Monthly Archives: July 2012

Academy of Natural science!

Exploring the World

Monday’s are hard. Everything seems to be closed. So we often have trouble planning fun outings.
Today we decided to take the train to town and check out the Acadrmy of Natural Science. It was great. The third floor, hands- on toddler room was by far the best. There was a bee hive, cockroaches, turtles and all kinds of bones, shells and rocks that we could touch.
The kids were not so into the diaramas, but the dinosaur section was pretty cool. And the butterflies were pretty amazing too! (this makes me think a butterfly shoebox diarama might be a fun project? And why don’t we hatch some butterflies next year!)
After the museum we had lunch at whole foods and headed back to the train. Esme fell asleep in the stroller!! Unusual for her, so I guess it was a good trip.

Activities (by Abby)

Project Toolbox

 Abby, I typed up your activity ideas here so they might be easy to find. So fun! ~Meredith

Hunting for Dinosaurs

  • Laundry Basket
  • Dinosaurs

Gather all dinos in a laundry basket. Sort and count according to size. Dashiell and Esme close their eyes while Abby hides the dinos. Kids open their eyes and search, putting the dinos back into the basket. Sort, count, repeat.

Paper tube bird feeder (done!)

  • Peanut butter (there is a “peter pan” PB in the pantry for this.)
  • Bird seed
  • Yarn

Spread PB on the tube then roll in seed. Use yarn to tie up outside.

Bird feeder!

Collecting rocks
Take a nature walk and collect rocks.  Come home, and sort according to texture. Paint the smooth ones and display on windowsills.

Special Soup

  • Scaps from compost
  • little kitchen pots

We can use the kids play kitchen for this. We will use left over bits from the compost– real food. We can mix it with water in the play pots in the play kitchen.  Potato peels, celery leaves, pasta and more.
Abby, you could *actually* make veggie stock for us from all those scraps! Here are some great tips about teaching kids to use knives.  Dashiell has been allowed to chop soft things with a butter knife like: cooked beets, melon, etc. If you wanted to make real stock, we can save scraps for a while and then just chop and boil.  We can freeze it and use for future soup recipes. ~Meredith

Paper bag pinatas!

  • Brown paper bags
  • yarn
  • cheerios
  • candy
  • popcorn
  • crayons and decoration

D & E can decorate their own bags before lunch.  The bags are filled with treats and tied closed with yarn.  After lunch they can swing at them till they break and get their treats!

Tissue Paper butterflies

  • tissue paper
  • scissors
  • pipe cleaners

The kids have been talking about butterflies after learning about them t the Wyck. We can use tissue paper and pipe cleaners to make some!

Searching for worms!
Esme loves gooey things deep in the soil. We’ll go in the yard and search for worms. We’ll talk about how worms are helpful to the soil and plants.

Painting with Straws (Done!)

  • Paint
  • Straws
  • paper
Painting with straws!

We will drop paint on the paper and allow the kids to blow through the straw to blow the paint around the page.

Finding a buried treasure
We will create a “treasure” using recycled and found items.  We will place them in a container or wrap them up. We will bury our treasure in the yard. In a few days time, we can go back and dig it up! We can pretend to be pirates or archeologists!

Mud magic
You didn’t get to finish this but I like it already! Mud is fun!!!! ~Meredith