Stuff We Love – Page 7 – The Creative Salad

A Photographic Periodic Table of the Elements

Last week at the California Academy of Sciences we picked up these fantastic ~~posters~~ placements (evidently!) that we’re planning on hanging (one will go in our homeschool area and one will head into work with David for his cubicle).

The whole family has been pouring over the posters. I love how these pictures (and interesting factoids written up on the reverse side) have been jump starting family conversations about chemistry and physics.

What a great use of photography to illustrate the composition of our elements. The sample items are almost as interesting as the elements themselves!

The authors website, The Photographic Periodic Table of the Elements, contains a wealth of information and many more photos for each of the elements. There are two companion books, The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe and Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t, also available. I’m looking forward to checking them out from the library.

Buddha Boards Paint With Water Fun

Buddha Boards make for an easy, kid-friendly painting activity.

Simply paint on the surface with water. Then the water evaporates leaving you with a clean slate, so you can do it all over again! No messy clean up and endless art opportunities!

We’ve been leaving our Buddha Board (with a jar of water) out in the living room so our daughter can easily paint any time she wants without any assistance from mom. How empowering! She LOVES it!

Thanks to Patty and Ron for the super fun gift!

Pride and Prejudice with Pictures!

Did you know that Marvel has published a graphic novel version of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice? (Thank you to Jenny for the info!)

As someone who devours all things Jane Austen, I was thrilled to hear about this. I’m all about bringing nineteenth century literature to the masses.

My copy arrived this morning. I can’t wait to dive right in. Doesn’t Caroline Bingley (above) look deliciously awful?! I abhor Mr. Collins already too:

I’ll provide one last shot, because I know you’re dying to see their interpretation of Pemberley…

I can’t wait to get reading… After this, I’m tackling the Marvel Illustrated Sense & Sensibility.

The Problem Solver

Want to play outside but your neighbor is using his noisy weed wacker?

There’s no need to fret.

Just break out your kid-sized noise reduction headphones.

They’re perfect for playing with the band at concerts and scooping dirt in the yard.

Fractiles Magnetic Tiles

$Making a menorah with fractiles$

Two posts about magnets in one week! Clearly this is one of our toddler’s current obsessions! (If you missed our post earlier in the week about making your own literary magnets, including the Kevin Henkes Lily magnet shown above, here’s the link.)

We bought these Fractiles for a trip back East earlier this year.

Not only were they fun on the plane and

enjoyed during our trip,

but they have continued to be played with regularly here at home.

She loves matching the pictures from the package (featuring dozens of designs) and making up her own designs.

The possibilities are endless!

The manufacturer packages several different sets of Fractiles magnets: the plain Fractiles Fridge Fractiles and the one that we have, Fractiles: Travel Version, which contains a steel board on which to place the magnets.

We highly recommend Factiles for hours of educational fun!