Homemade ArtBot!

Lily made this for her school's science project and we LOVED it!  

The kids at school got to pick a project from the Science Buddies website.  Lily picked the Art Bot.

We bought all the bits and pieces separately and put it together ourselves... Adult assistance needed but fun! 

AA batteries (2)

2xAA battery holder

3 volt DC motor

Plastic cup, 16 oz.

Cork

Popsicle stick

Thin washable markers (3)

White posterboard pieces or any kind of large paper.

Double-sided foam tape

Electrical tape

Scissors

Small Phillips-head screwdriver

Optional: Arts and crafts materials to decorate your robot (googly eyes, pipe cleaners, etc.)

Optional: Digital camera to take pictures of your posterboards

Volunteer to help you run your experiments

Lily then made more bots with 4 and 5 markers on each cups.  

We decided that taping the paper to the floor was easier as the bot kept falling off the table!

Electric Lemon!

Bella got this Lemon clock kit as a birthday party favor!

A perfect weekend activity to do!

It's super easy and why not go ahead and add more to this activity?.... We've got a fridge full of fruit and veggies and were willing to experiment with them!

Bouncy Egg!

I was searching for a weekend project online when I stumbled onto this one that intrigued me:

BOUNCY RAW EGG?!!

hard to believe...so we put it to the test...

It turned out to be a perfect weekend activity, with minimal amount of "work", just put the egg in the liquid and watch the progress in 24 hours!

You'll need:

- 1 raw brown egg (or 1 per kid)

-white vinegar

-glass container, such as a mason jar or a tall glass

Directions:

1. take any glass jar/glass where you can immerse an egg in, it's best if you use a brown egg because it's easier to see the transformation
2. Pour white vinegar until the egg is completely covered in liquid
3. Wait 24 hours before removing the egg
4. Remove the egg and rub gently under water until you reveal the clear membrane
5. have fun bouncing - remember, the egg is still raw inside, so when the egg breaks, it will splatter just like a messy egg falling to the ground!

What's going on:

1. Within the first few hours, you'll notice lots of little bubbles covering the egg
2. the vinegar is slowly going to dissolve the outer shell
3. 12 hours in, you'll notice that the outside shell has detached
4. 18 hours later you'll start seeing a more transparent egg

Once you've rinsed the egg, you'll notice that the yoke move around inside, because the inside is still raw!

WE LOVED BOUNCING OUR EGG!

We kept bouncing the eggs from higher and higher until the eggs broke.  We managed to drop them from about 18" off the counter, and in the end, we had to throw them into the bowl to splatter.  We could have kept going for ages.

NOTE: You will be playing with a RAW egg, so thoroughly washing hands at every stage is important AND even though vinegar is not harmful, if it's on your hands and you rub your eye, it will sting.... so caution all around.

Oh and don't use the eggs for cooking after....

 

Holiday decorating

Love arts and crafts to keep our little fingers busy and getting into the holiday mood.

Since we needed extra pieces to decorate the back of the wreath, Lily traced some of the leaf shapes from the kit and cut them up.

Paper wreath!

Since we were traveling and had limited suitcase space, we opted for a ready to assemble kit.

We opted for a paper source wreath kit.

We hung the wreath between two rooms so we made sure to decorate the back as well as the front... it was a big hit!

Bella added some original designs of her own!

Final result, helped get the room into the holiday spirit!