Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

A couple of years ago- I saw this great post from The Chocolate Muffin Tree about bubble prints.  When they did this activity, they used colored bubbles.  I thought, we could try it by coloring our own bubbles with paint. Just so you know, it does take a bit of tinkering to get a good mixture together that will be successful.  We did attempt a few prints with food coloring in the bubbles-  and we did make some of our own "bubble" with dish soap. We did find that we have GREAT dishsoap- so great in fact that it was fabulous at taking care of the color we added with the paint or food coloring. Thus- it was not good for making prints...  However- the best option was to use store bought bubble solution and liquid tempera. (We have since done this with liquid watercolor and food coloring. I would recommend using either of the paints over the food coloring in order to have a nice print) The children absolutely loved this activity...

We have frogs! Our froglets have absorbed their tales! (We only have one that is still aquatic!) So, we invested in some moss..... And the tank is now more "land" based. We also started feeding our little froggies crickets today. It sure if fun to watch them hunt! We've been getting quite a bit of rain - so we have been spending a lot of time building forts.  I have a couple of posts scheduled and ready, but we are going on vacation in a few days an I won't be back to work until July 11th.  If all goes well with scheduled posts, you will still have a bit to read while we are on the road. Just know that I won't be responding to comments or doing much reading for awhile :).

I've seen a wide variety of tutorials all over the web showing a very basic way to make your own stamps out of craft foam. Most recently over at Kids Matter where Angie made some wonderful butterfly life cycle stamps. Being that we are currently observing the life cycle of frogs, I thought I would make a bunch of stamps for the frog life cycle.  The children thought it would be fun to make their own too. First, we drew our pictures on craft foam. After you are happy with the design, use a sharp pencil and trace over your drawing to make sure that there is an indent in the foam where you have drawn. You can either cut a shape around the design, or you can cut the design out right around the edge of your picture. (I cut my stamps out right on the edge of the shapes, the children decided to cut their creations out around the shapes.) We glued the foam to a piece of hard cardboard with rubber cement, and added a piece of cork to the back with a ho...

Some of our frog eggs have been hatching into tiny black tadpoles! The children have been spending quite a bit of time observing our little friends. The aquarium has turned into a "I spy game" as they hunt for hatched tadpoles. We have also been reading a lot of great frog/amphibian/animal books, and building life cycle puzzles: Just about everything so far this week has been all about frogs! To document some of our observations this morning, we dipped our fingers in white paint and made frog eggs all over blue paper.  We finished them off with a black marker and made a couple of tadpoles too!        If you are in the local area and would like to set up an observation tank, please let me know. We have plenty of eggs/tadpoles to go around. We will be releasing the majority of ours as soon as they all hatch, and keeping just a few for continued observation.

 This Mother's Day, not only do I have the privilege of being the mom of the coolest boy on the planet, I also get to help him "mother" a few eggs! If you remember, awhile back, we tried to hatch some chicken eggs . Unfortunately, we were not successful and we borrowed a couple of chicks from grandpa's farm to observe. This weekend, we brought them back to the farm. The children really enjoyed watching them for about two weeks.  Part of farming and learning about life is that things don't always work out, but in order to be successful, you need to be persistent. So, we came home with another batch of eggs and put our incubator going.  Hopefully we will have better luck with hatching some chicks of our own this time. (We will know in approximately 21 days!) If you have been following the blog, you also know that we have been out on a hunt to find some frog eggs .  This weekend, grandpa was also able to help us find some from his pond!  We were able to harves...