Full Circle

A Weather Birthday

Another birthday! Little Brother turned 7 and we had his party over the weekend. We tossed around a few theme ideas and decided on Weather. Sort of an unusual birthday theme, but, surprisingly, it offered a lot of fun ideas to try. Little Brother is "walking sunshine", always smiling and laughing and happy, so the theme seemed appropriate for him.

First, some fun information at Weather Trivia. The fact that fascinated me the most was this one, "The amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all human beings worldwide. The total amount of fossil fuel used by humans since the start of civilization is equivalent to less than 30 days of sunshine." What were we ever thinking using fossil fuels when Mother Nature has provided us with an overabundance of free, clean energy to use? Astounding!

Anyway, back to the party... we made wind chimes... I bought embroidery hoops from the thrift store (very cheap) and collected an assortment of "dingers". Metal cookie cutters, a variety of bolts and washers, serving forks, etc. I bought some inexpensive windchimes and cut off the chimes to use, too. You can use fishing line to tie the pieces on, but I thought these threads were a colorful touch. I also thought it might be nice to paint the hoops ahead of time, too, but didn't think of that until it was too late!

Next, we made sun prints. I bought the paper at a toy store. It was a little more involved than I thought it would be and I can see that with practice you'd get some really great results. First you lay out your items on the paper in the shade. We then covered them with plexiglass to hold the pieces in place and moved them into the sunshine. However, the plexiglass seemed to block some of the sunlight getting through to the paper (you can tell by how the paper is changing color), so we took it off and exposed the papers a little longer. After a few minutes, you develop the papers in a tray of water and then let them dry. They will continue to darken over a couple of days.


Here's a couple of them finished...

We did a couple of really neat weather-related experiments. We got some ideas from the Steve Spangler website. First, we did the "Tornado in a Bottle". It was very easy to set up. I found the Tornado Tube connector at the toy store. We did the lamp oil version using blue lamp oil.



The next one we did was very cool, but a bit more complicated. Watch the video on the Steve Spangler site and you'll see a great demonstration of this experiment. I wanted the same "WOW!" factor as the one on the video, but when you read the directions, it's for one using smoke from a match. Not as impressive. So, we managed to put together the experiment as done in the video.

You'll need: a "foot pump" bicycle pump, a #4 stopper (from a hardware store), a tire needle (ours came with the pump), a drill fitted with a #16 drill bit, and a clear 2-liter bottle. Drill a hole in the center of the stopper and insert the tire needle that's attached to the pump.


Add a little bit of hot water to the bottle, then pour it out. All you need are the water droplets inside. Now, place the stopper firmly in the bottle.


Someone has to hold it down tight, otherwise it will pop out before you get enough pressure for the cloud. Start pumping the foot pump. When it gets to 40 PSI, release the stopper and the bottle will instantly fill with a cloud!



My very patient son, Big Brother, helped me take the "Cloud in a Bottle" photos. It took a lot of tries to capture the water vapor escaping from the top of the bottle. You can see it a lot better in person, so I'd really suggest trying this experiment. Besides, then the kids can entertain themselves shooting bottle rockets across the yard for the rest of the afternoon!
To finish up, we did a sun pinata.
 
A fun, "fair" weather day for everyone!

Ancient Egyptian Birthday and Broken Bones

My bunny girl turned 10 at the end of May and we had her birthday party over the weekend. She had asked for an "Ancient Egypt" theme this year and it turned out pretty well! I was getting all the last minute stuff together when the kids came running in from the backyard to say Middle Brother had jumped off the slide and hurt his arm. Uh Oh. He was crying pretty hard, not the usual kind of crying that's over and done with, but the kind where you know something's really wrong. So, Dad ran him up to the hospital and sure enough he had a buckle fracture near his wrist. Poor baby. He was back to his normal self when they returned home and the party got started. Nothing like a little excitement to start the day!

So, first off, everyone had to have Egyptian eye makeup...

Then, they designed their Egyptian collars (with inspiration from a few books)...







An Egyptian Feast including flat bread, 4-bean salad, cucumbers, grapes, dates, and Fig Newtons ; ). I bought the paper goods at Target - a new line (at least for me) called Isabelle Party that I thought was really pretty and appropriate for our theme...



The kids traced an ankh pattern (an Egyptian symbol of life) onto flattened Sculpey and cut it out. I got the ankh template from this site. After baking, they painted them and added a coat of Mod Podge.





We played a simple game I made up called Crocodiles in the Nile. I made a path across the backyard lined with blue crepe paper to be the Nile River. The kids had to run the length one at a time, while the adults threw ping pong balls at them. If they got hit (bit by the Crocodile), they were out. Simple, LOL, but the kids thought it was fun.

I printed out templates from this website for the kids to make pyramids.



For the favors, I tucked the goodies into homemade mummies and hid them around the yard. The kids had to de-code some hieroglyphics to find where they were hidden. I used this site and this one for translating and printing the clues.





To make the mummies, I shaped some newspaper into a cone shape and trimmed across the top to even it up. Then, I added a paper ball head and taped it in. I bought two inexpensive white sheets and ripped them up for wrapping. I wrapped around the mummy one complete time, tucked in some favors, wrapped again, tucked in the rest of the favors and then a final wrap to cover it all. I spray painted them gold (only on one side though, as I was running out of daytime).




They all had fun unwrapping their mummies. The idea was to mimic when the Ancient Egyptians were preparing their dead for the afterlife and they tucked charms and amulets into the linen wrappings.



We finished up with a Nile birthday cake and presents...



I almost forgot, I also downloaded some Egyptian music from iTunes and played it in the background. I love getting themed music for parties, I think it adds the final touch.

 

Valentine's Day Party

Happy Valentine's Day! We had a fun party today. We started preparing yesterday by learning a bit about poetry and reading some Valentine's books.

I found this site that has links for different patterns for poetry. Each child chose which style they wanted to use and then used the pattern to create their own poem. We had 2 noun verses, 1 cinquain and 1 haiku. In addition we looked at famous love poems and each child selected a short Valentine poem to learn and recite for the party.

Here's a couple of cute books to set the mood...The Valentine Bears by Eve Bunting and Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda. The Sabuda book tells the history of Valentine's Day and uses illustrations of mosaic tiles. The Valentine Bears is a sweet story of a mother and father bear who set the alarm to wake up from hibernation to celebrate the day.

For decorations, Sweetheart candies were our inspiration. We cut lots of heart shapes, tracing cookie cutters as templates, using the same colors as the Sweetheart candies. The kids copied the Valentine wishes onto the hearts - "YOU'RE FINE", "ASK ME", "SO COOL", FRIENDS 4 EVER", etc. We put them up all around the room.

At the party today, we played a game called "Throwing The Smile", made chocolate lollipops, did a Valentine craft, and recited poetry and ate cupcakes. Lunch was not very "Valentine-ish" - turkey chili dogs, but the kids loved them anyway. I made an easy Valentine drink that I hope made up for it though. I gave each child a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a clear plastic cup, then filled it with strawberry soda. Yummy and very pink!

Here are more details from the party:

Game: "Throwing The Smile"
This game is taken from the Family Fun website. In this game, players try to keep from smiling, if they can!

1. Players sit in a circle, making sure they can see everyone else. One player who is "It" starts the game by smiling widely, while all the other players are somber. "It" then uses his hand to wipe the smile off his face and throw it to another player who has to catch the smile with his hand and put it on.

2. This new "It" can then wipe off the smile to throw to someone else--though he will probably choose to mug wildly at everyone for a few minutes before relinquishing his happy role. Meanwhile, all other players must sit stone-faced. One smirk and they're out.

Very fun, great for any age.

Goodies:Chocolate Lollipops
This is one of the most rewarding activities. They're so simple to make, but the result looks like a lot more work. I get my supplies from the cake decorating section at Michael's.

You need: a bag or two of candy melts (depending on how many you want to make) - I bought white and brown candies for today, but have used other colors in the past with good results; a tray of plastic candy molds (we used heart shapes), lollipop sticks, clear cellophane bags. You don't need any special stirrers or squeeze bags. Empty a bag of candy melts into a glass bowl and melt in the microwave. I stir after one minute and then cook it for another minute. Stirring well helps it melt. Before we poured the chocolate, we added sprinkles to the bottom of the molds - white sprinkles for the brown chocolate and rainbow sugar crystals for the white chocolate. Then, spoon the melted chocolate into the molds and insert the lollipop stick. I put them in the fridge for about an hour. When they're hard, pop them out of the mold and put them in the cellophane bags. Tie with a ribbon. So easy!

Craft: "You're loved because...." Heart Ornaments
This is similiar to this craft, but with a little bit more added. Before the kids glued their hearts together, each of the other children had written on each other's hearts filling in the blank "You're loved because ________". We had 7 party-goers all together, so each child had six hearts to glue together. They each made two heart ornaments (3 hearts per ornament). Everyone read their Valentine's out-loud and it was sweet to see how happy it made them to read all the nice things the others had to say. We're going to save ours and use them as ornaments on our Christmas tree.

Entertainment: Poetry Reading   
We had 5 Valentine poems recited. Little Brother wanted to do 2 poems. One of them was "Won't you be my honeybee and fly away with me, we'll bumble along together 'cause you're my honey-bee." Middle Brother recited, "I love you, I love you, I love so well, if I had a peanut, I'd give you the shell." Sister did the classic poem by Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose", and Big Brother recited this poem, author unknown, "It is almost here, that special time of year. When hearts and flowers by the hours are brought to all who seek; When kisses swirl and words do peak into little tufts of cotton candy, my sweet. So be my love and be my own and call me on the telephone or send a card, that is not hard, right to my waiting door, and I'll be yours forevermore."

By the end of the party, the lollipops were cooled; we put them in the cello bags for everyone to take home.