"i week" inspirations

My 6 year old posed for the eyes and head on the bottom left.

 "... I imagine an invisible hat and immense shoes so I will look like I..."

It's extremely hard to write legibly this much on a chalk board, but hopefully you all can read it.

And the Iguana with the itsy i on its side.

Ice cream play dough tutorial

Now if you actually follow that link for how to make "ice cream play dough" you will see some amazing pictures of someone who probably only has the one child with perfectionist ideals and too much time on their hands.  Seriously, amazing pictures and idyllic and of course when I went to make it the "ice cream" turned a little greenish.  The 3 year old was still delighted though and made a lovely mess on the table while I read from "Little House on the Prairie" while knitting.

I used koolaid and baking soda for this and the girls had fun feeling the texture and playing with it while I read.

Picture of the 6 year old.  She lost interest in it the quickest but probably because she didn't like the messy feeling.  ;)

We made these ice balls by filling water balloons with water and food coloring.

I think the little one was upset because she broke one, but then her and her older sister had lots of fun throwing and smashing the ice balls.  My 8 year old lost interest in these the quickest, but the younger two had fun for the short time the ice balls lasted.

Ice color painting - how to.

The girls seemed to enjoy this project.  Fill ice cube trays with watercolor paints  and toothpicks so they can paint with ice.

It didn't work terribly well, but it wasn't bad and they seemed to enjoy trying it at least.

 Melting ice experiment

This was probably one of the favorites as they messed around with this for over an hour.  Freeze all different sized bowls of water and then sprinkle salt on the ice blocks.  Then drip water color paints onto the ice to see where the salt melted through.

The blue was the prettiest.

Notice all the ridges in the edge where the salt melted the ice? 

Afterward my oldest enjoyed melting the blocks in the sink and watching how quickly hot water would melt it.  "I see a 'C' in the ice."

Home made ice cream using bags - tutorial

A chalk board creation by the middle one.  :)

Their absolute favorite activity for "i" week was making ice cream in bags!  Lots of shaking.

The first time we made the bag ice cream was when we were all out in the pool with Daddy and Grammy.  The grown ups did most of the shaking, but it was super fun to eat the cold ice cream right out of the bags while we were in the hot tub.  In this picture the girls were playing with a big ice block that I froze for some swimming fun.  They played with it and noticed how heavy it was and how fast it melted and delighted in the bubble frozen in it.  ;)

The three year old shook the ice cream while jumping on the trampoline for a bit.

But the best part was eating it!  This day was the second time we tried this and we did three different bags of ice cream.  One with milk, one with half and half, and one with cream.  They all tasted good, but were slightly different textures and we made note of that and which we liked the best.

Felt ice cream tutorial
I found this tutorial for felt food, but the girls were more interested in making felt animals.  I thought I'd post it anyway though in case someone else is interested in using it.

The blanket that my 6 year old commissioned me to do.  It's very stretchy and represents a lot of reading out loud to them while I did it.  :)  She is so excited about it!

Caught them at a cute moment.

My 8 year old spent almost all of today sewing little felt animals.  She's now able to trace the pattern and cut it out on her own and thread the needles and tie the knots and do the whole thing without my help!  I'm so impressed that the girls are making their own toys.  I read out loud for about 3 hours straight today because they kept asking for more and kept wanting to work on projects while listening.

I still have a few library books to read to them tomorrow with titles that had "I" in them somewhere.  Pretty hard to find, let me tell you, but I found enough to make it fun and different.