A Springtime Picnic Snack

Today is graduation day for the college students in our tiny town.  While my husband dons an academic robe, I am home with the kids, two of whom are asleep.  On my second daughter's list of things to do today was "surprise for Mom." After lunch, she invited me outside for this:

 

 

Eco-Friendly Craft and Game: Reusing Plastic Eggs to Make Flowers

We were inspired to create our own garden math game during Easter break.  Real flowers outdoors are at least a month away, so it was cheering to add some color to our day.  Interestingly, it was my five-year-old son who was most eager to make these, and then knock the flowers down of course.

Materials Used:

• cardboard tubes (from toilet paper rolls or paper towels)
• cardboard cereal or cake boxes
• scissors
• paint
• paintbrush(es)
• clear tape
• leftover plastic Easter eggs
• tin can or softball

Directions:

1. Draw flower shapes onto cardboard, using the plastic egg halves as centers to give a sense of proportion.  Cut out flower shapes.
2. Paint flowers and use egg halves as stamps in the paint.  Let dry.
3. Paint or color cardboard tubes green to serve as stems.  We slit them lengthwise and rolled them tighter, securing with tape.
4. Assemble flowers by standing tubes upright to form stems, then adding flower petal layer, followed by the plastic egg halves to be the center of each flower.
5. To play a bowling type of game, roll a tin can (I stuffed ours with a plastic bag to add ballast) or softball to knock down the flower "pins."  Keep score of how many flowers are toppled for some fun addition practice.  Another version of a math game requiring a die to roll can be found here.

One of my children created this variation, which looks like mushrooms.

Find more creative ideas each week at Your Green Resource and these fun places.

Creating and Tracing Rainbow Light Patterns

Inspired by those magical moments when "rainbows" appear on the floor as glass breaks sunlight into its color spectrum, my daughter wanted to try to trace the color patterns. We improved our odds by placing a glass jar near a window on a sunny morning. 

 After playing with angles, my daughters started tracing the colorful light patterns that they found. It was a bit of a race against time, as the sun's angle changed, but we still enjoyed the process.

Watercolor paints would be even better because kids can paint more swiftly. Now that we've located our stash of paintbrushes, we'll have to try tracing with watercolors next.

This pattern was outlined later, and it seemed to resemble an island.