Giant Ice Cube Fun

Last night I filled a large plastic bowl full of water and added some plastic animals to it and stuck it in the freezer so we could have some giant ice cube fun today!

We took a variety of tools for Dad's tool box.  I explained how they worked and let the boys pick out which tool they thought would work best for chipping away the ice.

 Here they are with their picks on which tool would work the best.

 Then they got to test the tool they picked.  After that they got to take turns using all the tools.

 They loved doing this activity and trying out the different tools.  The chisel worked real well, but the thing they like doing the most was using the hammer by itself to chip the ice away.

We were able to chip all the ice away and free their little plastic animals.  They really enjoyed doing this activity.  I have a feeling we will be doing it again sometime.

Colored Water Travel experiment and feeding ducks

This idea has been floating around pinterest for a while now and I thought we'd give it a try. We put some blue food coloring in a cup and yellow in another then we rolled some paper towels up and put one end in the colored water cup and the other in an empty cup.

 Hopefully you can see in this picture that the water travels up and gives you green water in the middle cup.

 This morning we went and fed some ducks and geese bread at the park.  We were the only ones around and it was shadowy and early enough not to be hot yet so it was quite enjoyable.

Bowling and Water Fighting with Spray Bottles

On Monday we took our kids bowling.  There are lots of different participating bowling alleys around the country that have a summer program where kids bowl for free during the summer.  Check out more about it at www.kidsbowlfree.com.  

 Today we pulled out some spray bottles and filled them with water and my kids got their swim suits on and sprayed each other.  They had a blast doing it.  So little effort on my part, so much fun for them.  I love when it works out that way.  :)

Sponge Balls

Today we had a sponge ball fight with our homemade sponge balls.  Find instructions on how to make them here.

As you can see, they had a blast and it was a fun way to beat the heat.

Sponge Relay Fun

I Can Teach My Child posted a fun little sponge activity to do that we tried out today.  My boys had a great time with it.  We filled up a bowl with 8 cups of water than put it outside and put a bowl on the other side of the yard.  The idea is to have your child move the water with sponges.  I had all three of my boys going at one time.

 After they had emptied the first bowl we measured how much water was in the second bowl.  Then we talked about ways we could have lost water (dripping from one bowl to another and so forth).  After doing that two times I timed how fast they could do it.  We noticed that when they were trying to go fast they didn't get as much water into the second bowl.  They did this three times, then I went ahead and did it and tried to show them how to move fast and still save as much water as possible.  They had fun cheering me on.

Here are our recorded results.