April Vacation Week Edition

Indoor Mini-Putt with Mr. Corey

Design a mini-golf course with a few holes using things around your house.

Materials

• Either a golf ball/indoor golf ball, OR a homemade ball made of socks, rubber bands or hair-ties, and tape, or any other type of small ball you may have.
• A few cups
• Anything you have around your house to design the course, including furniture, rolled up towels, blankets, pillows, shirts, pants, jackets, bags etc.

Ideas

• For holes you can use cups turned on their sides, upside down baseball hats, a simple circle with tape, or any other “goal”
• To make a putter you can use a broom with a box taped on the end, your foot, an actual putter, a baseball bat, or anything you want to make to hit your ball with.
• For added challenges, tape a bit of cardboard on the back of a dining room chair and lay it down to form a ramp
• Why not make a course that goes down some steps, or off of a second floor ledge? Maybe start the hole on a bed, putt off the side, and try not to go out of bounds.

How to Play

Everyone starts from a common point on each course (known as a “hole”).

They then hit their ball through the course trying to use as few hits (strokes) as possible.

Each stroke is worth 1 point

You can either all play at once, taking turns to hit your balls and marking the spot with a penny so you don't become an obstacle for the next player, or you can finish each hole one at a time.

When you are all going at once, each player hits their ball down the hole in turn.

• Once your ball stops rolling, mark its spot with a penny and pick it up, and the next player then takes their turn.
• Once all players have had a turn that round, the player whose ball landed closest to the hole goes first, followed by the next closest.
• Repeat until each player has gotten their ball into the hole before moving to the next hole.

Alternatively, each player plays through a hole before the next player goes.

• Once each player has completed a hole, each player then moves onto the next hole.
• The player order then goes based on least strokes taken during the previous hole up to the most (so they can learn from the mistakes of those who go before them).

The winner is whomever has the LOWEST amount of strokes by the end of the course, and therefore took the fewest number of tries to get their ball in the hole.

Create awesome art by repurposing everyday materials.

Grow your Vocabulary

• Surface: the flat side of an object; the outside of an object
• Protruding: standing out from the surface; sticking out
• Circumference: the edge that forms a shape
• Scalloped Edge: formed or decorated with a series of small curves along the edge

Make a Large Paper Plate Flower

Materials

• White paper plate
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Markers or colored pencils
• Scissors
• White glue
• Strong tape (or hot glue…adult use only)
• Colored paper (construction paper, tissue paper, or wrapping paper)
• Toilet paper pube
• Thin dowel or twig, about 14” long

Instructions

1. With a pencil mark a dot in the center of the plate.
2. With a ruler, draw a line from the dot to the edge of the plate and make a dot on the edge of the plate.
3. From the dot at the edge of the plate, measure about 2 1/2” and make another dot on the edge of the plate.
4. Keep making dots on the edge of the plate every 2 ½”.
5. With the ruler, continue drawing lines from the center dot to the dots on the edge.
6. Repeat drawing lines from the center dot until you get around the circumference of the circle and all the sections are blocked out.
7. Your lines should look like slice of a pizza pie.
8. Scallop the edges of the plate with a pair of scissors (cut a series of small curves from one dot to the next.)
9. With a pencil, draw a detailed pattern in only one section. Design and color only one section at a time.
10. Color in your pencil pattern with deep dark colors. Take time with each section. Each one is special. Take a break whenever you feel like you are hurrying to get one done. Go to step 11, then go back to filling in sections. Cover the entire surface of the plate.
11. Cut toilet paper tube in ½, then cut the ½’s in ½. Now you have 4 pieces.
12. When all sections are designed and colored, glue or tape one piece of the toilet paper tube in the middle of the plate. It will protrude from the center of the plate.
13. Cut paper petals and leaves out of colorful paper.
14. Glue paper petals onto paper and toilet paper tube.
15. Cut paper or glue in little beads, or anything else you have on hand, to look like seeds, in the toilet paper tube.
16. Find a twig outside (or use a thin dowel.)
17. Attach twig ½ way up the back of the plate with tape or hot glue.
18. Glue on paper leaves to stick with strong tape or glue.