Jellyfish in a Bottle

The photos are much better at this original post which has been knocking around in Pinterest for a while. And now I have read a Thai blog - how cool is that! Don't worry, the post is in English and is simple enough to follow even in Thai.

This little jellyfish really does float to the top whenever you invert the bottle. We made a big one and a little one. I put a few drops of grape koolaid in for coloring - be sure to color the water gently or it will be too dark to really see the jellyfish (ask me how I know!) Although that can be a cool effect too - jellyfish at night!

The other part of this activity I loved was using recycling to craft. Last summer we went to the Sciencenter in Ithaca NY and played on their recycling table - they have barrels full of cleaned out plastic containers, ribbons, and other "trash" plus glue, scissors, staples and other materials to create new things - plus examples of paper plate masks, decorated plastic boxes, and so on to spur your child's thinking on what to make. J has been raiding the recycling bins ever since for "robot materials" but jellyfish materials will do nicely too.

While on the subject of kid activities I want to mention a new favorite book we found at the Borders going out of business sale: Totally Irresponsible Science Experiments While probably for older kids, we've found tons of fun and frugal experiments that we can do with things like salt, pepper, balloons, and of course vinegar and baking soda. The kids LOVE this book and beg to do something new from it almost every day. We've only had one project total fail so far - which was a teaching moment in itself since that is what happens to scientists in real life.