After School Linky (7-11)

Let's party!

How's your summer going? Too fast, you say?!? I hear ya.

Here are few ideas for inspiration if your bucket list is getting short.

20 Captivating Children's Audio Books for Road Trips from The Jenny Evolution

DIY Star Wars Target Shooting Game from Atta Girl Says

All Kinds of Summer Olympics Themed Games for Kids at The Real Thing with the Coake Family

 Under the Sea Books Kids Will Love (and Parents Too) from Crystal & Co.

Water Bull's Eye at Grandma Ideas

The After School Linky is cohosted by

Creative Family Fun

Planet Smarty Pants

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

The Educators' Spin on It

This Reading Mama

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks.

DIY Indoor Origami Flying Discs

It's been hot lately. Like melt your face off hot. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but sometimes it's nice to do an indoor activity to at least let the sweat dry.

This one is simple and loads of fun. If you're hearing, "I'm sooooooooooo bored" this summer, making indoor origami flying discs might just be the cure.

Supplies for 1 disc
8 two-inch square pieces of paper (plain office paper or heavyweight card stock)
Tape

How to Make It
Fold each 2-inch by 2-inch square of paper corner to corner so you now have 8 triangles.

Now fold one corner of each triangle down; look at the picture below for guidance.

Make sure all the origami pieces are facing up, with the folded flap on top. Slip the pointed corner of one piece into the folded flap of another. Continue doing this until you're able to tuck the last piece in place.

Add tape over each triangle tip for added stability.

Gently bend the outer edges of the disc down for increased aerodynamics.

Fling it like a frisbee and watch it fly and curve in the air. These are remarkably good flyers!

This awesome project came from the book Make: Easy 1-2-3 Projects. Check it out!

Gushing Soda Geyser

Most people have heard of the fabulously impressive Mentos and Diet Coke experiment before. If you haven't though, you're in for a treat.

This is a must-do for all kids who think science is boring.

What You Need
A roll of Mentos candies (mint flavor)
2-liter of Diet Coke
Piece of office paper
tape (optional)
someplace where it's okay to make a sticky mess (in other words, outdoors)

What to Do
Roll the paper into a tube the width of the Mentos. Add tape if desired. Load the Mentos candies inside the tube and hold the bottom of the tube so they don't spill out.

Open your 2-liter of diet coke and place it outside on level ground. Hold the tube of Mentos over the opening in the bottle. Quickly release your fingers so the candies slide into the bottle. BACK AWAY QUICKLY!!!

A gushing geyser of soda will come spewing out the bottle.

What Happens
That bubbly fizz that makes soda so yummy is the result of invisible carbon dioxide in the drink. Add something to the bottle and you'll see the CO2 at work (check out our Diving & Rising Raisins Experiment for proof). In the raisins experiment, tiny CO2 bubbles attach themselves to the raisins we added to the clear soda. This bubbling is called nucleation.

When the Mentos, which are covered with TONS of tiny pits, are dropped into the Diet Coke, CO2 bubbles instantly form in all the pits as the candies sink to the bottom of the bottle. The bubbles quickly rise to the surface, causing an eruption of soda!

Want a more detailed explanation? Visit Steve Spangler's site for more info, video, etc.

After School Linky (7-4)

Let's party!

WHOA! This weekend was so busy I nearly neglected the linky! Do forgive me!

Share all that's great about summer, fellow bloggers, and link up to show us what you've been up to!

The After School Linky is cohosted by

Creative Family Fun

Planet Smarty Pants

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

The Educators' Spin on It

This Reading Mama

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks.

Spray-Painted Patriotic Tees

Since our July 4th decorative tee shirts haven't been an annual craftivity, I can't quite call them a tradition. But given that this is our third installment, it's certainly something that's makes our Independence Day holiday all the more festive.

Check out our painted handprint flag shirt and July 4th tie-dye shirts from the past!

This year's shirt craft uses handmade freezer paper stencils and TULIP Color Shot Instant Fabric Color. We used red, white, and blue on grey tee-shirts. If I was to do it all again (and believe me, we will), I'd skip the white as it's barely visible and made our designs look washed out. Red and blue will suffice.

Here's how we made them.

Step 1 Pre-wash your tee-shirts if you're using new ones. Don't use fabric softener.

Step 2 Decide on your design. Silhouettes look awesome. Download something from the Internet or if you're artsy, draw something. If you like the ones we created, you can download a PDF of my designs from Google Drive here.

Step 3 Either cut your freezer paper to 8 1/2 x 11 and feed it through your printer or print the designs on regular paper and trace the design onto the freezer paper (hold both pages up to a window to create a light box effect). The design should be on the matte (NOT shiny) side of the freezer paper. Think about using upper case letters to lessen the number of tiny pieces of paper you'll have to iron back on once the design is cut out (e.g. the space inside the 'e').

Step 4 Using a craft knife (think pen-like exacto blade), carefully cut out the pattern with a cutting board underneath your freezer paper. Save the internal pieces you'll need to iron back on. NOTE: Be smart about who does the cutting. If you wouldn't hand your child a steak knife or let them cut an apple, they have poor fine motor skills, or can't be responsible with this tool, do the cutting yourself. For several of these reasons, I did all the cutting.

Step 5 Set your iron to medium-low heat (mine was on a setting of 3 out of 6). Place the design on your tee shirt in the desired place, with the shiny part of the freezer paper face down. Press the paper until it's attached in every place. NOTE: Irons are hot. Don't let your child use the iron if they're not capable of using it safely. Always provide supervision.

Step 6 Insert more freezer paper, a flattened garbage bag, cereal box, or cardboard shirt form inside the shirt. This is a MUST to avoid the paint bleeding through to the back of the shirt.

Step 7 Mask off the rest of the shirt. Overspray is a problem with this paint, which is basically spray paint for fabric. Any exposed areas of the shirt will inadvertently get painted. I used painters tape and plastic grocery sacks to mask off all exposed areas, even tucking the rest of the shirt under the cardboard form.

Step 8 Take the shirt to a well-ventilated area where you're not concerned with overspray ruining furniture, etc. We went outside and put our shirts in the grass. Shake each can of the paint for a minute. Then apply holding the can 6-8 inches above the shirt, slowly moving it across the stencil.

Step 9 Apply multiple light coats going back and forth. TIP: Kids tend to be heavy on the trigger and spray in one spot. Encourage your child to be gentle and move the paint can around the design. If too much paint is squirted in one spot, it WILL bleed beneath the freezer paper stencil.

Step 10 Wait until it dries, and remove all the stencil, painters tape, bags, and cardboard. Enjoy!

Want some great books to read to go along with this craft? Here's what I read to my six-year-old: