Comments (14)

By Mom Unplugged, February 22, 2009 8:25 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was clothing. We had a few ideas, but ultimately decided to experiment with weaving strips of fabric made from an old shirt.

First: the nasty shirt.

This is a shirt that had been a comfortable favorite of mine for quite some time. Too much time. It was stretched and shapeless and discolored. Très chic, don’t you think? I knew it was time for the shirt and I to part company. But since I didn’t even think it was in decent enough shape to donate, it was clearly a perfect candidate for shredding.

I cut the sleeves off, and then cut the shirt in half along the seams. I cut the side and bottom seams off, as well as the neck. I was left with two flat pieces of fabric.

The kids thought I had gone mad at first when they saw me cutting up my shirt, but then they got into the spirit of the moment and I had a hard time getting my cut up shirt back to finish the job!

We cut each section of the shirt into an oval shape and then began cutting it into a single spiral strip about 1/2 inch wide (approx 1.25 cm).

This was the result:

We wound the two lots of cloth into balls:

Next we got out our $2.00 picture frame loom. I warped it with the fabric by winding a single strip up and down around the nails. I have seen this done, but … hmmm… I didn’t like it much.

This was an experiment. Next time, I would warp it like our yarn dollhouse rug, by cutting single strips and tying one on each set of nails. We got a bit confused because there were two warp strips on each nail. Since this rug was “rustic,” a few mistakes didn’t really matter. In fact one could optimistically say that they actually enhanced the rug. But now I know that I prefer to have one warp string on each nail.

I wrapped the cloth around the shuttle and we began weaving.

To finish it up, I lifted each loop off the nail, cut it, and tied the two ends together in a sturdy knot.

The final result:

We used it to keep the dolls’ feet toasty in their bathroom, but it could also be a potholder, or even a dish washing cloth (that’s what my husband thought it was).

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If you did a clothing Unplugged Project this week, then please link to your project in the Mr. Linky below. If not, then follow the links to everyone’s project and enjoy! If you are interested in learning more about how to join us, then please read about it here. We’d love to have you!

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

Bottle

Enjoy!

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Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, February 15, 2009 8:56 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is wrinkle. We decided to do a little batik and experiment with wrinkling the wax.

You will need a piece of fabric (a natural fiber works best, we used a piece cut off of an old cotton sheet), wax, and a dye. We almost used beet juice, but finally decided on blue food coloring. As usual, I was ill-prepared and had no wax so we just melted some candle stubs. If you melt candles, be thoughtful about your choice of colors since colored wax will dye the fabric.

First we melted the candles in a tin can set in a pan of boiling water. We had white candles and green so we melted them separately and planned on using the green to help color our fabric.

We laid the cloth out on some wax paper and poured the wax on it. Be careful, the can will be very hot! First the white:

Then the green:

As you can see, we tried to cover most of the fabric since we really wanted to see the effect of wrinkling and cracking the wax. If you would like a different effect, then just cover parts of the fabric with wax, or pour on a design or pattern. The dye will not stick to any waxed portion of the fabric:

We let the wax dry and cool completely. The cloth was now as stiff as cardboard.

We crumpled and scrunched the stiff fabric and created cracks.

We put some blue food coloring in a bowl of cold water (hot would melt, or at least soften, the wax), and then we pushed the wax covered cloth in with a spoon. We left it in for an hour and the exposed areas turned a very pale blue. This step might not have been necessary, but at least it got the fabric wet and ready for more dye.

Next we laid the cloth out on a foil-lined baking sheet and dropped straight food coloring on to the cracks and spread it around.

What I learned - be sure to wear gloves if you are going to be handling food coloring! (This photo was taken AFTER I had washed them several times…)

I might be blue forever.

We let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes to let the color absorb, then we set about removing the wax. First we used knives to scrape off as much of the wax as possible.

I covered my ironing board with an old, folded towel and laid the fabric on a brown paper bag. I covered it with another brown paper bag and ironed with the iron on the highest setting but without steam.

The wax simply melted onto the bags. I replaced the bags a few times until no more wax appeared and it was all out of the fabric. We also tried paper towels, since I heard that they worked too, and they did quite well also.

Here is our finished fabric. The ironing dried it all nicely and we were able to work with it right away. Notice the green color in with the blue? The green is from the green candle wax, and is why we chose blue food coloring because we thought the two colors would look pretty together.

We had two little old notebooks that we covered with the dyed cloth using fabric glue.

We added a matching ribbon bookmark, and there you have it! A fun afternoon!

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If you did a wrinkle Unplugged Project this week, then please put a link to your post in the Mr. Linky below. If you link to the post rather than the blog, then we will always be able to find you - forever and ever! If you did not do a wrinkle project, then please do not link, but be sure to follow the links to see the other great wrinkle projects. If you wish to read about how to join in, then read more here. We’d love to have you with us!

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

Clothing

I hope you all have fun!

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Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, February 8, 2009 8:44 pm

I guess I must have picked float as the theme for this week’s Unplugged Project because last week’s marbleizing project involved floating a piece of paper in a baking tray of water. Well, I won’t do that again, because all I could think of all week long were ideas very similar to our marbleizing project. I was completely without inspiration.

Then this boring, snowy Sunday, as the kids were playing Calico Critters, I suddenly had the inspiration to try making a Calico Critter parachute. Parachutes float (…hopefully…)!

We gathered together some scarves of different sizes and fabrics to experiment with, some items for the “cockpit” (a small basket and a little nylon pouch that originally contained some fiberfill stuffing - I am glad to be a packrat, I knew that pouch would come in handy one day!), yarn, scissors, and a couple of fearless test-pilots:

First we cut four pieces of yarn all the same length. Then we tied one piece of yarn onto each corner of the scarf:

Next we attached our basket and pouch. In an effort to take weight into consideration, we decided to put the pouch on the cotton bandanna because the bandanna was heavier than the play silk and the pouch was lighter than the basket.

We tied the strings onto the pouch by bunching up the fabric just as we had done with the scarf.

We tied the basket on with a string on each handle and a string on each side in the middle in order to keep it as well-balanced as possible:

NOTE: Be careful tying the strings onto your “cockpit.” You want to keep them in order so that aren’t twisted and it can get a bit confusing, especially if your cloth is big and your strings long.

Also, you could simply tie your object directly on to the strings without having a container. I think it is more fun with a basket or a pouch though, that makes it much easier for children to experiment with different objects and toys.

The cats found this project to be particularly appealing. Strings plus soft things to lie on meant 5-star kitty excitement:

In popped the intrepid test-pilots, and off we went to the upstairs landing for launch.

Make sure you hold the parachute by pinching it in the center and dangling it all over the edge of the railing before dropping. Also, for best performance, the strings should not be twisted or tangled.

The bandanna went first - success!

Next was the playsilk. It didn’t crash, but it went down pretty fast. I thought that it might be because of the air flowing through the holes in the basket.

We lined the basket with a paper napkin and the second launch was perfect! The parachute floated gracefully down to the ground.

I am pleased to report that no Calico Critters were injured in the testing of the parachutes.

If you are curious, here’s a 5 second video of our silk parachute:

Link: How does a parachute work?

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If you did a float Unplugged Project this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky below (link to your post, not just your blog please so your post will always be easy to find). It’s also wise to leave a comment so if Mr. Linky ever disappears, you won’t disappear with it! If you did not join in, then please do not link, but read more about how to join in here.

I am trying to visit at least a few projects every week, but I can’t always get to everyone anymore. I feel a bit bad about that, but blogging is not a full-time occupation for me, so I guess I can only do my best. I hope you all understand!

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

Wrinkle

Have fun!

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Comments (19)

By Mom Unplugged, February 2, 2009 9:20 pm

This has actually (unintentionally) been a colorful week for us.

I haven’t mentioned Odyssey of the Mind (OM) here yet, but my friend Wishy and I just discovered it (actually she discovered it) and we dived right in last fall as coaches for our children’s Montessori class (1st - 4th grade). It’s a bit complicated to explain OM in this post, but suffice it to say that the children have to come up with an engineering or creative project entirely on their own. “Outside Assistance” is heavily penalized.

My 8 year-old daughter apparently has the role of a tree in her completely student-created play. She decided she wanted to dye some net green to be her leaves, so she chopped up an old artichoke that we happened to have in the kitchen and boiled the net in it to dye it green. It didn’t work so well. She then tried green food coloring. Not too effective either (I think it would have worked better on a natural fiber). That was all entirely her idea.

Personally I probably would have headed to Walmart for some green dye, or better yet, green net! But of course I couldn’t say that to her - “outside influence.” So, I look forward to seeing what possible solution she comes up with next.

I was so proud of my daughter’s initiative and creative thinking! These Unplugged Projects are more than just a diversion. I believe that they encourage original thought and teach that it is OK to not get it right at first. Just experiment to see what works, and if it doesn’t, then try and figure out how to make it work!

That was a bit of a tangent, but her experiments with dye got me thinking about food coloring and how we could incorporate that into the theme color. I began Googling food coloring and oil because I knew that the two don’t mix and I thought there might be something fun out there. I was quite excited to find this: Marvelous Marbling.

I have wanted to try marbelizing for a long time now. I have fond memories of loving it the time we did it in elementary school. Since the memory has stayed with me that long, it must have made a big impression!

Traditional marbleizing involves oil paint and turpentine. Frankly, I have never had the energy to tackle that. Turpentine - ick. This webpage tells how to marbleize using just food coloring and cooking oil. I had to try it! So we did. I made a few alterations - here is my version.

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For this you’ll need a shallow pan that is large enough to fit the paper you’ll be using (I used a nasty old roasting pan), food coloring, cooking oil, white paper (we used card stock - NOTE: thick card stock produces as a nice result, thinner paper tends to get a bit greasy), water and an eye dropper. The eye dropper is optional, but we found it worked better than just pouring.

Put just enough water in the pan to cover the bottom (**VERY IMPORTANT!**). As we discovered, if the water is too deep, the color will sink if you work too slowly.

Put about 1/2 tablespoon oil and 1 teaspoon food coloring into a glass (we halved the proportions of the original since we only had tiny bottles of coloring and I didn’t want to use it all up).

The two ingredients will not be mixed. [NERDY SCIENCE NOTE: Oil and water don't mix due to dissimilar molecular bonds - "like dissolves like" and water molecules and oil molecules are not alike. Read more here: Ask a Scientist - Mixing Oil and Water and here is a good, simple tutorial about solubility and water: Water Tutorial]

At this point, the mixture will look something like this:

Beat it hard with a fork until well blended. It is like mixing an oil and vinegar salad dressing and will take a few minutes. We experimented with mixing it in a jar and shaking it up. That worked even better, just make sure the top is on tightly (we had a bit of a food coloring disaster the first time my daughter tried it).

When done, it will look more like this:

Using the dropper (or gently pouring if you don’t have a dropper), place drops of colors on top of the water. The drops will stay in a blob, or perhaps explode a bit. You can place one color inside another. Experiment.

When you have dots of color all over the surface of your water, use a toothpick, or a fork, or a feather (whatever you want to try) to make patterns in the colors. They’ll make blobs and swirls and pretty patterns.

When you are happy with the design, gently place your paper on top of the water. Leave it for a little bit. We waited until the oil started to show through the back of the paper (about 30 seconds?) and then peeled it gently off.

There will be lots of oohs and aahs as the pattern is revealed!

That one reminded me of a medical slide. LOL! Here are is another pretty one:

We even tried hot water vs. cold water. Knowing that molecules move faster in hot water, we wanted to see if anything different happened to our oil/color mix in really hot water. We didn’t see anything too dramatic, but my daughter did note that the blobs converged a bit more quickly. (For more on hot vs. cold liquids, please read my post: Molecules in Motion).

Let the paper dry then use it for cards, wrapping paper, framed art, whatever you want. Ours will become thank you notes.

According to my 8 year-old daughter, this is her “new favorite project!”

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For more color project ideas, please check out all the links here.

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

Float

Hope to see you then! (If you want to join us, please read about how to here.)

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(marbelized)

Comments (10)

By Mom Unplugged, January 26, 2009 11:48 am

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was ball. My original thought was golf ball. We live on a golf course so our backyard provides us with a constant supply of golf balls!

We are still feeling very “sciency,” so I decided to stick with a science project like last week. For a while now, I have been wanting to try a trick that I have seen on a larger scale at a science museum: “floating” a ball in a stream of air to demonstrate Bernoulli’s Principle.

As a pilot and a flight instructor, I am very eager for my children to understand the physics of flight. I have given them many lessons on the shape of airplane wings. Each time we go someplace in our plane, I ask them to tell me about how the shape of the wing creates the lift that makes the plane fly. In fact they have heard me go on about it so many times that they are now at the eye rolling, “here goes Mom again” stage.

I thought that they would enjoy this “magic trick” and felt they were ready for it as an added lesson relating to the airplane.

All you need is a hair dryer and a ping pong ball. We had no ping pong ball (and golf balls are too heavy to use with the hairdryer) but I found a lightweight plastic ball in the playroom. It was larger than a ping pong ball, but weighed about the same.

Turn the hair dryer on to high (if you have a “cool” setting, that’ll save your fingers from burning as you play with the ball) and point it straight up toward the ceiling. Place the ball in the air flow. If your ball is light enough, it should hover there.

You can slowly and gently tilt the hair dryer sideways and the ball will “follow,” remaining in the air stream until the angle is such that the force of gravity is stronger than the “lift” generated. The ball will then fall to the ground.

For more fun, use a shop vac and some heavier balls. (I recommend that you do this outside!) Remove the hose from the vacuum port and attach it to the exhaust opening. It will now blow air instead of suck it in. Golf balls will work. Try the lightweight ping pong ball that you used with the dryer too and you’ll see that with the stronger airflow, it will balance much higher.

Why do balls “float” this way? Because of Bernoulli’s Principle! Bernoulli’s Principle basically says that the faster a fluid (or air) flows, the less pressure it exerts.

To understand this experiment, you also need to know that air flowing over a curved surface flows faster than air flowing over a straight surface (the reason for this is complicated, but has to do with the same mass of air being forced through a smaller area - the curve takes up more space than the straight edge).

So: The air that flows over the curved surface of the ball must flow faster than the air that goes straight up around the ball without touching it. The faster flowing air in contact with the ball exerts less pressure than the surrounding air that is traveling straight up. The lower pressure ball is “trapped” inside a cylinder of higher pressure and is thus held in place.

How does this relate to airplanes? An airplane wing is curved on the top, and fairly flat on the bottom, as you can see in this drawing:

The air flowing over the upper curved surface flows faster than the air flowing along the lower, straighter surface. This means that the pressure on the top of the wing is less than that below the wing. Thus the wing is “lifted” or sucked upwards.

Airflow over a wing:

After the fun of last week’s video science lesson, we made another one this week. It is a bit longer (nearly 3 minutes), but we hope you enjoy it!

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If you did a ball Unplugged Project this week, then please link to your project itself (rather than just your blog) in the Mr. Linky below. If you didn’t join us, but would like to find out more about it, please don’t link, but read more here.

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

Color

Enjoy!

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