ice bowl

Poor little G hasn't had much of a role on this blog yet. She's tried a lot of the infant activities M did at her age but to blog about them twice doesn't make much sense. This is a new variation on a few other things we've done (ice boats, ice painting, etc) and was great for a hot day. 

G was a bit more reserved about this than I expected. I gave her 4-5 colored ice cubes in a glass bowl of water. She batted at them, picked them up but quickly let them go, and splashed a bit. She also seemed to notice and watch the color melting off the cubes into the water. Needless to say this activity needs your undivided attention. G actually never tried putting the ice in her mouth but I was pretty shocked by that. 

On another note, I have labeled every (or close to it) blog entry with the age M or G was when we did it. You can easily search labels for a specific age if you'd like :)

chalk bombs

I think I've pinned this idea at least three times over the past year or so.  M was super excited and loved this so much.  Our chalk paint wasn't super bright but I'll explain that...

The idea of a chalk bomb is a water balloon filled with chalk paint.  There are a number of ways to make (or buy) chalk paint.  We made our by crushing chalk and adding water.  In theory it would have worked great because it was super bright and thick.  The trouble came with getting it into the balloons.  We only had super small balloons so that didn't make it any easier.  I attempted an eye dropper and a spray bottle but neither were forceful enough to get the balloon to expand and allow more than a little bit in.  I ended up filling it as far as I could then adding water.  It definitely diluted the "paint" but it still worked.  We had about 12 yellow, blue, and red bombs -

M loved throwing them.  He typically squeezes water balloons until they pop all over him so he needed some direction to throw away from him and he did well.  

Our paint wasn't super bright and was actually brighter once the splatters dried up.  This was really fun though and we will definitely be trying it again with better balloons and/or a better filling method.

ice boats

We celebrated the first day of summer today with ice boats in our kiddie pool.  This activity was a huge success with M and one that we will definitely do again.

Directions:
- Tape the short end of a flexi-straw to the bottom of a Solo cup so that the tall end stands up straight in the middle of the cup.
- Fill the cup 1/3 of the way with water and freeze (ours froze overnight).

- Once completely frozen cut the cup away from the straw.  I also read that you could loosen the ice by running warm water on the outside of the cup but I found it pretty easy to just cut the cup and slip it right off.
- Use a hole punch to make a sail for each boat.  We used construction paper.  After the fact I thought it would be cute to have had him decorate the sails but they get wet and ruined fairly quickly.

M was really excited to put them in the water and we liked sailing them back and forth and sending them down M's pool slide.  As I said, the sails were soaked within a minute or so and slumped but M didn't care and eventually just pulled them off.  The straw was great because he could use it to move the boat around without grabbing the ice every time.  

The weather wasn't overly hot today but warm enough for this activity.  That was probably in our favor because I could see these melting super fast on a very hot day.  Ours lasted maybe 10 minutes each today.  I made two and we played with one at a time because, of course, after the first melted M was asking for more.  M actually seemed to enjoy them most once they melted a bit and were smaller.  He's a big fan of throwing things (balls, rocks, etc.) into water so he had tons of fun throwing the smaller ice chunks into the water then finding them.  This was a great activity for summer and one that definitely gave me some ideas for other things to try this summer!