by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

These bubble blowers are a BLAST and can be made with upcycled items easily found at home! This craft is perfect for Earth Day week. What else could you upcycle to make into something new and fun?!

Materials Needed:

• Plastic bottle
  • You can use a plastic cup as well
• Piece of a mesh vegetable bag
• Duct tape
• Bubble solution (store bought or DIY)

Directions:

• Find a plastic bottle for each bubble blower
• Cut off the non-drinking-end of the plastic bottle
  • Cutting about an inch off the end is plenty
  • If using a plastic cup - cut a small opening on the bottom of the cup. This will be the spot where little ones put their mouths to blow their bubbles.
• Fit your piece of mesh vegetable bag over the cut end of your plastic bottle and secure to the bottle using duct tape
  • If using a plastic cup, put the mesh over the wide end of the cup (where you would normally drink!)
• Put some bubble solution inside a container
  • To make your own you will need:
    • 1 cup water
    • 2 Tbsp light corn starch
    • 4 Tbsp dish soap
      • Mix all ingredients together!
      • There are a lot of recipes for bubble solution - I used this one because I had these materials at home!
• Invite bubble blowers to dip their plastic bottles into the bubble solution and then try blowing bubbles!
  • Big bubble snakes will appear!

Thank you to our Earth Day week sponsor, D. F. Richard!

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

This week’s Tinker Time was inspired by Earth Day! These activities are all easy to do with materials that you probably have in your household recycling bin or trash can. Try out one or two and let us know what you think! 

Sensory: Cork Boats

• Gather your materials: three wine corks, two rubber bands or hair ties (or duct tape!), a straw or craft stick, a piece of paper, scissors. 

• Assemble your boat! 
  • Rubber band the three corks together so they form a raft-like structure
  • Wiggle the straw or craft stick between two of the corks
  • Cut your piece of paper into a triangle and decorate
  • Cut two slits on your triangle so you can slide it onto the straw or craft stick to become a sail!
• Have some sensory fun playing with the boat in the water! 

Building: Egg carton building blocks

• Cut egg cartons into small sections (the parts that hold the eggs!)
• Optional: color or paint the egg carton pieces
• Explore using the egg carton pieces as building blocks! 

Sorting: Old crayons become new!

• Place liners in mini or regular muffin tin
  • You can also use silicone shape molds, if you have them! 
• Sort old broken crayons by color into the different sections of the tin
• Bake the crayons for ~12 minutes at 250 degrees
  • Don’t go too far away--keep an eye on them and make sure to take them out if they start smoking!
• Let your “new” crayons cool completely and then gently ease them out of their cupcake liners
• Use your new & improved giant crayons! 

Art: Jar lid banjo

• Find a jar lid
• Place some rubber bands around the lid
• Tape a handle of some kind--a craft stick, paint stirrer, or piece of paper towel tube
• Decorate!
• Play your jar lid banjo! 

Thank you to our Earth Day week sponsor, D. F. Richard! 

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

This is such an easy and fun project and is a perfect one to do during Earth Day week! 

Materials Needed:

• Magazines or other scrap paper
• Pencils
• A glue stick
• String
• Mod Podge or DIY Mod Podge (white glue mixed with water)
  • This is optional!

Directions:

• Prep this activity by cutting magazines or other scrap paper into long skinny triangles
  • Cut the paper vertically to make the longest triangles possible!
• Starting with the wide end of one of your triangles, start rolling it tightly around a pencil
  • Sometimes little ones need help with this beginning step!
• Keep rolling until you are about 2” from the end of the triangle--it should just be a skinny little strip left
• Cover that strip with glue and continue rolling to complete your bead
• Wiggle the bead off your pencil
• Make more beads!
• String your beads to make a necklace or bracelet. 

If you’d like, when you’re finished with your beads--you can paint them with Mod Podge and let them dry. This will make your beads more secure and sturdy and also make them shiny!

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

Materials needed:

• One piece of aluminum foil per young scientist/participant (roughly the size of a standard piece of paper) Make sure all participants have the same size piece of foil. 
• Sink/tub/plastic bin with about 6 inches of water in it
• Weights to put in your boat (pennis work great for this!)
• Optional: other building materials
  • Cardboard, tape, straws, popsicle sticks, etc

Directions (prep):

• Fill up your water station (sink/tub/plastic bin)
• Prep materials for each scientist participant--make sure they all have the same materials to use for their project
• Collect boat weights (ex. pennies)

Directions (activity):

• Explain to your young scientist(s) that today you will be making boats! 
• Challenge them to make a boat that they think will hold the most weight and not sink using the materials provided
• Test your boats by putting them in the water and gradually adding weight!
• Feel free to re-design and test again. 

The Science:

• We are seeing two forces at work in this science experiment: gravity and buoyancy!
• Gravity: gravity is trying to pull your boat and pennies downward towards the center of the earth
• Buoyancy: buoyancy is pushing the boat towards the surface of the water! 
• Your boat will float if the force of buoyancy is greater than the force of gravity. 

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

This is a super cool activity that can be done with materials you have at home that you may have thrown away otherwise! 

I like this activity because it also introduces an easy way to talk to your little ones about recycling and upcycling. You could start this activity with a short discussion. What does it mean to recycle? What do we recycle in our house? 

What do you think it means to UPcycle? This word will probably be new to them! When we recycle, we take items like plastic bottles and send them to the recycling center. From there, they are melted down to become the same item again or something new and different! Did you know plastic bottles can be recycled to become fleece jackets, carpets, and sleeping bags?!

UPcycling is taking something just as it is (in our case here, a CD) and turning it into something fun and new using just our hands and our creative minds! Upcycling projects tend to become beautiful works of art. Ask your little ones if they have upcycled anything before? Or maybe projects you’ve done together as a family? Projects they may be familiar with would be things like tire swings or milk carton birdhouses. 

Enjoy exploring upcycled CD scratch art together!

Materials Needed:

• Old CDs or DVDs (it’s fine if they’re all scratched up!)
  • Check out your desk for old computer software--the CD I used was an ancient program from the digital camera I had in college!
• ACRYLIC paint! 
  • I know it’s not washable which is tough with little ones--but it does need to be acrylic for this project so it sticks to the CD. 
• Items to scratch the CD with
  • Chopsticks, forks, keys, paperclips, etc. 
• Some kind of string or ribbon if you would like to hang up your scratch art CD!

Directions:

• Invite little ones to paint their CDs! 
  • Be sure to paint on the shiny side of the CD, not the side with writing/text. 
  • It’s best to paint the CDs one color, or blocks of color. Since the idea is to create scratch art on the CDs, if you paint pictures of flowers or dogs or houses---they will look odd after you have also added scratch art to them. 
• This is the hard part--wait for the paint on the CDs to totally dry. 
  • If you have enough CDs, you can experiment with scratching them while they are still wet and then compare with the CDs you scratch when they are dry. 
• Once the CDs are dry, use the scratch tools to create designs on them!
  • Add a string or ribbon and hang your CD in a window to create a beautiful suncatcher! 

By Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

Materials Needed:

• Bowl(s) or container(s) that are freezer safe
• Fun items/trinkets to freeze (small plastic toys, rocks, coins, etc)
• Food coloring (optional, if you want colorful ice)
• Spray bottle
• Salt

Directions (prep):

• Collect small trinkets and items from around the house and place them in a bowl or container
• Fill the bowl or container with water
• Add food coloring, if desired
• Freeze at least overnight (depending on the size of your container)
• Fill a spray bottle with water & a few spoonfuls of salt, shake!

Directions (activity):

• Take the container out of the freezer and turn it upside down on a cookie sheet, tray, or large dish
• Once the ice has unstuck from the container, remove the container and invite your young scientists to play!
• Direct them to spray the ice with the spray bottle. You can also have some other salt available that they can use to help melt the ice.
• Try to free some of the trinkets!

The Science:

• There are so many angles that you can take for discussing the science of this project.
• The water: it changes from a liquid to a solid when we put it in the freezer! While you melt the ice with the salt water, it changes back into a liquid again! That’s two states of matter, can it become a gas? (Yes! Water vapor!)
• The melting: Salt lowers the freezing point of water. Ice melts faster when salt is added as the salt lowers the freezing point of the ice, this is known as freezing point depression. The more salt you add the lower the freezing point. This is why we use salt on roads in the winter to help melt the ice and make them safe!

The following Wee Ones video is designed for preschoolers and is all about "Melting" and would make a good video to watch together while doing this experiment!

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

The craft I have to share with you today is making a bird kite! This is a really simple activity that you can do with a handful of household items - and it will (hopefully) supply your little ones with a whole bunch of fun.

This awesome activity was found on www.krokotak.com - browse their website for a variety of other fun activities that use simple materials you can find at home, mostly paper! 

Materials Needed:

• Piece of 8.5 X 11 paper 
• 2-3 Sticky notes 
  • Or pieces of colorful scrap paper and a glue stick or tape, I like the sticky notes because they are self adhesive!
• Stapler, scissors, hole punch
• Markers, stickers, any other decorations you’d like
• String/ribbon/yarn

Instructions:

1. Fold a piece of paper in half 
2. Gently “swoop” down both sides to form the wings of your bird and attach with one staple
3. Punch a hole on the bottom for the kite string
4. Cut a sticky note to make a beak and tail feathers--feel free to add other decoration using markers
5. Add some sticker eyes
6. Attach the string - you’re ready to fly! 

By Colie Haahr, CMNH Educator

This is an active game, but can be done with no running, indoors or outdoors!

Kids love hiding things and finding things, so this is a game that can last for quite a long time, and can be played with just two people or more.

Set up: First, have each player create a snake. You can use pipe cleaners and beads to make a pattern snake. If you do not have materials available to make a pipe cleaner snake, you can color a snake instead by drawing a snake, having your child draw a snake, or using a template.

Game play: Once everyone has decorated or put together a snake, take turns hiding and finding them. There are a few different ways to do this. If younger kids are playing with older kids, a variation that works well is to have a grown up hide all of the snakes, and kids can search for and find only their own snake. This makes the game more fair in that one person will not find all of the snakes right away.

Rules:

• Use your own house rules for hide and seek: this usually includes no peeking while someone is hiding or hiding items!

Explore more:

Add to the fun: have a “pattern pageant” with a grown up as the judge. Inspect the patterns, ask kids to come up with hidden talents for their snakes, and choose a snake as the winner. Maybe it’s the snake that would blend in best in the natural world, the one with the best pattern, or the child who didn’t do so well in the hide and seek game ;) 

Talk about why animals have patterns in nature. Usually, this is to send a message to other creatures, such as “I’m dangerous!,” or to help the animal blend in to stay safe from predators. Some animals have patterns that mimic other things, allowing the animal to appear larger than it really is, or blend in with a different group of animals. Elementary aged kids could do some independent research to see who can find the animal with the best camouflage! 

Try this printable paper chain python activity:
If you do not have a printer you can make a paper chain by simply cutting up strips of construction paper or copy paper. 

Try this printable spiral snake: 
Kids can color it in, but may need help from a grown up to cut it out. These would be neat to hang from the ceiling once completed! 

This is a very similar activity, but involves finger painting the snake to create a pattern:
You could also make a pattern like this using the CMNH Wacky Art bubble wrap painting method.