How to extend the life span of a bubble?

Can the Life Span of a Bubble be Extended in Different Temperatures and Atmospheric Conditions?

My son liked to play bubbles. If the bubbles can stay longer and even be sticked to a place for a longer time, that will be much interesting.

Below is an experiment solely provided by education.com for our readers. I must try with my son!

Materials
1 tablespoon glycerin
2 cups Dawn dish soap
1 tablespoon vinegar
½ cup white corn syrup
Measuring cup
Bubble wand
Large container of distilled water
Rubber gloves
4 clear plastic jars with lids
Freezer
½ cup measuring cup
4 cups
Masking tape
Marker
Tablespoon
Stopwatch
Notepad
Pencil

28 Creative Stamps that kids can make

I like stamping arts. Simple stamps can make a pretty picture easily.

Below are some easy to get materials which can be made into stamps for kids crafts.

Stamping with Lego

I found that Lego can be used for stamping.

We can make the stamp we like easily.

We can make heart, cross, stripes, etc.

We can also make random-located dots for stamping DIY gift wrapping paper.

And, we can make words too! That is great!

Our first pottery class

Besides the first mosaics class, we also had our first pottery class at the resort in the summer holiday.

It was our first time and was more difficult than I imagined.

It was difficult to make the shape that I wanted on the tuning table.

I wanted to make a pen-holder. But I could not control my fingers well.

Sometimes, I made it concave by accident. And sometimes, I made it bent irregularly carelessly.

So as my husband and my son, they found that quite difficult to make a good shape!

Finally, the teacher helped us to make the desired shapes. We only did the decorations on it, lol!

 

Our First Mosaics Projects

This summer holiday, we went to a resort.

There are some art classes in the resort, such as clay, shoe / tshirt / cap design, pottery, bottle drawing classes.

We attended a few of them. The class that I liked most is the mosaics class.

This was the first time my son and I did the mosaics projects. We felt so exciting!


In the class, we were given a wood photo frame as the foundation to adhere the tiles on.

There were so many pretty tiles for our choice. Some of them were complete and more of them were in pieces.

If we wanted to cut our shapes, we can use a cutting tool.

Kids Activity - 7 Non-traditional Jenga Block Games

We have a set of Jenga blocks at home. We like to play them so much.

Besides playing them in the traditional way, my son and I brainstormed some other ways to play with them.

We had much fun with these games. Share them with you here!


1. Build the tallest 'building'

With no limit on number of blocks to be used, try to build the tall 'building'. Who can build the tallest one will be the winner.


2. Build the strongest 'building'

With limited number of blocks, try to build the strongest 'building'. How to judge which one is the strongest? We used the remote control car to help us. Your opponent uses the car to crash the 'building'. The building that can tolerate greatest number of crashes before falling down can be won.

Rainbow Popsicle Sticks Pen-holder

I bought a pack of colorful popsicle sticks for my son long time ago.

These sticks are special as they have 'teeth' for building up easily.

I planned to build a small house with my son. But my son did not want that and the pack of sticks was put idle for a long time.

Recently, my son saw the pack again and told me he wanted to make a pen-holder with them.

Oh! What a good idea!

We decided to make a rainbow color pen-holder.

But after finishing it, we discovered that it was too big. Some shorter pencil and pen would lie horizontally under the pen-holder.

Also, we found that it was quite difficult to stick the bottom with a cardboard.

We had to think some way to make some vertical layers and to stick the bottom cardboard tightly.

Finally, we used a few colorful strings to solve the above problems. With strings, vertical layers can be made and they prevent the bottom from falling off.

Also, coloring strings are pretty and creative! We love it so much. How do you think?

DIY Minecraft Lego Fridge Magnet Clock

Recently, I found magnet sheet which could be printed in ink-jet printer in a craft shop.

 I bought one to try with my son.

My son likes Minecraft very much recently. He wants to make some Minecraft figures magnets.

We tried to print the figures with the magnet sheet.

But it was failed. I guess it was because our printer does not accept the thickness of the magnet sheet.

But this doesn't matter because the magnet sheet allows us to draw on it too.

However, I chose to print Minecraft figures instead of drawing them because it was difficult to draw the pixels by hand.

We found some Minecraft figures by Google search and then printed them out by color printer.

Then we sticked them onto the magnet sheet and cut accordingly.

The effect is quite good.

My son likes that very much. He always play with the magnet figures.

Kids Activity - Spring Flower Show

In Early April, we went to a flower show with my son.

He is a boy and did not have much interest on the flower show. But I did.

He only wanted to play in another playground made by natural materials. I will introduce that playground in the next post.

The flowers were so pretty! They told us that Spring was coming.

Kids activity - Noah's Ark (2)

Besides the Ark Garden, there are a lot of exhibitions and facilites in the Noah's Ark.

Adventureland

My son truly wanted to try the rope climbing facilities inside it. But he was not tall enough to play that now. He felt so disappointed.

Kids activity - Noah's Ark (1)

Recently, we had been to a special place for kids. It was the Noah's Ark.

It is the world's first full scale Ark replica.

It is in fact a big building with exhibition rooms, hotel rooms, restaurants and shops inside.

Below are the pictures of the Ark took a few years ago. I post these pictures instead of those we took recently because on the day when we visited recently, the weather is cloudy. We could not take pretty picture on that day.

Kids Crafts - Cardboard Maze

I saw some interesting booth games in a party.

I think they can be made easily at home for the kids too.

Like this, it is a maze made with cardboard and Styrofoam.

Kids can play in pairs or one by one.

What they need to do is to roll a table tennis ball from the start to the end point in a maze.

The maze is easy to make.

First find a big Styrofoam or cardboard as the bottom.

Design the maze on the board. Then use cardboards to make the walls of the maze.

To add challenges, you can add some slopes or obstacles in the maze like this one.

At the right bottom corner, two ways were made with slope.

And there were some obstacles in the middle of some of the way.

It was quite difficult to make the ball pass through these ways easily.


You don't need to buy any material for making this.

You can save cardboards / styrofoam from food or toy packages.


If you don't want to make a big one, you can use Lego to make a small one and then use marble to play with it.

Children must have a great fun with this simple and cheap game, lol!

'Ball' Game Made by Small Boxes, Tissue Rolls and Carton Box

My son's school had a special assignment recently.

It required the students to make a toy with recycling materials. Parents could think and teach children how to do at home. But children had to make them at school. This assignment is important because the score will make up 10% of the General Studies exam marks.

Though my son is seven years old now, he cannot make complex crafts tidily. Thus, we have to prepare a toy that is funny and not too complex to make by himself.

Finally, we decided to make this. This was a 'ball' game.

Glass Decor Color Project - Photo Frame

I like the stained glass / windows in church so much. When sun shines on them, they are so colorful and pretty.

I always think that it is so good if I can make one by myself.

One day, when I walked around a craft shop, I discovered that there was glass décor color for making stained glass.

This one is special because you can draw your own picture on a plastic sheet, let it dry completely and then peel off your work and stick it on glass, mirror or tiles.

As I was afraid that my work could not be peeled off successfully, I also bought a photo frame too.

 

I  filled in colors on the photo frame with my son. That is so funny and the final work really looks good!

2013 We grew a special X'mas tree!!

This year, we grew a very special X'mas tree at home as decorations.

This tree was special because it grew very quickly and it was colorful.

Also, it was easy to grow!

Though it was small (its height was about 8 inches only), it was so beautiful! We like it so much! How do you think??

This is in fact an experiment about crystallisation. We grew it according to the instructions in a science magazine for kids.

Recycle plastic bottles - Bowling

One day, my son told me that he has never played bowling and wanted to try that.

But playing bowling in Hong Kong is quite expensive and the balls are quite heavy. He may not strong enough to play that.

Suddenly, I remembered that we had saved some empty plastic bottles for crafts. They could be act as the bottles for bowling.

My son enjoys this, lol!

Save two more plastic bottles will make this bowling game perfect!

Summer Home Decor made with kid

My son and I made a simple but beautiful home décor.

I think this is fresh to put it at home at hot summer.

Do you agree?

I did not want to spend any money to buy anything to make the décor.

Thus, I tried to find the materials from my kitchen cabinet.

Luckily, I found some blue plastic stones, which was previously used for decorating a vase for a water plant.

I also found a jar, which was previously used for feeding a small fish.

For the boat, we first tried to use Lego to build it. Because I think that should be funny if we can put a Lego man on the Lego boat.

However, it sank though we had changed a few styles of building methods.

Thus, finally we used a small piece of foam, a toothpick and a color paper.

The foam does not absorb water, or it will sink.

I think that is quite good and looks fresh in hot summer! We like it and put in in the dinning room now.

 

It looks good to be put together with the sand picture that we made. (please go to previous post for the sand picture making process.)

 

If you do not have the color plastic stones, you can put some sand on the bottom.

 

Then put some water and add some color for food. Do not use poster color or water color. As I tried, though the water could be made colorful, it was not clear.

 

After that, put some baby oil. As baby oil is lighter than water, it will float on top layer.

 

Then make a small boat or something that can float on top of the baby oil. That is beautiful, too.

 

We made by this method once. But as we did not have color for food and sand, the final work is not so beautiful. 

 

For more home décor for kids, please go to my Pinterest.

http://pinterest.com/shinekidscrafts/home-decor-for-kids/

Hong Kong Disneyland

We had annual pass for the Hong Kong Disneyland.

But in the coming year, we will not buy anymore.

Because the entrance fee has been increased about 30%.

That is so... expensive!

Now, if you want to buy one day ticket, for adult it is HK$450 (approx. US$58) and for child it is HK$320 (US$41). @@


But it was lucky that we could try the newly opened facility - Mystic Point before the annual pass expired.

As advised by Disneyland, this facility is unique in the world.

Below is the outside of the Mystic Point.

Plastic Bottle Balloon Air Gun

Examinations have passed, yeah!

Though summer holiday has not yet started, my son has much leisure time to play now.

We had kept some plastic bottles for crafts.

We thought and thought about what we should do with them.

Suddenly we remembered an experiment or game mentioned in a science magazine...

That is to make 'air' gun with plastic bottle and balloon.

After completion, when we pull the balloon and hand off, the 'air' will like a bullet which can shoot the target.

Slide and Stairs Build Together

This is really amazing and creative idea!

I want to keep a record in my blog!

If we have this in our house, I think my son will not play other toys.

He will go up stairs and slide down many many times.

This can surely encourage children to do exercise! lol

 

http://pinterest.com/shinekidscrafts/home-decor-for-kids/