Crayon People and What Happened to the Minoans?

Completely unrelated, but these are the two favorite projects we did this week.

First, the crayon people. I received an awesome little gingerbread man baking mold in my stocking this year. (I've got an awesome Santa.)  =) AND the kids got new crayons in theirs. So, we decided it was time to clean out the crayon box and recycle all of those broken bits and pieces. I thought the stocking treasure and recycling chore combined would make a fun project. 

We started with a little peeling action...

After about 2 minutes of this fine motor practice Joshua announced, "I DO NOT want to be a crayon peeler for my job when I grow up!" (I laughed at that one even hours later when I remembered how serious he was.) =)

They kept it up (with help) and enjoyed it much more once I started each of the crayon papers for them. 

We divided them up into my new fancy mold...

Then after about 7 minutes in the hot oven and another hour to cool down and harden, we had adorable little people crayons!

The kids LOVED that they turned out all swirly and will make multiple colors on the paper at once. They often try and hold onto several crayons at once to make the same rainbow effect that these do much   more easily. First they colored...

Then they discovered that the people crayons could stand up...

AND stack and balance! Which just made them THAT MUCH COOLER!

Now about the Minoans...We had a fun project that we wanted to do to go along with Joy's history for this week but we REALLY wanted to wait for Daddy to do it with us, so we had to wait until Sunday night when he was home. Joy built her project ahead of time so it would be all ready and dry when he was ready to do it.  

(It's made of model magic around a bottle and she's painting it so carefully!)  =)

Daddy read to us the final section in the chapter all about 'The Mysterious End of the Minoans.' Historians think that many of the Minoans left the island of Crete because of the volcano that erupted and sank the entire island of Thera which was nearby. It caused huge tidal waves that swept the shores of crete and created large clouds of ash, dust and smoke that ruined the air, land and crops. This one disaster helped bring the first great civilization of Crete to its end. 

Then it was time to set off our own volcano!

The kids squealed as our volcano oozed and bubbled...

They LOVED it!  =)

And then it was over...very quickly. Faith was sad that it was over and, making this face, said she wanted to see it again. 

So Joy got a turn to pour in the vinegar this time...

It surprised me that they were just as thrilled about it as the first time we did it. 

Faith Elaina was delighted to see it spew again.  =)

It didn't seem to matter how many times they had already seen it, they still reacted the same way...

Then Daddy mixed some in a clear bottle so that they could watch what was happening inside their volcano. 

We ended the experiment with one last 'eruption' and then it was done. 

'No One Has More Fun Than The Adamses!'