I decided to head back over and revisit Unplugged Mom @ Unplug Your Kids and see what her theme was for the week -- we really enjoyed these when we were doing them regularly, so hopefully we can continue on.

This week the theme is: purple

We tried our hand at homemade candles....they were supper easy and super fun -- a little messy!

We shared the adventure with friends, also fellow homeschool blogger.......I think they enjoyed it as well.

Supples are glass wax, wicks, color & scent, oh yes, your glass jars too!

Here we are cutting the glass wax so it can be put into a pot

Taylor is trying her hand at cutting the wax & Jayda is looking on

  We took pencils and wrapped the tall wicks around it to hold the wick in place

The color above and the scent below, after chopping ( kids chose Ocean Mist )

The wax, the color and scent are melting in the pot. We needed to wait til the temp went down to at least 175 before pouring it into the jars.

Aren't they lovely?!

They came out so well, we were all very pleased.

And purple popcorn balls for the littles.......

The year of the Ox!

My daughter asks me this morning, after glancing at the calendar, 'Why are the Chinese just starting their year?'  I responded, 'Would you like to learn about the Chinese New Year?!' She replied, 'Yes!' So that'd exactly what we did! 

~ Chinese New Year is the most important of the Chinese holidays, and is a time of feasting with the family, celebration, fireworks, and gift-giving. It is a 15-day holiday, beginning on the first day of a new moon and ending with the full moon on the day of the Lantern Festival

~ The Chinese calendar follows a 12-year pattern with each year named after an animal. There are various stories which explain this. The simplest is that Buddha (or the Jade Emperor) invited all of the animals to join him for a New Year celebration, but only 12 animals turned up. To reward the animals that did come, Buddha named a year after each of them in the order that they arrived, starting with the Rat, followed by the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat (or Sheep), Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.

~ Ancient Chinese legends tell of the Nian, a man-eating beast from the mountains which came out every winter to feast on humans. To scare the Nian away, the people used loud noises such as firecrackers and fireworks, and bright colors, particularly red.

~ Days leading up to Chinese New Year, homes are spring-cleaned thoroughly so that all the bad luck of the previous year is swept away (and on the first day of the new year, brooms and dustpans are put away and never used in case the good luck of the new year is swept away!) Often houses are freshly painted. Traditional Chinese homes sometimes get a new coat of red paint, as red is a particularly lucky color. Homes are decorated with paper-cuts.

~ Also used to decorate homes are Chinese couplets. These are two tall posters, usually consisting of 4 Chinese characters each (as eight is a lucky number), which are hung on either side of the front door. The couplets express traditional good wishes for the year ahead.
 

~ At Chinese New Year parents, family and friends give money to children in red envelopes. The red color symbolizes good luck, and the amount of money can be anything from a small coin to a larger amount. Lucky money envelopes are also known as Red Packets or Red Envelopes.

We made simple Chinese Lanterns. We tried making the more complex ones, but they were a little too much, so went simple!

Using BORAX, we made a bouncy ball today......

Two cups, borax solution and ball mixture

We mixed borax and warm water for the borax solution

Then added food coloring....

Then a tablespoon of glue to the ball cup

and to the glue we added a little bit of borax solution and cornstarch, and let it sit

Then begin stirring, once you can't stir any longer, take it out and use your hands....

Now its supposed to bounce......however, ours did not.

We are going to try again another time and see what the problem is. Maybe look for a different site for the instructions. Here is the site we used.

We started this last week but the kids just journaled about them today. We actually made them twice b/c the first time we did not add enough Borax!!

Thank you, Melissa, for the idea!

Click here for the link to make them.

Each year we paint those little plaster of paris ornaments, here is this years pics!

We love to watercolor.....so to add a demension to it, we experiemented with textures using salt and rubbing alcohol.

We painted a few blocks of colors on a page -- any design will work.

Jayda used alcohol &  added Kosher Salt. The salt soaks up the color, leaving a star-shaped effect -- varying by which salt use use -- table or kosher. She used alcohol with a Q-tip, first -- you can see after it dried, the color was lifted a bit to reveal a lighter color. We flicked alcohol, carefully, as well as dotted with the Q-tip end. 

Here are my daughters creating their works for art.

Taylor added only salt.

We found that the darker paints work much better for creating the alcohol effect.

Here is a great site that helps with watercoloring.

We had fun making a bit of a mess today!

Stained Glass Leaves

Cut black construction paper or heavier paper ( what I used ) into two 5" x 5" squares.
Cut a leaf shape from the center of the two squares while holding them together. You may want to place your leaf shape at a diagonal, so that when you hang it the construction paper border is diamond shaped.

Shave crayon bits in fall colors. You may want to use more than one color for each leaf.

Place the crayon shavings between two pieces of wax paper and press with a warm iron until the crayons melt. I put it between an old towel to catch any bleeding colors.

Cut the wax paper to fit inside the edges of the construction paper frame.
To assemble the window, glue stick both black papers and place wax paper that you created with crayon between them. Make sure your leaf pattern matches up.

This afternoon we painted with our FEET!

Loads of fun for all of us. It's very windy here so I had to use buckets with rocks in them to hold the paper down.

Thanks to my friend, Kelly @ A Day in My Life, for this idea!

Have you rec'd your Sunkist Lemonade Stand? I hope many of you joined with my family in participating this year. For those that missed it, you can still sign up......click here.

We rec'd our stand a month ago but haven't set it up or set a date to have the actual event. I'm shooting for sometime in July. We chose the Denver Children's Home as our charity. Our kids are very excited about being a blessing to so many children. We are hoping to phone and actually visit the place as a family, and then present the profits from the stand.

So have you rec'd your stand, and if so, have you held your event yet?

The theme for this weeks Unplugged Project was ribbon..

We made bracelets, anklets & chokers.  I found the idea HERE

Visit Mom Unplugged's website to participate in next week's unplugged project.