From the category archives:

Materials

Marvellous Marbling

February 2, 2012 Activities

The big girl received an art book for Christmas. Most of it is way too old for her, but she loves picking things out and then we get to work out how to modify them for her. She wanted to try marbling, but we had a few problems to solve so we tried lots of [...]

Engineer’s Report: Gingerbread House

December 22, 2011 Activities

Location: Slab has been well prepared, very smooth and level on a hard substrate. Block is minimum size, house too close to front boundary. Floorplan: A simple rectangle with only one room and firepit in the centre for cooking. Entrance centre front is decorative only, 6 windows give adequate light and ventilation but difficult to [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Rubbings

December 14, 2011 Materials

Do you have any idea how many patterned, textured surfaces you have around your home? Hundreds. Trust me. Obligatory Christmas tie-in – use rubbings to make wrapping paper, just use crayons or pencils on butcher’s paper. Kidlet’s creatively entertained and personalised paper as elaborate as you want.

Grass Weaving

December 1, 2011 Activities

Learning about materials is a good way for little kids to learn about, well, materials. It’s a great start because they are something they know and are familiar with, and they can easily see and feel differences in their own clothes. We are always having discussions about whether clothes will be too hot or too [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Mocktails

November 9, 2011 Materials

Water Answers

November 4, 2011 Earth and Beyond

How much do you know about water? Check back to the quiz for the questions. 1. Generally the solid form of something is heavier than the liquid because it’s packed together more tightly and there’s more in it. But ice is less dense than water, which means for the same volume there are [...]

Baked Icecream (that, um, melted. Help?)

November 3, 2011 Activities

I‘ve tried to make meringue a couple of times and it hasn’t worked, so that was probably a sign that I shouldn’t have done this. Or at least that I should have tried it several times before putting it in the blogging schedule. But given trips to Melbourne and husband travel and another trip to [...]

Quiz – The Water Edition

November 1, 2011 Lists

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Why does ice float? Is there water on the moon? Why is the Dead Sea called that? Do you need to drink 8 glasses a day? And what’s the piece of Australian memorabilia in the picture, and what the heck does it have to do with water? [...]

Kid Questions: Why do we use glass for mirrors and windows?

October 17, 2011 Activities

At first this sounds really weird – we use glass for windows so we can see through it, but we also use glass for mirrors and we can see ourselves. Why does it act differently in different things? The answer is that it isn’t really the glass that makes the mirror. Good quality glass is [...]

Sand Jars

October 13, 2011 Activities

We have all sorts of rocks and dirt around my house. I know this partly from what ends up in my bag or pockets on walks, partly from what I pour out of shoes, and partly from what I scrub off the bath. They’re a decidedly recurring fact of life, so I decided to do [...]