On Tuesday, C6 and I were SCIENTISTS. We mixed up water, colored sugar, and oil and SHOOK IT UP! It MIXED TOGETHER! And then...it SEPARATED! And weird little stalactites formed for awhile, then dissolved.
We also put some dried basil and parsley into a bowl of water to see if they would float or sink. Mostly, they floated!
Science, man. Yeah!
For a while now C6 has been wicked into "awts an cwafts". One day, over a month ago, I took out a big cardboard box and we decided it was an AIRPLANE. Since then, almost every day we draw on it with crayons, paint on it, put stickers on, glue pompoms on, glue beads on, glue cotton balls on, then paint OVER the stuff we glued on...add more layers of stickers...glue on toilet paper rolls...paint them...etc. We cut out pictures of food from magazines for the "airplane food"...drew dials, on off buttons...etc...there's an ignition switch where he can put a key in. There's also a place for him to plug in his headphones.
He loOooOooves hangin' out in his airplane.
It is awesome.
Anyhoo, one of the pages of "Mangia! Mangia!" is about antipasti, and it mentions "prosciutto wrapped melone". C6 was curious about this, so we decided to make some prosciutto wrapped melone ourselves. We picked up a nice ripe cantaloupe and a few slices of prosciutto at the market.
Here is where it became UNINTENTIONAL MESSY DAY! (Bonus!)
I cut the melon in half and let C6 scoop out all the seeds and "guts" into a bowl. We started with spoons but of course that wasn't going to last - it was full-on HANDS-ON! Wow. This was a whole lotta fun. He remembered when we made jack-o-lanterns for Hallowe'en and compared it to that. Even after we finished getting all the gunk out of the cantaloupe and into the bowl, we just squooshed around in the seeds and stuff. Y'know, just for fun. Squooshy, squooshy, fun. Instant Messy Day! (At least he didn't try to make a "cantaloupe guts angel" on the floor.)
After Squooshfest 2007, I sliced the cantaloupe and removed the rind. C6 helped wind slices of prosciutto around the melon. The kid loved the prosciutto, not so wild about the cantaloupe this time around (though he likes it). I suppose he was all cantalouped out by that point!
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Cantaloupe!
Cantaloupe who?
Cantaloupe tonight, Dad has the car!
On another MESSY DAY, I filled a biiiiig bowl with uncooked rice and gave C6 some spoons, different sized cups and bowls, and a funnel. He loved moving the rice from container to container. He was busily working for quite awhile and then (we knew it was coming) whoooooosshhhhhhh - all the rice went onto the floor and so did C6. He started flailing his little bodkin around atop the grains. Arms and legs moving all around. He was making a "rice angel". HAHrhAHR!!!!! The next day, after our lesson on how to use a funnel, I was trying to shove some Bacos back into the jar and they were spilling all over the place. "Mummio, use funnel!" said my little smartypants.
Every once in awhile C6 and I will have MESSY DAY. Yesterday, we made some homemade play dough. We used a simple recipe, that I think was on Mr. Rogers back in the day. Totally old school. Here is the recipe. Mix 2 parts flour and 1 part water. Make mess! Add a little food coloring if you want. Even more mess! HURRAH!!!!!! The dough is more elastic-y than play dough, because, um, it is real dough. C6 loved mixing the dough in a bowl with his hands.
Last messy day we decided that fingerpainting was fun but there was more fun to be had in...TOE PAINTING! So we took off our socks and got a-paintin'. Now that. That was messy day.
It was awesome.
