Are you ready for Summer of Funner 2013?

Look for us in July!!!

[And, in the meantime, check out our sister site: The Lunchbox Season!]

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And check out our first post: Our Best Chewy Granola Bars: A Flexible Recipe

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Since this edition of the Summer of Funner is coming to a close, we thought we’d use our final post to list the movies that we saw and ”reviewed” this summer. The theme of this Summer’s Movies was “Colourful Movies.”  This year, we added a few new releases to the mix. And, for the at home movies, we made some fancy tickets!

Summer of Funner 2012 Film Festival

The Amazing Spiderman (Webb, 2012)
Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012)
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009)
The Kingdom of the Fairies (Melies, 1903) & Nothing Sacred (Wellman, 1937)
Farenheit 451 (Truffaut, 1966)
Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer, 1966) & Cyborg 2087 (Adreen, 1966)
Desk Set (Lang, 1957)
Hugo (Scorsese, 2011)
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 Here are Six Tips and Tricks for Hosting a Great Family Film Festival of your own.

1) Pick a set date, time, and overall time-span for your film festival.
We watched a movie every Tuesday of the Summer (a ten week span) at 6:30pm sharp.  You might also just pick a weekend to do a marathon. Or, you might watch a movie in 20 minute installments each evening before supper. This fall, we’ll likely view a movie every other Saturday. And, we’ll change it up after the holidays to keep things fresh!

2) Choose a theme for your film festival. 
This summer, we kept our theme open, choosing “Colourful Films” as a catch-all for movies that used colour in interesting ways. Last New Year’s Eve, we had an impromptu Sherlock Holmes marathon.  We’ve also focused on Shakespeare films, book adaptations, and innovative movies. This fall, we’re thinking of picking a favourite director and his or her influences or a favourite actor or actress.

3)  Make a calendar or program and tickets.
Whet everyone’s appetite for the films by making a film festival calendar and posting it on a corkboard or fridge. If you prefer to keep the titles a secret (or if you need to operate on a bit more of an impromptu vibe), just mark the “film festival” date and time on a big family calendar in the kitchen!  On the night of the movie, issue movie tickets or grab a roll of tickets from the dollar store for the kids to swap for refreshments.

4) Look for free stuff whenever possible! 
Scour your local public library’s listing of available titles and score those movies for free! Check your local listings for films that will air on television and record them or watch them as the air. Swap dvds with friends and family.  

5) Serve thematic treats or meals.
Experiment with movie-themed snacks or a dinner that fits with the plot or storyline of your film! (This worked well for us on our Sherlock Holmes night.) Watching Harry Potter? Whip up your own imagined version of “butter beer” or chocolate frogs. Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Order a pizza!  Sleeping Beauty? ”Poisoned” Apple Slices (apples dipped in caramel or chocolate sauce). Once and a while, it’s alright to break the “dinner table” rule and have some fun right in front of the television. Cut yourself some slack and let loose! Eat when the characters in the film eat or when they say certain key phrases or when the camera changes shots or angles!  

6) Follow up with movie reviews or other film related activities.
Write about your favourite scenes! Draw pictures of them! Have the kids perform exact copies or modernized versions of their favourite scenes and record them. (This worked well for us with stuffed toys when we watched Bringing up Baby a few years ago!) Compare and contrast the movies you’ve watched all season!  Here’s a copy of our Movie Review Worksheet from our post on Moonrise Kingdom & Kids Movie Reviews in pdf format:  Movie Review Worksheet pdf. You can also copy and paste the image below:

Don’t forget to join us this September over at our sister site: http://www.thelunchboxseason.com! 

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The bruised peaches proved easy to work with. No need to drop them in boiling water or put them, fresh-boiled, on ice in order to remove their skins. The skins were practically falling off. And, after slicing away any unsavoury brown bits, we were in business. Despite our lack of experience working with peaches, we came up with a plan to make three types of Peach Preserves: an Amaretto Jam, a Brown Sugar Vanilla Jam, and a Butter made with the remains of our motherload of Giant Peaches. And, after a great summer day of canning, the kids came up with a few some more abstract designs to use as canning labels! Recipes and labels below!

Amaretto Peach Jam
makes 6.5-7 half-pint jars
 
Ingredients
4.5 cups peeled, pitted, chopped ripe peaches (~3.5 lbs of peaches)
7 cups sugar
.5 cup Amaretto
.3 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 foil pouch of liquid pectin

Brown Sugar Vanilla Jam
makes 6.5-7 half-pint jars
 
Ingredients
4.5 cups peeled, pitted, chopped ripe peaches (~3.5 lbs of peaches)
7 cups brown sugar
.125-.25 cup pure vanilla extract
.3 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 foil pouch of liquid pectin

Jam Method
Fill your canning pot with water and bring the water to a boil. This will take a while.
Place 7 half-pint-sized and 1 quarter-pint sized mason jars (or the equivalent) on a canning rack set inside the pot to sterilize and warm.
Meanwhile, warm the canning lids (but not the screw tops – we stack ours aside on a meat cleaver) in a small pot of water set upon your smallest burner.
Remove hot jars from the boiling water with tongs or the like and set upside-down to dry.
Keep that canning pot of water boiling.

In a large stock pot, combine all ingredients EXCEPT pectin and, forever stirring, bring the mixture to a boil.
Add pectin and bring the mixture to a bubbly, frothing, noisy rolling boil, forever stirring to insure the bottom of the mixutre does not burn.
Stir and boil hard for approximately 2 minutes.
Remove pot from heat.
Skim foam from the top of the brew with a wooden or metal spoon.

Funnel hot jam into hot mason jars, leaving .25-in headspace at the top of the jar (i.e. fill the jar with hot jam to .w5 in below the very top of the glass jar).
Place warm lids on jars and attach the screw tops so that they are closed but not ridiculously lock-tight.
Place the filled jars in a rack in the boiling water of your canning pot.
Cover the canner and bring the water back to a boil.
Process in the boiling water for 5 minutes.
Remove the jars and set aside to cool on wire racks or a surface that isn’t heat sensitive.
Enjoy!

Giant Peach Butter
makes about 6 half-pints
 
Ingredients
4 to 5 cups peeled, pitted, cut ripe peaches (~3 lbs of peaches)
.5 cup water
2.5 cups brown or white sugar, or a mix
.6 cups honey
or
.3 c maple syrup, .3 c molasses

Method
Fill your canning pot with water and bring the water to a boil. This will take a while.
Place 5-6 half-pint-sized mason jars (or the equivalent) on a canning rack set inside the pot to sterilize and warm.
Meanwhile, warm the canning lids (but not the screw tops – we stack ours aside on a meat cleaver) in a small pot of water set upon your smallest burner.
Remove hot jars from the boiling water with tongs or the like and set upside-down to dry.
Keep that canning pot of water boiling.

In a large pot, bring the peaches and the water to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer at medium-low for about 10 minutes, until the peaches are tender enough to pulverize.
Use a blender or hand blender to pulverize the peaches until completely smooth.
Add sugar(s) and honey or syrup/molasses mixture.
Bring mixture back toa boil and stir gently.
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 12-20 minutes, stirring off and on.
The mixture should thicken up and mound on a spoon.

Funnel the hot butter into the warm mason jars, leaving .25-in headspace at the top of the jar (i.e. fill the jar with hot butter to .w5 in below the very top of the glass jar).
Place warm lids on jars and attach the screw tops so that they are closed but not ridiculously lock-tight.
Place the filled jars in a rack in the boiling water of your canning pot.
Cover the canner and bring the water back to a boil.
Process in the boiling water for 5 minutes.
Remove the jars and set aside to cool on wire racks or a surface that isn’t heat sensitive.
Enjoy!
   
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This weekend, we finished Our Big Summer Project – Our Outdoor Mural!
Here’s how we got from point B to point Z, with a DIY recap at the very bottom of the page.

Generating the Final Design
Come up with a final sketch (or use an existing image) and print it in both colour and black and white. Earlier this summer, I chronicled the kids’ first attempts to sketch for a planned outdoor (see Outdoor Mural Phase One: Sketching from our Favourite Artists). Drawing on those projects, particularly their imitations of abstracts and of the African masks owned by Henry Moore, the kids continued to sketch throughout the summer. On a trip to Ottawa last week, the kids fell in love with the totem poles in the Museum of Civilization. So, working with their father, the kids came up with a design [drawn within in a rectangle of a ratio of 2w:3h] that incoporated the faces on the masks they’d drawn in a totem pole structure. They also used some of the “abstract” concepts they’d picked up from the other artists they’d sketched to come up with a simple but striking background of leaf-like geometrical objects. Once a Master Design was in place, we scanned it into the computer and printed it out in black and white [to use as a colouring page].
Original Designs, Master Design and a Scanned Black and White Copy of the Master Design:
     
Gathering Supplies
Measure space. Cut MDO or Plywood to size. Purchase exterior paints and painting tools.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I measured the back of the garden and decided upon the size of mural we would like to place against the back fence. We wanted a 4 foot wide by 6 foot high mural [corresponding to the ratio of 2:3 we'd given the children to sketch within], so we went to Danforth Lumber and asked for 4×8 MDO panel to be cut to size. [MDO is board that is often used in sign-making. Plywood works just as well.] We took home both the 4×6 and the 4×2 panels and set them up against a our shed in the backyard.
Then, this Saturday, with a colour printout of our final design in hand, we went to the paint section of a large, local hardware shop to choose our paints. We set a budget and decided that we could afford both 1 quart of exterior primer and 6 quarts of coloured exterior latex. [You probably need 1-2 quarts in total to complete a mural of this size, but most places won't mix less than a quart of paint per colour. Unfortunately, our shop did not have any rejected/returned paints or we would have been on those like flies!] The kids had a great time mulling through the paint chips and helping choose an array of colours to suit our needs. We came up with a palette of six CIL colours: Lake Simcoe, Shamrock, Kiwi Fun, Red Brick, Egyptian Earth, and, Sun Rays.
As the paints were being mixed, I ran off to the dollar store to pick up a wide array of paint brushes,plastic tarps, plastic cups for holding paint, hooks and latches to secure the board against the fence, and a box of coloured chalk. We came home that night and primed our wooden mural boards before bed.
Supplies and Priming:
     
Painting Day!
Colouring our Master Designs, Chalking-Out and Painting the Mural
On Sunday morning, we got up early. We set the kids to work choosing the final colour placement for our mural. We asked them to pick out a crayon or coloured pencil closest to each of the six paint colours we’d chosen at the store. Then, they filled in the black-and-white copies of the mural design with their “suggested” layout. Together, we conferenced and filled out a third colouring sheet with the final colour placement. We taped this final design to the shed near where we were working to us as a reference for our painting.
Colouring the Black & White Copy of the Master Design:
     
Meanwhile, my husband spent time laying out the basic design in chalk on the primed panel. First, he chalked a grid of rectangles in light yellow on the panel that corresponded to a grid he had drawn in pencil over the printout of our final mural design. Then, he sketched the outlines of the figures onto the panel in a medium coloured chalk.  Bea joined in from time to time to lend an expert hand. Finally, when he’d gotten the drawing the way he liked it, he re-traced that final design with a darker chalk.
Chalking-in the Master Design on the Primed Panel:
          
Then, we got to painting! We set the panel on the ground on top of several tarps. We had each kid work with one colour at a time, pouring a small amount of paint into a plastic tub for them to use. Before the kids would paint a certain area, my husband and I would spend time outlining the edges of those areas with fine brushes [smaller than 1 inch]. Then, the kids filled in the outlined areas with their own brushes [1-1.5 inches]. We kept a cloth around to clean up the dribbles. The project took several hours. We made sure to take water breaks and to order a few very large pizzas to keep us going! As evening drew on, we stood the finished mural up against the garden shed and applied some finishing touches. This morning, we attached hooks to the sides of the panel and latches tot he back fence so taht we could latch the panel to the back fence to keep it from falling in the wind. Still, it will be easy to move around the garden any time!
Painting the Mural:
                  

The Finished Mural!

Below, you’ll find a basic DIY!.

Creating a Movable Outdoor Mural - A Brief DIY:
Supplies
MDO or plywood cut to the size of your choosing
Praint Brushes
Paint Roller [Optional]
Outdoor Acrylic Latex Primer [Optional]
Chalk
Outdoor Acrylic Latex Paints [3-6 quarts in colours of your choosing]
A Sketch or Printout of the Artwork You Will Paint – We call this the “Master Design”
[The Master Design need not be your own artwork...feel free to copy whatver you like!]
Computer, Scanner & Printer
Coloured Pencils, Crayons or Markers
Tape
Tarps or dropcloths

Method
Prime the MDO or plywood with Outdoor Acrylic Latext Primer [Optional]
Scan your Master Design into a Computer
Crop or resize the image so that it corresponds in width and height to your wooden panel.
Print this image once in colour [optional] and several times in black-and-white.
With coloured pencils or crayons that match the 3-6 colours of paint you’ve chosen, fill in your black-and-white colouring page to your liking.
Divide another printout of the Master Design into squares or rectangles in a grid-like pattern.
Tape the gridded-image onto a fence or wall near your wooden panel.
Using a light coloured chalk, divide the MDO/Plywood panel into a grid with an equal number of squares or rectangles as in your Master Design.
With the grid as your guide, draw your Master Image onto the panel using a medium coloured chalk.
When you are happy with the image, colour over that medium coloured chalk with dark coloured chalk [optional].
Lay the mural panel down on a tarp.
Tape the coloured-in image of the Master Design on a wall near your workspace to use as a guide.
Outline the edges of each section of colour in the mural using a fine paint brush.
Fill in the outlines using a finer or thicker brush to suit.
Return the board to an upright position to add your final touchups and let dry.
If desired, attach hooks to each side of the wooden panel and secure against a wall or fence with latches attached to that wall or fence._______________________
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August 13, 2012

The next step will be for the kids to write a small biographical description of each of their creatures! Then, we’ll concoct some wild “ghost” stories about them…a project to last us right through to Halloween, no doubt! I wouldn’t even be surprised if we ended up with a full-fledged children’s book by the end of the year!!!

Here’s a look at the sketches that went into their Yesterday Books today!

Tobes’ Creatures:

The Bunow 
The Abawaqoo 
 Pigbot 
 Pwig
GoatUGoose  
 Twrtle 
Hurtle

Bea’s Creatures: 

 Tappacowape
 Cowacat 
A Pig! 
Pigabat 

Choat 
 Bullgriff  
The Horthadonk

And here’s a look at the kids in action:

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August 9, 2012

Looking back upon last summer’s Eggsperiment Day as a highly successful foray into scientific discovery, I decided to look into various ways that we could use Skittles and other candies in a likewise “Scientific Manner.” Drawing heavily from the phenomenal Steve Spangler Science website (I wish I’d seen this last year when I was designing the Eggsperiments!), I transformed a few basic experiment ideas into “magic tricks” that I could perform in order to lure the kids into a series of further sweet spells and queries. The kids are already used to “candy math” (my fool-proof way of getting them to learn to Skip-Count, multiply and divide), so I was sure the day would be a success, no matter if the experiments were failures or successes! And of course it was! You can’t go wrong with candy! We may just have to turn this into a Kids Birthday Party Plan for one of ours next year!!!!

Below, you’ll find a recap of our 10 Sweet Science Experiments with a photo gallery to follow each.

1) Mama’s Magic Trick: Fattening a Gummy Bear Overnight
Materials: Gummy Bears, Glasses of Water
I didn’t want to tell the kids we were doing “Candy Experiments” until the morning of our experiment day, so I gave the kids a few gummy bears after supper as well as a cup of water. This way, they wouldn’t think anything was funny when they saw them around the house. After they went up to bed, I dropped a gummy bear in a fancier glass and set it on the counter. In the morning, the kids came down to find fat bears in water! We took them out and compared them to dry original bears in terms of size and feel. I asked the kids how they thought this would happen, handing them their Yesterday Books in order to record their hypotheses.  Then, I told them how it worked: The gummy bear is made of glucose starch and gelatin. All of these substances absorb water when placed in it. But the starch and gelatin in the bear prevent it from dissolving the way that sugar normally does in water. So it swells up. Then, the kids floated a few more bears of their own to see how fast it worked! It only took an hour or so for some “substantial” results! The kids went on to hypothesize that you could do the same with Gummy Worms etcetera. Perhaps for a kids’ birthday party, we could make “Fat Worms” – put that on the list of “Things to Do!”

2) Magic Trick: “Snake Charmer” Skittles
Materials: Skittles (or M&Ms), Water, Cups or Bowls
If you drop a skittle face up in water, the colour slowly bleeds out and the sheet of thicker, edible sugar on which the “S” is printed slowly pulls away from the top and floats to the surface. Again, I didn’t tell the kids what would happen for this one. Instead, I told them to drop their skittles in the water, point to the ramekin and ask the bowl “What sound does a snake make? Tell me magic water, What sound does a snake make?” It was pretty hysterical! The kids then practiced this “trick” on each other.  Then, we discussed the rationale of why this happens, namely, that while the colourful sugar coating of the candy dissolves almost immediately in water, the “S” is printed in edible ink on an edible papery substance (like the edible rice paper wrappings on some Japanese candies we’ve tried.) which, while it may have some sugar in it, is lighter and buoyant, rising to the top before it, too, dissolves, especially if you touch it!

3) Experiment: Can You Make the Mini-M&Ms Say “Mmmmm”?
Materials: Mini M&M’s, Water, Cups or Bowls
I had read that you could do the same as above with M&Ms, and such is the case. However, we remembered that sometimes experiments with larger or smaller versions of an original object will not produce the same results. So, the kids tried to see if they could make teeny tiny ms rise from the water. Hypothesis? The tiny “M”‘s will rise. Result: The tiny “M”‘s did rise!       

4) Favourite Experiment: “Will it Float? The Candy Edition”
Materials: Various Candy Bars, Water, Sugar, A Large Clear Vessel, Spoon/Stirrer Stick, Paper & Pencil to Record Results
For one of last year’s Eggsperiments, we tried floating fresh and hard boiled eggs in water and then in salt-water solution, discussing the notion of a denser or “heavier” solution would make an object that sank in water float. This year, we tried to float various candies and chocolate bars in a vessel of water. (I cut slices of some of the larger bars and broke of squares of those that I could and put the rest of the sugar-stuff away – out of sight, out of mind!). Then, we tried to float the same treats in a sugar-water solutions (added gradually in x3 teaspoon increments) and tabulated our results in our Yesterday Books. The candies that floated in water were: Marshmallows, Kit Kats, and Aeros. The candies that were no-floats were: Dairy Milk (chocolate bar), Snickers, Twix, and Mars. Our Hypothesis: The candies with air trapped inside of them miraculously floated in water. The candies without air trapped inside sank in water!

Then on to buoyancy in a sugar solution… Of the candies on the no-float list, none floated in a martini glass of water mixed with 3 teaspoons of sugar. Of the no-float list, Twix and Mars slices floated in a martini glass mixes with 9 teaspoons total sugar while Snickers and Dairy Milk did not float. In 18 teaspoons of sugar plus the water in the martini glass, neither the Snickers nor the Dairy Milk floated. In 24 teaspoons of sugar plus the water in the glass, the Snickers floated. The solid Dairy Milk bar still did not float! The kids hypothesized, however, that the bar would float if we made a thick enough mixture, but they did not want to use any more of our “baking sugar,” as they called it, to test it out!

5) Experiment: Smashed Skittle Liquid Rainbow  – Failed this Time but Fun - Requires Further Testing!
Materials: Several Skittles, Water, Cups or Dollar Store “Test Tube” shot glasses, Mortar and Pestle, Funnel, One Tall Narrow Empty Vessel, Spoons or Droppers
Here, Tobes FINALLY got to smash his Skittles! Pure heaven! First, we separated the skittles out into groups by colour. Then, we took a different amount of skittles per four colours: 5 Yellow, 10 Green, 20 Purple and 40 Orange & Red. We smashed them in a mortar and pestle with 2 tbs water, so that the sugar coating dissolved into our water and the gooey bodies were separated. Then, we poured the coloured sugar water part through a funnel into our “test tubes,” and topped the tubes up with water, stirring until combined. We made sure that there was an equal amount of substance in each cup, knowing that each cup had a different amount of sugar or a different density. This took a while, and it was totally fun. Then, we poured the most sugary substance into the bottom of our clear vessel, following from greatest to least amount of sugar, attempting create a density rainbow of skittles. Unfortunately, we did not have a different enough density between the test tubes for this experiment to work! We ended up with a glass full of purply orange goo. Still, it was fun! The kids hypothesized that if we used a special eyedropper to disseminate our liquids, and if we had a greater range in amount of skittles per colour/equal-sized container, the experiment would probably have worked! The most important part of this experiment was the SMASHING!
         

6) Centerpiece Experiment: Magic Sugar Rainbow
Water, Sugar, 4 cups, Food Colouring, One Clear, Tall, Narrow Empty Vessel, Stir sticks or Spoons, Turkey Baster
The basis for this experiment is the same as the previous one – by dissolving different amounts of sugar in water and colouring them, you can build a “rainbow” in a glass by layering the liquids from the most to the least dense. This time, I let the kids figure out how to do it all on their own, leaving them with measuring cups, droppers of food colouring, sugar, water,and stirrer sticks. We had four equal sized martini glasses. The kids put 1 tsp sugar into a glass and filled it with 6 drops yellow food colour and water to just below the brim. In the next, 1/4 cup sugar, 6 drops green and water to the brim. In the next, 1/2 cup sugar, 6 drops blue, and water to the brim. In the last, 1 cup sugar, 6 drops red and just a bit of water to the brim. Then, we stirred and stirred until each solution was dissolved. Finally, we used a turkey baster to add the liquids, from thickest to lightest, to a tall narrow glass vase. This time, we had success! The red stayed firmly at the bottom. While the blues and greens muddled a bit, there was definitely gradation of colour as it rose to the top of the vase. The yellow, of course, became green, but there was still a gradation of colour from top to bottom! Fun, fun, fun!!!!

7) Festive Magic: Micro-Baked Volcano Cups with Koolaid Lava
Volcano: Salt-Dough (a 2:1:1 solution of flour:salt:water + Food Colour), micro-safe cups, plate or tray
Lava: Vinegar, Red Koolaid, Baking Soda, cup and spoon
Two summers ago, before I stared keeping track of our fun online, the kids and I made volcanoes out of clay and then tried the two basic tricks of exploding vinegar and baking soda, and diet coke and mentos inside of them. This year, we revisited ye old Volcano experiment by baking Salt Dough volcanoes in the oven and by “Sweetening” our pot. This year we made salt dough with a little colour, mixing 2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup water with some food colouring. Then, I had the kids mold free-form volcanoes around two somewhat-microwaveable plastic cups and we micro baked them on plates, first for a minute, then for 30 second bursts until mostly dry. (See our Salt-Dough Ornaments post for oven-baking info, or just use a cup or tin can as your volcano!). I had the kids place their volcanos on trays and fill their centers with baking soda. Then, I had them mix their vinegar and koolaid in a separate cup. We poured these into our volcanos and stood back to watch them erupt!

Finally, we refreshed our memories about how and why this works: When Baking soda and vinegar are combined, the Acetic Acid in the vinegar reacts with Sodium Bicarbonate in something called a “Double Replacement Reaction .” The reaction between the acid and the bicarb almost immediately form something called carbonic acid. However, the carbonic acid is so unstable that it just as quickly breaks apart into carbon dioxide and water. The bubbles in the “lava” are actually the carbon dioxide esscaping. In the end, what “escapes” the volcano are Water, Sodium Acetate, and Carbon Dioxide.
       

8) Unphotographable Experiment: Sparks in the Dark, or, Lifesaver Lightning
Wintergreen Lifesavers, A Dark Room, A Good Strong Mouthful of Teeth or a Mortar and Pestle
The kids went into a dark closet and bit into their lifesavers -and they saw sparks!!! Then, they took the mortar and pestle to the lifesavers and found more of the same. Apparently, all hard candies emit some light when you bite them. This effect is called triboluminscence. But Wintergreen lifesavers are flavoured with methyl salicylate, or oil of wintergreen, which is flourescent, absorbing light that is of a shorter wavelength and emitting light of a longer wavelength than just plain old candy. Who knew?  Of course the kids tried to “bite” down on other candies in order to prove the lightning power of the wintergreen over all others….Who wouldn’t test a bunch?

9) More Festive Magic: Lifesaver Soda Explosion
Wintergreen Lifesavers, possibly a Mortar and Pestle, Meat Cleaver or Hammer & Board, Bottles of Soda, Paper Funnel
This time, we attempted to re-do ye olde Mentos in the Diet Coke Explosion experiment by swapping Mentos for our Wintergreen lifesavers and diet coke. Our lifesavers came in a bulk pack and so were larger than the ordinary kind, so the kids used smashed bits from the previous experiment. They made a paper funnel and quickly dropped several wintergreen lifesavers into a just opened bottles soda. Then, they stood back and watched the magic happen. The lifesavers geysere were larger than the ones we made with the mentos two years ago! Spectacular!

Why does this happen? Well, carbon dioxide is always escaping soda bottles once they are opened. However, because of their ingredients and rough surfaces, items like Mentos, and, to a slightly lesser degree, this year’s Wintergreen Lifesavers, cause that build up and escape of gas to occur much more quickly.
       

10) Ye Olde Exploding the Ivory Soap in the Microwave trick…with a Candy Mold Finish for the Soaps!
Materials: Ivory Soap, Microwave-safe Plate, Waxed or Parchment Paper or Paper Towel, Microwave, Koolaid or Food Colour, Candy Molds or Cookie Cutters
Place an unwrapped bar of ivory soap on a plate or piece of thick paper towel in the microwave. Microwave for 45 seconds – 2 minutes until the soap “foams” turning into a cloud! Watch it carefully! It gets quite large. You don’t want to overcook! Apparently, two scientific transformations occur here. First, you are heating and, hence, softening the soap. Second, you are heating the air and water trapped inside of the soap. Thus, the water vaporizes and the air to expands into a foam. But what to do with the foam? Make candy mold soaps again, or snow, or lather up and get rid of all the evidence of candy mess! Careful! After a while, if you haven’t already tested the soap out in the tub to see if it still lathers (and it does!), it will crash open and break into thousands of tiny shards.

Here are things we did with it (with many thanks to the best bites blog for the inspiration which led us to our “candy mold” tweak). Soap 1 (we had a three pack): Place soap foam into a big bowl, add warm water enough to make the soap back into a pliable clay type substance. Divide the mush and colour with koolaid or food colouring. Form into shapes or press into CANDY MOLDS or cookie cutters. Of course we used Candy Molds, because it was the perfect day for it! Our soaps didn’t turn out that great, to be quite honest, but the kids enjoyed looking at them through the molds.  Soap 2: Bring it into the tub, smash it, or make it into lather.  Soap 3: Let mama hold it over your head and crumble it into snow over top of you (also in the tub).
         
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August 8, 2012

Pilsner Pretzels [Soft Beer Pretzels]

Ingredients
.3 c warm water
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1 pckg active dry yeast
1 c Creemore Springs Pilsner (or any beer – light or dark – of your choice)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4.5 c all purpose flour
vegetable oil (spray works best)
10 c water for boiling
.6 c baking soda
2 egg yolks, beaten with 1 tbs cold water
coarse salt or pretzel salt

Method
Combine water, sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer.
Let sit for 5 minutes or until foamy.
Add beer (mixture will foam up lots more) and stir to combine.
Gradually add the flour and butter, adding flour by the 1/2 cup, mixing with the dough hook on low speed.
[You may not need to add the entirety of the flour to reach a smooth consistency]
Knead the dough at medium speed until the dough smooths out and begins to pull away from the bowl.
Remove dough to a clean, oiled bowl.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place for about an hour, until dough rises or doubles.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and spray with vegetable oil.
Divide dough into 8 equal pieces.
Roll each piece into a long rope, about 18-20 inches long.
Bring the dough-rope into a horseshoe shape, free ends north, curve south.
Bring the free ends together and twist the rope once or twice near these free tips (but with an inch or so to spare).
Bring this knotted portion down to the middle/center of the original horseshoe.
Pinch free ends down onto edges of dough to form a pretzel shape.
If all else fails, roll out a rope and twist it into something that looks like a pretzel!
Place pretzels back onto baking pan.
Allow pretzels to rise again slightly as you…
Preheat the oven to 450.
Bring the 10 c water and .6 c baking soda to boil in a pot or roasting pan.
Add pretzels 1 or 2 at a time to the pan and boil for 30 seconds, spooning tops with boiling water.
Remove the pretzels with flat slotted spatula.
Return the pretzels to the parchment lined pans.
Brush them with the beaten egg-yolk & water mixture.
Sprinkle with coarse salt to suit your taste.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden-warm brown.
Cool pretzels on wire racks until you just can’t help yourself and dig in!!!!

Hops and Robbers Mustard [Beer Mustard]
Adapted from the Ball Book’s Oktoberfest Beer Mustard Recipe
makes 5-125ml jars
recipe may be halved for a simple refrigerator portion
[This morning, we decided to increase all elements of our recipe by 1/3 to incorporate the entire can of beer and to help the kids work on fractions and division - but we are publishing the recipe as we originally formulated it because of the simplicity of the measures. You may want to finish off the can yourself, after all...]

Ingredients
1.5 c Hops and Robbers [or your favourite beer - dark or light]
1 c/250 g mustard seeds
[choose yellow or brown seeds to complement or contrast the shade of your beer]
1 tbs chopped garlic
1 c water
.5 c malt, cider, or white vinegar
[depth of flavour or colour chosen to complement the shade/style of your beer]
.75 c brown sugar
4 tbs yellow mustard powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cinnamon [optional]
.25 tsp cloves [optional]

Method
In a medium saucepan, combine the beer, mustard seeds and garlic and bring to a boil.
Remove the pot from the stove and let stand for 1.5 – 2 hours, until seeds have absorbed the liquid.

Get ready to can by sterilizing 5 250ml glass jars in a boiling water bath in a large pot with a wire canning rack inside.
Heat the lids (the discs, not the screw cap rings) in a small saucepan of water to the side.
Remove the jars from the boiling water and set them upside-down to cool just slightly as you make your mustard.
Keep the water in your canning pot boiling.

Using a hand blender or food processor, pulverize the mustard mixture until chopped but still grainy.
[The look and texture are really up to you.]
Add the remainder of the ingredients to the saucepan, stir, and bring them to a boil.
Reduce the heat to low and simmer & stir for 10-15 minutes, until the mixture reduces by about a third.

Heat the mustard back up to just a bubble.
Ladle the mustard through a funnel into your hot jars, leaving a .25 inch headspace.
[We processed four of our five jars and reserved a final larger "cook's treat" jar of mustard to use on our pretzels, refrigerating the remnants.]
Wipe the rims of the jars clean if necessary.
Add the flat metal lids and attach the screw tops so that they secure the lids but are not extremely tight.
Process the jars of mustard in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.
Remove jars and cool.

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Mustard Prep:

   

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Mustard Making and Canning:
                  

Pretzel Formation, Boiling & Baking:
                                 

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Over the past few days, the kids have started putting two and two together, relating their interest in the film (and Dahl’s novel) with life around them. And, this morning, they started asking about the “Stop the Mega Quarry” signs they’ve seen on lawns and in storefronts throughout the neighborhood. So, we decided to spend some time investigating how people have depicted this “problem” and the proposed “solutions” surrounding it.

Today, the kids took an important first step in becoming Socially Responsible.

SUMMERof FUNNER ACTIVISM 101: INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEM

First, we had a good look at the sign in the window of our coffee shop:  
From the words on the back of this signboard, we learned that there is an area 100 km Northwest of Toronto in which the “Highland Companies,” backed by a “Hedgefund,” have purchased quarries and thousands of acres of farmland, with the intention of creating a “Mega Quarry.” We read that what was once precious farmland would be converted to quarries which would produce limestone. And we read that the site in question is connected to the “headwaters” of five major rivers, and that several hundred million litres of Ontario drinking water would have to be diverted and perhaps treated before being returned to its natural course in order for the land to be quarried.

I brought home a few flyers for the kids to have a closer look:

As we were reading, the kids stopped to look up a few basic terms in the dictionary: Quarry, Mega, and Hedgefund. And the kids wrote out the words and their definitions in their Yesterday Books.

One thing I wanted to make clear to the kids was that whether or not we agree with the “Stop the MegaQuarry” Mission, there is always a basic ”agenda” or “point of view” in a flyer, and there is always an “author” or writer behind that opinion.

So, our next step was to investigate the “About Us” section of the www.ndact.com website to find out about the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce who produced the flyers and signs. We found that the group consisted of residents (many of them farmers) from the Melancthon and Mulmur townships in Ontario, an area to the north and west of our home in Toronto. From what we could gather, it looked as if several of the farmers who had lived in the area “sold out” to the Highland Companies. The group producing the flyer consisted of a group of concerned residents who were left. At least, the group consisted of those who were not actively employed by or involved in the quarry industry itself. I was careful to remind the kids that there are likely just as many if not more people who might support the quarry industry or be supported by it. I wanted to make sure they were aware of the alternative voices which might arise from within that community.

Then, we moved on to investigate the environmental impact of the proposed Mega Quarry as propounded by the NDACT group. As I read the kids the bulleted list of points regarding the impact of the mega quarry, they drew “symbols” of what this impact was or meant.

Where the flyer argued that the agricultural land in the area produces 50% of the potatoes consumed by the GTA, the kids each drew potatoes.
Where the flyer argued that the pit to be excavated 180 feet below the water table threatened four major watersheds, and that, in turn, the water resources for one million Ontarians could be affected, the kids drew taps and a water table.
Where the flyer argued that the Highland Corporation would have to pump 60o-million-litres of water from its quarry per day, the kids drew a flooded tap and a water line.
Where the flyer argued that to operate the quarry, hundreds of diesel trucks would have to run every day, creating traffic and pollution, the kids drew fleets of dirty, barely distinguishable trucks.
Where the flyer argued that the streams and rivers running through the Niagara Escarpment would be affected by the Quarry, the kids drew more streams.
Where the flyer argued that once the limestone is extracted, the Highland company will attempt to farm the bottom of that pit, which seems costly, risky, and a dubious pursuit, the kids drew failed crops and a farmhouse sunk in a pit.
And, where the flyer aruged that the proposal will use unproven technology, the kids drew question marks.
When we were finished, the kids had filled their yesterday books with a few good pages of definitions and symbols:  

Then, we had a “big conversation” about what they thought was most important about the proposed Mega Quarry.  They were concerned about the wildlife in the region and along the Niagara Escarpment, particularly the birds of Ontario sheltered there. They were particularly worried about the potential impact of the Mega Quarry upon the water supply. We talked about the uses of water in our everyday lives, our own body’s percentage of water,the percentage of water on the face of the earth, and the relation of water to wildlife.  Inspired by a conversation I’d had with the owner of the cafe where we picked up the flyers, I asked the kids why something like a “hedge fund” would be interested in the quarry: was it just for the limestone and the income to come out of it, or was it for the access to the water, after all?  This got us all wondering about how important pubic or private control of fresh clean drinking water has become and will be in the years ahead.

The next step was to decide if and what the kids wanted to do about the proposed Mega Quarry. The kids are experienced protesters, after all… Last summer, we  produced our “Save the Riverdale Farm” Sketches and we made T-shirts and a Rob Ford Protest Song in support of our local libraries. Today, the kids decided to learn more about the Mega Quarry by visiting the partner websites:  http://www.ndact.com, http://www.citizensalliance.ca, and http://www.nomegaquarry.com.  They also decided to send the illustrations they made today and a brief email of concern to their Ontario party leaders. [They asked me, however, not to reproduce their messages as they felt they wanted to keep the private.]  They are also planning to produce their own t-shirts later this summer. Although, at this point, they’re not sure if they want the shirts to say “Stop the Mega-Quarry” or if they want to ask others, “Is a U.S. Hedgefund Taking Control of Your Drinking Water?” 

You’ll have to stay tuned to see the results of their efforts…But, wait a minute, what are YOU going to do?

UPDATE: 
SUCCESS!
The Mega-Quarry will NOT be pursued.
Read all about it here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/11/21/quarry-melancthon-proposal446.html
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