A Lesson in Colors with Play Dough

Today my 2.5 year old and I made play dough in primary colors, which we then mixed together to make the secondary colors. There's something magical about putting a ball of red and a ball of blue together and watching it slowly swirl together in your fingers into purple. And then brown, because of course after that we mixed them all together (having a two year old is very hard on my perfectionist nature!). We used this no-bake play dough recipe from PBS with great results. I actually quartered it because that seemed like A LOT of dough. And it was. A quarter was just right for our purposes. To save you the trouble of the math, here're the amounts we used:

• 1 c. flour
• 1/3 c. salt (okay, technically, if you quarter the recipe it's 1/4 c and 2 tbsp, but 1/3 worked well.)
• 1/4 c. water
• 1 tbsp oil

1.  Mix it all together. You might need a touch more oil and/or water during the mixing process. 
2.  Divide the dough into 3 balls.
3.  Use food coloring to make a ball of each red, blue, and yellow.
4.  Divide each colored ball into 4 balls of each of those colors. 12 balls total.
5.  Mix in different combinations two balls of different colors to get your secondary colors, and two of the same color to get your primary. Dividing it that way makes it so you roughly have the same amount of each color. (Hi, remember me from above, perfectionist?)

So now you have six  balls of six different colors.

1.  red + red= red
2.  red + yellow= orange
3.  yellow + yellow= yellow
4.  yellow + blue= green
5.  blue + blue= (surprise!) blue 
6.  blue+ red= purple (sort of, have you ever met a color more hard to mix than a nice purple???)

Tip: If your dough gets a little dry when you're playing around with it, just damped your hands and smoosh the balls around. It'll get right back to its original pliability. 

Baking Soda Snow

I love playing in the snow with the kids but we haven't had any this year and it's been  too c-c-c-old if there'd been any anyway. Fake snow INDOORS seemed like a good way to have some snow fun despite the lack of real snow.

I found this great recipe for baking soda snow on Momma's Fun World.  This stuff is mold-able just like the real stuff and is completely safe. It is made from two ingredients I already had handy- baking soda and conditioner- so that's always a win for me. And it keeps. Stick it in a tupperware container or, like we did, play with it in a baking dish that has a lid and pop the lid on it when you're through. A month later and it was still in great shape. The pictures show just a half-batch of the snow to give you an idea.

 My 2 year old had such a great time making snowmen (Use twigs or pipecleaners for arms, choc. chips and pony beads for buttons and eyes) and playing treasure hunt in the snow with some buttons and "gems" we have hanging around. (Don't put anything in there you wouldn't want the finish to get "polished" off of- it is baking soda after all.) Both my 5 and 7 year old played with it when they got home from school and loved playing with it just as much. A lot of bang for little buck an little effort. I definitely recommend trying it!


What You Need (for a full batch; we only did a half.):

• 3c. baking soda
• 1/2 c. white conditioner (We used the Sauve Kids 3-1 because that's what we had on hand and it worked great.)

What You Do:

• Mix it up using a fork or your hands, adding more conditioner if necessary.
•  Play!
•  You can pop it in a resealable container when you're done and use it over and over again, though you might have to add a little more conditioner to refreshen it.
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Dying Rainbow Macaroni for Crafts

 I just felt the need to dye colorful macaroni and make necklaces with my octopi the other day. It turns out it's not at all hard to do. In fact it's easy and fun and the end result is brilliant!

We used rubbing alcohol to dye ours but I have read you can use vinegar as well which would be more friendly to kids who tend to put things in their mouths, but from our experience the alcohol worked really well to get vibrant colors. I haven't tried vinegar so I can't say if one's better than the other.

Pasta is a really cheap product. We bought a couple different varieties for a dollar a box- penne, ziti and ziti rigotti. Anything with a hole will work but the straighter pastas like the ziti rigotti and penne worked best for my 3 and 5 year olds for stringing so consider avoiding elbow macaroni when working with preschoolers.

This is a quick and easy project that little hands can lend a hand with. The dying alone is a family project. I like a craft where the process is just as fun as the product. Otherwise, what's the point?

And the projects you can DO with the end results are endless. Necklaces and mosaics. Christmas tree strings. They can be used for sorting shapes and colors and sizes. Counting, adding, subtracting. Practicing fine motor skills of stringing.

So.

Here's What You Need:

• pasta with holes, straight tube-like pasta is best (although the slightly curved ziti did dye the best!)
• food coloring in red, yellow, blue (and green cause that's how it comes you know!)
• rubbing alcohol (we used isopropyl)
• ziplock bags (we used freezer bags and they still seeped a little at the zippers, so beware and maybe double up!)
• paper towels
• 1 cup measuring cup
• tablespoon

Here's What You Do:

1. Decide how many different colors you are going to make and get out that many bags.
2. In each bag, measure 1 tablespoon of rubbing alcohol.  (Or even a 1/2 tbs might be fine.)
3. Drop 10-15 drops of food coloring in each bag of alcohol to make your colors.
4. Meanwhile have your octopus fill the one cup measuring cup with the pasta(s) of his choice. Heap it on there. Let him dump it all in one of the bags while you hold it up. (Don't let the dye out, yuck!)

 

5. Close it up realllll tight and let him squish that pasta all around in the dye.

6. Repeat with all your colors.

 

7. After they're mixed up really well, lie the bags flat on a paper towel-lined cookie sheet.

 

 8. Let them sit there for a couple hour, flipping every so often. *We did two and a half hours for the red, orange, yellow and green. But purple and blue just did not come out as well as I wanted (what're you gonna do- pasta is yellow in nature!) so I dyed them a second time in 1/2 tbs rubbing alcohol and more dye and repeated the process for another 2 hours. This time they came out nicely!*

9. When the pasta has reached your desired hues, drain out the excess liquid from the bags.

10. Dump each color of  pasta in one layer, not touching the other pastas, onto paper towel-lined cookie sheets, plates, whatever.

11. Let dry. If it's a sunny day put them out there and they will dry in no time! Our pasta was ready to use in 30 minutes on a hot sunny day.

12. Admire your beautiful pasta. I couldn't help but layer it all in a big jar like a rainbow. It was just so pretty too look at!

Making Necklaces with your Pretty Pasta.

 

Tie a piece of pasta onto the end of a length of yarn (a couple feet will do it.). Tape the other end for ease of stringing. Let your octopus get to work stringing macaroni. When he's all done, untie the pasta end, leave the pasta there or take it off, and tie the two ends together. Easy peasy.

Campfire Craft

 I'm not sure how it happened really. One minute we got the tent out from its hiding place under the couch. (If you don't stow stuff under there you should!) and then we were making a lake out of blue blankets and crafting a campfire out of paper for roasting cotton ball marshmallows. In the end, "camping" became quite the creative production. And it's even better because in a couple weeks I won't feel that badly about throwing it out- provided I can sneak it past the bosses.

The boy scouts are good campfire builders. We are good pretend fire builders. Smokey would be proud. And this is how we did it.



What You Need:

for your fire:

• red and orange construction paper
• scissors
• glue and maybe scotch tape

Here's What You Do:

1. 1. To make your fire: Cut out flames the long way out of your construction paper, leaving the bottom edge nice and straight and untouched. I drew out an easy zigzag flame shape and handed it over to my 4 year old to cut- good practice! 
2. Out of leftover scrap, cut more flame shapes and paste them onto the bigger pieces here and there and wherever.
3. glue the edge of one side onto the edge of the other side so you have a ring of fire.
4. Cut out little u-shaped mouse holes along the bottom edge for your "firewood" to go through so the fire stands nice and straight on top instead of falling over.

for your kindling and fire wood:

• brown paper
• glue and some scotch tape
• scissors

What You Do:

1. Cut your brown paper into varying widths by 9" or so. Honestly, it's not a science and I have no idea what length we cut. 
2. Roll each strip nice into a stick and glue it closed or tape it shut. We did both. It did not want to stay.
3. Stick your sticks through the mouse holes you cut in your fire to make it look like they're on, well, fire.

for your marshmallows on a stick:

• brown pipe cleaners
• cotton balls
• white electrical tape to keep the balls neat
• scissors.

What You Do:

1. Snip your cotton balls from top to bottom but only half-way through so that you can "unroll" them a little. 
2. Wrap the snipped cotton balls around your pipe cleaner. 
3. Wrap a length of white electrical tape around the marshmallow to help it keep its marshmallowy form. (We experimented and did some on the top and bottom of the marshmallows too but really it just looked better when we wrapped the sides of the cylinder in one go and it was way easier to do too.) Now you'll be able to pull on and off your untoasted and roasted marhsmallows to eat right up.
4. Roast those puppies over your fire.

 

Who knows, maybe you can even con your kids into taking a nap "under the stars" when they're done. I wish I had!