Saturday, March 31, 2012

Embracing the Messes: Making Advances

Remember when I talked about embracing messes when there is fun to be had? Well, I still am working on not cringing at the mess and not having an anxiety attack when I see dirty clothes, but I’m progressing. Apparently, I’m one of those “just jump right in and get it over with” type people because we didn’t start small.

Exhibit A: Oobleck (google it if you don’t know what it is. FUN, FUN, FUN—especially for the older kids who understand states of matter….so that’d mean I had a blast with this. It made me giddy about homeschooling.)

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I’d rate this as easy clean-up, just in case you’re wondering. If you’re looking for the recipe, it’s just cornstarch and water, with food coloring if you wish. You can find exact measurements through that handy thing called Google.

Exhibit B: Slime/Gak. You’ll note this project took place outdoors, mainly because Hannah was napping and we can’t be in the kitchen during that time. However, I’d be lying if I left it there. It was pretty messy at first, so we headed outdoors. I was planning on saving this gak for a while. Unfortunately, the outdoors added elements to our gak including leaves, dirt, and rocks. We found the slime recipe from Pinterest. It starts out quite watery, but with lots of kneading gets much “gakier.”

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He loved this one. We even saved it one time and he played with it outside again. We would have saved it again except, as mentioned above, the dirt in it was causing it to change colors. Yuck. We’ll be doing this again!

Exhibit C: Baking soda and colored vinegar. I don’t have a picture of this (so I think that invalidates calling it an exhibit—whatever), but he really enjoyed it. I covered the bottom of a 9x13 pan with baking soda and gave him 3-4 individual little cups of different colored vinegar. Then he took a dropper and added different colors of the vinegar into the baking soda. He loved that it fizzed, but also enjoyed making all the different colors run together. A big hit, and he requested to do it again!

Exhibit D: Fingerpainting. This is where I apparently lost my mind. We started out with individual circles of paint on a lovely Christmas plate. I envisioned him doing just as I would do (my downfall most of the time)—using one finger for each color. You know, as to not mix the colors and make it ugly. HA. Continue looking.

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When he was done, there was paint EVERYWHERE. He had to have a bath afterwards. We might wait 6 months-10 years before doing that again. I had to do deep breathing exercises to make it through that one.

And now for the final exhibit, Exhibit E, I give you….planned mudhole maddness.

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(Deda, this is a video! I have no idea how to fix that the video isn't centered. Everything is "off" on my blog, but not on youtube. Strange!)


The shower desperately needs to be cleaned now, as you can probably imagine!

So we’re having fun with all this uncharacteristically warm weather for this time of year and really look forward to the other MESSY activities we have planned!

And can I say….I LOVE BEING A MOMMY!!!!! This make life fun!!!!

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