Friday, January 25, 2013

Art: Watercolor Trees

All you need for this art activity is: masking tape (we used green craft tape), watercolor paper, and watercolors.

First, you tear the tape into strips to use as branches and a trunk.  Press the tape down firmly in the shape that you want.   

Mine is on the left and Ocean's is on the right (she decided to add "snowflakes" to hers).


Add your watercolors:

Once the paint is dry, remove the tape.

We may do this project again, but with darker paints for a greater contrast.  Maybe we'll make grids or road maps...or spider webs?  I also liked the way it looked with the tape on so we might do some like that as well.  



Science: The Naked Egg

This week, we did a really easy & fun science experiment.  All you need is an egg (or two, in case one breaks), some white vinegar, and a jar.  You put the egg in the jar, cover it with the vinegar, and then let it sit for 3-4 days (changing the vinegar once, after the first 24 hours).  The acid in the vinegar breaks down the eggshell (base), so that you're left with just the translucent membrane.
To supplement our experiment, we read "The Egg," which is a Scholastic "First Discovery book."  I love these books as they let you "look inside" things.  After 4 days, we found that the egg was soft and bouncy (we bounced it -carefully- on the kitchen table).  We also held it up to the window so we could see the "nucleus" (yolk) and the "cytoplasm" (the whites) inside.  Ocean also enjoyed looking at it with a flashlight.

 This is what it looked like right away, you can already see the shell breaking down.
 Ocean's drawing of the experiment (although, of course, our egg did not produce a chick...I think that was wishful thinking on her part).  She also practiced writing the word, "egg."
 So cool how it glowed in the sunlight.