Unplug Your Kids

Here’s the theme for this Monday’s Unplugged Project:

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project goes along with the Bubblegum Books annual contest for TV Turn-Off Week. This year’s contest is themed: “Show Your Shiny Side”, so the theme for next week is:

What makes you (your child) shine?

(Draw or write something to submit for the contest (if you want to). Deadline is March 14th and submission info is here. Open to preschool and elementary-aged children who are either traditionally-schooled or homeschooled.)

Or, if you prefer, the theme could be simply:
shiny

We decided to do a shiny project. The only shiny material we could think of that we had at home, was aluminum foil. So here is the project we came up with: Shiny Raised Pictures.

First we folded sheets of heavy duty foil into fourths (shiny-side out) so that it would be thin enough to emboss, but not so thin as to tear easily. Heavy duty foil works best – my son first tried with ordinary foil and it tore.

Next we placed our foil rectangle on top of a piece of cardboard. We then drew a picture on one side using a ballpoint pen. The trick is to press firmly enough to get through all four layers without tearing. It’s really not hard to find just the right touch.

Then we flipped our pictures over so the raised side was up. We colored in the pictures with markers which created a very pretty translucent, almost stained glass effect. Some markers were easy to smear with a finger so as to fill in with color without creating dents in the foil.

Finally, I dug out my fancy scissors and we made colorful frames.

My 2 year-old was more interested in trying out her new big girl undies and running back and forth to the potty, but eventually she “drew” some pictures on paper with the markers, and then had fun playing with the leftover foil bits.

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The final products:

A pirate ship on the ocean (5 year-old son):

Flowers – she made it into an envelope by adding another foil art-piece to the back and stapling together (7 year-old daughter):

Free-form design (me):

If you participated in this week’s project, please leave your name and link in Mr. Linky (and a comment too, so we can find you if Mr. Linky malfunctions and I have to take him off).

I had fun this week. I felt like a Very Crafty Mom, although I am not!

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The theme for next Monday’s Unplugged Project is:

Wood

Remember, the theme is very loose. Use your imaginations. If you want to make a collage of the letters “W-O-O-D” then great, that “counts!”

Also, anyone can join in. If you don’t have a blog to link to, then either email me your photos and I will post them here, or just upload them to a free photo hosting service and link to that album. Have fun!

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