My Little Artsy Scientist

     I'm hanging out here on my blog instead of Facebook because my fellow Nursing students may vote me off the island if I mention wanting to go back to school again.  I'm currently wrapping up week 2 of my 3-week break from school, and I'm getting a little stir crazy.  I think it's because J is deployed.  If he were home, I'd be busier, and so time would fly by, and I'd be whining for more break, not more school.  As it is, I've been trying to keep busy by scrubbing down my house, purging my closets, and doing a few fun crafts with Monkey.

     Yesterday while cleaning out one of my closets, I came across a painting from the first paint party I ever attended.  It's a rather vibrant flamingo that I never really had a place for, see:

So I decided to paint over it and make it into something fun for just us girls to do.  

     I painted the entire canvas in a few coats of white paint before letting it dry.  Then I used some tape that wouldn't peel the paint to spell out the word "Love".  (Original, right?)

   
     I then dropped small amounts of brightly colored paints all around the canvas, and I instructed Monkey to help me spread them around.  The rules were you could mix one or two, but no yuck brown color, and no leaving any white spots.  I started at the top, and she started at the bottom, and we met in the middle.

     Once the entire canvas was covered in paint, we called it a day, and let it dry while we went out for Mexican food with a couple of friends.  When we came back, the paint was all dry, so I began to remove the tape.

     And voila!  Our own little work of art:

     I love that my child can go from an artist to a scientist like a sports car can go from 0 to 60.  Her variety of interests make it easy for me to come up with something to entertain her.  Lately she's been interested in the Magic School Bus.  She has the Inside the Human Body book, and it's her latest favorite.  She's also been begging me to let her watch the shows, which I was happy to oblige her once I discovered them all on Youtube.  Yesterday when she got home from daycare, I had a surprise waiting for her.  We put together our own map of the human body.  

     I went to Office Depot and found a roll of white poster board paper in the teacher's section.  I laid that out on the floor and had Monkey lay down on top of it so I could trace her.   We then taped the outline to the door in the kitchen and Monkey colored a few different organs.  We mainly focused on the digestive tract, because that's what the Magic School Bus: For Lunch episode focuses on, but the Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body book goes into the heart, lungs, and brain as well, so we added those in for good measure.  (For printables, just click on each organ listed: stomach, intestines, brain,  heart and lungs)  Some of the printables were too big to fit in her little body, so I just freehanded them.  As she colored each organ we talked about what their functions are. 

Drawing the cereal she had for breakfast.

   After assembling the entire body, we went to Youtube to watch The Magic School Bus: For Lunch one more time.  I also like the idea that we can come back to this project and add other systems later, like the skeletal system, the muscles, the nervous system, and more!  Plus, it's a good review for me  :-)