How Stuff Works Week!

So, I'm trying something new to help me spend MORE time playing with my kids and less time thinking about how I should. Basically I decided to pick a weekly theme and come up with an activity about the theme to do with my kids each day, Monday through Thursday. Then on Friday they can watch TV and trash the playroom as long as they want while I get to have my project day to do crafts and things I usually never get around to. Anyway, here is how our first week went! 

HOW STUFF WORKS WEEK

MONDAY: Electricity

For our electricity day, we tried to make a "Squishy Circuit" which is a neat little play dough project I found on THIS website. We never did figure out how to get our LED lights to light up, but we had a BLAST with the play dough!

TUESDAY: Newton's Laws of Motion

My daughters are 2 and 4, so we kept it simple. I rolled a ball to show them that it would keep going unless something stopped it, like bumps in the sidewalk, the wind blowing against it, them picking it up, or good old gravity.

For the second law, we dropped 2 balls of different sizes at the same time to show that they would fall at the same speed despite their different masses.

For the third law, we blew up balloons and let them go to show that when the air pushed out one way, the balloon would fly the other way. They REALLY liked this one. And after each experiment I let them play with the balls and balloons for as long as they wanted. They were entertained for hours!

WEDNESDAY: Heat

For our heat experiment day, I froze a bunch of toys in ice (the night before) and had the girls get them out by using the heat from friction as well as from hot water. Then we made chocolate covered strawberries to show how heat from the microwave, the stove, and our bodies can melt chocolate. BEST. EXPERIMENT. EVER!

THURSDAY: Light

On Thursday I bought the girls flashlights to help us learn about light. We spent the ENTIRE day playing in our closets, in boxes, and under the bed doing shadow puppet shows and having light saber wars. It was a very fun day!

FRIDAY: Mom's Day

On Friday, I plugged the girls into the TV, pulled out a few toys, and let them do their thing whilst I cleaned the house and packed my bags to drive my husband out to Champaign-Urbana so he could run a Marathon! It took the whole day to prepare and I'm glad I had that uninterrupted time to get things done!