Back-to-School Pencil Cake

August 31st, 2016

back-to-school-pencil-cake

Why not make this fun back-to-school pencil cake? It’s super easy to make, and eating cake will make the beginning of the school year all the sweeter.

First you will want to bake a rectangular cake. We made ours chocolate, and we used a boxed cake mix. You will want three vanilla icing containers. (We used two, but it would have been easier with three.)

Dump two icing containers into a larger bowl and stir yellow food coloring into it until you get the right color of yellow. You might want to grab a pencil and place it next to your icing so you can compare the shade of yellow to the real pencil.

Divide the third icing container into three bowls: one will be pink, one tan, and one gray. You can buy black food coloring in a cake aisle of a craft store. Create the gray color by adding black food coloring to white frosting. The pink can be created with red food coloring. What I did for the tan was to place some chocolate icing into the white icing, since I had left-over chocolate frosting from a different project. If you don’t, you can use any food coloring until you get the right shade of tan.

pencil-eraser-cake

We cut the rectangle cake in half, and those halves in half. If the cake is horizontal, make your cuts vertical. (You are cutting short pieces, not the long way.)

Lay your pieces of cake on some cardboard lined with foil. (I used packing tape to connect two pieces of cardboard on the back.) Make a point on one end of your pencil cake by making one end look like a triangle.

sharpened-pencil-cake

Now you are ready to frost the cake. I stared with the back of the pencil. I frosted the eraser pink. Then I frosted the metal part of the pencil gray. The remainder of the pencil is yellow, except for the tip, which is tan. I used a Hershey’s chocolate kiss for the point of the pencil.

back-to-school-cake

Your pencil cake is complete! Have fun celebrating at a back-to-school party!

The Speed of a Rotating Cookie

August 29th, 2016

speed-of-a-rotating-cookie

Today we are baking a gigantic cookie, and then we will spin it! We are attempting to determine the speed of a rotating cookie, and I will compare it to a merry-go-round.

First you need to go into your kitchen and bake a huge chocolate chip cookie.

baking-cookiesThis post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

You can use your favorite cookie dough recipe. My daughter Rachel tells you how much of each ingredient she used to make her cookie:

This fun experiment is from Christian Kids Explore Physics by Bright Ideas Press, In the chapter on motion, the book describes how to figure out the speed of a merry-go-round. First you need to determine the circumference of the merry-go-round.

C = 2π r

The radius of the merry-go-round is 5 feet.

5 times 2 times 3.14 equals 31.4 feet. So the distance around the merry-go-round is 31.4 feet. That means every time Rachel goes around, she travels 31.4 feet.

Now we need to determine how fast the merry-go-round is going. My son pushed Rachel around as hard as he could while my other son timed 15 seconds. I counted how many times Rachel went around in 15 seconds. The answer was almost 4 times–3.75 times is more accurate, as you can see if you watched the video. 3.75 times 4 equals 15 revolutions per minute. (A minute has 4 segments of 15 seconds.)

To determine how many feet Rachel traveled in one minute while riding the merry-go-round, multiply the circumference by the speed. She traveled 471 feet per minute!

merry-go-round-physics

In the video I show you how to determine the speed of your rotating cookie at home, depending on how big it is and how fast you spin it. Who knew physics could be so fun and delicious!

Rembrandt Art Projects for Kids

August 25th, 2016

rembrandt-art-projects-for-kids

This post contains affiliate links. I was given access to the class to blog about it, which I was very glad to do.

We are on the second lesson of Mixing with the Masters, and this week we are doing some beautiful Rembrandt art projects. Rembrandt is my favorite painter. I’ve used his artwork to teach my children Bible stories, since he painted so many biblical scenes:

Charcoal & Gesso Portrait

Rembrandt-self-portrait-gesso

The first art project is a charcoal and gesso portrait of Rembrandt. This artwork is better for older students, since the shading on the face is crazy. Your kids need to be prepared for the first layer to look unfinished. This is a three-day art project.

Before you start, print out the sketch (template) of Rembrandt that Alisha (the art instructor) provides. I also printed the black and white portrait and the gray scale. I enjoyed Alisha’s teaching about the gray scale, and my children noticed different shades and tried to match the gray scale shades to what they were painting with gesso.

Rembrandt-gesso

Coloring on the back of the template with a charcoal pencil will enable you to transfer the sketch to the paper without your children having to draw the original. You just use a mechanical pencil without lead to trace the sketch onto the watercolor paper.

Let the first layer of gesso dry, and the next day you can darken or lighten your drawing in different places. Alisha gives instructions on how to do this in the demonstration video for this project.

playing-with-gesso

The gesso portraits came out way better than I thought they would! I was expecting them to look like a Picasso, based on how crazy they looked on the first day when we shaded the faces. It was almost as if someone splatted Rembrandt with a chocolate pie, except in black and white.

The most fun part of this project was painting the gesso on top of the charcoal and having the shades mix while you paint. We had never used gesso before!

Ink Pen Sketching

ink-pen-etching

All you need for this ink pen sketching is a pen and paper. We used Alisha’s template for the shape of the dog so that we could focus on the cross-hatching technique that Rembrandt used on his etchings. The puppies came out cute.

The Mill: Mixed Media

the-mill

We started this mixed media project with a black canvas. (I prepared the canvas by giving it two coats of black paint before we began the project.) I also bought four different scrapbooking papers that had cool patterns in brown. We used that for the cliff and windmill, using the template that Alisha provides in her class.

Alisha’s mill looked a lot more like the original painting by Rembrandt, with a light tan sky and dark brown earth. She talked about the use of chiaroscuro, which is a technique that uses light and dark for effect. We just reversed the effect by painting a dark sky blue and having the mill be a lighter tan.

mod-podge

If you would like to take this class, go get it here: Mixing with the Masters. We are really enjoying these art projects!

Mixing-with-the-Masters-600

Turning Potential into Kinetic Energy

August 22nd, 2016

turning-potential-into-kinetic-energy

In today’s experiment, we will be turning potential into kinetic energy as we hold various objects above a bucket of water and release them to see how far they splash.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

You will want to do this experiment outside on a sunny day. The person dropping the objects needs to be willing to get wet, especially when the person releases the heavier objects like the banana and the can of baked beans!

Turning Potential into Kinetic Energy (The Experiment)

Step 1: Gather supplies. You will need a large tub, a hose, a ruler, and various objects to drop into the water. We used a marshmallow, a grape, a nut, a quarter, a pine cone, a banana, and a can of baked beans.

splashing-experimentThis post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

Step 2: Fill the tub with water and have someone hold a ruler on the side of the tub. Print out the chart on page 143 of Christian Kids Explore Physics by Bright Ideas Press, and clip it to a clipboard. Record your findings on the chart, or you can just call out how many inches the water splashed upwards.

splash-grape

Step 3: Drop each object and watch how far the water splashes. The objects with more mass have more potential energy. When an object is held above the water, there is potential energy in the object. Potential energy is converted into kinetic energy as soon as you release the object because it is now moving.

Let me describe it another way: A log of wood has potential energy. It’s just sitting there and doesn’t look like it has energy, but as soon as you light it on fire, the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy.

Energy will be released if something happens to an object with potential energy. As long as an object just sits there, it’s only potential. When movement or chemical change occurs, you now have kinetic energy.

Video of the Splashing Experiment:

Take a look at how far each of our objects splashed:

Hope you enjoyed our fun experiment!