For a Cabin-Feverish Day

Here are a couple of fun activities for those cold, wintry days.

1. The most classic science fair project of all time--a volcano
A few months ago, Taylor helped Blaine make this volcano. Of course there are lots of ways to do this. Taylor started with an old glass salad dressing bottle, covered that with cardboard from a Cheerios box to make a cone shape, and covered that with black clay. Then you just need loads of baking soda, white vinegar, and red food coloring (you'll note that sometimes we use blue, just for kicks). When we get the volcano out we go through practically a whole box of baking soda, but hey, that is some cheap entertainment!

2. Fishing pole and fabric fishies
Blaine used to steal the safety key from our treadmill and 'go fishing' for his alphabet magnets with it. Finally I got on the ball and made him a legitimate fishing set. Taylor took Blaine on an outing to the woods to collect some branches for poles. Then Taylor attached string to the pole and the magnet with superglue. I used a template to cut out fabric fishies (just google 'fish template' and choose what you like). I cut out two from each fabric scrap and sewed them together, with a magnet glued in between the layers. Obviously there are a number of ways to do this, just make sure to use really strong magnets.

Hope you're winning the fight against cabin fever!
loves,
anne