In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we wanted to find out what gives a leaf its signature green appearance.  The answer is complex, but most of it stems from its pigments, the tiny materials that give off color in paint, fur, and even our skin.  In this experiment, we will bring out the green pigments that give a leaf its color and see what other colors a leaf can hide!

What you’ll need:

• Coffee filters
• Small Drinking Glasses
• Rubbing Alcohol
• Tree leaves (preferably from trees that change colors with the seasons)
  

  Our example uses a maple leaf.

• Hot water
• Pencil or pen
• Tape
• Optional: Plastic wrap

What to do:

1. Collect several green leaves from a tree. Trees that really change color in the fall are the best, but you can use leaves from any “deciduous” tree, a tree that loses its leaves in the winter.
2. Tear the set of leaves into several pieces and place them in a small drinking glass.
3. Add just enough rubbing alcohol to barely cover all the leaf pieces.
4. Cover the container with foil or plastic wrap to keep the alcohol from evaporating into the air. (optional)
5. Put the container in a dish of hot tap water for about 30 minutes.
6. Watch for the alcohol to go from clear to green.
7. Cut a strip out of the middle of a coffee filter, about one inch wide and just long enough to dip into the alcohol from the rim of the glass, for the leaf sets that you want to test.
8. Tape one end of the filter to a pencil or stick, and suspend it across the container, with the other end just touching the alcohol and pigment mixture.
9. Allow some of the mixture to travel slowly up the filter slice.
10. Wait about 90 minutes.

Wow, a lot happened over those couple of hours! Let’s investigate…

First, why’d the rubbing alcohol turn St. Paddy’s Day-green?  Well, the alcohol turns green as the pigments from the leaves are absorbed into it; the heated water warms the alcohol, encouraging the pigments that color the leaf to rush out of the cut-up leaf pieces and spread out in the absorbing alcohol, giving it the leaf’s green color too!

After you placed the coffee filter into the resulting green mixture, did you see the green color break up into several different colors?  Out of our mixture, we saw the coffee filter slip pull out the different color pigments.  After they separated, we ended up with dark and light yellows and green pigments.  You can bet that those yellow pigments would have become more active with the arrival of fall later on, when the green pigments start to break down with the season.

The color pigments hidden in our leaf!

What kind of colors did your leaves reveal?  Apparently leaves can hide a lot of different colors, as well as leprechauns!

Enjoy this Green Experiment?  Share It!

Awesome!

Angel RainbowKitty! Congratulations! In recognition of your stunning interior decorating accomplishments, you’ve won 300 JumpStart coins. You can use them to make your room even more beautiful – or for anything else you’d like, of course!

There were some other wonderful entries, but unfortunately we had to choose only one winner. However, we thought the other screenshots were so spectacular that we just had to share them with you and award 75 coins to every entrant for participating! Here are a few of our other contestants:

Congratulations to our winner and to everyone else who entered the contest. Thank you for the beautiful screenshots and keep on decorating!

Share the news!

It’s been a little over two weeks since the personalized rooms launched at JumpStart.com. We hope that your kids have selected the perfect furniture, decided on the best gizmos, and placed everything just the way they like in their room. We know that with all the available pieces, the possible room arrangements are endless, and we’d love to see what your kids have done with their place!

If you’d like to give your kids a chance to win 300 JumpStart coins (wow!), just stop by our Facebook page and post a picture of their JumpStart room. Not sure how to do that? No problem! You’ll find step by step instructions here. Remember, we are choosing a winner on Monday, March 15^th; do be sure to send pictures of your kids’ rooms before then.

Share this Contest with your Friends!

*To learn more about Johnny Appleseed, visit Answers.com here. That’s where we got our info!*

Today is Johnny Appleseed Day, a day to celebrate Chapman’s growing accomplishments and have some fun with apples! You can make an apple tree, too – and, unlike a real apple tree, you won’t need to wait five years to enjoy it!

Materials:

• Large piece of white paper
• Brown construction paper (or a brown paper bag)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Red and green paint
• Paint palette or paper plate
• Play clothes that you’re willing to get paint on
• Fingers!

Get painting!

1. Cut out a tree trunk shape from the brown construction paper and glue it onto the white paper.
2. Put some green paint on your palette and dip one of your hands in. (This is where those play clothes will come in handy!)
3. Use your hand to stamp handprints at the top of the tree trunk. The green handprints should look like branches.
4. Put some red paint on your palette and dip in a finger or two.
5. Use your finger to stamp fingerprints in the branches of your tree. The fingerprints should look like apples.

There you have it – your very own apple tree, ready to be displayed! Now all that’s left to do is sit down with a Red Delicious or Granny Smith and enjoy your beautiful artwork!

Celebrate with your friends!

Want to check out the new venue? Look for the gate just to the left of the Brain Training Arcade. When you see the giant spotlights, you’ll know you’ve arrived.

Keep an eye on the clocks outside to find out when the next performance is scheduled to begin. Then, head on in and grab a seat in the front row.

Or bound up to the stands for a view of the whole scene.

The JumpStart Amphitheater is the perfect spot to make friends with some fellow music-loving Jumpeez, so be sure to say hello and show off your dance moves while you are there!

This exciting new venue is here to stay, so tell us, what performances would you like to see? Perhaps Kisha singing one of our favorite JumpStart tunes, Echolocation? Or maybe a bit of classical music? Comment below to let us know!

Share this New Feature with Friends!

Our first leprechaun craft is great for older kids, so they can have their own leprechaun cup to place coins in, as if the leprechaun is protecting his pot of gold!  The second, simple craft places a pot-of-gold at the end of a rainbow as a door handle decoration and is probably best for your younger children, but even older ones might find it fun!

The Crafty Leprechaun

The Crafty Leprechaun

What You’ll Need:

• 12. oz paper cup (like those used for coffee)
• 2 Green and 2 orange pipe cleaners
• Green, peach, yellow, and black construction paper (one small sheet each)
• Green paint
• One pair of googly eyes
• A black pen, black marker, and red marker (or pen)
• Glue

Here’s what do do:

1. Paint the paper cup green and let it dry.
2. Cut out a circle from the peach construction paper. Make sure it’s big enough to hide the cup’s rim when looking at it straight on.
3. Cut out a hat from the green construction paper and make sure the brim is a little bit wider than the peach circle that will create the head.
4. Use a black marker to make a band on the hat, but leave room in the middle for a buckle!
5. Cut out 3 small squares from the yellow construction paper and then cut out their middles for the hat’s and shoes’ buckles!
6. Glue a buckle onto the center of the hat and then glue the hat onto the top third of the peach circle.
7. Glue the googly eyes a little under the brim of the hat.
8. Draw a nose in black pen and a mouth in red marker (or pen) and then set the face aside.
9. Coil an entire orange pipe cleaner around a pencil or pen and slip it off.
10. Glue the ends of the coil onto the peach circle, making a beard.
11. Cut two small, straight pieces from another orange pipe cleaner and glue these above the googly eyes for eyebrows.
12. Glue the head onto the cup to cover near a third of the cup in length.
13. Take one green pipe cleaner and make a small loop at one end (secure it by wrapping a small part around).  Make a loop in the pipe cleaner right next to the one you just made and twist it so it stays in place. It should now resemble a flower stem with leaves. Take the straight edge and make a third loop that meets the other two in the center, making a clover shape!
14. Repeat the previous step again for the other hand.
15. Attach one on each side of the cup using tape or glue.
16. Cut out two small shoe-shaped pieces from the black paper and glue one yellow buckle to each shoe before gluing them to the bottom of the cup.

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

What You’ll Need

• Paper plate
• Scissors
• 1 sheet of yellow and 1 sheet of green construction paper
• Black marker
• Markers for each color of the rainbow
• Gold and green glitter (optional)
• Glue or tape

Here’s what to do

1. Cut a half-circle into the bottom of the plate.
2. Cut out two pie-shaped pieces on the edge of the plate where the half-circle’s corners line up.
3. Have your child color a rainbow that follows the arch of the half-circle
4. Color the rest of the plate with black marker and be sure to color in a pot rim at the corners of the half-circle
5. Take the yellow construction paper and cut out a shape that resembles a pile of coins, making it as long as the diameter of the half-circle.
6. Run a clear glue stick over the “pile of coins” and sprinkle gold glitter over the construction paper to make it look real!
7. Glue or tape this to the back of the paper plate with the glittery side facing frontward
8. Cut out the shape of a shamrock from the green construction paper and glue it to the center of the pot. Optionally glue green glitter to it.
9. Hang it on any door knob in the house!

Have fun making these crafts with your children! They are a pot-of-fun!

Share These Great St. Patrick’s Day Crafts with Friends!

First, have your child enter the virtual world at JumpStart.com and run over to his or her room. Make sure the room looks just the way he or she wants it, and have the Jumpee stand so that you have a good view of the room.

If you’re using a PC, you can press the “Print Screen” button to capture an image of the entire desktop and send it to your clipboard. To do the same on a Mac, press Command-Control-Shift-3. If you press Command-Control-3 on a Mac, the same image will be automatically saved on your desktop as a PNG file.

Open an image editing program like Microsoft Paint. Paste the image into the program.

In Paint, choose Edit > Paste.

Once you have the image pasted into the program, choose “Save As” to save the image to your computer.

Choose File > Save As... to save the file.

Make sure to save the file in a location where you’ll be able to find it easily. Facebook supports a fairly wide variety of file formats, but JPEG (.jpg) is a safe bet.

Now you’re ready to upload the photo to JumpStart’s Facebook fan page! First, navigate to the fan page. At the top of the screen just underneath the text entry box, there is an icon with a photo on it. Click on this icon.

Click on the photo icon to get started.

Next, Facebook will give you the opportunity to choose whether you want to upload a photo from your drive or take a photo with a webcam. Choose the first option.

Choose "Upload a photo from your drive."

Find the image file on your computer and upload it. Once you’ve uploaded your photo, simply click “Share” to show it to the JumpStart Team and other JumpStart fans!

As we deliberate, we’d like to get your input about which room is your favorite. Click over to the “Photos” tab to see the screenshots that other JumpStart fans have posted. To show your support for a screenshot, just click the “Like” button underneath it. Your guidance will come in handy as we work to pick out the most magnificent room in JumpStart! Once we have a winner, we’ll announce our pick on Facebook and right here on the JumpStart Blog.

Tell your friends you want to see their rooms!

Sock Bowling

What you’ll need:

• One pair of rolled up socks
• 10 empty plastic bottles (any size will do)

Directions:

1. Place the 10 empty bottles in a pyramid shape, just like bowling pins, at the end of a hallway.
2. Stand at the opposite end of the hallway and toss the rolled up socks at the bottles to see how many you can knock down.
3. Too easy?  Try different techniques to throw the socks:  Spin around 10 times before bowling at the pins.  Turn backwards and throw the socks between your legs.  Try bowling with two pairs of rolled up socks at one time.  See who can make up the most creative way to bowl.

Balloon Tennis

What you’ll need:

• Two wire coat hangers
• One pair of old nylons (cut in half so that the legs are separate)
• Masking tape or tin foil
• One balloon or ping pong ball
• Scissors

Before you can play, you’ll need to create nylon rackets!

1. Start with one wire hanger.  Pull on the hook and the opposite side simultaneously in opposite directions, to create a diamond shape.
2. Take one leg of the nylons and pull it all the way down to cover the diamond shaped hanger.  You may need to squish the diamond a little bit to make it easier to pull the nylon over the hanger.
3. Tie a knot in the nylon right at the coil of the hanger so the nylon is snug and tight over the diamond.  Cut off any excess nylon.
4. Have an adult pinch the hook toward the rest of the hanger.  Tape the end to create a safe handle.  If you do not have tape, tin foil works just as well to wrap around the handle.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 to create a second racket.

Once you and your child have crafted two rackets, all you need is a ballon or ping pong ball and you are ready to play. Passing the balloon back and forth or counting the number of consecutive hits are great ways to stay entertained.

Share These Indoor Sport Ideas with your Friends!

There is a billboard in front of the movie theatre on Main and one in front of the Hall of Fame! Have your child take a photo of anything they find interesting and put it on the billboard for them to see whenever they enter JumpStart!

Movie Theater and Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame Billboard

Drag pictures on the left to place them on the billboard!

Storyland

A lot of the various lands within JumpStart also have billboards that you can personalize! Storyland has the most with a few in each of the subsections. In Storyland, children have the option to color a picture or use one from their camera for decorating their billboard! There are a bunch of different tools in the art studio for coloring a picture from adding texture or adding text. Anything your child does will make his or her billboard fantastic! Check this one out!

Choose from a bunch of different pictures to color!

Color a picture and beautify your billboard!

Adventureland and Marineland

Adventureland and Marineland both have billboards as well! You can even take a photo, and decorate a frame for it and then display its beauty on the billboard. Check out the picture we took of Frankie in Adventureland!

Frankie is a star!

We bet your children might find it cool to take some underwater pictures in Marineland too, so head on to Merllywood to place them on the billboard-walk of fame! Have fun finding and decorating all the billboards to really personalize your world!

Tell your friends about decorating their JumpStart world!

Mystic Mountain Caverns (AdventureLand)

We’ll start with our absolute favorite set of jump pads in all of JumpStart.com. Once you find Hops at AdventureLand’s Mystic Mountain, you’ll have access to a vast network of jump pads that can transport you throughout the caverns. Experiment with different jump pads to see where you end up next!

Wow! That’s a lot of jump pads!

Make sure you watch out for Punk Punks on your way down!

The Hall of Fame

How appropriate that our jump pad hall of fame includes the JumpStart Hall of Fame jump pad itself! This one will send you flying high over MainStreet. Check it out for a great view.

This jumpee is rockin’ out and ready to jump!

Look at that view!

DownTown Islands

The orange slide in DownTown leads to a coastal pool, complete with a lovely little island. Step on the island’s jump pad and you’ll be transported to another island nearby!

Prepare for liftoff!

Here we go!

Tiki Falls

We showed you an amazing portal to the top of Tiki Falls last week, but did you know you can also get there by jump pad? Just step on the jump pad at the bottom of the falls to get started!

She’s moving up in the world!

Which jump pad is your favorite? Are there some awesome ones we’ve missed? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Tell your friends about the coolest jump pads around!