SMMART MUSIC: 50 States that Rhyme

AaaaalaaaaBAMA and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas...

Found this darling 50 States that Rhyme Song and have been trying to sing it with my girls by reading it off my smartphone.  I finally decided that printing the words would work better for us to learn it.  But what about my little ones who cannot read?  I found this image of the states in alphabetical order.  Put them together and we have a little song sheet to learn the 50 states.  Once the 50 States Rhyme Song and shapes are learned, we can sing the song while we point to the states on a map.

The 50 States That Rhyme Song
Tune: Turkey in the Straw

Alabama, and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas
California, Colorado, Co-nnecticut and more
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho
Illinois, Indi-a-na, I-o-wa ...35 to go...

Kansas, and Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine
Maryland, Massachusetts and good old Michigan
Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana
Nebraska's 27, number 28's Nevada

Next, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, and way down, New Mexico
There's New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, now let's see
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee

Texas and there's Utah, Vermont, I'm almost through
Virginia and there's Washington, and West Virginia, too
Could Wisconsin be the last state or is it just 49?
No, Wyoming is the last state in The 50 States That Rhyme!

(http://www.mrsjonesroom.com/songs/50states.html)

(http://www.jkcrafts.com/cricut-cartridge-states-p-10715.html)

SMMART TIME-OUT FOR MOM: Spa Ideas with Michelle (Guest Post)

Beautify Your Skin in Time for Spring

Spring is a time for new beginnings such as the grass starting to turn green, flowers and shrubbery blooming and the warmth of the sun breaking through the clouds. Glimpses of the sun are often rare during the winter months in central NY making most long for the warmer days ahead. Unfortunately, one of the deterrents many individuals find as they head into spring is that they have to unveil their worn, tired, dry and lifeless skin that they’ve kept covered all winter long.

Dry skin is often our spa’s primary focus this time of year when winter’s wrath has left one feeling weathered and chapped. Here you’ll find a natural blend of ingredients that includes organic products and fresh herbs used to refresh, cleanse and moisturize your skin, exfoliate dry elbows and feet and relieve chapped hands. Many of the products that we use at the spa can be found conveniently at home or via a quick trip to the local grocery store.

The following is a simple list of ingredients designed to help you get ready for spring. With this DIY body scrub, you’ll feel confident showing off your skin in a tank top, shorts, sundress and even sandals.

Ingredients:

1 c. White or Organic Granulated Sugar

½ c. Almond Oil

4-5 drops Lemon Essential Oil

Preparation:

Place the sugar in a bowl and slowly begin to add the oils to the sugar mixture. Depending on the consistency, you may need to reduce or add more oil as you go. You’ll need to be careful not to get your sugar scrub mixture too loose and soupy however.

It’s as simple as that. The sugar scrub mixture should be applied in the shower to warm, clean skin, while focusing on areas such as your arms, back, torso, legs and neck. Since the sugar scrub is course, you may want to avoid sensitive areas such as your face.

Sugar scrubs are simple to make and can be used throughout the year, especially during wintertime when your skin is at its driest. Try incorporating different essential oils with the granulated sugar to achieve the ideal scent of your choosing such as lavender, eucalyptus and peppermint.

vvv

“Hello everyone, my name is Michelle Pino, I work at the spa at Turning Stone Resort and Casino. It’s a privilege and pleasure to go to work every day knowing that I am able to positively affect the lives of so many! I am equally excited to be able to share my knowledge with tips and tricks for all of you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home!”

 

SMMART SCIENCE: Make your own Agars

Agars, oh how I've missed you... My university days were filled with sterlizing the tips of metal loops over a bunsen burner and swabbing blood agar with bacteria to grow.  Funny story - for Valentines Day I gave the boy I was dating a blood red agar with an outline of my lips.  It actually worked!  I kissed the agar and incubated it and after a few days...there those bacteria lips were!  Complete with a sharpie written note on the agar lid: "Just want you to know what you're kissing...Happy Valentines Day!"  Side note:  He never did ask me to marry him.

 

So, instead of purchasing agar for science experiments, we set out to make them for ourselves!  We basically followed the package from the back of a Knox Gelatin box and used the Knox plain gelatin and some boullion to feed bacteria. 

 Make boullion gelatin agar cups for the bacteria to grow on:  Place 1 cup cold water in a mixing bowl and sprinkle 4 envelopes of unflavored gelatin powder over the water.  Let it sit for 1 minute.  Pour in 3 cups hot water and stir with a spoon until the gelatin completely dissolves, about 5 minutes.  Stir in 3 Tb bouillon.  Pour ¼ cup of gelatin liquid into a short clear cup.  Repeat 14 times so you have 15 clear cups filled with gelatin.  Cover each cup with plastic wrap to keep out bacteria.  Place the cups in the refrigerator for 3 hours.

Sit the plastic cups on the counter for a while, with the plastic wrap still on top, so the gelatin comes to room temperature before you use the agars. 

You can make up a batch of agars and then test to see what types of things prevent bacterial growth the best.  Swab separate agars with hand sanitizer, vinegar, lysol, bleach, or whatever else you can think of that might prevent bacteria from growing. 

Have your child use a Q tip to dip in a household substance.  Swab it across the firm gelatin in a “Z” shape down, then rotate the cup 90 degrees and swab from top to bottom across the length of the cup back and forth until the whole surface is swabbed.  Label the agar cup with a sharpie so you know what substance you used and let the agar sit out on the counter for a few days. 

Have your child record her observations each day.  What substances keep the bacteria away the longest?  Moms, be sure that when you see bacteria start to grow that you just chuck the agars.  We don't want any little ones getting into the bacteria or otherwise effected.

Happy growing!

SMMART Science: Resurrection Bread

We know that when you pop ready-made bisquits into the oven they will rise because of the baking soda or baking powder in the ingredients...but what helps make a bisquit rise a little more is a MARSHMALLOW!

My friend mentioned that she was making Resurrection Bread with her girls.  Place a marshmallow on a flattened bisquit and then form the bisquit up and around the marshmallow.  Pinch it shut to form a "tomb".

Bake the bisquits according to the package directions.  The marshmallow EXPANDS when heated, but when it cooled, it contracts and leaves a cavity in the bisquit tomb.  When your child opens the tomb..."He is not here; for he is risen"  Mathew 28:6

SMMART ART: Reverse Glass Painting

"Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and looking through the glass at the image. Verre Églomisé is a commonly used term to refer to the art of cold painting and gilding on the back of glass. In German it is also known as 'hinterglasmalerei.'  This art form has been around for many years. It was widely used for sacral paintings since Middle Ages. The most famous was the art of icons in the Byzantine Empire.

 The painting can be realistic or abstract. Realistic reverse paintings are more challenging to create as one must, for example, in painting a face, to put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as they will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. No such care need be taken with the abstract form, but with this form there is not a good idea how the piece will look like until it is finished. This process is not like stained or leaded glass work in that it is not intended to hang in a window with light coming through the piece. Hanging on a wall, framed or unframed, with a lot of light directed towards the piece provides best viewing." (Wikipedia Reverse Painting on Glass)

Do you have an old picture frame?  We did our own modified version of reverse glass painting.  First we used Sharpie markers and drew the picture outlines and inside details that we wanted to portray on the glass.  Then we painted over the top of the sharpie with clear paint, so you could see the details of the sharpie underneath the color of the clear paint.  Ours could actually be used as a sort of stained glass art.

Roxanne, the producer of "Good Things Utah", told me how she uses clear Elmer's glue and food coloring to create a clear paint that she uses to paint pictures on her windows.  Crafty girl, that Roxanne; and if you ever need anything "Blinged out", she is the queen of "Blinging" things!  She "Blings" everything from keys to use as pendants, to hats, to her office stapler.  But I digress...

SMMART Family Review of Disney on Ice Dare to Dream

With all the hustle and bustle you do as parents it is so nice to be able to take a step back and enjoy some real time with your kids. This week has been plagued with the flu at our house. So much so that we almost were not able to go to Disney on Ice. Tinkerbelle must have sprinkled some pixie dust on our house, because thursday the girls woke up feeling better with no fevers. Not so true for my poor husband and son. So with quick phone call my oldest daughter Kailey called a friend and we were off. There is nothing like watching my daughters eyes light up when Mickey Mouse skates onto the ice and the show begins. Pure joy and happiness in the eyes of your kids is the part that makes being a parent all worth it. Our favorite part of the show was watching Rapunzel and Flynn Rider fly on her hair flying around above the ice. And of course a little ice cream treat as well. We loved it….Thank you Smmart Ideas for this opportunity to spend time together as a family!

 

Melissa, Kailey and Alyssa Jaffa

 

So glad that these ladies had a super time at Disney on Ice Dare to Dream at the Energy Solutions Arena! 

SMMART ART: Huichol Gods Eye

Another yarn craft from the Huichol people of Mexico is called a "God's Eye".  You may remember making these at summer camps.

"A God's eye is a yarn weaving and a Huichol spiritual object.
The Ojo de Dios or God's eye is a ritual tool, magical object, and cultural symbol evoking the weaving motif and its spiritual associations. For the Huichol peoples of western Mexico, the God's Eye is symbolic of the power of seeing and understanding that which is unknown and unknowable, The Mystery. The four points represent the elemental processes earth, fire, air, and water.
The Ojo de Dios, or God's Eye, is a simple or complex weaving made across two or more sticks and is thought to have originated with the Huichol Indians of Jalisco, Mexico. The Huichol call their God's eyes Sikuli, which means "the power to see and understand things unknown." When a child is born, the central eye is woven by the father, then one eye is added for every year of the child's life until the child reaches the age of five." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_eye)

You need two sticks or popsicle sticks.  I think that using actual sticks seems more indiginous and authentic.  Wrap the sticks with yarn to secure them before you have your child start yarn wrapping...this will save a lot of frustrated little hands.

Wrap over stick 1, under stick 2, over stick 3 and under stick 4...continue wrapping in the same motion.  Make sure the yarn is wrapped beside previous row so the yarn spreads out flat.  When you run out of one color, you can tie another color and continue.  You can use a multicolored yarn for an easy way to get a variety of colors.

Another way I used to do...Wrap all the way around stick 1, then drag the yarn to stick 2 and wrap all the way around stick 2...then all the way around stick 3, then all the way around stick 4....so you have a full wrap around each stick...it doesn't bunch up as much this way.

Shimmer yarn is always fun to use or try some pastels for the Spring!

SMMART ART: Yarn Art

I saw a fun idea for yarn art on www.thatartistwoman.org and thought that we'd use this style of yarn art by the Huichol Mexican people for our spring art class...but we would do Yarn Eggs!

"Huichol art broadly groups the most traditional and most recent innovations in the folk art and handcrafts produced by the Huichol people, who live in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit in Mexico. The unifying factor of the work is the colorful decoration using symbols and designs which date back centuries. The most common and commercial successful products are “yarn paintings” and objects decorated with small commercially produced beads. Yarn paintings consist of commercial yarn pressed into boards coated with wax and resin and are derived from a ceremonial tablet called a nearika. The Huichol have a long history of beading, making the beads from clay, shells, corals, seeds and more and using them to make jewelry and to decorate bowls and other items. The “modern” beadwork usually consists of masks and wood sculptures covered in small, brightly colored commercial beads fastened with wax and resin." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huichol_art)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StringArt1MAPDF.JPG)

First cut out an egg shape from a cereal box.  You can paint the shape a pastel color for a nice background color.  Then use tacky glue and make a glue perimeter around the cardboard egg. 

Start to wrap pieces of egg colored yarn around and around...starting from the edge and all the way into the center.  Or you can lay down a yarn design across the egg horizontally and use a new color every so often for a striped egg.   We had precut strands of yarn for the art class.  This way, the yarn wasn't too long to handle and the students could use a variety of colors in their egg yarn art.

Now paint a backdrop for your yarn egg.  What setting would you paint?   A nest?  a grassy field?  a few chicks?

More tacky glue... and glue your yarn egg onto the backdrop.