Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, January 18, 2009 11:00 pm

Thanks to a suggestion from Meg at Bare Baby Feet, this week’s Unplugged Project theme is balance. We felt “sciency” this week, so my oldest daughter and I scoured our favorite science book but found nothing that sounded fun to her.

I did a few Google searches and happened across this amazing-seeming experiment. I tried it and then showed it to my children who were very impressed. As you will see, I tried to make it even more fun for kids by modifying it to make a balance toy: a flying bird. Read on for more!

THE SCIENCE:

This experiment (which I understand is often shown as a magic trick), involves two identical sharp forks, a real cork (a real one is a bit softer and easier to use than a plastic one), a toothpick, and a glass. Push the forks into the sides of the cork.

They should be in the middle of the cork, directly opposite each other. The cork will not be in alignment with the forks. Try to have the forks at a 90 degree angle to each other, like this:

Push a toothpick into the end of the cork, on the side between the forks (be careful, the toothpick breaks easily, so be gentle). You will have something like this:

Experiment by balancing the toothpick on your finger. It seems impossible, but once you find the right spot, the forks will just balance. You can mark that spot on the toothpick with a marker, or just remember about where it was.

Place the balance point of the toothpick on the edge of a glass. The forks should remain suspended on the side of the glass. Pretty amazing!

Now, for the grand and very dramatic finale! Take a match and light the end of the toothpick on fire (yes, I really did say to set fire to the toothpick - YOU, not your kids of course :-) ). The flame will move up the toothpick, burning it into nothingness. The fire will stop when it reaches the rim of the glass.

Does the cork fall down? NO! It stays put, hanging by practically nothing on the rim of the glass. You can even lift it off and place it back on, barely touching the rim, and the whole thing will balance.

Here’s a video I made of the toothpick burning (I have never put a homemade video on my blog before so I really hope it works). Watch closely and you’ll see that my son tried to knock the whole thing off the glass at the end of the video but it just bobbed up and down and returned to its original position. Very stable!

How does this seemingly magical “trick” work? Warning: science stuff coming up - feel free to skip to the next section if this is all “blah blah blah” to you.

The secret to understanding this experiment involves a study of center of gravity and pivot point. The center of gravity is “the point about which you can balance the object as if all the masses were concentrated or gathered at this point“ or “the average location of the weight of the object.” Imagine balancing a see-saw.

But the center of gravity does not necessarily have to be on the object itself. Here it is actually in the open space between the forks. This means that, unlike a see-saw, the object is not balancing on its center of gravity (“CG”). Instead it is balanced on a separate pivot point (the toothpick on the edge of the glass) away from the center of gravity.

We had to arrange the forks so that their mass was a bit lower than the center line of the cork in order to insure that the CG remained lower than the pivot point. Since the CG is lower, if the fork assembly is displaced, the CG will be raised and gravity will pull it back to equilibrium. You can see this in my video. All balance toys have a CG that is below their pivot point. (NOTE: I am NOT a scientist! Any physicists out there may disagree with my terminology, etc., but I am trying to make this as simple an explanation as possible.)

THE FLYING BIRD:

Not wanting to use my good forks as permanent bird wings, I had to think of something else. A matching pair of thrift store forks would have been ideal, but the thrift stores were all closed today. I ended up using a set of small screwdrivers that came from the bargain bin at the local hardware store, and that turned out to be not what my husband expected. There were four screw drivers, so by using two corks, my daughter and I were each able to make a bird.

We stuck them into the sides of the cork at the appropriate angles (see above). They were actually easier to get in there than the forks were.

TIP: Test “fly” your configuration on a glass before proceeding further. Adjust the screwdrivers (or forks) now if necessary to get it right. I didn’t check mine before-hand and had to fiddle later after the feathers were on.

To create a good surface for sticking on feathers, I cut construction paper into a symmetrical wing shape. By folding the paper and cutting double thickness (while keeping a portion of the fold intact) this was easy:

We then covered each screwdriver with a paper wing and stapled it so that the screwdriver was hidden inside. Staple as close to the screwdriver as you can so the wings stay on. It doesn’t matter if the staples are in the middle of the paper because you are going to completely cover the paper with feathers.

Paint your cork if you want to.

Next, glue on feathers. We had “natural-looking” feathers and “fake-looking” feathers, both from Walmart a long time ago. I opted for a colorful, fake bird. My daughter chose to be more natural. Elmer’s white glue didn’t work so well, so I broke out the hot glue gun and we began sticking on feathers.

I found an old jar to be a useful stand for our sticky birds while they dried, as well as for painting the underside of the cork.

After things have dried a bit, you’ll need eyes (googly or beads) and a beak of some sort. We cut the tips off some new crayons with scissors to make our beaks and they made perfect beaks! Glue them on with the glue gun.

If you haven’t already, carefully stick a toothpick in the back end of the bird.

Once everything is well dry, you can “fly” your birds on the edge of a glass. If properly balanced, they’ll bob up and down when touched, but won’t fall off. PLEASE don’t try the flame trick since you don’t want to risk setting all the glue and feathers on fire!

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If you did a balance project this week, then please link to your project post in Mr. Linky below. I really prefer links to project posts rather than blogs in general, so that readers will always be able to find your project no matter how far down it is buried in your blog. If you did not do a balance project, please do not link. Read more about how to participate here. We’d love to have you join us!

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

Ball

Have fun!

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Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, January 14, 2009 10:25 am

Thanks to a wonderfully creative music teacher at my children’s Montessori school, the latest fad around our house are little homemade guitars/harps like that shown above. The kids are loving putting different sized rubber bands around my food storage containers and then experimenting with the sounds produced.

The sound reminds me of a kalimba. It’s a little hard on me when I need to put away some food and can’t find any containers, but…oh well. I can adjust.

These simple little string instruments made me think that a post about quick and easy homemade musical instruments might be fun to write. I obviously won’t be anywhere close to covering all the homemade musical options, so if you think of something I forgot, please leave your idea in the comments.

If you are here because you are looking for musical instrument ideas, then be sure to read the comments for more ideas. Unplug Your Kids readers are very creative!

Here are my ideas:

• Let gourds or squash dry out. Once they are completely dry, the exterior will be hard and when you shake them, the seeds will rattle around inside. You’ll have some nice, natural maracas.

• Quick maracas: Fill plastic Easter eggs with rice or lentils and tape shut. Instant shakers!

• Paper plate maracas: Put some dried beans on a small paper plate. Cover with another, upside down paper plate. Staple the two plates together around the edges to seal them shut. Add a cardboard or popsicle stick handle if you want, then decorate. Here is ours:

• Wrap tissue paper around a fine tooth comb and make “Doo-doo-doo” noises through it for a kazoo sound.

• Flip over empty cylindrical cardboard oatmeal containers and bang on the bottom to make a drum.

• Line up a row of glasses and fill each with a different amount of water. Tap them with a spoon and note the different pitches. Play a tune!

• If you have a thin-rimmed wine glass, fill it with water. Wet your finger and rub it slowly and gently around the rim to create your own glass harmonica. It might take a bit of experimenting to figure out exactly what pressure you need, but the results are impressive. Experiment with more water in the glass and less water. What happens to the pitch? What about an empty glass?
  NOTE: Benjamin Franklin invented a mechanical glass harmonica like this modern one based on his design (he called it an “armonica”):

If you have never heard it, you must listen to the rather fairy-like sound of an armonica!

Can you play a tune with several glasses with different levels of water? You might not sound this good, but it’ll be fun!

• Blow across a glass soda or beer bottle like you would play a flute. Unless you play the flute, it’ll take a bit of practice. Adjust the angle of the bottle against your lips until you get it right. It will make a lovely tone. Different levels of liquid will produce different tones. What about lining up many bottles with different levels of liquid and playing a song?

(NOTE: Great related link - Bottled Music. This link tells exactly how much water is needed in a twenty ounce bottle to produce each particular note of the scale, and even has instructions for playing Row Row Row your boat on the bottles.)

• Craft idea: Cricket Chirping Sticks:

I didn’t think these sounded too much like crickets, but they do make a cool sound for your musical instrument collection! Learn how to make them here.

• Another craft idea: Sandpaper blocks - Wrap sandpaper around two blocks and attach it to the back with thumbtacks. For easier handling you might want to attach a knob to the back of each block (with glue or screws). Rub the blocks together for a cool sound. Try coarser and finer paper for different sounds.

And of course, the obvious: turn your 2 year-old loose in your pots and pans cupboard for lots of drums, cymbals and noise music.

That’s it for what’s in my brain right now, but Googling “homemade musical instruments” produces lots of cool results.

Here are links to a few of my favorites:

Jingle Sticks

Rainstick

Didgeridoo

Inventing Homemade Instruments with Math and Measurement (a wonderful website that teaches the science of music!)

Artists Helping Children (a very long list of many musical instrument craft links - useful!)

For a book that has some fun instrument games and activity ideas for young (preschool) children to use their homemade (or non-homemade) simple instruments, consider 101 Rhythm Instrument Activities: for Young Children by Abigail Flesch Connors:

NOTE: This is a great book to use with young children, older ones might find it boring.

Comments (24)

By Mom Unplugged, January 11, 2009 9:25 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was square, an unpremeditated choice on my part.

While at Walmart the other day I saw $2.00, 8″ x 10″ oak picture frames, and had a random thought. I wondered if it would be possible to turn a picture frame into a loom. These are the kind of odd random thoughts that I have from time to time.

I had looked at a few children’s looms like this one at Christmas time and found them to be rather expensive. Not knowing if my 8 year-old daughter would enjoy it enough to justify the price, I gave them a miss. But obviously looms have been on my mind.

I bought a $2.00 frame, dug some nails out of the garage, and away we went. The only catch is that the frame is actually a rectangle, not a square. Should I have saved this for a future quadrilateral theme instead? Hmmm….. But couldn’t this project have been made just as well with a square frame?

After extensive deliberation, The “Unplug Your Kids Weekly Unplugged Project Standards Committee” (ie. me), declared that it does indeed meet the official Unplug Your Kids Weekly Unplugged Project Standards (our standards are quite loose). :)

If you want to try this, you’ll need an inexpensive or thrift store wooden frame, some small nails, a hammer and some yarn. Try to choose a sturdy-looking frame since you’ll be hammering on it.

Take the glass and back off the frame and save them for some other project.

Place a ruler along the short edge of the frame to measure where to put the nails. Put a dot about half an inch inside of the inner edge of the frame, and then put dots every half inch. Stop when you get half an inch from the inner edge on the opposite side. Do this on both short edges. If you do it properly, you’ll have the same number of dots on each side and the dots will be opposite each other.

Hammer a nail into each dot. Try your best to make them straight and about the same height (but don’t worry if it isn’t perfect).

Voilà, your loom is made! That’s it! Easy, isn’t it?

(NOTE: I am NOT a weaving expert and didn’t even know my “warp” from my “weft” until I researched the topic, so I hope I am accurate in the following terminology.)

Now for the weaving part. But first, we need a few weaving accessories:

A shuttle holds the yarn that is passed through the loom (the “weft“). I made a simple shuttle by cutting a strip of corrugated cardboard and cutting a notch in each end. Then I wound the yarn around it lengthwise. I made one for each color that we would use. Here they are:

Real looms have something to compress the rows as they are woven. I believe this is called a “reed.” We used a wide tooth comb for our reed and it worked perfectly!

To make the passage of the yarn through the weft easier, looms usually have some mechanism for raising the strings of the “warp” (the strings that are tied onto the pegs and form the base for the weaving) which the weft must pass over and under. The space that is created is called a “shed.”

We used a wooden paint stirring stick (the kind you get for free from the hardware store when you buy paint). Again, a very successful choice.

To attach the warp I tied a piece of yarn to the nail at the top, pulled it as tight as I could, then tied the other end onto the bottom nail. I did it for each pair of nails:

I tied the end of the red weft yarn to the top left nail and began weaving:

The paint stirrer easily threads over and under the warp. Turn it on its end to raise the warp and create the shed. Pass the shuttle through the shed.

Remove the paint stirrer and repeat, making sure each time to raise the opposite set of warp strings from the time before. Pull the weaving tight, and every few rows, use the comb to push the weft up to the top to tighten it.

To change colors, as we did, at the end of a row simply cut the yarn leaving about an inch. Tie the new color on to the cut piece of the old yarn. Try to tie it as close to the warp as possible so you can hide it under your weaving and it will be on the back.

Use the same method to add more yarn to your shuttle. When the shuttle is getting low, tie the end from your ball of yarn to the tail on the shuttle and start winding more on. When the knot appears in your weaving, just tuck it through to the back and no one will see it.

We are not quite finished with our project, but I’ll be sure to post a photo when it is completed and removed from the loom.

By the way, this could be done with any size picture frame. If 8″ x 10″ is too daunting, start with a 5″ x 7.”

If you are unsure if your children will like weaving, then try this approximately $4.00 project before spending $60.00 or more for a “real” child’s loom.

Please send me a photo of your picture frame loom creations and I’ll post it here!

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A FEW USEFUL / INTERESTING LINKS

• Here is a basic link on how to set the loom up and weave: How to Weave (it also explains how to get it off, which we haven’t tried yet).

• A neat link to very simple looms of all shapes made from cardboard! - Weaving Frames.

• Also, a link to a previous Unplugged Project that we did where we made a Tin Can Knitter (a kind of homemade cylindrical loom).

• Finally, a few posts of mine about Potholder Looms: Potholders “Loom” in Your Future and Removing a Potholder From a Loom.

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If you did a square Unplugged Project this week, then please put your link (to your actual project, not just your blog) in Mr. Linky below. If you didn’t join in, then please don’t link, but read more about how to join us here.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project is thanks to Meg of Bare Baby Feet.

It is:

Balance

Thank you so much Meg. I love it!

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Comments (11)

By Mom Unplugged, January 4, 2009 9:26 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is orange. Unlike some more premeditated weeks, I really had nothing in mind when I chose this theme. An orange-colored collage maybe? But having missed last week’s project, I felt like trying something a bit more adventurous.

In a moment of restless insomnia, I suddenly thought about pomanders. Do you remember the fragrant old fashioned drawer fresheners made from fruits studded with cloves?

I googled “orange pomanders” and found quite a few different sites with instructions. Most required orris root powder (the dried and ground root of a certain iris) as a preservative and several weeks of drying in a cool, dark place. Interesting fact tangent: if you are a gin connoisseur and drink Bombay Sapphire Gin, you are drinking orris root (as well as lots of other stuff).

Since I had neither orris root (who has that in their pantry?), nor time for the curing, I was happy to find one site that claimed that an oven could also be used to cure the fruit. We don’t have orris root, but we do have an oven! We can do this!

As usual, I have a hard time sticking to a “craft recipe” precisely and often venture off into often messy “improvements.” So, loosely inspired by the About.com oven-curing method, this is how we made ours:

You will need oranges, apples, or lemons. We used an orange and a clementine. The clementine was a bit of an experiment. Would it make a nice, smaller pomander - or would it shrivel and wither away? I tried to choose a clementine with a tightly fitting skin rather than the loosely-skinned ones that one gets sometimes.

You’ll also need whole cloves, a skewer to poke holes in the fruit, as well as masking tape and ribbon if you want to make a hanging pomander. If you want to add extra fragrance, gather together some ground cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Some people also add ground ginger.

Our major original modification involved honey. So you might want to have some honey and a brush on hand too!

First tape off the parts of the fruit where the ribbon will be. That way you won’t put cloves in the wrong place.

Use the skewer to poke holes where you want the cloves to go. Make sure the holes don’t touch or the cloves will fall out.

Of course my 6 year-old son enjoyed impaling his clementine.

Push cloves into the holes. Traditionally, pomanders are completely covered with cloves, but I was feeling stingy with my expensive cloves and thought that this first time we’d just make some stripes. Less expensive bulk cloves might be better for a full-clove pomander.

I didn’t really want my three year-old playing with a sharp skewer, so I gave her a few grapes to push cloves into. She loved this activity!

Once the cloves were in, we mixed some cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg on a plate and tried to roll the fruit in it (be sure to remove the masking tape first). Of course it didn’t stick well, so that is where the honey came in!

We brushed just a very light coating of honey, then poured on the spices and rolled the fruit around in it. It stuck quite nicely then.

I put our uncured pomanders on a glass pie plate and into a 170 degree oven (the coolest temperature of my oven) for an hour.

After an hour, not much had happened so I upped the temperature to 225. I left them in for about another hour at that temperature.

I wish I could upload the smell for you all. Mmmmm….heavenly, and very “Christmassy.” NOTE TO SELF: Project for next Christmas or Winter Solstice perhaps? If you are trying to sell your house, make sure you have a pomander in the oven.

When I took them out, they looked fairly dry, but not too pretty. My oldest daughter said: “I thought they were supposed to look nice!?” Did we wisely speed up the curing process, or overdo it? Time will tell.

Well, I guess my daughter was right. They really weren’t that attractive, but at least they smelled good.

We dressed them up with some ribbons, and then put them in a paper bag in the garage to dry out some more. They are supposed to be quite dessicated and light by the time they are properly done. Stay tuned!

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Here are a few other pomander-making links:

How to Make a Spicy Orange Pomander

Oranges and Yule

Making a Pomander

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As usual: if you did an orange Unplugged Project this week, please link to your post in Mr. Linky below. If not, then please do not link, but enjoy reading the projects in Mr. Linky. If you would like to learn more about how to join in the Unplugged Project, then please read more here. Hope to see you soon!

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme is as random as this week’s was. It will be:

Square

Have fun!

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Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, December 29, 2008 8:56 am

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is wrapping paper. I am hoping to learn lots of neat new ways to recycle used holiday paper.

With all our indoor time due to the terrible icy, snowstorms we had all week, you’d think we’d have found an opportunity to do our project on time. But somehow we have been too busy with holidays and sledding and playing games to get to a wrapping paper project yet. Maybe today or tomorrow?

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If any of you were able to work a wrapping paper project into your busy holiday schedules, them please put a link to your project post in Mr. Linky below. Please link to your post, not just your blog, so we can always find your project! If you didn’t do a wrapping paper project, but would like to learn more about the weekly Unplugged Project, then please read more here.

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Next week’s weekly Unplugged Project theme will be:

Orange

Enjoy!

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