Spirited!

This girl is full of giggles and silliness and spunkiness and life is so great with that smile to greet you!

Tie-Dye!

Today's activity was tie-dying. We had So. Much. Fun.

We just bought a kit from our local craft store. I know there are more earth-friendly ways to dye but for our first go at this, I went the simplest/cheapest route possible. 

Thankfully, we had plenty of white shirts and pants lying around. A couple had logos on them from different camps the Things have done, but Thing 1 had this extra tank top we decided to throw in as well. 

The Things did most of the work themselves which, as I've said before, is hard for me to not control. But they did a GREAT job. Thing 2, who is six, needed a little guidance but 7 1/2 year old Thing 1 took complete control of her shirts.

We followed tips from this photo to create the different patterns. 

And while the instructions said you could put the dye on dry clothing, I found that it absorbed much easier and quicker on wet, so we quickly gave everything a dunk in some water. 

Thing 1 going to town. We laid out garbage bags on our counter to make for easy clean-up.

I love how vibrant the colors are.

The Things wanted to make a shirt for Dad (the yellow, blue, and green) - they insisted he would NOT want pink or purple on his shirt. 

After we got everything well-coated with the dye we wrapped our shirts up tightly in plastic wrap and set them out on our patio to dry for about seven hours. We got everything unwrapped, rinsed them in the sink until the liquid ran clear, removed the rubber bands with scissors, and then ran them through a hot water cycle to rid any remaining dye.

The end result! (I photographed the back of the shirts so you could fully see the designs.)

SO cool and the Things LOVED every minute of it. This is definitely a project we will be doing again and again! (And a great use for ALL of those camp t-shirts we end up with!)

Lego Quest Tuesday's

Every Tuesday at Casa de Things is Lego Quest Tuesday! The Things LOVE Lego's but their creativity was staggering to who can make the tallest tower or the fastest car for one of their fairies or ponies. I knew they had more in them so when this website popped up in my Pinterest browsing, I knew it would be a huge hit. 

(Are we seeing a theme in these posts? I LOVE Pinterest...there are so many wickedly creative and helpful people out there.)

This particular blog lists 51 different tasks to complete with Lego's - a quick Google search and you'll find many other websites dedicated to these challenges. Given we don't have 51 weeks in our summer, I went through and found the ones I thought they'd have the most fun with while still presenting a challenge: Making a monochromatic picture, a self-portrait, and creating a character from their favorite book to name a few. 

Thing 1 is currently reading "The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail" by Richard Peck so she decided to recreate the mouse. So cute! 

SO awesome!

Thing 2 is obsessed with the Pigeon books by Mo Willems. This is the yellow bus from "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." 

Thing 2 is also crazy in love with the Rainbow Magic series (fairies and fun, you can't go wrong!) She has read quite a few of the beginner chapter books so she also made a series of fairy wands representative of the books. These two are from "Lauren the Puppy Fairy" (see the ears and tail on the left wand?) and "Pearl the Cloud Fairy."

I love coming home from work every Tuesday to see what they have created! The quests have completely reinvigorated their love of Lego's, which have now made a permanent home with our downstairs craft/activity corner!

Tin Can Stilts

This week one of our activities was making stilts out of tin cans. I had seen this floating around Pinterest the last year or so and remember doing something very similar at my grandparents. The Things had a lot of fun drawing on recycled cans and getting to use The Husband's tools!

Despite Thing 2's face (she was concentrating hard on balancing!) they had a lot of fun on them. Unfortunately, because we have no yard and I have two of the most accident prone kiddos, they are stuck indoors with their stilts. I would say shoes are a definite must with these - even though we attempted to find the smoothest cans in our recycling that we could find, you never know when there might be a sharp edge on the cans.

Lakeside Fun

One of our favorite things to do in the summer is spend time in the sand and water. Living in the middle of the country our options are limited. Luckily for us, we live just a short drive from a fabulous lake complete with beach, walking/biking tails, and giant wooden playground. It is the perfect area for family gatherings or just a quick afternoon in the sun!

It was a beautiful, fun afternoon! We went home to rest and have dinner before heading out for Thing 1's Girl Scout pool party. The girls decided to spend their hard-earned cookie sale money to rent out our local pool after hours. We left Thing 3 with Grandma since it was so late and so we could enjoy the full two hours.We all had a great time having the entire pool to our small group of about thirty!

Foil Rivers & Water Beads!

Our summer learning fun continues. A couple of the more popular things we've done lately are experimenting with the laws of gravity using a foil river and learning about molecules with water beads!

I can't remember exactly where I read about creating the river (Pinterest, most likely) but I knew this would be one The Husband would tackle. He loves doing these types of projects with the Things. Bonus - it was a HOT day so this doubled as a way to cool off during Thing 3's nap. 

The Husband helped them construct the river to keep the water in but it was all Things changing the direction of the river, putting rocks, twigs, and anything else they could find along the path to see how it changed the water flow.

This was the official report I got from The Husband while at work:

"They learned a lot about rivers, dams, water flow, gravity, floods, etc We had an invisible town and I challenged them to make the river overflow its banks to flood it and then try to save it removing the least amount of rocks possible."

They all enjoyed it so much the giant sheet of foil is now perched on a shelf in our garage so they can do it again (which seems to be a trend this summer - they are LOVING so many of the activities we've done).

Today we played with WATER BEADS. I'd been wanting to do this one for awhile. Water beads are just tiny bits of polymer - the same stuff they put in diapers and those little food packages to absorb moisture. I also learned it was originally developed in the 60's to help crops retain moisture during drought. See - summer learning isn't just for the kids! We found our beads at the local craft store in the floral department. They are marketed as a decorative filler for vases but are so much more fun to play with! If you have seen Orbeez in the toy department, it is the exact same thing but cheaper.

$2.99/pack - The Things chose clear and pink beads.

Carefully pouring the beads into a clear container. (Ignore the recital gloves she is STILL wearing almost a week later.)

Thing 1 learned very quickly to pour carefully and close to the bottom as those little beats bounce EVERYWHERE. 

We then filled our bowls full of water. 

We stirred the beads up with our hands a bit to separate them. If they stick together they take much longer to absorb the water and grow! 

Our beads about an hour later. Already growing! 

 

Still growing! 

Thing 2 was fascinated with the clear beads. 

They seem to disappear in the water but you can feel them when you put your hands in. 

And they appear to be see-through when in the water. 

We let ours absorb for about five hours. I don't think they got to the full size they could have but we were all anxious to play. Even the babies got in on the action! (I shouldn't have to say it but - watch babies closely. These are not to be ingested and their first instinct is to explore with their mouth.)

We only used a half a pack of each color and it filled this 16 qt tote almost a third full of little beads. 

It didn't take long for the older Things to break out the pool toys.

Or to stick their feet in and squish the beads with their toes.

We decided to leave a few out to see what will happen as they lose their water source.

As I type, the babies are napping but Things 1 & 2 are still happily playing in the beads. NOTHING holds their attention this long. I figured Thing 1 especially would get bored pretty quickly (because she's seven, you know, and this is kind of a "baby" thing) but her little science mind is trying to figure out how they work. Next time I plan to utilize the observation sheet created and discussed here.

Learning through play - the best kind!