V is for Volcano

We thought it would be fun to talk about Volcanos to go along with our letter of the week.  So we read some books and looked at pictures and then made our own.

We mixed:
3 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
2 tbsp of cooking oil
water

We formed our volcano around an empty yogurt container.

Hailey decided to paint her volcano brown.

Once everything was dry we made our volcano erupt.  We mixed:
2 spoonfuls of baking soda
1 spoonful of dish soap
red and yellow food coloring
and when we were ready to set it off- we added the vinegar

(Rich thought it would be fun to mix all of those things together inside a water bottle and then hold his finger over the top while the pressure built up.  Let’s just say it erupted like what an actual volcano probably does and the kitchen was a mess!)

We also started doing the Raising Rock Stars Preschool letter of the week activities that I found over at 1+1+1=1.

Hailey coloring her verse for the week.  The letter V was kind of a hard letter to start with- the verse was hard for her to remember.

Then she colored and cut her One Way sign.

And read the One Way book.

Hershey Kiss and Science Experiments

Hailey made a Hershey Kiss for a cute Valentine’s Day activity.  I cut out a Hershey Kiss shape from an old file folder.  Hailey wrapped it in foil and then taped it to the back.

Hailey added some eyes to the kiss.

The finished Hershey Kiss.

We did a little color mixing experiment.  We froze different colored hearts using food coloring.

Then we put the hearts into clear cups, waited for the ice to melt and checked to see what happened.

Once all the ice melted Hailey filled in our color chart to see what would happen when certain colors were mixed together.

Then we did an experiment with snow.  Hailey filled a cool whip container with snow and we brought it inside to see what would happen.

Hailey checked it every hour and made predictions about what she thought would happen next.

Once it was all melted we poured it over a coffee filter to see what would happen.  We talked about why the bowl was full of snow and why the water was much lower and we talked about why there was dirt on the coffee filter.

I took pictures of Hailey checking the snow and wrote down her predictions/comments each hour.  This will be made into a little booklet.

Winter Fun Activities

Here’s some of the activities we did during the week:

We made a crystal.  Hailey shaped a pipe cleaner into a “snowflake.”  Then we took 1 cup of boiling water and 3 tbsp of Borax and mixed them together in a wide mouthed jar.  We stirred it up until the Borax was dissolved.  We tied the pipe cleaner to another pipe cleaner to prop it up on the top of the jar.  After about an hour we could see crystals starting to form.  We left it in overnight just to see what would happen.

Hailey’s snowflake.  You can add food coloring too if you want to make different colors.

This picture was made during story time at the library using Epsom salt- first decorate a snowman and glue it on.  Then take hot water and dissolve epsom salt in the water.  Then brush it over the whole paper with a paint brush.  As it dries crystals will form on the paper.

We made a snowman out of glue.  Put glue on wax paper in the shape of a snowman.

Spread some glitter onto your snowman (or dump the whole bottle like Hailey did ;-)).

Decorate your snowman.

Once the glue dries (ours took a couple of days to completely dry) you can peel your snowman off of the wax paper.

Hailey circled different items that you would need in the cold weather.

Then she colored a picture by following the directions for what color to color each part of the snowman.

All of the following are printables I got from Isty Bitsy Learners:

Hailey read a book about the different activities you can do in the winter.  Each page starts with “You can” and then she is able to figure out the rest by looking at the picture.  For example “You can skate.”  She loves that she can read the book by herself.

I called out different letters and Hailey had to find the letter and cover it up with a snowflake.

We played a game where we had to roll the dice and them move a snowman.

This printable says, “The children are throwing ____ snowballs.”  Hailey put different numbers in the blank then counted out that number of cotton balls to put on the paper.

I also printed out pages for Hailey to practice writing her letters.  First she traced the letters then wrote them by herself.  She did a great job writing the letters and then asked for more paper to write more words.  (Notice her brown fingernails from some of the groundhog day art projects we had done earlier in the day using brown paint.)