Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

Do you remember last week when we painted the snow with our giant paint brushes ? There was a considerable amount of "paint" left over, and instead of bringing it inside we opted to leave it out to see what would happen to it. Overnight, it froze.... and then snow started to collect over the top. Today, we decided to bring one the paint containers inside and experiment with the frozen "paint" in our sensory table. The paint itself is just water mixed with a package of powdered Kool-Aid. (the kind you need to add sugar to without the sugar added.) I prepared the table with small containers of water of varying temperatures and a few spray bottles of water as well. The children were also given pipettes and turkey basters. Through their scientific explorations, they quickly found that the warm water worked better to melt the ice than the cold water. They were also surprised to find that the water collecting in the bottom of the table was really cold! ...

Yesterday, we spray painted our snowy white outdoor canvas. Today, we decided to go BIG, and to continue to add some color to our world of white.... Again, like yesterday, we opted to use Kool-Aid to color some water. Today, we put the powder into buckets and pitchers with water. For our paint brushes, we took our handy dandy pvc pipe set and made some giant ones! Some of them have sponge pieces on the ends (We took apart our water bombs from this summer and attached them to the end of the pvc pipe with pipe cleaners and packaging tape.) We also made some brushes with the pieces of a new clean mop head. We used the same technique to attach them to the pvc pipe. Like Dan Hodgins notes, when it comes to paint brushes- the bigger the better! Then, out into our winter wonderland.... This painting was a lot of fun. It did not hold the children's attention as long as the spray bottles did. There is something magical about squeezing those that keeps little ones entertain...

We painted with Kool-aid! Instead of adding it to other paint like I saw on some other blogs, we opted to use it more like a liquid watercolor by adding a small amount of water to each colored powder. Unfortunately, my camera was MIA during our wonderful sensory painting experience so I only have photos of the finished product: Another wonderful thing you can do with Kool-Aid is to color and scent your homemade play dough. Here is our favorite dough recipe: 1 c. flour 1/2 c. salt 1 c. water 1 Tbsp cooking oil 2 tsp cream of tartar 1-2 pkg Kool-Aid Mix all ingredients in a microwave save cooking dish. Cook on high in microwave for 3 minutes Remove from microwave, stir well. Cook for one minute, stir, repeat until the dough is no longer sticky. Remove from the dish- knead and remove any lumps. This dough can also be cooked on the stove-top. We prefer to make it in the microwave as it is much more difficult to burn and the children are more active participants in the process. This post...

One of my favorite activities to do in the warmer months is recycling paper. We save all of the unclaimed art and scraps of paper from other projects in a big tote. When we have a large amount, we fill the sensory table with scraps of paper and scissors. This first stage of the process often takes a day or so. The children are given the opportunity to come and go, cutting and ripping whenever they choose. (Some people use a paper shredder if their goal is make homemade paper. We try to do our without the aid of electrical tools.) In order to make great paper, it is necessary to cut the paper into tiny pieces. The smaller the better. This give the children ample opportunity to work with scissors and to tear paper which is very important to building their fine motor skills. We cut and we tore, and we cut and we tore... (You will notice that the majority of the paper is white. We usually reuse our colored scraps for other projects adding only a small amount into our recyclin...

I've been on a recipe kick for paints this week. I've been finding so many cool new ones while following Deborah Stewart from Teach Preschool on Facebook . This recipe is noted in a blog she posted from Creative Jewish Mom . Dane and I whipped up quite a few batches in various colors. Of course, we altered the recipe using powdered Kool-Aid instead of food color for many of the colors. (Note the dark blue, brown, and black were made with Wilton food coloring). 3 tbsp baking soda 3 tbsp cornstarch  3 tbsp white vinegar 1 1/2 tsp light corn syrup food coloring  (OR like we did- Kool Aid powder) Initially we thought that making them in muffin tins would allow us to pop them out and have watercolor cakes. However, we soon realized that they would not easily come out. We then transferred the paint with spoons to some plastic containers we kept to recycle. We didn't want to waste any of the paint, so we painted using the paint that stuck in the muffin tins f...

Today was an early night for us, we were done providing childcare at 4:30 p.m., which was considerably early for us considering our night time care can run until 11:30 p.m. So, for a "normal" human being, that might mean an early night??? Well perhaps in another household, but not ours :). It is nearly 1 a.m. and we are just now starting to wind down for bed. I am continuing to find some amazing ideas and network with a variety of folks through Deborah Stewart by following her on Facebook- Teach Preschool. She brings together many people in the field of early childhood education and she regularly posts ideas she finds on blogs and websites. I have been very interested in some of the recipes she has posted, and decided that I would try out one of them tonight. The recipe I tweaked came from a post by Allison at in a nutshell (you can follow the link for the recipe and directions.) When I made them, I doubled the batch and instead of using food coloring and flavori...