Water Week - Update #1

Monday

Trip to the library

It's always difficult for me to skim through the books at the library when I have M with me (which is always). I was smart this time, and pulled up the online catalog on the library website and did a quick search for "water" in the juvenile section on Sunday night. It pulled up a ton of books, so I copied the title and location for about 15 books that were listed as available and printed the list to take with us to the library. I tried to find a good combination of informational books and pleasure books.

When we got to the library I quickly found the two books in the children's section that I knew would have pictures, and set M down in a comfy chair where I could see her while I located the rest. I flipped through and narrowed down my choices until I had several books with experiments to try, as well as a book of poems about water and a couple of stories about boats and swimming. "The Water Gift and the Pig of the Pig" turned out to be a really neat story about using a divining rod to find water, and "Sun Dance Water Dance" has some great illustrations (we have read that three times already!).

We stuck around for "Toddler Tales" to hear some stories and sing songs, then headed back to the car for a "car picnic." We are out of the house so much lately that I always pack a cooler with snacks that we can eat for lunch on the go.

We went straight from the library to a friend's house for a play date. We bought a season pass to the water park that is located right behind our house, and we planned to go together that afternoon.

Water Park / Pool

No "Water Week" would be complete without some swimming! M is just learning to swim and has so much fun at the water park. They have a splash pad area, but mostly she stays in the pool. While we were there we talked about floating - how she can float on her back, and how her life vest floats to keep her above water. We also talked about how her wet feet make footprints on the concrete, but the hot sun quickly heats the water and it evaporates.

 Jello Pops

We wrapped up the day with some frozen Jello popsicles. We actually made these on Sunday, but since we decided to freeze them (which turned out to be a bad idea), we weren't able to eat them until Monday. They were very easy to make:
 

•  Mix up a box of blue Jello. We used this opportunity to get in some practice with measuring. I let M dump the mix into the bowl, then helped her pour in 1 cup of hot water. We mixed it together, and then she measured 1 cup of cold water to add to the bowl. After mixing again, she held the cups while I poured the Jello mixture in to fill the cups about half way.
• We put the cups in the refrigerator for 30 minutes until they were partially set, and then added some Swedish Fish. The cups we had were fairly narrow, so the fish didn't have very much space.
• After we added two fish to each cup, we transferred the cups to the freezer to sit overnight.

Lessons learned:

• Swedish Fish are not very good frozen. They were frozen solid (obviously), and got slimy as they defrosted - yuck!
• Pulling the fish out of the Jello was clearly way more fun than actually eating the popsicle.
• Next time, make the Jello in a big clear bowl and add lots of fish. Regular Jello would be much better (not frozen). Use a spoon (or fingers?) to go fishing!