Summer Fun 2014 - Shooting at Bubbles with a Squirt Gun

Have you ever tried it?

 

It's a lot harder than you might think.

Not only are the bubbles on the move...

...but it can take several squirts of water to get one to burst.

And when we play, points are lost for hitting the bubble blower...

...instead of the bubbles.

Summer Fun 2014 - Water Gun Reverse Tug-a-War

Thinking of the my old hometown's annual, summerfest, firefighters' water fight, I hooked a balloon up on a piece of string through a straw, tied across our backyard, armed the children with inexpensive water guns, and let the battle begin.

The idea being to shoot water at the balloon, moving it across the string toward a goal, while the opposing player attempts the same thing, but in the opposite direction.

Two players, or in teams, there's no way to win without getting wet.

Silicone Minifigure Ice-Cube Tray - Melted Chocolate Chip Lego Men Look-Alikes

I briefly considered surprising the children with a set of Lego Movie minifigures, before deciding they were going to totally blow our summer fun budget, and settling on a much less expensive, but still very promising,  silicone minifigure ice-cube tray/candy mold.

We put it to good use as soon as it arrived, with bags of peanut butter, white and milk chocolate chips ready to be melted, and molded into little men.

G (age 15) took over the project, brainstorming out the best ways for filling the molds in order to keep melted chips from blending together.

At first, she thought she might be able to pipe more than one of the melted chips at a time, but that proved difficult...

...so she followed a suggestion from Sugar Swings to put a small dab of each chip (the original tutorial was for candy melts) in the bottom of each section of the mold first, staying below the dividers...

...going back over each section again, filling to the top...

...then tapping the mold a couple times to remove any air bubbles, before placing it into the freezer for a few minutes to allow the chocolate harden.

They popped right out of the mold once the chocolate was set.  But, we discovered that it's better to pull the mold away from the sides of the men...

...rather than pushing up from underneath.

A few of the first batch lost their heads that way, but were quickly repaired with drop of melted chocolate...

...and then given faces with a chocolate dipped toothpick.

And while they were not quite the official minifigures from the movie...

...no one complained.

Minifigure Sticker Finger Friends

Before we watched The Lego Movie I set the younger children up with finger-sized minifigure stickers (just pictures of The Lego Movie minifigures I pulled off of Amazon, copied to a single page in Paint, printed onto sticker paper as a 5''x7'' picture - so they'd be small, and cut out)...

...so they could pick five each...

...to stick to their fingers...

...as sort of finger puppets.

During the movie, when any of their characters appeared on screen, they could act along - or just cheer, with their little finger friends.  And, after the movie, when they got tired of finger puppets, they could stick them down onto sheets of blank paper and draw their own story around them.

Note: This sort of activity is not suitable for toddlers or babies.  Printable stickers come off easily and might be swallowed by young children sucking on their fingers.

Summer Fun 2014 - Roasting Marshmallows With a Magnifying Glass

Technically, it's more burning, than roasting...

...but it smells fantastic, is a ton of fun...

...and just generally a great way to spend a (properly parentally supervised) summer afternoon.

Lego Movie Surprise, Corn Starch Oobleck Lego Dig

My youngest three (ages 7-11), who didn't get to see The Lego Movie while it was in theaters, have been counting down the days until it's released to DVD. I saw that it was going to release early on Amazon Instant View, and decided to pre-order it without telling them.  Instead, I put together a few Lego themed crafts, and snacks to subtly hint at the coming surprise.

The movie came out yesterday, so in the morning I had special dino-digs ready for them.  I mixed up cornstarch and water Oobleck, like I have in the past for fossil finds, but placed Lego minifigures into the goo, instead of dinosaur bones.

I didn't have time to spend trying to work the Lego pieces (which float) down into the goo as it hardened, so instead I filled the small cups I was using as molds, just over halfway with the liquidy mixture, plopped the Lego pieces in - one minifigure's worth per cup, and covered them up with dry cornstarch...

...smoothing it down with a spoon, so it would mix enough with the liquid to become part of it, while still staying solid enough to keep the Lego pieces from floating back to the top.

 

 As usual, I let the oobleck dry overnight, before popping the digs out of the cups, to present to the children with knitting needle "digging tools" and small paint brushes.

I didn't add any sand to the cornstarch this time.  Sometimes I not only add sand but also corn syrup, baking soda and vinegar, using a recipe for homemade watercolor paint minus the coloring. I didn't want to risk adding anything this time that might remove paint from the Lego men.  Just cornstarch and water alone worked fine, but it did make for a crumblier (much easier) dig.

For a couple of our digs, I let the children use a water filled squirt bottle to free the Lego pieces...

...by turning the solid cornstarch partway back into oobleck.

That was so much fun, that it wasn't long before...

...all the newly freed minifigures were back in the goo...

 ...and once again...

...in need of rescue.

Shadow Wall in a Picture Frame

Before I put away the glow-in-the-dark paint we used for our Lego man-sized shadow room, I slapped a few coats onto a piece of cardboard cut from the back of a cereal box...

...just the right size to slip into an 8''x11'' frame - the kind with a stand up tab in the back...

 ...so the children could have some fun...

...leaving shadows of their own.

It might not be as dazzling as the shadow room at the children's museum, but it's still a lot of fun - fun that can be easily stored away for another day, once they are done.

Again, we used an ultraviolet flashlight (being careful to close our eyes for the "flash")  in a very dark room to create our shadows.  We tried it with a camera flash too, but that just didn't work as well as the ultraviolet light.