Building Forts

The kids (especially the boys!) love to get their "engineering hats" on to create new structures. We worked in groups to build forts on the playground with cardboard boxes, chairs, picnic tables and blankets. Check out their masterpieces:

Monster Smiles

Earlier this week, I challenged the after school group to design their own "monster smiles"! 

The results: 

 

First Smiley Face!

Christopher was the first to make it to the smiley face on his behavioral clip system!!!  This means that he was caught FOUR times making good choices in the before and after school programs. When someone makes it to the smiley face, they get to choose a special reward. Christopher chose to bring in the movie Beetlejuice to share with the after school group! Congratulations, Christopher!! Keep up the great work :) 

 

Wednesdays with Wendy

Since the middle school gets out early on Wednesdays, Wendy and I have started a tradition of cooking a special treat!! We've had fun trying out new recipes and sharing our finished product with the elementary kids as an after-school snack.
Our first creation was puppy chow - Chex cereal combined with chocolate, peanut butter and powdered sugar. The recipe we used can be found here: http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/puppy-chow-recipe.html 
The following week, we made fudge (you can tell we LOVE chocolate!). Here's the recipe we used: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fudge/

The week before last, we made mini cheese and pepperoni pizzas on bagels. They were a huge hit! Ashley said that she wished she could eat these pizzas everyday! 

Last week, we made No-Bake cookies with oatmeal, chocolate and peanut butter. We found the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cooking-live/chocolate-peanut-butter-no-bake-cookies-recipe/index.html

Comment with suggestions you have for Wendy and I's future snack-making!

Tin foil boat experiment

On Friday, the after school group designed boats using tin foil. The objective? To create a boat that would hold the most weight when tested with pennies. Using a water-filled sensory table, the kids were able to test out their creations by counting the number of pennies their boat could hold before it sank. 

Ashley's boat design held the MOST: a whopping 192 pennies! 

Here's how the rest of the boats stacked up:

117 Stanley

94 Dustin

86 Abby

45 Devon

37 Maggie

36 Jacob

28 Jade F

23 Wendy

6 Makayla 

4 Chris

3 Jade H

Painting the sidewalk

Last week, the after school group made sidewalk paint using 1/2 cup cornstarch, 1/2 cup water, and 8 drops of food coloring. We learned about mixing colors, combining blue and green to make turquoise, blue and red to make purple and red and yellow to make orange. Then, we took our paint to the playground to create art on our blacktop! The kids had lots of fun painting their names and other designs outside!