimentation for the two boys who stuck through out. I gave them carte blanche and talked them through different ideas to try until they both ended up satisfied with the end result, which for both boys was quite different, one wanting a gloopy feel and the other wanting a more solid feel. They both loved the toothpaste smell to this dough.

Now it is your turn!

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He picked it up on his own, The Deadliest Creature in the World

May 19, 2016 By Annette1 2 Comments

My lad can read, and read fairly well, but pick up a book just because? He generally doesn’t just pick up books to read unless something about them intrigues him mightily.

This morning a breakfast my lad saw this book “The Deadliest Creature in the World” sitting on top of my review pile and picked it up and was reading it over breakfast. Now I don’t know about you.. .but that’s a win in my book.

Book Synopsis:
A heart-stopping touch, a powerful punch, a killer kick….WHICH creature is the deadliest?
YOU Decide.

My thoughts:

Other than the obvious.. MY BOY IS PICKING UP A BOOK AND CHOOSING TO READ IT INSTEAD OF messing around on his tablet!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOT WOOT!!!!!!!

It’s draws a child in and I LOVE IT for that.

It also provoked discussion.
“Mom, they shouldn’t have included this one. This frog doesn’t attack people. If they get poisoned it’s because they are trying to it. So he’s not so deadly, he’s just being protective”.

“An ostrich!!?!?!?! MOM!!! They have an ostrich in here!!!!!”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. Mom, did you know there’s a fish that has really poisonous spines?”

Filled with colourful pictures that depict the animals well and an easy to read large font this book is sure to be a hit with your children as well. They will be equally as fascinated as we were by the Cone Snail that can change it’s venom according to the prey it has caught. I tell you, this book is interesting. 🙂

I like that at the closing of the book the author says this
“But what about creatures that are fragile or teensy or slow? What about the ones with no arms or legs? They have been surviving for …. years with the help of toxins and poisons.” It leaves the door open for children to research for other deadly animals of the world, and consider some they might not even have thought of.

To get you started in your search for dangerous or deadly animals, check out these top 25.

Raincoast Books generously provided me with a readers copy of this great picture book. It’s a soft cover book of about 30 pages, written by Brenda Z. Guiberson, and delightfully illustrated by Gennady Spirin. See also my review of another Guiberson book, The Most Amazing Creature of the Sea.