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What You'll Need:

• 2 paper or plastic plates
• Decorations (stickers, markers, or paint)
• Ribbon
• Hole Punch
• Craft Jingle Bells
• Scissors

• Using your paint or stickers, decorate the outside of your tambourine. Be colorful and creative!
• Next, match the plates up so the bottom part of the plate faces out. Punch 5-6 holes around the plate’s circumference, making sure your bottom and top plates match up.

• Cut the ribbon as long as you’d like. Longer ribbons always seem to add more drama! Then lace the ribbon through the jingle bells.
• Loop your ribbon around the holes punched in the plates, securing it with a double knot.
• Shake away! These small bells make a joyful sound!

What You'll Need:

• Clean Tin Can (be aware of sharp edges!)
• Baloon
• White Duct Tape
• Decorative Tape
• Two #2 Pencils
• Scissors

• First, cut the balloon at the base of the “stem”. You’ll need lots of balloon material to cover the wide opening of the can.
• Stretch the balloon over the tin can. Tape the perimeter.
• Then finish the whole can with the white tape, and add decorative tape if you so choose.

What You'll Need:

• Plastic Easter Eggs
• Plastic Spoons
• Dry Rice
• White Duct Tape
• Decorative Tape
• Scissors

• Fill the plastic eggs with about 2-3 pinches of rice. Filling them too full will not allow for the fullest sound: less is more.
• Close the eggs and stick some tape around them immediately. If these crack open, you’ll have a big mess.

• Next, situate two of the spoons to “cup” the eggs on either side. Wrap the tape around the spoon. Follow the spoons’ handles down with tape, as well as the top of the egg.
• Add some decorative tape or stickers of your liking.
• Shake it up!

Let's bid farewell to Summer in style by creating tie-dye beach towels with the help of the color wheel, rainbow order, mixing, and pigment strength. Set up the activity in the comfort of your backyard, and don't forget to grab some gloves and plastic coverings if you aren't on grass.

• Spray Tie Dye Kit
• Duct Tape
• Beach or Bath Towels
• Warm Water
• Twisty Droppers
• Color Wheel

This activity works best with the widely available spray tie-dye kits. They dry faster, making the application easier for even the youngest beach-goers.

Grab white beach or bath towels (the fluffier, the more color-absorbent), lots of duct tape, hot water for mixing the tie-dye, and the spray kit.

Lay your towel out on a flat surface, smoothing it out. Spell out your child’s name across the towel using the tape and moving slowly.

Keep the color wheel handy as a guide. It is a great visual tool for classifying spectral wavelengths from red to violet.

Depending on the options available in the tie-dye set you’ve purchased, look at your color wheel and separate your bottles into primary, secondary, and tertiary categories.

Next, put on your gloves on a covered surface or grass and mix the tie-dye with the warm water. What colors are made from primary colors? Working from the color wheel, which colors will look best near each other on the towel?

With those gloves on, let the spraying begin! Be glad you have on gloves! The bottles can get messy fast. If you prefer the traditional route of tie-dying, try using Twisty Droppers! Pigment strength was brought up: how do we intensify the color?

It’s perfectly fine to get spray on the tape. Once the towel is pretty dry, flip it over to spray the backside! Flip back over and allow to dry completely. Wash the towels separately twice, alone in the wash.

This is the time of year to be grateful, not wasteful. Used wrapping paper can tend to pile up during this special season of gift giving. Who amongst us hasn’t looked at a trash bag full of giftwrap and shook their head? There’s got to be a better use for all the paper, right? Below are a few clever ideas to get the kids involved in upcycling used gift wrap.

MYOB: Make Your Own Bunting. A delightful holiday design trend for several years now, bunting can be placed around the house to spruce up your season. Cut up your old wrapping paper in triangles using a template, tape it to a string, and have the kids come up with clever phrases, adding some deck to your halls.

Insist Your Toddler Cut Corners. For the toddler set, a whopping pile of paper and a pair of safety scissors is like heaven on Earth. Getting your preschooler practicing this important fine motor skill with all your leftover gift wrap. The paper is thinner, which might spark some cutting confidence. Pile it all up in a sensory bin and let them have at it!

A Little “Thank You” Goes a Long Way. So many presents, so many people to thank! Utilize the season’s remaining wrapping paper by having your kids fashion the cutest homemade thank you cards. This is a great busy activity in the dog days of winter break (you’ll thank us later).

A Place (setting) for Everything… Upcycle wrapping paper to create festive placemats for your holiday table. Not only will your tablescape showcase some extra holiday cheer, clean up will be a snap!

Winter Break Weaving. Paper weaving is a fun activity suitable for many age levels. Shred your remaining wrapping paper into strips. Using an x-acto knife, cut slits into construction paper. Be sure to do this step over an old magazine or cardboard. Weave the strips in and out of the slits. Use the creation for thank you cards, decoration, placemats, or anything where around the house that could use a little extra holiday style.

Your holiday guests will be delighted as they arrive to your doorstep on a cold night greeted by these frosty, glowing lanterns. Oh what fun it will be when they learn your little scientists created the evening’s entryway décor!

It goes without saying that these lanterns work best in freezing temperatures. Should you choose to use them to light your holiday table, make sure to place them in a bowl for when they begin to melt!

This experiment involves the change of matter from a liquid to a solid (and eventually back to a liquid).

You will need:

• Plastic red cups

• Smaller plastic cups that can fit inside

• Decorations - glitter pipe cleaners, craft pom poms, glitter, pine sprigs, etc.

• Water

• Tape

• Food coloring

• Candles (battery-operated is probably best)

Grab one of your red cups, and twist pipe cleaners up the length of the cup. This part requires some engineering inspiration and small hands. How do you get them to stay up? If you choose, add some craft pom poms. Working on the pom poms to stay suspended in the pipe cleaners also creates a unique challenge. Think!

Next, pull out a long piece of tape and attach it to one side of the cup near the lip. The tape will be the important piece that will hold down the second cup, so it doesn’t float. Basically, have the tape ready before you pour in the water.

Fill the cup about half full with water. Add a few drops of food coloring if you would like at this time.

Place the smaller cup into the bigger, red cup. Pour your water in between the two cups, so it fills until about a half inch below the rim. You’ll want to push down on the smaller cup the entire time because the goal is to have the two rims even with each other.

Secure your second cup in place with the tape.

Place in the freezer overnight.

When you are ready to place your lanterns out for all to enjoy, remove them from the fridge and give yourself about 5 minutes. This is the perfect time to discuss the scientific changes you observe.

• The water is now frozen.

• The frozen water has pushed the small cup up.

• The frozen water has perhaps even changed the shape of the outer cup.

Remove the inner cup with a little tug and turn the red cup upside down to shake out the ice lantern. Time is not on your side handling the frozen lanterns, as they will melt quickly.

Showcase them with a battery-operated candle any place around the house where you’d like to wow your guests!

Who doesn’t love a good snow globe? Each one is a spellbinding combination of swirling, swishing liquid, and falling glitter that is perfect for sensory play. As mesmerizing as they are, did you know that snow globes are actually an experiment regarding the scientific principle of viscosity?

Let’s apply the standard of viscosity by creating a Snowman Snow Globe. We’ll put it together and then explain why it works.

You will need the following:

• A water bottle (a clear glass water bottle was used here)
• Clear glue
• Tap water
• Glitter
• Black tape for the snowman’s top hat
• Markers, paper, and pipe cleaners to make the snowman face
• Craft items for the “floaters” inside the globe, like snowflakes, stars, buttons, or jingle bells

First, let’s get our snow globe looking like a snowman. Using a sharpie marker, draw on the eyes and buttons.

Second, you can draw on the carrot nose, but we used leftover orange sticky craft paper here.

Next, select a pipe cleaner to tie around under his carrot nose for a little scarf.

The man needs a top hat, right? Wrap the cap in black tape for his hat.

Now that he’s dressed and ready to go, squirt the clear glue into the bottle. We added more glue to one of our bottles. Will more thick glue make the glitter move slower or faster?

Next, sprinkle in your glitter and drop in the items that will float.

Now it’s time to watch the snow fly!

So what does viscosity mean for the snow globe?

The viscosity of a fluid is its relative “thickness.” Think of glue or maple syrup. Both are thick and slow. Viscosity is measured by its resistance to a stress factor. In the case of our snow globe, the stress is the water and shaking motion. Compared to the water, it is much thicker, slowing the fall of our glitter, snowflakes, and jingle bells.