Comments (9)

By Mom Unplugged, July 21, 2008 6:01 am

Well, I am still away on vacation. Last night I returned to Upstate New York and my children after a week in Florida.

Thanks for all the well wishes and such. I had to leave for Florida suddenly, but not due to any emergency. As some of you know, I am a pilot and we finally decided to buy a new airplane after a 7 year airplane hiatus. The plane was ready a bit earlier than planned and a last minute cancellation opened up an unexpected training slot for me, so I had to rush off to Florida in a hurry.

An intense week of training away from my children meant that yet again, I did not do the Unplugged Project! But I am sure many of you did, so I am putting up the Mr. Linky where you can link to your glass projects.

As I am still on vacation, I may not get around to everyone, but I will try.

Finally, I have noticed from the comments quite a few new comers to the site. Welcome! Normally I try to respond to each comment personally by email, but as I am away, it has been impossible to do that. But I would like to say welcome to Unplug Your Kids and I am so glad that you are enjoying the site!

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Flat

No promises, but I really hope to be able to join in that one!

Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, July 13, 2008 7:54 pm

I flew to Florida today somewhat unexpectedly (not an emergency, but I didn’t expect to be going so soon) and my children stayed behind in Upstate New York with my family. So we did not do our stone Unplugged Project.

I am putting up the Mr. Linky for those who did it. I won’t get there for a while, but I look forward to visiting your projects soon!

Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be (and I hope I’ll be back to join in):

Glass

Comments (18)

By Mom Unplugged, July 6, 2008 9:02 pm

For this week’s Unplugged Project, sky, I was inspired by my Uncle’s very detailed star charts. He used to create charts of the constellations using thick black paper, a white pencil, and a pin to put holes where the stars were. The bigger the pinhole, the brighter the star. When you hold his charts up to the light, they are a very accurate representation of the night sky. I tried to photograph one of his charts here, but they are much easier to appreciate in person:

We gathered together astronomy books, construction paper (although dark blue was the closest we had to black), colored pencils, a ruler, and pins:

First we studied the books to find constellations that we liked. My oldest chose Leo since that is her “sign.” My 3 year-old nephew made up his own constellation, as you shall see.

Then we cut some dark blue construction paper in half. We transferred the dots to the paper as best we could by eye (if you have a simple constellation book with large drawings such as H.A. Rey’s excellent classic: The Stars: A New Way to See Them , it might be easier to trace them on tracing paper and then transfer them over to the construction paper).

The younger astronomers just drew a bunch of dots or “stars” randomly on their paper, as my 2 year-old is doing here:

They then drew lines between the stars, connecting the dots, to show the constellation forms as they do in books:

The really fun part was poking holes through each star (dot) with a pin so the light would shine through. We were not as accurate as my Uncle and did not worry about star intensities!

My 3 year-old nephew decided that his constellation was a sea horse and I can really see that! Here are the finished star charts:

And when held up to a window or light, they look like this:

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If you joined us for sky this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky and leave a comment so we can find you. If you didn’t, you can read about how to join here.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Stone

I hope to see you then!

Comments (14)

By Mom Unplugged, June 30, 2008 7:26 am

We have had a Wee Enchanted Garden kit in the closet for several years, but had not yet put it together. So that’s what we did this week for the Unplugged Project theme of garden.

The Wee Enchanted Garden is a mini fairy garden in a box. Since we love fairies, it was a fun project, but I think it would be even more fun and very easy to create your own fairy garden without a kit.

This is what came in the kit: a plastic plant saucer, paints in the three primary colors, a paint brush, soil (it feels like a very light seed mix), grass seed, assorted beans (to grow into the “trees”), stones, gravel, little plastic figures (a frog and a rat), some seashells, and a lovely little fairy house made of wood and bark!

First my two oldest children painted the saucer. Since the paints were just yellow, blue, and red, it was a good exercise in color mixing too.

My youngest happily painted with some water colors and, in typical 2 year-old fashion, refused all colors but blue:

Pita, our assistant:

After the paint dried, the real fun began: the planting and arranging.

The children wanted to add a few other treasures to the garden. They disappeared into their rooms and returned with a penny, a marble, and a plastic snake (to eat the fairies?).

One tip: be careful when you water. We used a watering can and flooded it a bit. There is no drainage and the seed soil is very light. Next time we will water by spraying with a spray bottle.

This would be a very easy project to replicate without the kit, although I think that lovely little house makes the kit really wonderful.

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Here’s one more garden project idea. This one is more ambitious, but very worthwhile!:

The Children’s Garden

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If you joined in this week for garden, then please leave your link in Mr. Linky and a comment so we can all find your project. If you didn’t join us, read about how to play and consider doing next week’s theme.

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Since we will be flying on a plane soon, the theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

sky

Hope to see you next week!

Comments (21)

By Mom Unplugged, June 22, 2008 10:48 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is “old.” It was a hard choice for me since I thought of many fun options, but…

My now 6 year-old son has always been somewhat obsessed with maps. Since, at the moment, he really enjoys drawing “treasure maps,” I ultimately decided that he might enjoy making a treasure map that really looked old.

When I was a child, in art class once we antiqued cards by burning the edges with a candle, gluing them onto wood, and then coating them with shellac to make them look yellowed and ancient. For some reason I LOVED this project. In fact I loved it enough to remember it to this day, and trust me, it was quite a while ago!

Well, I didn’t have any shellac on hand, but I have heard that similar results can be obtained with coffee or tea. So, we gave it a go. I followed the basic instructions for How to Antique Paper from Curbly blogger, DIY Maven. We then embellished a bit. Here’s what we did:

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We needed brewed coffee or tea, instant coffee granules, a Sharpie (permanent marker), some plain white paper (I used computer printer paper), a baking sheet with a rim, some paper towels, and an oven:

First we drew our maps with the Sharpie. The kids loved this of course, and each made several:

Then we crumpled the maps and flattened them out again to create wrinkles:

Next came the really fun part. We laid the maps side by side on the rimmed baking sheets and poured coffee on them. You don’t need much, a cup probably would have sufficed. I don’t know what I was thinking when I made a whole 4 cup Pyrex jug full! Too bad instant coffee is too disgusting to drink or I could have a few cups while we worked.

We poured on a little (don’t flood it) and then smeared it around with a paint brush to completely cover the paper without drowning it too much:

The coffee is what stains the paper that yellow-brown tone. If you want “age spots” then sprinkle on some instant coffee granules and let them dissolve a bit:

Once the granules have dissolved a little, blot up all the excess liquid on the paper and the baking sheet with some paper towels. Tip - blotting with a dabbing motion seemed to work better than wiping:

Here they are before going into the oven. The oven dries them off quickly and gives them a slightly parched, brittle, old texture:

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees (93 Celsius - “low heat”) and put the baking sheet in the oven. It took about 5 minutes or so for ours to dry out. Keep an eye on it. When the edges start to curl up a bit, it is probably done.

They will come out looking hundreds of years old! But, if that’s not enough for you, you can take it a step further and burn the edges too. Obviously, this is an activity for adults only.

Light a candle and place it in the kitchen sink. The dry paper burns very well, so you’ll want water right there. You can also just drop the paper into the sink if the flame spreads too quickly. I was a bit overly-enthusiastic on my first go and burned a few apparently crucial areas of one of my daughter’s maps (sorry!):

I eventually got the hang of it and was able to produce just a lightly ragged burned effect instead of giant, blackened blotches.

Tip - gently slide the edge of the paper back and forth through the flame. Keep it moving and try not to really let it actually catch on fire. After a few passes through the flame, take it out. The edge will be glowing. Put the edge under some running water to extinguish the glow. Afterwards you can let the paper dry on its own, or if you are impatient as we were, then simply pop it back into the oven for a few more minutes to dry off.

Our finished maps:

The final touch was rolling them up and tying them with string:

~THE HUNT FOR TREASURE~

While we were making the maps, my daughter asked if I would make a “real” treasure map for them, and then hide some treasure somewhere for them to find using the map.

I thought that sounded fun, so I did.

The map is revealed (they hadn’t looked at it while I was making it):

After a false start in the wrong location (perhaps Mom is a poor map draftsman?), they finally got their bearings and were hot on the trail of the pirate treasure:

And the treasure is finally found!

We had a great time on the treasure hunt and surprisingly, it actually taught some map-reading skills!

The treasure hunt is a fun activity to try anytime. It only takes a minute or two to draw a map and hide the “treasure.” You don’t have to get fancy and “antique” your map unless you want to.

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We had a lot of fun this week. This project was easy enough for them to do on their own (apart from the burning of course), and we all enjoyed it

What did you do for old? If you joined in this week’s Unplugged Project, please put a link to your project in Mr. Linky. Also leave a comment so your project link will be forever immortalized should Mr. Linky fail, as he does from time to time.

If you didn’t join us, please think about trying to next week. You can read all about how the Unplugged Project works here.

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In honor of summer (here in the Northern Hemisphere anyway), the theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Garden

Please note that I did not say “garden-ing” (although that would be a fine project to share). It could involve pictures of gardens, something to do with plants, seeds, bugs, colors, dirt, butterflies … anything! Be creative, I look forward to being inspired by you all!