Day 4
On day 4 we continued with our watermelon theme with a watermelon volcano! I bought a whole watermelon, cut it in half and scooped out the fruit. Then I gathered together: one half of the watermelon rind, some baking soda, some white vinegar, and about 5 drops of food coloring (pick whichever color you like best – I chose green). I used about 1 cup of baking soda and about 2 cups of vinegar, but how much you want to use really depends on how much you want the “lava” to flow over. If you don’t want it to overflow, use less. I put the baking soda inside the watermelon rind, and I mixed the vinegar and the food coloring together in a container. Then we went outside, set the watermelon rind on the ground, and poured the vinegar/food coloring mixture over it. Instant volcano!
Pro Tip: Plan carefully where you want the volcano to erupt. Food coloring will stain concrete. Baking soda and vinegar can kill grass. Find something to put the volcano in or on, such as inside a children’s plastic swimming pool, or on top of a tarp. Or put it on the ground in a corner of your yard that you don’t care about as much, such as a shady spot where the grass never grows, or a spot where the weeds have taken over.
With the other half of the watermelon rind, we hammered in some “nails” using a hammer and some plastic golf tees. Ellie decided to make a smiley face using the golf tees. It was a great fine motor skills activity, we plan to do it again every time we buy a watermelon.
Day 5
For Day 5 we cooked and ate foods that started with the letter W. Breakfast was waffles and watermelon. Lunch was wheat bread (for our sandwiches). Snack was white popcorn. Dinner was wings and waffle fries. And of course we had water!
We finished up our watermelon theme by using these watermelon alphabet play doh mats I found on Fantastic Fun and Learning. You can use them with play doh, beads, buttons, all sorts of things. We started with play doh but quickly found we liked using beads much better.
And we talked about our last letter W word, worry, using three worry books I found at the library: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes, Worried by Sarah Medina, and The Don’t Worry Book by Todd Parr.
The first week of “school” went amazingly smooth and we had so much fun. Each night I did about 30 minutes to an hour of prep work, then each day we spent about 30 minutes to an hour doing the activities.
Book Resources for the Letter W:
Here are all of the books I used for the week, all of which I found at our local public library: Worm Weather by Jean Taft, One Cool Watermelon by Hannah Tofts, The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli, Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes, Worried by Sarah Medina, and The Don’t Worry Book by Todd Parr.
