ice breaking and book making

I was in the shower this morning when I heard excited squeals downstairs from the children. I heard the back door open and shut and then the pounding of feet up the stairs.

The next moment the bathroom door was flung open (our door is lockable but you can open the lock from the outside - handy for when the toddler locks themselves in the bathroom, not handy when you want to shower in peace.)

"There's ice in the garden!"

Excited squealing from all of them, even Shrek who isn't sure what the excitement is but wants to join in.

By the time I was dressed, there was a series of ice related experiments going on in the kitchen. Od had put some ice in the microwave and was timing how long it took to melt on the low setting. Eb was holding some in his hand and Mb was dropping chunks on the path outside to try and shatter it. There was the usual conversations about states of matter, and a discussion about mass, velocity and force as Mb noticed that the thicker the piece of ice, the harder it was to break.

Then we were off to look at ice crystals under the microscope (not ours, I was too wimpy) so we found these images on the Internet.

Now to the book making.

I've got quite into making little journals and notebooks for the kids, as it seems to reduce their paper consumption and it's more than a little addictive.

We've tried a few from the Crafty Crow website here and this excellent website Making Books With Children.

Mb has been hard at work colouring in and writing out the phrases underneath from this free printable. He was very keen to turn it into a Christmas book that he could keep.

What I especially loved is how he personalised it, adding his own drawings and designing a front and back cover, and adding details to the printed pages:

Front Page

Printed Page

Back Cover

We made this book by simply gluing pages together using PVA glue on the left hand margin, then cutting a piece of coloured paper as a book binding and wrapping this round the edges. Then I sliced off any bits of paper that were sticking out a little bit with our guillotine.

This book was only 14 pages long, so this technique worked just fine.

I have in the past made thicker books. To do this I cut the paper to size on the guillotine (we seem to make mostly A5 size) and then holding the paper together with bull dog clips whilst carefully pasting PVA glue on the spine of the book. Normally about three thin coats. Once this is dried, we add a binder like the one above, and then the notebook spends a week pressed between two heavy books. In about a week you have a personalised notebook.

Hurrah for simple craft projects!

I should point out that this is not my invention, and I did read it some where on another blog but cannot find it.