Summer Days, Drifting Away

As mid-July approaches, I just cannot believe that summer is about halfway over. We have been keeping busy as bees and thought I'd document some of our activities.

After watching Curious George one day, Ava was interested in pullies, a simple machine. We briefly talked about simple machines and decided to make one ourselves. We tied a string to two baskets and used each to deliver goods back and forth to one another, upstairs and down. She got a kick out of this. Several days later, she was downstairs and asked for a blanket. When I shot it down in our "pully", she thought that was the bee's knees.




We found this idea on my new favorite hobby, pinterest. It's chalk paint. At first, I didn't really get it, but once it dried (no pictures of that), it was really neat looking.



One day Aves asked me if she could make some shoes? Huh? Um, okay. So I asked her what she was talking about....we needed a plan. At first she wanted paper. I asked her what would happen if we used paper for shoes and she quickly concluded that wouldn't last. So she said we need something stronger. She had the fabric already picked out and that wasn't going to cut it. Suddenly it dawned on us at the same time! As we sat munching on our box of crackers, we seriously both looked around the room for something stronger than paper and voila! The cardboard box! She said it first and it was like she stole the thoughts right out of my head. We had a good laugh about that one. Next, I asked her what we should do next. It was neat to see her tell me each step the way she pictured it in her mind. We needed to trace her foot around the cardboard so it would fit her foot. Same with the fabric. She glued to fabric to the shoe and wanted to add a strip that would go across her toes. A little decoration with glitter glue and her mental creation became a tangible pair of shoes! She was so proud!




And of course, we made the OOBLECK, like any teacher's kid has, I'm sure. We had a fun and messy time with this!



We did a short little activity with milk and food coloring that I found online and cannot find the site to reference, and made really pretty swirly art. Ava had a great time with this one.