100th Day!

Today was Garrett's 100th day of kindergarten. All morning until lunch time the kindergarten classes rotated to different rooms doing fun activities to celebrate. My boyfriend and I both got to go and help out. It was a very fun morning for everyone.

Garrett and I talked about the 100th day and making something cool for it, and he wanted to make a gigantic snake. So we decided to make the snake in the shape of '100' and gave him stripes with 100 m&ms. Garrett seemed satisfied with it, and his friends all seemed to like it, so I think it was a success. The glue melted the m&m's so there was color leaking all over the project, but it wasn't too bad.

The doorway into the kindergarten hall was decorated with a super fun poster.

I got to the school late, so I missed the class doing a 100th day scavenger hunt.

The first thing I got to see was 100th day King/Queen crowns. The kids all got to decorate Steak and Shake hats with the number 100 and some various shapes and stickers. 

Garrett was actually almost willing to have his picture taken for once.

After they made their crowns the teacher told them a story as they sat on the rug. They're supposed to sit 'criss-cross applesauce' but Garrett apparently decided it was time to get comfortable.

They all got to sign their names on this "I am 100 days smarter!" sheet. I love seeing all the different signatures. One little boy circled his name after writing it. Garrett for some reason started writing his sideways down the paper. One of the girls wrote hers huge taking up a big chunk of the paper.

Everyone in the kindergarten classes was given a number between 1 and 100 to decorate a couple of weeks ago. As they brought them back to school they got hung in the hallway until the entire wall was completed. 

Garrett's snake was hanging up outside his classroom. He's the only one that had a creative project. Most of the others were just 100 pennies or cheerios in a plastic bag.

I'm not sure what he was saying here, but he was eating the 100 day snack he'd just made. The kids counted out 10 of 10 different things then got to sit down and eat it. 10 marshmallows, 10 pretzels, 10 m&ms, 10 cocoa puffs, 10 cheetos, 10 chocolate chips, 10 white chocolate chips, 10 fruit loops, 10 cheerios, and 10 goldfish crackers. 

Then they went in the next classroom to make '100' masks. 

Garrett finished his mask and just looked dreadfully bored. 

Luckily for him everyone else started finishing up and they sat down to sing this 100th Day Chant. (it sounds like the seven dwarfs song)

Finally they were back in their classroom where they did 10 sets of 10 different exercises. Garrett smiled for this picture during bicep raises then decided he wasn't exercising any more and stood there completely still for the rest of the time.

All that exercising made for some hungry 6 year olds. Lunch was the next stop. Then all the helpers left and it was back to normal for the afternoon. 

 

Homemade Bouncy Ball

Since today was a school holiday, Garrett was at my house and I wanted to do something fun with him. I was pretty excited to try out this homemade bouncy ball. I ended up being very disappointed with it. I looked at many different e-how pages about doing this, but couldn't find any comments of anyone that had actually tried it. There were a couple of different "recipes" that I tried, but wasn't satisfied with either one.

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 tsp. borax
• 2 tbsp. water
• 1 tbsp. Elmer's glue
• 1 tbsp. cornstarch
• food coloring (optional)

 You'll need 2 separate cups to mix your ingredients. Labeling them is completely unnecessary, but I like being pointless.

1. In the first cup mix the borax and the water together. 
2. In the other cup put your glue. Mix in your food coloring until the glue is your desired color.
   
   
   
   
3. Pour your borax mixture on top of the glue, but DO NOT MIX yet.
   This is where I found some inconsistencies. Some places say to use 1/2 tsp of the borax mixture and some say to use it all. I didn't have good luck with either way, but preferred only using 1/2 tsp of it.
4. Add the cornstarch. STILL NOT MIXING.
   
   
   
   
5. Wait 15 seconds.
6. Mix until it forms a blob and won't mix anymore.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Take out and knead in your hands. Form it into a ball as it gets more solid.
   It will be sticky at first, but that quickly goes away.

I'm not sure how long it's supposed to take until it's considered a ball. I kneaded the first one (the yellowish one) I made for a LONG time, and it never seemed to be good enough. It got to the point that I was just playing with it like silly putty and then it started drying out before I could form it into a good ball. 

The second one (the blue one) I kneaded for a little while and it wouldn't really hold its form or bounce, so I gave up on it.

These are supposed to last for a couple of days when stored in a plastic bag. I obviously wasn't worried about them, so you can see that they'd already started drying out by the time I took pictures.

I don't know if I'll try this again. It was really easy to do, but it was pretty frustrating since neither attempt worked out. They didn't bounce much at all, and the second one was really hard to try to roll in a ball at all.

I hope if you try it you have better luck than me. :)

Here's the original pin:

Source: eHow via Victoria on Pinterest
And am I the only one who thinks it's completely deceiving that all these eHow tutorials use pictures of REAL bouncy balls? The homemade ones don't look ANYTHING like that. 

Cloud Dough

I made this a few months ago, so I don't have any pictures of the process. It's only 2 ingredients though, so you don't need them anyway.

Mix together 2 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of baby oil. 

That's it!

You can add in food coloring if you want, but the blog I found it on just kept it white, and I really think it's prettier that way. It seemed to take to the color weird, so it's a weird blue-green color, but Garrett doesn't seem to mind.

This stuff is so fun! It's softer and fluffier than normal playdough. You can't really mold things with it because of that though. But it's fun just to squeeze and play with. It is a bit messier than playdough. It's sort of greasy feeling because of the baby oil, and it seems to be more crumbly. I'd be careful of what surfaces you put it on, and be aware that hands will be messy, but it's really nice feeling and moisturizes too. 

This stuff seems to last well. I made it 2 or 3 months ago, and it's held up great. I store it in a leftover mini oreo fun pak container, but I'd recommend a plastic bag or something, because it sinks down in the container and is hard to get out.

There are some downsides to this, but I'd definitely recommend it as a bit of a change from normal playdough. I will be making it again in the future.

Here's the original pin. She made a really large batch, but I just cut it down to 1/4 of hers and it was great.

Source: Flights of Whimsy via Victoria on Pinterest

Memory Book Questions (Free Printable!)

Since I started the blog I realize I haven't told you a whole lot about me. I'm planning on a dedicated post about that sometime in the near future, but for now I'll tell you about someone very important to me. I have a 6 year old brother named Garrett. I'm almost 23, so if you do that math there are nearly 17 years between us! It's fun having such a huge age gap, because we get to form such a unique bond. I help out at his school multiple times a week, and pick him up and watch him every afternoon until my mom gets off work. 

I love that I can do all the fun "kid stuff" I pin on Pinterest without having any kids of my own. 

An idea I've seen before, but can't find it pinned on any of my boards is to ask your children questions every year and make a memory book of sorts out of it. I love this idea. I have a paper from the 4th grade where I wrote what some of my favorites at the time were, and I love looking back on it. It would be great to have it for every year of my childhood.

So I decided to make a printable sheet of basic questions to ask Garrett. His birthday was a month ago, and I'd wanted to do it by then, but it completely slipped my mind. It's better late than never, though, so I got to thinking up some good questions and typed something up on Picnik. 

I printed it out and sat down with Garrett to get some answers. I had him write everything (with my help with spelling), because I think it will be fun to see how his handwriting changes every year. 

His name is in the left circle, and his age is in the star in the center. I also wrote the date we actually did it underneath the star.

His Answers:

What do you want to be when you grow up? Mechanic

Favorite Color? White

Favorite Animal? lion

Favorite TV Show? Johnny Test

Favorite Movie?  Spiderman
Favorite Game?  Lego Batman

Favorite Book?  Wayside School

Favorite Food?  Hot Wings

Favorite Candy? Chocolate

Some of these answers came as a complete surprise. He's never told my mom or me about any desire to work on cars, but that's what he decided on when I asked him. And his favorite color seems to change every week, but it's usually blue, black, or red, never white. I really liked doing this activity, and can't wait to do it again next year.

You can download this free printable here.

Let me know if you use it. :)