With January thankfully behind us, we are settling into February, noticing with appreciation the lengthening of the days, and the slow return of the golden feathers on the gold finch. After many recent days when the daily high was in the single digits, we all seem to have toughened up a bit, so that being outside at 20 degrees is fairly comfortable now.
We recently added a sheep to our menagerie, a young ram who came to us from the farm at Little Leaf (another home based school), so he is very comfortable being around children and is very sweet. He came with a name... Chain.
I came across these directions for making Gak on The Artful Parent blog. It was so fun to make and play with, we made four batches in one week. It is cold, smooth, wet and rubbery- feeling, and it makes a delightfully squishy, dare I say "farty" noise, coming out of the play dough squeezer.
Mix 8 oz glue with 8oz of warm water in a bowl. We used food coloring to brighten it up. The more the better, at least 5-10 drops.
Separately, mix one tsp borax powder into 1/2 cup warm water
Pour borax solution into the glue water and stir-- it will flubber up immediately. If there is any extra liquid in the bowl, pour that off and start exploring this crazy stuff!
One
day, after using all the tools with the gak at the table, the children
layered some between scrap wood boards, creating some kind of pretend
machine, maybe a press? After a day or two, the gak had hardened,
essentially gluing the boards together. These boys worked hard to pry
the boards apart and scrape off most of the dried-on gak.
painting and other artistic endeavors
sticky string art
bubble wrap painting and printing
good old play dough
