Non-Newtonian Fluid ... or Cornflour Goo to you and me.

We haven't done very much science for a while so today was a good day for a little play. I found this link for Cornflour Goo at Kids Make Stuff some time ago but I have been putting it off for fear of the mess. However, it is a nice sunny day today so I though we would try it outside.

I only made a small batch (half a cup of water, a little food colour and a bit over a cup of cornflour but we managed to have lots of fun with it any way.
It took a little while to get Junior to give it a prod but once he got his hands in there I couldn't get them out. There was lots of giggling, poking, squeezing, squelching and mucking about and a little discussion about solids and liquids. Not sure if he learnt much but we both had lots of fun. Have a look at the following You-tube clips if you want to see what the goo is like.

Buzz Boy

The dress-up box is a big hit with many of the three year olds in our playgroup and Junior has been quietly interested in its content for a few weeks now. He started out with a fireman costume and tried a couple of the fairy dresses which are a big hit with the girls but he was pretty nonplussed with it all until last week when he discovered the Buzz Lightyear costume.Now he is a changed boy. For the past two weeks he has dug this costume out from the bottom of the basket and when he puts it on a strange transformation take place. He doesn't just looks like Buzz, he takes on the character as well and rockets around the place with a new found confidence which the usually Junior doesn't always express in larger groups!
Imaginative play is such a joy to watch and this week I managed to capture a couple of photos - alas a little blurry in places because Buzz doesn't sit still for very long!

A bit more painting

Apart from the marble painting mentioned in my previous post we have also been doing a bit more painting this weekend. We tried some stencilling using paper doilies.We painted some Liquid Amber seed pods collected from the front lawn. They look a bit like Christmas decorations so it might be time for Christmas in July...
and we finished painting a treasure box we started at a friend house a couple of weeks ago.

We're all marbles here

Yesterday was a nice sunny day so I thought it was a good day for some painting on the patio. We decided to try some marble painting. I put a circle of paper and some paint in a plastic plate (paper plates would have been easier but we didn't have any) and popped some marbles in for Junior to roll around and make pretty patterns. It was also a good opportunity to talk about mixing colours.
This was a big hit with Junior - so much so that I have been unable to retrieve most of the marbles which are now a current favourite.
Out came the marble tower pieces, which entertained both Junior and Aussie Dad for quite sometime and lead to an in-depth discussion of the rules of the game of marbles. All this was very foreign to Aussie Mum who obviously doesn't appreciate the subtleties of the game - but enthralled Junior.

Quick to make and quick to bake...

This week we were a little pressed for time and a little short on ingredients so we settled on an old favourite to feed our play-date visitors - scones.
These reminded me of Zooarchaeologists post on fruit crumble, another staple in our house, because anything that you can cover in cream always goes down a treat with Junior.

A busy week

Well it has been a busy week for Aussie Mum and my boys. Bub had his first experience of day-care with two short days on Monday and Tuesday. He was way too interested in his new surroundings to do very much sleeping but apart from that he seemed quite happy and managed much better than his mum.
Wednesday was play-group and then we all popped into the Kindy Open Day where Junior is enrolled for 4 year old kindy next year. Junior could have stayed all afternoon but we were eating into Bubs nap time so we had to leave early. I also had a Mothers Group dinner in the evening. It was a lovely night out but a late night on top of 7 months of regular night time waking means I'm still trying to recover!

Thursday was playdate visitors and a trip to the park and Friday was Juniors swimming lesson and an early evening pizza at the local Italian with the neighbours. Sigh .... a nice week but sometimes it feels like my little family is growing up so fast that I need to slow down a bit. Looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend.

Spin art

A few weeks ago I read a couple of blogs that talked about salad spinner art. I have been trying to source some liquid watercolours to try this out with Junior but haven't been able to buy any locally - I will have to order some online. So today we tried some spin art with Crayola finger paints instead.
Because the paint is thick and gloopy it needs to be added fairly evenly to the centre of the paper or the paper tends to flick up and end up at one side of the spinner but apart from that it seemed to work ok. The only other problem we had is that our salad spinner is a bit stiff so Junior need some assistance with the spinning but this didn't dampen his enthusiasm.
I'm sure there could have been a physics lesson in this art project somewhere but we were having too much fun just making pretty patterns to talk science today!
If I get some liquid water colours I will try them too but this seems to be a good use for the finger paints which always just end up as a big green blob when we try and use them for their intended purpose.