A Jewish Homeschool Blog: November 2011

Monday, November 21, 2011

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Some Pretty Cool Activities

We have a huge tub of crayons in the kitchen that the kids use to color and draw... inside that tub are tons of broken crayons that the kids just don't use and so thanks to the many awesome ideas out there in the blogosphere, this is what we did:

First, place them in a cupcake tin, I divided them into like colors, but you can mix them, either way is fine...

Put them in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes... only after I put them in the oven did I wonder if this would be a problem in the Kosher department- but I found out that since crayons are not food and these are non-toxic, that it is fine. Feel free to ask your own Rabbi if its okay to put wax crayons in your oven.

After 10 minutes, I took them out- they were completely liquid and marbled so I carefully put the tray of crayons in the fridge to harden. After about 15-20 minutes, they were hard and I pushed them out of the molds... and VOILA!

My 4 year old daughter has claimed them as her own, she piles them on top of each other, colors with them, traces around them- yes, it was a hit and I am looking for Alef Bet molds to make our next batch of crayons with. If anyone know where I can get them, let me know!

Okay, now this next little Science project we did was absolutely awesome.

It is all about Density in Liquids.

We took 4 liquids:

Honey

Dish Soap

Water with red food coloring

Oil

We poured the honey, then the dish soap, the water then the oil and this is what we got:

Note: we did it very carefully so not to mix the dish soap and the water. After a day the water started seeping into the dish soap. Someone suggested we try rubbing alcohol on top of the oil as it is less dense then oil and would rise above it. If anyone tries it, let me know, we didn't have any in the house.

Have a good one,

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Parshas Chayei Sara, Alef Bet and more...

Here's a great book to go along with this weeks Parshah, all about how kind Rivkah was at the well:

Keeping my 2 year old busy while we work... using large beads and pipe cleaners, he made necklaces and bracelets just like Rivkah received from Eliezer:

We made our own well with real water inside and a bucket the kids could use to retrieve water. They used little mentchies and animals to reenact the story or what happened at the well, they played with this for a while:

The more advanced version of Rivkah's jewelry for the bigger kids to make (smaller beads):

Some hands-on Alef Bet activities--

Creating letters using shapes, hammer and nails:

Creating letters with the Geo-board:

We used the Montessori Red Rods to create the letters of the Alef Bet:

Using the Sandpaper Hebrew letters, they traced it with their fingers then traced it in the sand:

This is Avraham's tent from last weeks Parshah, Parshas Vayeira:

A pretty awesome Science experiment we are doing- get 2 stalks of celery and slice the bottoms giving the water direct access to the veins. Place them in 2 different colors of water (using food coloring) and watch how the water goes through the veins in the stalks to the leaves. It took a few days but the kids loved checking on it every day: