Here is a fun flower experiment: Grab some colorful construction paper, and cut a flower shape in four different colors: blue, green, red, and yellow. Grab four bottle caps, and put sugar water into each. Place the construction paper flowers into each of four clear glasses, with the full bottle caps in the centers. Then put them outside, and watch which bottle cap gets drunk out of the most by bees and butterflies. For some reason, the red color attracts insects more than the other colors…
Buy a big bottle of lemon juice. Only a glutton for punishment will squeeze two cups’ worth of lemon juice with her bare hands. Not to mention rubbing her eyes accidentally and screaming. No sirreee. Lemon juice comes in a bottle for a reason.
Grab your funnel. Throw it up into the air so that it spins, end over end, and catch it. This will impress your children, who will cheer that you are the best mother in the world. (sigh of satisfaction) Take a bow to acknowledge that this is true.
Now onto the real lemonade-making. Pour 1 cup of sugar through the funnel, into the pitcher. Pour 2 cups of lemon juice in. Pour 6 cups of water in. Stir it. Or shake it if it has a tight lid. (If it doesn’t have a tight lid, don’t shake it, or it will fly in all directions like a sprinkler on the lawn on a hot summer day.)
That’s it. You’re done. Drink it.
Oh, and if you want to get all fancy shmancy, slice slices of lemon, lime, and orange, and throw them in. Shove a slice of lemon into the side of the glass, and serve with a bendy straw and perhaps a tiny paper umbrella. Cheers!
Here are some simple Memorial Day decorations: Pour sand into a clear glass jar, and stab a flag into it. On either side of that, light blue candles. I sprinkled gold confetti stars on the dark blue butcher paper tablecloth. I threw metallic markers on the table, so that the boys could draw on the butcher paper while waiting for their food.
On either end of the table, I spray painted two shoe boxes black the day before. I filled those with sand, placing toy soldiers in the sand. I stabbed two American flags into the sand, so that they crossed each other. These decorations would also be good for the Fourth of July.
Making sun prints can be fun for kids. You can make sun prints either with regular construction paper or sun print paper. Sun print paper is photographic paper that is highly sensitive to light. When you expose the blue paper to the sun, it starts turning white almost immediately. So don’t take it out of the packet until you’ve got your leaves ready. Choose leaves with interesting shapes.
Take the sun print paper out and place the leaves on top. Don’t do this on a windy day, or your leaves will blow off. You can place a small rock on top of the leaves to keep them from flying away. Within an hour, your sun print is done.
If you are using cheap construction paper, it will take all day instead of one hour. Set the dark-colored construction paper out in the sun. Place your leaves on the paper, with rocks on top. Check it at the end of the day. The shadow covered by the leaf will be dark, while the rest of the paper will be much lighter.
