Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

Allan and I had an interesting conversation with Dane today. We happened to come across some pretty cool "cave drawings" on our wooden radiator cover.  The cover is not finished. I think it is the only one in the house that managed not to get a coat of paint yet. (It's the one in our bedroom... No one ever really sees that room but us, and we only sleep in there..... )  This is probably the 3rd time we've found art work in places that wouldn't necessarily be considered "proper canvases."  Dane is now 8, He insists that the drawings are from when he was about 6.  I love his creativity and the fact that he LOVES to paint/draw/create.  It is a tough balance with being strict about "canvases" and continuing to encourage him to express and explore.  Our house isn't "normal" by any means.... We use the walls as canvases all the time, which makes it a little bit more difficult for Dane to understand where it is appropriate to express hi...

If you've been following along, you'll know that we started to sprout a few seeds about a week and a half ago. In Upper Michigan, starting seeds indoors is almost a necessity considering that the outdoor growing season is so short. You can see the start of our project here .  We have been taking photos daily to document our observations. ( You can see our full photo stream on Facebook.) After about 9 days of sprouting in the plastic bags in the window, our peas and beans were ready to be moved to dirt. The children did a great job planting the sprouts in our fiber pots. We have been watering them daily with our spray bottles. The children have been carefully observing the changes and growth of the seedlings. We have also been testing another experiment with some seeds. We planted a bean seed in each of these test tubes: water, sand, and soil. (This photos if from day seven of the experiment. We take a photo with a number each day so that we will have a record of ...

If you haven't notice, I tend to get excited about messy things. Most often, the messier, the better. This is not, by far, the messiest thing we have tried.... but for those of you who thought our "slime off" was a mess.... don't tell me that I didn't warn you.... While I was looking for great recipes to test in our "Slime Off, " I ran across this recipe for floam. If you have never played with floam, it is a neat sculpting/sensory/all around fun/messy thing to play with. Prior to this experience, I had only played with store bought floam. It is made from polystyrene beads and a slimy substance. Please, please, please don't go out and buy any styrofoam beads to make this. Styrofoam is not good for the environment, so please reuse some that you have or can find. The children enjoyed the grating of the styrofoam the best anyway!!! We used a plastic cheese grater and some styrofoam packaging I saved because I figured that we could find ...

Welcome to this week's edition of What Would You Do With It? Wednesday. This week we are looking at liquid laundry detergent bottles! We have been collecting these bottles for a very long time and have accumulated all sorts of different shapes and colors. There are 2 major projects we do with these bottles every year. First, we make them into butterflies! Our outdoor art gallery/rock garden always gets a few butterflies for our walking neighbors and community members to enjoy! I have an earlier post listed here with all of the details. Of course, they can be decorated in a variety of different ways. The second project that requires some detergent bottles is our annual totem pole. The totem is primarily made from metal coffee cans. However, we use laundry detergent bottles for the accents - like making elephant ears or eagles wings. There are a couple of other projects out there I found that I would love to try. (They've been on the to do list for awhile.....) The first o...

So, like most people, when I find something I like, I tend to stick with it. A great example of this is our "gloop" aka "slime" recipe. We have a great recipe, the children love it, it is fun and easy to make and we use it all the time. I have been told that I NEED to try another recipe even if it is just for the dramatic effect of making it and seeing the instant change when the chemical reaction happens. So, today.... we decided to have a slime off.... Today's contestants are: Blue Gloop. You can actually make this in any color you would like. We made our slimes in different colors for easy identification. You can find the recipe for this here. This is our tried and true, we use it every time recipe. In the other corner is "GAK" or "Slime" made with Borax. The recipe is all over the web. We followed the tutorial here. For this option, we decided to use green food coloring (with a drop of yellow to make it extra bright). ...

A couple of weeks ago, Dane decided that every Friday would be fort day. Lately, every day has been "Friday" The children have been highly engaged in building and creating forts of all kinds... This week's warm weather melted the snow enough to make it sticky and fun to form. It was perfect for using our "brick makers" to build a fort outside! The unusually warm weather allowed us to stay outside for quite sometime, but also prompted a fresh set of clothes when we did come in! Melting Snow = Water! Of course, we couldn't come inside until we were happy with the progress of our fort. I anticipate that the children will continue to work on this project as the weather permits. However today we are expecting "FLASH FREEZING" which could put a damper on building for some time, but at least we were able to form our structure in plenty of time for dropping temperatures to firm it up for us! When "fort day" was declared, we first opted to cover...