WEBELOS

Artist

Which Color Holds Heat Longest?

Circle 10 Council

Materials needed:

4 juice cans

Poster paint: white, black, green and red

Hot water, close to boiling

4 thermometers

Food coloring

Paint each can a different color, then fill each can with equal amounts of hot water. Add food coloring to the hot water, mixing drops of all the colors together to get black. Put a thermometer in each can, then record the temperature every three minutes until the water cools. Make a graph showing your results. Which color held heat best?

AFTERIMAGES

Circle 10 Council

Cut 3" circles from brightly colored sheets of construction paper (red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and violet). With full sheets of black and gray (or a piece of gray cardboard), go outdoors in bright sunlight or sit under a bright lamp indoors. Put the red circle on the black paper and look at it steadily for at least thirty seconds without moving your eyes from the paper. Sometimes the experiment works better by shutting one eye. Now take the red circle away and continue looking steadily at the black background. There will still appear to be a circle on it, the color will be green, not red! Try the experiment again with a gray instead of a black background. The gray will also appear to be green. Turning off the light or moving into a shadow sometimes increases the effect. Now try the experiment with the green circle, the afterimage will be red. With the blue circle the image will be orange, and the orange circle will give a blue image. Yellow will leave a violet image and violet will leave a yellow image.

PAPER AND CRAYON RELAY RACE

Circle 10 Council

Each team is numbered off and given a crayon. On signal, all #1 players run to the leader, who whispers the name of an object they must draw and gives each artist a piece of paper. On signal, they run back to their team and immediately begin to draw the object with the crayon. When team members correctly guess the object, the artist runs back to the leader. First team to send the artist back earns a point. The #2 players become the artists and the game continues.

No Mess Plaster Or Clay Sculpture

Circle 10 Council

Materials needed:

1 plastic bag (grocery or freezer are ideal) 2 cups of water

5 cups of plaster of Paris or clay of your choice twist tie medium size mixing bowl scissors

plastic knife measuring cup

Before making your sculpture, decide if you want it to be a "representational" sculpture, meaning it looks like an object or figure, or if you want it to be an "abstract" sculpture, which is based on the real thing but does not look exactly like it. Set your bag in the plastic bowl and pour 2 cups of water into it. Slowly add Plaster of Paris. Hold the top of the bag closed with one hand while squishing and squeezing the bag with your other hand until all the lumps of plaster are mixed with the water. Then, squeeze out all the air and use a twist tie to close the bag. Lay the bag down on a smooth surface. At this point, the mixture will seem to be runny and won’t hold a shape. Suddenly it will begin to harden and feel warm. Quickly form your sculpture by pulling and pressing the mixture inside the bag. Important - as you work, keep pulling the bag up from the plaster so it doesn’t become stuck in the plaster. Let your finished sculpture dry for 30 minutes. Carefully cut the plastic bag open and peel it away from the plaster sculpture you have made. If you wish, you can use a plastic knife to draw lines or other designs on your sculpture. Let harden for 24 hours. Use sandpaper to smooth any rough spots. If you wish to paint the sculpture, you will need to seal it with a clear acrylic spray first or the paint will not adhere well. Instead of painting, you can glue on leaves, seeds, shells or other natural objects. Use you imagination!

Creating Critters

Circle 10 Council

Preparation: 8 or more people in small groups; scissors, construction paper, glue.

Divide the players into small groups and give each group a pair of scissors, glue and a variety of colors of construction paper. Within a given time limit (15 minutes to half an hour) each group designs and constructs a new species of animal. They must decide on a name for their critter, where it lives and what it eats. When all groups are finished, a spokesman for each group introduces their critter to everyone.

CRAYON COPIER

Materials needed:

paper crayons

pencil tape

Scribble with a crayon until the paper is covered completely with a solid color. Don’t get too concerned if there are small gaps of white space; the main thing is to provide a consistent coat of color that will transfer to another sheet of paper. Place the paper, colored side down, onto a clean sheet of paper of the same size or

slightly larger. You may need to tape the sheets in place, if the papers shift while the boy is drawing. On the clean side of the colored upon paper, have the boys draw a picture. When done, lift the paper up and the drawing will have transferred to the clean sheet.

CRAYON KOOKIES

Materials needed:

old crayons, broken into small pieces

paper muffin cups muffin pan

Put broken crayon pieces in the bottom of paper muffin cups and place the muffin cups in a muffin pan. Bake at 400 degrees, just until the crayons begin to melt. This takes about five minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely. Remove the paper cup. These are great for leaf rubbing and scratch boards.

LINE DESIGNS

Using manuscript or cursive writing, write your name on a large sheet of paper. Use crayons or markers to trace around the shape of the name. Continue drawing the shape until the paper is filled. For variations, try using a color scheme, such as complementary colors, primary

colors, rainbow colors, etc. You may choose to vary the thickness of the lines or incorporate other shapes into the drawing.

HELPFUL HINTS

GLUE

The best glue for plastic (such as bleach bottles and milk cartons) is clear silicone. Scotch contact cement is good for bonding rubber or plastic to wood. Egg whites make a bond adhesive to glue the paper of egg cartons. Tacky white glue works best on Styrofoam. Wallpaper paste is good for paper mache because it doesn’t mold.

SAND PAINTING

You can color salt with food coloring or tempera to use as a substitute for sand.

COLORING FIREPLACE LOGS AND CHIPS

Soak logs and chips in a solution of water and salt and you get yellow flames when the wood is burning; soaking in borax and water produces green flames. Try throwing salt or borax into your next campfire and see the flames change colors - don’t throw in the whole box, ½ cup will get you started.

COSTUME MAKEUP

Combine liquid skin cleanser with powdered sugar for thickness and add food coloring. This wipes right off.

HOLES IN PLASTIC

To make holes in plastic, use the heated tip of your hot glue gun. It is easier and safer than using a heated nail and pliers.

ANTIQUING EFFECTS

Apply a liberal amount of black or brown paste shoe polish to an object to be "antiqued". Wipe off excess polish before it dries. This gives an especially good effect when used with tin foil.