Category: At Home Art and Music

Ways to Expand the Activity:

• Change the shape of the flattened and cut end of the straw. Does it work if it is cut in a triangular shape?
• Change the length of the straw by cutting the end opposite of the “reed” or flattened and cut end. What happens?
• Add holes down the straw on one side to act as keys. What happens when you cover all of them and play your straw oboe or cover only a few?

What Kids Learn:

• Sound waves. Sounds waves are made up of vibrations that travel through the air, water and objects. The sound waves that reach our ears make our eardrums vibrate. Exploring the vibrations that are sound waves through hands-on activities help create a better understanding of how sound waves travel.  
• How a double reed works. The reeds constantly close and open making the vibrations to help create sound through the instrument.

Ways to Expand the Activity:

• Trace the patterns that are reflected.
• Cut different paper snowflakes and compare the different patterns that are reflected.
• Try to cut out a specific shape to create a pattern that you want to create.
• Use a flashlight. Are you able to create the rainbow dances inside using a flashlight?

What Kids Learn:

• Interference patterns. When light passes through something with small defects like scratches, you can see rainbow colors and unique patterns.
• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!

Vocabulary:

• Reflection. Change in direction of a wave that returns waves back from a surface.

Ways to Expand the Activity:

• Tell a story using the pictures. You could add written words, and multiple items into the story.
• Try using a person in the stop motion. Challenge yourself to move slightly while someone takes the pictures.

What Kids Learn:

• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
• Storytelling. Kids are able to be creative, explore their imagination, and set the foundation for thinking outside the box.

Vocabulary

Stop motion. The process of filming objects one frame at a time while making small changes in each photo, giving the illusion of motion when the photos are viewed in rapid sequence.

Ways to Expand the Activity:

• Experiment with color mixing when setting up the activity. What happens when you mix yellow and blue crayons together? What happens when you mix the melted crayons during the melting process? (Be cautious because the plate and its contents will be hot)!
• Compare and contrast how fast different colored crayons melt. In one cookie cutter put dark crayons and the other put lighter colors. Which one melts faster?
• Create art using the sun and science! Set out a piece of paper in the direct sun and sprinkle pieces of crayon on the paper.

What Kids Learn:

• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
• Phase transition from a solid to a liquid. When wax reaches its melting point it begins to turn into a liquid.

Vocabulary:

• Thermodynamics. A branch of science that deals with heat relating to other forms of energy.

What kids learn:

• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Symbolic thinking, or the ability to think about one thing representing something else. When small children begin to connect a tree on paper to the tree on their street, they start building the connections in the brain that allow for reading and learning later.

Vocabulary:

• Printmaking. The activity or occupation of making pictures or designs by printing them from specially prepared plates or blocks.
• Texture. The feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or a substance.
• Monoprint. A print that is usually limited to one copy. Mono means one. A monoprint is typically drawn or painted onto a plate, block, or surface and then transferred onto paper.

Ways to expand:

• Engineers work with constraints or restrictions. Create a set of guidelines that everyone has to follow. There could be a time limit, a certain number of resources, items, or materials, only items of a certain color, etc.
• Create a theme. The costumes would have to be made with certain elements of a theme. For example, you could choose animals, animated characters, etc.
• Record the presentation of all your costumes and challenge another family or friend to do the same.
• Put on a play! Create a story and dress your characters.

What kids learn:

• Basic engineering skills. They learn to solve problems by using the engineering design process: asking questions, coming up with solutions, building, testing and improving.
• Engineering is utilized in a variety of fields. Engineers are needed to help create better shoes, learn about materials and how they can be used in unique ways, etc.
• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
• Dramatic play. Kids try out different roles, practice communication and learn about their interests when they play pretend. Pretend play is an especially critical way for kids to process scary or difficult situations.

Vocabulary:

• Constraint. A limitation or restriction. Materials, time, and space are common constraints. Real engineers have to work around constraints all the time!

Ways to expand:

• Try to use the tube with the markers attached as your drawing tool. Hold in your hand and draw with it.
• Experiment with different kinds of motion. Spin, push, pull, and see how your art changes.
• Go on a pendulum hunt! Can you find examples of a pendulum in your house?

What kids learn:

• Process art is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment where the end product of art and craft is not the principal focus. Process art is about the journey, not the destination!
• The bob is the weight on the string
• A pendulum works by converting energy back and forth, a bit like a roller coaster ride. When the bob is highest (furthest from the ground), it is moving the slowest and has maximum stored energy (potential energy). When it is lowest (closest to the ground), it is moving the fastest and has kinetic energy. So as the bob swings (oscillates) back and forth, it repeatedly switches its energy back and forth between potential and kinetic.
• Pendulums swing with a reliable pattern and operate with the invisible force of gravity. Earth’s gravity attracts the pendulum. When the pendulum is hanging still, the yarn and weight are straight and at a 90-degree angle to the Earth as gravity pulls the string and the weight to the Earth. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) made use of this early work as he developed the laws of motion.

Ways to expand it:

• If you have a helper, have them spin the plate while you add paint with a paint brush or markers. Pressing a paint brush or markers lightly on the paper plate while the plate is spinning can create circles.
• Make predictions! How far will the paint splatter? Will the colors mix together? Does adding water to the paint change your results?

What kids learn:

• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so it is valuable to let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!

Vocabulary

• Inertia: The resistance of an object to change its motion or direction. Your paint will stay on the plate until a force, like spinning the plate, acts to make it move, then it will keep moving until friction or another object slows it down.
• Force: energy caused by a push or a pull, in this case, the push created by the movement of your plate
• Newton’s First Law of Motion: Every object will continue moving at the same speed or remain still unless something makes it change.
• Centrifugal force: the apparent force felt by an object moving in a curved path that acts outwardly away from the center of rotation.

Tips and Tricks:

• Your blender will survive! If you pulverize the dandelions too much with the blender, it may not preserve as much of the yellow color. Try different levels of shredding.
• Use fresh dandelions.
• You can substitute white vinegar, though cream of tartar is preferred.
• Using baby oil will give your mixture a nice fragrance.
• You can add additional flour and salt. Adding more salt can cause the playdough to last longer, but you may feel the texture of the salt on your hands when playing with the playdough. If your kids are sensory defensive, use less salt.
• You might consider using a wooden spoon because plastic spoons may break.
• Not all yellow flowers are dandelions. Talk with your kids during your walk about the different types of petals and leaves. Have them identify by comparing and contrasting. Don’t pick your neighbors prized daisies by mistake! Be safe out there.

Benefits and How to Expand it:

• Playdough can be squeezed, rolled, pinched, molded and flattened all using hand and finger muscles. This is a great pre-writing activity!
  Grasp, push, pull, and roll with a rolling pin to strengthen both hand and forearm muscles. Once it is flattened, bring on the cookie cutters!
• Playdough is unbeatable for practicing scissor skills. Roll out: ”snakes” and give them a haircut! Do snakes have hair?
• Practice life skills. Make sausages, meatballs, or roll dandelion cookies. Have your kids “teach” you to use a knife and fork and cut into bite sized pieces. Sing the meatball song if you know it! Miss Nancy sings it all the time for Wee Wednesday at the Discovery Center!
• Forks are fantastic, but imagine what a potato masher can do! Introduce new tools from the kitchen. How do you think they are used?
• Express yourself. Relax and enjoy this wonderful process activity and let your senses go with pure, sensory play.