testing out paint from the real paint co.

Our Sunday started off as a beautiful sunny day but at around 4pm, the clouds came in and now it is raining. So we painted our volcano for tomorrow's mini lesson on volcanos.

I was in search of nontoxic, kid friendly and environmentally safe paint for us to use. I always felt bad washing paint brushes in the sink because I knew the paint would go into our water system. Today, we sampled paint from The Real Milk Co. It's a powder that you mix with water. According to their website, "their formula is made with 100% organic ingredients, nontoxic, food contact safe, VOC free and even biodegradable/compostable." I wish their samples came in little glass jars instead of plastic but I have to pick and choose my battles.

It took some time for me to mix the powder and water together. I didn't want to use the entire sample because I knew we weren't going to need it all so I used a little dropper to add the water as I was mixing. The colors I chose were cocoa, mocha and black iron. After we were done, the volcano ended up looking like one color but we'll see how it turns out tomorrow when it dries. It could be because my kids eventually mixed the colors together as they were painting.

Each sample was $3.50 and if I wanted to get a set of 6 basic colors, it would cost roughly around $21 but they have a flat rate of $10 for shipping. That ends up being a little pricey for 1 oz containers. There's another company I would like to try so I'll post an update on which ones we liked best.

Hopefully everyone else is having a nice and relaxing Sunday!

virtual art class with author Mo Willems

We are huge fans of the Elephant & Piggie series by Mo Willems! The author is doing a Lunch Doodles series in partnership with The Kennedy Center. Every weekday at 1pm ET, he will have a new episode in which he has a new activity for kids and/or a drawing lesson. Parents can download and print out the activity sheet for the day. Since my kids wanted to draw pigeon from the Don't Let the Pigeon Book series, we watched the 1st episode where he taught them how to draw the famous Pigeon. I also read them one of our favorite book, Waiting is Not Easy, a book that seems to be fitting during the world's current pandemic situation.

Afterwards the kids wanted to wear their costumes, saving their Halloween costumes come in handy when you're stuck at home.

linking cubes

These linking cubes have been a hit in our home lately. After their math activity, my kids spent a couple hours building shapes and people out of them. They are definitely worth the purchase. Since my daughter is working on 1st grade estimation, we will use the linking tubes tomorrow for an estimation activity.

For this preschool math activity, I downloaded these free cards from Montessori Print Shop and instead of using the "quantity" cards that were included in the set, I had my son use the linking cubes to represent each number.

homeschool - states of matter

I've been homeschool my preschooler for a few weeks now and will occasionally give my 1st grader homeschool work after school but today was the official day both of my kids were home due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Today we were suppose to do a volcano experiment but upon opening the box I realized I had to actually make the volcano model and it would take 2 to 3 days to dry. Total fail! So I whipped up a little lesson on the states of matter in addition to their regular math and handwriting school work.

For the properties of matter introduction, I used Scholastic's Watch & Learn Library under the Physical Science & Engineering section. I printed two different "Think Sheets", one in Spanish for my 1st grader and one in English for my preschooler. I then looked online for free worksheets that would help them understand the concept.

This worksheet is from Mrs. Thompson's Treasures website. We also used a Chemistry set from Lakeshore Learning that helped demonstrate the difference between liquid and gas. The rest of time was spent working on workbooks, math and playing with linking cubes. For the most part, we had a pretty productive day, with the kids only watching tv while I was making dinner.