Happy Canada Day

...to all my Canadian Readers!


I have learned a lot about your country over the past few months and it is really a beautiful place. I hope you all have great day.

Saturday Shout Out 6-29

Hello Everyone, 

I am sorry that I missed last week. I wasn't feeling good over the weekend. I hope you have all had a good couple of weeks. I have been doing projects from my summer list. We now also have an online paper (bit.ly/KISnd9) that has lots of links to all kinds of great sites with ideas for fun.

Sugar Land, TX, clicked in  a fewple times in the last couple of weeks. I love the name. I would love to live a place called Sugar Land. It got its name because it used to be a sugar plantation and now Imperial Sugar Company has its headquarters there. Sugar Land has a great website http://www.sugarlandtx.gov/index.asp. They also are going to have a really big celebration for the Fourth of July, http://ow.ly/bEwZ7. I found it on their Facebook page. From the pictures on Flickr it seems like a really pretty and fun city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_land_tx

A great big SHOUT OUT goes out to the people in these terrific Cities and Countries.Thanks so much for visiting my blog.

Mini Pizzas

Food Fun Friday

Sometimes Mom let's me make dinner or Dad and I cook when mom is sick and can't cook. I only know how to make pizza but it is fun.

For my pizzas, I use:

english muffins

shredded cheese (any kind)

spaghetti sauce 

shredded parmesan cheese (we call it shake cheese)

sliced vegetables (whatever we have, but usually onions and green bell peppers)

After putting all the ingredients together we bake them at 400° for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is golden and the crust is crisping. My parents help me put it in and take it out of the oven because I am still short.

More Melted Crayon Art

The other day I made this for a gift for my granny. I have been seeing rainbow crayon art everywhere and really been wanting to try it. 

For this project I used:

Newspaper

Foam Poster Board

Crayon Pieces

Whole or larger pieces of crayons.

A silhouette of me I made in Paint.net
(I will make another post about that project)

Glue

Painter's tape 

*Blow Dryer

*votive or tea light

*Matches

*Get a parent's help for these things because the heat, fire and blowing hot wax can really hurt you.

For the main picture we mounted the silhouette using glue and scrap pieces of foam board so it was raised. The we used painter's tape to stick a strip of glue crayon bits to the top of the picture. That left a border so I could write something. When it was ready I used my mom's blow dryer to melt the pieces. I used broken pieces for this part because I wasn't going to keep them there and it uses them up.

For my name on the border I wrote it out in painter's tape leaving a corner in each letter pulled up. Then I melted crayon tips in a tea light and covered the area around the letters with the melted crayon tips. When it was cool I pulled the pulled corners and the tape peeled right off. I only had to fix the space in the capital A. I like to use longer crayons for this part because the flame scares me. *Don't use twistables scrap pieces because they catch on fire

A few things went wrong or I need some more practice with. First, our printer needs ink so I had to color in the silhouette with black crayon. That was cool, but it melted a little and the colors splattered. Next time I will mount the foam backs but won't glue on the picture until the crayon is done. I also think the colors should have been in a different order, so next time I will change that around. Mom says we need to have a diffuser for the blow dryer since to be hot enough it makes the melted wax blow everywhere.

This was a lot easier than I thought it would be and I don't think it will take too much practice to get it looking really nice like some I have seen around the internet. It is also a neat way to frame my artwork I think. Little kids will need a lot of help since there is a lot of hot things and the blow dryer can get heavy before it is done. Older kids should have lots of fun with it. Make sure to put down lots of newspaper because the wax spatters everywhere.

Wordless Wednesday

Stop Motion Chess

Our newest project was to try to make a stop motion animation film. We did two shorts with my dad's chess set. There were a lot of things we did wrong but our first time turned out sort of neat. My favorite part of this was how it looks like a long time lapse.

My goal is to make a stop action film using my toy soldiers and toy trucks. I am working on the story board and script and dad says he will narrate it and write the soundtrack. Meanwhile mom and I are doing research on different ways to get it filmed and what effects we have in our software. Next up for us is another try with the chess set doing some of things we have learned.

I am having a great summer!!

Wordless Wednesday

Building a River I

Not all projects are successful but they are almost always fun. Our latest project was to build a river from its source to its mouth. For this project we used some boards, aluminum foil, trash bags and duct tape.

It was way harder and more involved than I thought it would be. I made sketches but I didn't know how big it would get. First we laid out and duct taped the trash bags to give us a flood area of the river. Then we folded the foil into a riverbed. It took a long time and it was really bright. Mom got sunburned on her front from it.

 It totally flooded out in so many places and it never made it all the way to the end. But it was SO much fun. I have some ideas on how to make it better. I will get the river flowing before summer is over!!!

 

 In the meantime I will work on more projects from my Summer Bucket List. Coming up soon we have prints made on milk, a home made barometer, an underwater viewer, marbleized designs and my first attempt at stop motion animation. This is the best summer ever

 

Surface Tension Patterns

We spent the afternoon making cool patterns in milk using the principle of surface tension. 

You need milk, food coloring, cotton swabs and dish soap. It works very much like our magic soap experiment last summer. The liquid has a skin of surface tension and the food coloring sits on top of it for the most part. The dish soap breaks up the molecules and releases the tension sending the food coloring out in explosive rings. The patterns were so awesome! 

This is a really easy project. Little kids would enjoy making the colors explode and older kids would enjoy the science behind it.  In another post I will talk about making prints from the patterns in the milk.

Tip from Lian's Mom: I didn't want to waste expensive milk for this project which was actually done over a couple of hours with several batches of clean milk. I added 1/2 cup of powdered milk to 1/2 gallon of water. It worked just fine.

A Summer Adventure Part 2

The next morning Jerry came up with an idea. Their town, Gilmore, had been famous for its beaches since the Seventies. Jerry thought it would make sense to hide the golden horseshoe there.

When the kids got to the beach they had meant to search for the horseshoe right away, but the light blue ocean and the smooth sand seemed too inviting. There would be a lot of time later to look, so the kids played on the beach for a while. Sally soaked in the sun, while Jerry collected rock samples and shells. Mike spent some time looking, at first, but the frothy waves seemed like more fun. The kids played in the ocean and used Jerry's collection to build a decorated sand castle.  It was towards afternoon when they realized they hadn't done much searching and more importantly that they were hungry.

to be continued...

Saturday Shout Out 6/16

How is everyone this week? I just finished my last day of school until the end of August. I do have summer tutoring and I don't like it, but some of it is fun. We have started on the Summer Bucket List and I am writing a story, A Summer Adventure by Lian Nathaniel, all summer long. It is so great to see so many repeat visitors. I really thought with school being out that fewer people would visit. I see less cities but more often. That is just terrific.

The two cities I chose to look this week are Cincinnati, OH and Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Cincinnati has a lot of great websites promoting it like http://cincinnatiusa.com/ and http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/. It seems to be a great place to visit. The neatest thing I saw was the Choir Games happening in July. It is like a choral olympics. That would be so much fun to go to. You can read more about them here http://2012worldchoirgames.com/Home/Landing?sectionName=2012-games.

Prince Edward Island sounds like a neat place. Summerside was the first town from P.E.I that I have seen on my blog list, so it was a good place to look at.  Summerside first became a town in 1877 then in 1995 it became a city.  Their city website  http://www.city.summerside.pe.ca/, has links to a lot of great places to learn more about it. I especially liked the photos at http://www.downtownsummerside.com/

http://www.downtownsummerside.com/photogallery.php

I want to send a great big Shout Out to all the wonderful people, who live in these cities, states and countries, that clicked in to my blog this week! I really do enjoy seeing where you live.

Making It Rain

Our latest project was to make a cloud rain. I don't know how to make a real cloud rain but mom found a fun experiment on Pinterest to try. All you need is a clear glass or jar filled with water, some shaving cream and food coloring. Make a cloud out of the shaving cream on top of the water and add drops of food coloring until the cloud gets saturated and starts to rain. After the experiment I used different colors to see what would happen the the rain. It was cool, it all turned purple in the end.

Here is the link http://pinterest.com/pin/127930445635407185/ where we found the idea and you can find more Summer Fun on Lian's Ultimate Summer 2012 Bucket List For Kids of All Ages

Happy Flag Day

A happy flag day to you. Did you fly a flag today? We don't have one so I made this one.


Flag Day was established in 1916 to honor the day the US adopted its first flag, June 14, 1977. I found some fun websites about flag day with all kinds of great facts about the flag. The best website I saw today was http://applications.appleton.org/parades/flagday%202012/ . Appleton is where we are going to move someday and I love that they make such a big deal for flag day. Someday I will see the parade in person.


Some other resources are 
http://www.factmonster.com/spot/flagday2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_%28United_States%29

And for tips on how you should display the flag
http://www.holidayinsights.com/other/flagday.htm

Wordless Wednesday

A Summer Adventure Pt1

A fun project I thought of  for this summer is a serial story about a family on a summer adventure, inspired by photos from around the internet. Watch for new installments  here on the main page and read the whole story on 

 A Summer Adventure by Lian Nathaniel

Part One:

A family of children was standing in their yard, on the last day of school, watching the sunset. Jerry, Mike and Sally liked the beautiful cotton candy colored sky. Jerry was the know it all of the three children, he was about to tell his siblings that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away when their mom yelled from the door.

"Dinner time!"

As they walked inside Sally said, "Guys, I really wish we could do something fun this summer, that we could have a real adventure."

After dinner they were watching tv when the commercial came on. It was for a contest to win an trip around the world. A trip like that was just what Sally had in mind when she said adventure. The lucky winner would be the one who found the golden horseshoe hidden somewhere in their town.

The children talked, about where they would look, until bedtime. They were excited at the possibility of winning the trip. It would be the best summer adventure ever.

to be continued...

New Art

I was playing with paint.net today and made this. I call it "Whirlpool"

Saturday Shout Out 6/9

I hope everyone has had a good week. I am just trying to finish up school. I just have a little bit of Chinese to finish for school but Mom is making me do math work sheets until school actually ends next week. It isn't too hard. I have spent most of my time swimming. It is hard to blog from the pool though.

This week I took a look at Naugatuck CT. It is a town and a borough. I haven't seen that before. I am not sure how that works.

 

 It is a small town with around 30,000 people but it has a lot great things on its website http://www.naugatuck-ct.gov . It looks like a nice town to live in and its Howard Whitmore library is so cool looking. Looking at the links, I found the historical society and read about a neat project where the high school kids helped to research the historical artifacts and documents the city museum has. http://naugatuckhistory.com/documents/2011/2011-02-05_Civil-War-Article-1.pdf I would love to help with a project like that. That is so cool!

I am going to make a whole post for my international city tomorrow. This week's city is coolest city I have seen yet. Split, Croatia.

Big Shout Outs To all the neat people that clicked into my blog this week. I had so much fun learning about the places where you live. I also learned about four new countries this week. (Whoever you are in The Dalles, OR and Fort Worth TX, please leave a comment so I can say hi to you. I love that I see your towns almost every day.)

Melted Crayon Art

We did our first project of the summer. Yay!

To make this I used:

broken crayons
a tea light candle 

card stock

Newspapers

First I wrote and printed out my message in MS Word. After cutting out my letters and arranging them on the card stock I melted crayons over the candle and began to touch different parts of the page leaving a blank space over my letters. Mom made sure to put down a liner under where I was working and it was a good idea. Some kinds of crayons drip more than others and it got a little messy.                                                                     

I discovered why adult supervision is important. One of my crayons caught on fire, but mom fixed it right away. It is really important to not put the crayon directly in the fire because they might catch but also because the fire leaves black streaks. I don't think this is a project for smaller kids but I really hope mom and I can try again soon. Maybe with jumbo crayons. It was super fun and the textures and the way the colors blend are just so cool.

The person I got the idea from did this on tiles and I really want to try that. Here is a link (http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com/2012/01/tutorial-melted-crayon-letter-art-love.html) to the blog post where I got this idea and here is a link (Lian's Ultimate Summer 2012 Bucket List For Kids of All Ages)  to all the other fun projects we have planned for the summer.

Readers Choice

After doing an unscientific poll of people who read my blog regularly, I have a top ten list of favorite posts from the last twelve months. 

Marvel -ous and Lian: Super Hero Designer

 

I Cooked Dinner!

Granny Is The Best

Boys of Summer!

School's Out!

Making School Fun: Virtual Field Trips

My Favorite Things About School: PE

Water Bottle Sub

Project Christmas Spirit: Final Entry

Eggcelent Fun