Bouncy Balls, Rice Maker Pancakes and things we’ve made because of Social Media

Can you believe that summer has officially started? We had our last day of preschool and I may have bawled just a little bit-not just because we’ll miss all the sweet friends we’ve made over the years and our amazing teachers but because I’m going to have to spend ALL the days with the duo for the next 8 weeks! What are we going to do? (besides watch World Cup???)

Thankfully, we’ve already come up with a few ideas and most of the them literally came to me in my Facebook feed. (or my pinterest feed, and my Instagram feed….I think I may need a social media detox this summer too if it weren’t all the really amazing ideas it provides me with!)
One brilliant idea was this borax crystal growing experiment.

I found it when I realized how amazing borax was after I tried it on this bouncy ball experiment that totally totally failed for us.

The chemistry was definitely cool but I’m glad we did this one outside.
The boys and I were unimpressed because we all envisioned the ingredients magically turning into those awesome dollar store bouncy balls but they were more like balls of glue that dried really fast.  Regardless, it was something fun and messy and it inspired a talk about how the journey is sometimes better than the actual destination which was rather enlightening with 5-year olds.
We also made what might look like a flop out of this neat egg carton into helicopter idea. 

The guys and I were proud of what we made but they were a little difficult and labor intensive and they didn’t LOOK like all the effort we put into making them and they didn’t look like helicopters.  We’ll revisit this when the guys are a little older and I figure out how to cut those cartons better and we eat more eggs.

But I was pretty impressed that these pool ring cupcakes miraculously turned out! If you’re really adventurous you can make umbrellas and pool noodles and beach blankets.  I was just pretty proud of getting most of the bears into the pool rings and that was good enough for all of us.

And we probably will try this pancake in my rice maker again this summer.  It was a little odd and it won’t be any of our favorite breakfast but it was something, not rice, that magically came out of the rice cooker and that is reason enough.

But my happiest thing I saw on Social Media recently is this 100 happy days project and because of it every day for a hundred days I’ll be posting one happy thing somewhere and just by noticing these things in my life, apparently I’ll be happier too.  So why not?  I hope you join me, and if you find something out there in cyberspace (do they still call it cyberspace?) to help me entertain my littles this summer, please let me know-that will definitely make me happier too!

PS. my day one for #100happydays is this one.  Oh how he makes me smile:)

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)