I was surprised a couple weeks ago when I asked PJ if a car would go faster or slower down a steeper ramp and he answered “slower.”  And so was born the next What to do? Wednesday post.

In the spirit of matching literature with learning activities, we read Choo Choo by Virginia Lee Burton.

Then we set up our own little experiment.

We built a ramp using some blocks and a long box.

We measured how tall the highest part of the ramp was with a ruler.  (Our first ramp was 2″ tall).

Then we used a stop watch to time how long it took our “car” (Loft in our case) to travel to the end.

We repeated that 4 more times (5 times total).  This was also a good time to talk about human error and averages.

Then we repeated the process with a 4″ ramp.

Now, PJ can tell you the correct answer to the opening question

—————————————————————-

Since, we’re approaching the start of the school year, I will have less reason to come up with such creative activities for my children.  But if enough of you guys are actually using the ideas and would like me to continue posting them, I will continue.  So, show of hands comments if you value What to do? Wednesday.  Otherwise, it will take a school-year hiatus.

The following projects were inspired by SouleMama…

I love projects that teach a life skill in a stealth-like way.  Isn’t that the best way to learn …when you don’t even know you are?  In my humble opinion, everyone should know some basic sewing skills like threading a needle to sew on a wayward button.  Button Sewing 101 didn’t seem so exciting but learning how to draw pictures using colored thread…well that’s FUN!  Enter Embroidery 101. 

SUPPLIES

• Small embroidery hoop (about 5″ in diameter).   JoAnn’s had colored, plastic ones–way cooler than the wooden ones.
• Blunt needle
• Scraps of burlap or other loose-weave fabric
• Emroidery floss in lots of colors

I found these from my days of counted cross stitch.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Loosen the emroidery hoop enough to take the two pieces apart. 
2. Cut a piece of fabric large enough to stretch over the inner loop.  Stretch fabric over inner loop.
3. Push larger loop over inner loop to hold fabric in place.  Tighten screws.
4. Cut a long section of emroidery floss.  Separate 2 strands from the 6.
5. Thread the 2 strands through the needle. Pull the ends together and knot them at the bottom. 
6. Start creating!



7. To tie off the floss at the end, slip the needle under a stitch on the back and then thread the needle through the loop you just created.  Repeat for a tight knot.

Have younger kids?  Me, too.  You can do Lacing 101.

SUPPLIES

• cardboard
• scissors
• shoelaces
• hole punch

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Cut out simple shapes from cardboard.
2. Punch holes about 1″ apart around perimeter of shape.
3. Tie a shoelace through one hole.
4. Lace away!

We have a great piece of property…flat, not too big, not too small (yet), and did I mention flat? We’ve also turned into quite the “green thumbs.” Planting our garden near our septic drain field probably helps too.

 
Before and after shots of this year’s garden.

Anyway, gardening is a great activity to do with your kids.

Why?

I’m so glad you asked.

1.  Kids love dirt.

2.  Gardening is a living, breathing spiritual metaphor.  (Enter Exhibit A on left:  Pruning–If we don’t cut the diseased leaves off, the whole plant gets sick).

 3.  You get to reap eat what you sew.

4.  It’s fun and rewarding.

5.  Did I mention, KIDS LOVE DIRT?

You’re probably thinking what I thought…She’s a little late to be talking about gardening.  Aren’t you supposed to plant in May?

I was actually thinking…So many blogging topics (like Garden 2009), so little time.  Hey, gardening would make a great What to do? Wednesday.  Two birds with one stone.  I should of thought of that back in June and saved this post for now.  Well, I’ll make it work anyway.

Where to start?  Well, you can check out some of these sites…
Kiddie Gardens
Hortikids–helping kids grow
Kids’ Valley Garden

Depending on your yard and climate, you can decide if you want to try something inside (such as window sill herbs) or outside.  If you go outside, you can decide between potted plants (flowers or veggies) or creating a garden. 

July is not too late for this post because there are some plants (veggies especially) do well in the cooler months that are fast approaching.  Some suggestions are peas, spinach, pumpkins, and winter squash.

One thing we tried this year was building a make shift trellis for our gourds to climb.  Patrick leaned a couple 2 x 8 board up agains the house and strung string across them. 

We also hooked up a drip hose and buried it (I mean about 5) under our garden. Instead of taking time to water our garden properly (which we were really bad at last year), we just go out and turn on the drip hose for a couple hours.

If you’re looking for something very fun (but not so practical), try planting a sensitive plant.  We learned about them at Epcot last year.  When you touch it, it folds up.  This one is in the mimosa family.

Before touching After touching

So, stop surfing the web and go get out and garden!!

If you’re still here, enjoy browsing what’s been going on in our garden this year…

Now, for real, go out and garden.

Well, we’ve entered the “dog days of summer” here on the muggy east coast.  With that comes summer rains (and thunderstorms). 
So what to do when it rains and you can’t go outside?  Oh wait…you can go outside (in the absence of thunder/lightening). 

Yup, my children can often be found singing splashing (and more recently, swimming) in the rain.

What are you doing in the rain this summer?

This week we’ve been reading books by Lois Ehlert such as Color Zoo and talking about shapes.  For our project, I cut out lots of shapes out of colored paper and asked my kids to create animals (or creatures) from the cut shapes just like the author did.

I traced circular items out of my junk drawer like thread spools to get various sized circles.  I used an old gift card to get a rectangle and the triangle-folding-method to get squares.

For the older kids, try a game of Tangoes.

I’d love to know what you’re up to on this wonderful Wednesday.  You can leave a link below or comment.  You can also link to pictures of your child’s shape creation if you wish.

If you’re up for a little mess (but a lot of fun), try this activity.

1.  Mix 2 parts shaving cream with 1 part white glue.  (You can actually experiment with different ratios but what good are instructions without a little guidance?)

2.  Optional: Cover your child adequately for a messy activity.  This paint is washable, hence the “optional.”

3.  Optional:  Color your paint with food coloring or tempera.  Ours was already blue from the shaving cream.  I also only made one color because Ty was more interested in the process than the product.  The older two may have wanted colors to create a more representative picture.

4.  Have fun painting a tray or piece of cardstock.

5.  If on cardstock, hang picture to dry.  The paint dries raised.  Pretty cool.

Do you have a great idea or activity to share? Read the rules here, and link away…

Earlier this year, I found a cool book at the library called Science Through Children’s Literature by J. W. Butzow.  I think it’s a great way to explore science and it gave me the backbone for a couple of our summer science projects.  Last week, we explored volcanoes.  The book we read was the Magic School Bus Blows Its Top.  I also checked out a bunch of books from our library’s juvenile non-fiction section (call number J 551.21, if you were wondering).  Then we did the following project…

1.  Depending on your child’s age, either help or have your child use playdoh or clay to decorate an upside-down funnel.  We also put clay on the bottom as shown below so it wouldn’t slide around in our bowl later.

2.  Fill a little bowl with about 1/3 cup of baking soda and set inside a larger bowl.  Like this. (You’ll have to use your imagination to see the baking soda in the blue bowl.)

3.  Set your “volcano” inside the big bowl so it covers the smaller bowl.

4.  Pour about 2 cups of vinegar into a container that your child can easily pour (we used a pyrex measuring cup).  You can also add food coloring for a colorful eruption.

5.  Pour the vinegar slowly into the top of your volcano and watch the eruption!  You can repeat this step as long as there is still baking soda left in the bottom.

6.  If you’re so inclined, you can also explain to your children why baking soda and vinegar react that way.  You can also explain how when an acid and base react, they create a salt water.  Go ahead, have them taste it.

Do you have a great idea or activity to share? Read the rules here, and link away…

Drum roll, please….

It’s a calendar…or a toddler weekly planner of sorts!

Patrick and I created this for PJ when we were tired of answering questions like, “Is it a school day or a friends day?”  and “Does Daddy have work today?”  We were also looking for a way for ‘yesterday’ to actually mean yesterday instead of anything in the past and ‘tomorrow’ to mean tomorrow instead of anything in the future…3 minutes or 5 weeks from now.

1.  Find 7 different colors of construction paper or cardstock.

2.  Print out colorful labels for each day of the week.

3.  Use contact paper or a laminating machine to cover each day. 

4.  Find a common place to hang your new planner.  Ours started over PJ’s bed, then Mia’s bed.  We recently moved it into our front entry way for convenience and because we were running out of wall space in the kids’ room.

5.  Make labels for as many activities as you can think of.  I think it’s important to have a picture and the word.  I used images from Microsoft Office.   Also, make a TODAY arrow that will always mark…TODAY!  (sorry if that didn’t need an explanation).

6.  We laminated our activities because Nana is a preschool teacher and can do that easily.  You don’t have to if it’s too much trouble.

7.  Use painter’s tape to make your labels into stickers and plan away! 

8.  We sing the following song every morning after we move our today arrow to the appropriate day:

Sunday, Monday,

Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday

There are 7 days, there are 7 days, there are 7 days in a week.

(The tune might be ‘Oh My Darlin’)

We also review which day is today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

I’d love to know how your preschool reacts to it if you care to share.

Do you have a great idea or activity to share?  Read the rules here, and link away…

Welcome to the first week of What to do? Wednesday.  Summer is upon us ,mommas, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to be wondering what I’ll do to keep my children (ages 6, 4, and 2) occupied all summer or even if they’ll all come out alive.  I started thinking more strategically about my summer when I mentioned inventor’s camp for our oldest and my hubby nixed it saying I could do whatever they were going to do with him myself.  He continued on to criticize camps saying they were just an excuse for parents to dump their kids for the week…DUH! 

So since camp (in the traditional sense) is out, I got busy thinking of how I could be proactive at heading off the inevitable “I’m boreds” and “There’s nothing to dos.”  I’ll share my ideas if you share yours…deal?

Here are the rules guidelines…

1.  Every Wednesday post a fun (even inexpensive) day trip, creative craft project, science project, kid-friendly cooking experience, or other acrobatic you used to keep your children entertained.  Activities for all ages (infants through high school) are welcomed.

2.  Please use the code below to display the What to do? Wednesday graphic which links back to the Corkboard.  Mentioning the Corkboard in the text of your post would be a plus, too, but I’m not going to be picky.

<a href=”www.thecorkums.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll129/ephesi512/random/whattodowed.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”image hosted on Photobucket” width=”300″ height=”175″ /></a>

3.  Add your blog using Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post.  Don’t have a blog?  You can just leave a comment.

4.  Have fun!

——————————————————————————–

<insert child’s name here> the Builder

There’s something magnetic about tools…especially the real ones.  My kids are forever wanting to be “just like Daddy.”  Why they wouldn’t want to strive to be like their Type-A, over-planning, sleep-deprived, chore-assigning, veggie-pushing, order-giving, crazy momma is beyond me.  Well here’s a project that will keep them busy for at least minutes.

1.  Start with a brick of dense foam.  I used the kind found in the fake flower aisle of our local craft store.  Not the kind that disintegrates when you touch it, the other kind.  The packaging looked like this.  You can also use the pink stuff from home improvement stores.

2.  Cover it with felt.  I used hot glue to secure most of it with a nail on either end for the thicker parts.  Feel free to adlib here to make it work for you.

3.  Steal borrow some of DH’s golf tees (or stop by the sports store on your way back from the craft store).  Dig around in the toy chest for a plastic hammer.  For readers from Steamed Crab Country, you can also use wooden crab mallets.

4.  Sit back and enjoy watching your <insert your child’s name here> the Builder, hammer “nails” into “wood.”  It’s a great hand-eye coordination builder if you’re a half-pint (or a great stress-reliever if you’re a full pint).

 Now, go link away.  I’d love to know what you’re up to.  The success of our summer might depend on it!