I am writing a new ebook called Seafaring Adventures. It is a weekly Bible study for early elementary age classes or homeschool co-ops. I am using it for our Co-ops Young Bible Scholars class. It is seafaring adventurers following Paul’s life looking for treasure. The treasure is God’s Love!!!! Any way the first class I plan on making Treasure stones, hiding them before class, and having our adventurers seek them out. Seeking out the Treasures of God hidden in earthen vessels.
My first hurdle was find enough coffee ground to make 24 stones. I found out that you can go to your local Starbucks and they will give it to you FREE! They expect you to use it in your garden . . . I did use the left over ground there.
Next you need to dry out the used coffee grounds . . . so spread them out on cookie sheets or a old sheet under a ceiling fan. Don’t do it outside it draws flies . . . I didn’t want the stones to have fly eggs in them!
Thirdly, how many stones does a batch make? How many batches did I need? I choose to do a test run and then make the ones for the class. So I made the recipe from http://www.geocities.com/loveofkidsrecipes/treasurestones.html .
Her recipe is the same as the one in the book by John and Danita Thomas, “The Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions” GREAT book!! Every homeschool mom needs their books!! Fun mess and mess-free craft ideas.
Anyway, I made the first batch just like the recipe called. Well, it was soupy and took forever to dry. It was kind of hard to form into balls. They just made BIG pancakes. 1 recipe could have made 4 stones about the size of a baseball. But I had 3 children helping me so they made them big!
Now to make the real stones for the hunt! I figured 4 stones per batch and that would mean I needed to make 6 batches. Well, I did one batch of quadruple recipe and was able to come out with 17 stones. BUT I wanted to work out the runniness of the test batch. So, I made sure each of my cups of flour was heaping. Used rounded cups of coffee grounds, and used about a third as much water. This mixture as too dry and so I added more water but only up to about enough for 2 recipes not the 4 that I had the dry ingredients for. This was about right. My 8 yo dd handed me each of the treasures as I formed the stones. Then we made the last 2 batches to make the remaining 7 stones. Again only using about half the water called for.
So expect 3 to 4 nice size stones to put your treasures into. AND start out with less then half the water, adding more as needed to form a soft clay.
Sher Birmingham, wife to Bill
Successfully at Home Business, School, and Cooking http://www.SherBirmingham.com
Get Organized! http://www.cindysaffiliates.com/go.php?offer=fruitfully&pid=fruitfully
