We stayed in this weekend and had some fun with science! My sister, a science teacher, sent me some links to preschool science activities, and we tried a bunch out: milk painting, candy coloring (above left) and salt-dough ornaments (above right). The salt dough recipe we used was super easy: 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and 1.5 cups of hot water. (I ended up adding a little more water to get a good dough consistency.) Ornaments baked at 325 degrees for an hour, cooled, then decorated with markers. The only problem was they looked so much like cookies we ended up making a second, edible batch! We made an ocean in a bottle with a mini water bottle. Little bottle = less wasted cooking oil, and Joseph loved holding his own little waves. Water, blue food coloring and cooking oil, and that's it! For the longest time, Joseph refused to touch anything gooey or sticky with his hands. Just lately, he's been more willing to explore textures. Even dunking his hands into a big mixing bowl filled with flour was exciting (and messy). I gave him some store-bought slime but you can make your own. I also picked up some Zyrofoam at the dollar store, which was just as fun without the mess. Here are some of the sites with science activities we enjoyed:

• http://happyhooligans.ca/20-science-activities-toddlers-preschoolers/
• http://babbledabbledo.com/20-science-projects-for-preschoolers/
• http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/50091/preschool-science-experiments