Plant Power and Art Sprouts

This week's guest posts are by Julia Buckingham, KVR Plant Power Camp Instructor, and Vicky Ramsay, KVR Art Sprouts Camp Instructor.

Hello, curious Plant Power friends! We are lucky that our green allies of the plant world can be found right outside our doors! This week I want to ask that you take the time to get to know a plant. This activity can take as long as you would like. It could be a one time deal or just the start of an ongoing plant(s) study.

An activity to start to acclimate you to the plant world:

1. Walk around your yard or while on a hike. Look for a plant that you gravitate toward.
2. Notice particular qualities of this plant.
3. Take note in your mind the color, how the leaves are shaped, how the leaves grow on the stem, look at the margin (or edges) of a leaf
4. Is the plant flowering? If so, what insects are visiting the flower?
5. Are there thorns or little hair-like spikes on the steam or leaves
6. Use a field guide or a phone app to identify the plant.
7. Notice where this plant is growing again. Is it wild or cultivated? Does it grow in clumps or alone? Is the plant low to the ground or tall and thin? Does it prefer sun or shade? Wet, loam, clay or rocky soil?
8. Does it have a smell?

Take time to draw your plant if you so choose. Notice all of the small details in the stem, leaves, flowers. Jot down notes about your observations. Write the date on your paper. At this point decide if you would like to continue with this activity. You can choose another plant on a different day. If you decide to do multiple plants, you can create a plant book and add to it as you discover more details about that plant. This activity could go on for months and years if you really enjoy doing it.

As my favorite herbalist Susun Weed says, “Herbal medicine is peoples’ medicine”. I think this means that many of the plants that live right outside our door have wonderful healing properties. These green allies have so much to offer us. They are free and available to us. There are so many plants out there, it can be overwhelming! Take the time to learn one plant at a time and at your own pace. Notice when the plant starts to grow in the spring, when it flowers, where it grows, and how it goes dormant in the fall.

Simple Plantain Oil
Materials: 

• small jar
• oil (like olive oil or even coconut oil or lard/tallow if you can get it to liquify in the summer heat) 
• masking tape and marker
• willingness to go outside in the hot heat to collect your leaves

Brief description of plantain: Plantain grows in almost every yard, low down in the grass. They have a dark green broad leaf, kind of like a big paddle. The leaves have ribbed veins and the leaves form a rosette pattern and grow from the middle of the plant. The flower and seeds of the plantain grow from the center of the plant on a tall spear-like steam.

Collect plantain leaves. I pick them one at a time and fill the jar as I pick them. Rip the leaves up into smaller pieces. Fill a small jar to the top with fresh plantain plant material. Add oil to the top of the jar, making sure to cover all of the plant material. Note: You may have to add more oil to the top in a few days, so check it often. Create a label. I like to put mine on masking tape with the date, the plant, and what kind of oil you used. Let the plant/oil mixture sit on a towel in a dark place in a jar for at least six weeks. After six weeks, strain out the plant material. Either put the oil back into the same jar or smaller jars to give out as gifts or other family members. Use the oil on any small cuts, bruises, bumps, cracked hands or feet, pimples or bee and wasp stings.

A few things to consider: Collecting plants in the sun ensures the least amount of moisture in the plant. Make sure to protect yourself from the sun with a hat. Always check for ticks after you are out foraging for plants! Be very cautious as to how much of a plant you are harvesting. If the plant is growing abundantly, you may consider picking it. If there are only a few of the plants, it is best to leave it.

               
Hey Campers,

This week would have been our Art Sprouts week at camp together and I'm sad we won't be able to meet. But I have a couple activities for you that we have always found to be fun, whenever we do them. I hope you try out one or two and if you do, let us know how it went! Send pictures! We'd love to see your smiling faces.

With big love,
Vicki

Goon Goo
(recipe from the Mad Professor by Mark Frauenfelder)
There are lots of recipes for slime out there, but this one is perfect, in part because you can see the chemistry happening and change the quantities to see how it changes your goo.

First you need to make a Borax solution
Borax is a naturally occurring mineral salt that is left behind when a natural lake evaporates. It's often used as a laundry additive and you can buy it at most grocery stores.
To make 1 batch of Borax solution add 1 tablespoon of borax to 1 cup of warm water. Stir until it dissolves. Store the liquid in a jar with a lid and label it, “BORAX SOLUTION.”

Goon Goo Ingredients
2 Tablespoons Elmer's Glue-All or other white glue
2 Tablespoons water (purified water is best but tap water is okay.)
1 drop food coloring
2 teaspoons borax solution

1. Combine the glue and water in a glass cup or bowl. Stir with a spoon until completely mixed.
2. Add 1 drop of food coloring to the glue-water mixture. (Truly you don't need very much food coloring to stain your goo. Too much will produce an impossibly messy glob that will stain everything it touches and create strife at home.)
3. Add the borax solution to the glue solution and stir. This is where the chemistry starts to happen. The mixture will immediately start to form a blob. Keep stirring. If some of the glue-water liquid does not clump together with the rest of the blob, add a little more borax solution and stir some more.
4. Put your blob in a plastic baggie and knead it.
5. Remove the blob and play with it! The plastic polymer feels cool and clammy. It looks wet and sticky, but will snap if you pull on it quickly. It will bounce if you throw it on the ground, and slump into a puddle if you set it on a countertop.

THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND THE GOO
Elmer's glue contains two kinds of polymers: polyvinyl acetate and polyvinyl alcohol. The polyvinyl acetate is in the form of microscopic drops, and the polyvinyl alcohol surrounds the drops. When you use glue to stick things together, the polyvinyl alcohol dries up in contact with air, and this causes the polyvinyl acetate particles to clump together and become hard. When the borax solution is added to the glue-water mixture, it forms lots of rubbery “bridges” that link the polyvinyl chains. That's why you end up with a blob. This kind of chemical reaction is called cross linking.

Saucer Slime 
Use the same recipe for Goon Goo, but try using 2 Tablespoons clear gel glue instead of Elmers white glue. (not Super glue)

Frankenstein's Hand
(recipe from The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science, by Sean Connolly)
Materials:
1 glass
1 disposable rubber glove
3 Tablespoons vinegar
2 teaspoons baking soda

1. Pour the vinegar into the glass.
2. Add the baking soda to the inside of the glove. Hold the glove by its wrist and shake the powder into the fingers.
3. While letting the fingers fold downward, carefully attach the wrist opening of the glove onto the glass. It should be a tight fit. Try not to spill the baking soda out of the fingertips yet!
4. Now lift the fingers of the glove up, allowing the baking soda to fall into the glass. A chemical reaction will ensue, filling up the glove with some kind of gas.. (do you know what it is?)
5. Stand back and watch as Frankenstein's hand begins to come alive.

You can give this experiment a little Halloween flavor by marking the glove with bones, veins, and screws. You can also add a little ketchup at the bottom of the glove to increase the gore factor.

This video shows a pretty good reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIJexxbAkEY
This video shows a few challenges, but also the book the recipe comes from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqLUfwAQgDo

Stop Motion Observation

Materials
1 tablet of paper or 1 small pack of post-it notes
pencil or pen
access to plants outside

1. Go outside and find a small bud of a tree, or a flower just before it's bloomed. Sketch it in your notebook in the bottom right corner of the first page. Time 1 or 2 hours and then sketch another picture of it on the following page, again in the bottom right corner. Try to keep the size consistent and the stem in the same location. For the entire day, try to capture the bud or bloom every 1 or 2 hours in a quick sketch. If it hasn't bloomed by the end of the day, pick up your observations again the next day until the bloom is fully open.

2. Now hold your post-it notepad or sketch book at the corner between your thumb and forefinger so that you can flip the pages. You can try flipping from front to back or back to front.  As you watch, it will look like a moving picture!