Have you ever done the magic spoons trick? It’s great for a little bit of magic and a little bit of science in one fell swoop. For the magic spoons you need spoons (of course), small glasses (clear is best), food coloring, baking soda, and vinegar. Perhaps you can see where this is going.
To prepare, make sure you have an equal number of spoons and cups. Put a little bit of food coloring on all spoons but one, and let them dry.
Then put a bit of water in all the cups but one. Put vinegar in the last cup.
Put cornstarch on each spoon with food coloring. Put baking soda on the spoon without any.
Then, let the children stir their spoons into their cups, one at a time. Obviously, the spoons with food coloring on them will ‘magically’ turn the water colors.
The spoon with the baking soda (do make sure you match it up with the cup of vinegar, or this will be quite the flop) obviously does something different.
Now, if you set this up ahead of time, your kids won’t know what’s going to happen. The boys had seen someone else do it, though, so I was explaining to them how it worked and showed them every step along the way. Either method is fun, and it’s really easy. Go on! Try it!
Good morning all! We’ve been having some lovely chilly weather this week. And by chilly, of course, I mean it got up to about 70 degrees. We spent part of our weekend at the racetrack, where – you may possibly recall me mentioning before – Greg races his motorcycle. He does pretty well, too!
That’s him in the middle, #29. Race weekends are long days, long drives, and a lot of waiting around for a few minutes of heart-pounding tension. Fortunately, we know how to pass the time:
Unfortunately I couldn’t bring a project to work on, as my hands were more than full keeping a pair of two-year-olds safe and happy at a racetrack. Still and all, it was a good weekend. Let’s check out our links!
I would like to point out that these stairs are not actually made from vintage crates. Susan painted the artwork on them herself. Really. Go over there for more pictures, it’s amazing.
Now, when I saw this picture, I assumed it would be difficult. Turns out it’s only a three-ingredient recipe! I could probably make it without incident. Not that I need more candy!
What a cool idea! I really need to find some scrabble sets at a thrift store or something; there are so many cool projects to make with the tiles!
Well. Ready to link up?
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We had circus day this week, a direct result of showing Charlie some pictures of the circus day we did last year. In the process of digging up pictures, I discovered that I never blogged about it. Which is crazy, because it was awesome. Of course, at the time I had 6-month-old twins and was preparing to move back to the States, so maybe I was busy. Or tired.
Here’s a picture from last May:
It’s more than a little heart-wrenching to look at those pictures and see how much smaller they were just 18 months ago. Sigh. Anyway, we made a sheet-tent and painted their faces. Somewhere between Japan and Arizona the face paints got misplaced, but we had something better for a tent this time:
Thanks for the parachute, mom. As you can see, we’re putting it to good use. They laid down in the tent with their blankets and we watched circus-themed episodes of their favorite shows.
Another favorite on Circus Day is reading all of our Circus books. Last time we could only find two – Hocus and Pocus at the Circus and If I Ran the Circus. This time the boys extended the definition of ‘circus book’ to anything with ‘tricks’ in it.
On the left, an adorable, chubby, three-year-old Charlie is showing me his favorite part of the story – where Pocus turns into a pig. On the right, lanky five-year-old Charlie shows off a page from New Tricks I Can Do.
There was popcorn, and animal crackers, and a lot of “animal tricks” in the center ring.
We made big, soft pretzels both times. They’re really good, and not really that hard – just fiddly. This time the boys helped me roll them out and shape them.
We also watched some footage of real circuses on YouTube. (WARNING: check your videos before you show them to your children, there are a few anti-circus activists who think that the best way to convince people that all circuses abuse their animals is to show graphic videos of animal abuse labeled as a circus footage. We didn’t have much of that, just poke through the video a second before you say, ‘Hey kids, look at this.’)
We also listened to “circus music” while they were playing with their stuffed animals and doing tricks. (Just search for ‘circus calliope.’ So much fun!) They had fun walking on the ‘highwire’ (the sofa), jumping and somersaulting, attempting to juggle, and hopping on one foot.
We colored circus pictures, decoded a circus secret message, played with… circus play-doh…
Listen, it’s hard to fill an entire day with a circus without an actual circus. Still, it was really fun.
