Color Flashcards

The photographs for the color project began over a year ago, but recently the flashcards have cycled up as popular item for play.  Her favorite, of course, is yellow.  

Bird Seed Ornaments

Cold weather is here, and the resident birds are hungry.  Every morning the starlings and the cedar waxwings hit our cherry tree for the ripened red delights. The squirrel and chipmunk gather fallen sunflower seeds from the ground.  The cardinals and chickadees raid the feeder.  We all watch the action, but Loki likes it best, so we call it “kitty TV.”

Though we currently have a feeder (and by feeder I mean a dissected milk jug hanging on a string), Aurora and I decided that a few decorative embellishments could be a fun addition to our backyard, so today we made bird seed ornaments.

To make the ornaments, gather

2 packets of gelatin

½ c water

2 c bird seed

string

cookie cutters

wax paper

cookie sheet

In a small sauce pan, mix the gelatin into the water and heat until dissolved.  Stir in the bird seed.  Place the cookie cutters on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.  Fill the cookie cutters with the bird seed gelatin, pausing midway to insert a looped string.  Allow the mixture to harden for eight hours. 

Ta da!  Bird Seed Ornaments!

Baking Soda and Vinegar

For fun times, cover a cookie sheet in baking soda, put vinegar colored with food coloring in a squeeze bottle, and let your kid go to town.

At Aurora’s insistence, she and her father took turns pouring the vinegar. They made all sorts of sound effects as the yellow eruptions bubbled before them. My favorites were an enthusiastic “WHOA!” and a extended guttural “grwull.”

So while the carboxyl group of the vinegar’s acetic acid (CH3COOH) was busy becoming an acetate ion (CH3COO-) by donating a proton, H+, to baking soda’s sodium bicarbonate’s (NaHCO3) bicarbonate ion to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), which decomposed into water (H20) and carbon dioxide (CO2), which effervescenced out of the remaining sodium acetate (CH3COONa), I was busy enjoying my daughter laugh and my husband smile.

First Snow

Today’s snow was magic. Oh sure, she had seen two whole winters’ worth of snow before this morning, but today’s snow was something special. We walked out into the blustery fall after preschool but only made it two steps before we were poking it with our fingers and throwing it “splat” onto the concrete.

She learned the word immediately.

At home, given the option between playing in the snow and anything else, the choice was always snow. While I made lunch, she tromped around with Dad in the backyard looking for “big snow.”  Instead of taking a nap, we gleefully ran around the football field leaving “paw prints”

with our feet. She threw small snowballs at my legs. “Ah! Aurora got me with a snowball. Aaaah!” I’d run around each time, and she would laugh and laugh.

Being a wimpy parent, of course, I got cold and called it quits before she did. We retreated to the cover of our front yard. Her mittens were soaked through, so I gave her my heavy-duty spare pair. This left me to gather giant balls of “big snow” for her to “splat” by the armload. Pretty soon we had amassed enough to attempt a snowman.

She learned this word immediately as well.

We rung the door-bell and convinced Dad to call his work day quits—all family members were needed for this, the building of Aurora’s first snowman. Immediately upon inserting the eyes, Aurora declared there to be a need for a “happy face.” We found an appropriately smiley stick. Aurora gave him a hug. He was decapitated, but repaired easily.

After much convincing, Aurora returned to the warmth of the inside, but continued to look at her snowman from the front window.