Create and Learn: My First E-book!

I'm so excited to share with you some exciting news! My first E-book came out this past week! I've been working with the wonderful people at Demand Media the past few months to produce my book: Create and Learn! Super Fun Projects That Build a Kid's Creativity and Brainpower. It is 86 pages full of Chocolate Muffin Tree inspiration to be more creative with your children and at the same time creating special memories together.

It has been a lot of work writing this book, while teaching High School Art full time, creating blog posts, and taking care of my family.  I am so proud that I was able to accomplish this book. If someone would have told me two years ago when starting this blog that I would have an E-book based on The Chocolate Muffin Tree, I would have never believed them. I am overjoyed that it has become a reality! Hooray for me!

Create and Learn! is available at Amazon.com for only $7.99

Liquid Watercolor Experiments

My daughter can never get enough of experimentation with liquid watercolors and different surfaces. It is neat to see the interaction of the liquid watercolors on all the different textures and how each material absorbs or not.  If you don't have liquid watercolor, food coloring mixed with water can be substituted for this activity.

Materials Needed:

Liquid Watercolors mixed with water

Food Coloring mixed with water

eye droppers

newspaper

paper towels

tissues

napkins

coffee filters

baby wipes

To begin the experimentation, lay down newspaper to protect the table surface. Either water down food coloring or liquid watercolors and place in muffin tins or small containers.  Use the eye droppers to drop color on to different surfaces such as: paper towels, tissues, napkins, coffee filters, baby wipes, newspaper, and more....

Paper Towel Experimentation

Facial Tissue

 Baby Wipes

 Newspaper

What Should We Make With All Our Experiments?

Dancing Candy Hearts Experiment

Do you have any left over candy hearts from Valentine's day? Well,  I have just the experiment that you can do with candy hearts that my daughter has been going crazy about the past few days.

Materials Needed:

Candy Hearts

Clear jar

1 cup of water

2 Tablespoons of baking soda 

about a 1/2 cup or more of vinegar

First, fill a small clear jar with about a cup of water.  Then put 2 Tablespoons of baking soda and stir.

After that,  put about 2 or 3 candy hearts in the mixture.  They will just sit at the bottom of the jar at first.

Then add the vinegar and the hearts will begin to dance or rise and fall! C was really excited how they were dancing!

We stirred them around to help the hearts move about.  Essentially the baking soda and vinegar are reacting to create carbon dioxide and bubbles and lifting the hearts up. In the end, the candy hearts just stayed at the top, but C had fun experimenting with adding more baking soda or vinegar to see if it they would dance or move more. This occupied her for a long time!

Happy Heart Experimenting!

Does Your Child Keep a Sketchbook?

My daughter has had a sketchbook before, but I was excited to see some of her drawings that she recently did in her new book.  I gave her no instruction so I was really impressed.  She usually will draw things from her imagination, but she chose to draw things around the house.  I wanted to share her wonderful drawings. Let me know what you think.


Here is her sketch of our Valentine Teapot that we have had forever and that she has always been enamored with.  It was so cool to see that she sketched it.

Here is a sketch that C made of my husband's plastic heart gear that he ordered online.  It was created by a 3-D printer which is something my husband has been obsessed with.  Obviously my daughter finds it just as fascinating or she wouldn't have sketched it.  The gears actually work on the heart too. SO fun!

Lastly, here is my daughter's sketch of The Snowy Day DVD cover.  She has loved this book and movie since she could walk. It just happened to be out because she told me that the snow reminded her of Peter and the Snowy Day and she wanted to see the DVD and book.  That book will always have a special place in our hearts here.

I can't wait to see what else my daughter will sketch in her new sketchbook!

Bubble Printed Valentine Hearts

My all time most popular post on the The Chocolate Muffin Tree is Bubble Printing and we revisited this technique just recently to create some Valentine Hearts. They turned out beautifully.

Materials Needed:
(Per color you need)
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoons tempera paint
few squirts of dish soap
containers
straws
paper

We made Bubble Prints in this post here if you want to follow the tutorial with pictures. Basically you mix up the ingredients above in each container per each color. Then you blow into the mixture like you were blowing bubbles in milk (watch that little ones don't suck up the soapy mixture) and place a paper over the colored bubbles to create a print. The print is created as the bubbles pop. Each time you'll need to blow more bubbles to create more prints.

After you have a bunch of bubble printed papers, you can use them to create heart shapes.  We used construction paper in Valentine colors to frame our hearts. You could make these hearts into Greeting Cards or even Heart Garland.

Happy Bubble Printing and Happy Hearts Day!