Making Snake Bubbles and Decorating T-Shirts

We've been having so much fun learning!

I found a non- fiction book at the library all about bubbles on Friday and I couldn't resist checking it out since I've had so many ideas about cool bubble projects I wanted to do with the boys.

Most of them I found on Pinterest and they include everything from bouncing bubbles to giant bubbles, to snake bubbles, to painting with bubbles.

So this week our science unit is going to be all about bubbles!  

We started out with making snake bubbles, which are super easy!  

• Just cut the bottom off a plastic water bottle, attach an old mismatched sock (or a face cloth would work well!) and dip into bubble solution or soap & water and start blowing.  
• I had them make their own bubble blowers, I know it would have been easier to assemble them myself but figured there had to be some sort of learning taking place while assembling them.  
• To make the bubbles more colorful we added food coloring directly to the sock then started blowing.  
• We also made bubble prints by blowing our snakes on top of white paper and letting the bubble pop. 

                    

We did Chex mix math today (again with an idea I found on Pinterest-- just LOVE that site!).   They estimate, count, make fractions, add, tally and compare.  But, of course, the best part is eating it!  Evan only  counted since that was hard enough for him.

 We also played a fun math game called flip 10 using UNO cards (also found on Pinterest!-- I am determined to systematically go through each pin and try them out).  Reinforcing the pairs of numbers that add to 10.  You play just like memory; flipping over two cards at a time.  Instead of matching then you want to find pairs that add to 10.

For reading today we started a poetry unit and read a bunch of Shel Silverstein's poems.

We found a favorite and I had the boys copy it onto a huge lined and laminated poster board.  My plan is to switch out the poem each day this week and to have the boys take turns copying them.  Copy work is a great way to get reluctant writers to write, they learn about grammar, punctuation and spelling just by copying and I find they don't complain quite so loudly.

Since bubble painting just was not enough of an art project to satisfy my budding artist.

I planned another art project for today and it just had to be another T-shirt.  I couldn't listen to the "mommy can we pleeeeease"... anymore so I figured hey why not?! Homeschooling is supposed to be fun!

We made our own iron on transfers.  They drew dark and colorful pictures with crayons onto sandpaper and when they were finished I ironed their artwork onto their t-shirts.

I'm trying to get better at asking them how or why things work instead of telling them, so after a short discussion the two older boys realized it was the heat from the iron that melted the crayon and allowed the melted crayon to transfer to the shirt.