4th of July

Happy Birthday America! We celebrate by attending a picnic that brings family members from across the country. My mom has hosted the annual picnic on the century farm for the past 6 years, so this year we tried making decorations for it.

I saw some white stars made in the grass from Parents Magazine. The magazine called them flour stars, so that's what we did. My husband had a star template in the garage made from plywood, which is what we used. If your husband doesn't have a hodge podge of everything in the garage a cardboard cutout star would work perfect. My sons took turns spraying the grass with a squirt bottle of water. We laid the template over the wet grass and sifted flour over the top of the wet grass. When we took the template off we had white stars in the grass.

My sons liked the feeling of textures with this activity. I didn't really think that a 3-year old and a 4-year old would use this activity to explore textures. As an adult, I take texture for granted and don't think about it unless I'm eating something that has an awful texture. The boys loved to feel the flour, which I thought was interesting because they have helped me bake before. I realized that when the boys helped me bake I didn't let them touch the flour or other ingredients too much. They also liked touching the sifter, the grass, the grass wet, the flour grass, and the flour sand.

I liked watching the boys try new ways to expand on the same activity. For example, what it would look like in the sand box, or what if we used the flour around the star. Both were fun ideas that we tried.