Comments (20)

By Mom Unplugged, October 19, 2008 9:04 pm

Mmmmm… cupcakes. Looks good, doesn’t it? This photo is quite deceptive. We have not been baking. Don’t try eating this yummy birthday cupcake because it is made out of old crayons!

This week’s Unplugged Project theme was wax. When I picked the theme I thought we might do something to recycle our crayons, but I didn’t know what. However this morning as I was lying in bed, I dreamed up these Birthday Cupcake Candles. The kids were enthusiastic, so I decided to risk complete disaster and give it a go.

I am almost too embarrassed to post this one, because it is a little over the top! But we certainly had a blast making these, and the suspense as to whether they would be a success or a giant flop, simply added to the fun.

They were a resounding success and really not hard to make at all, so here goes a tutorial:

You’ll need broken crayons, a muffin tin, muffin papers (foil ones are best), and birthday candles. If you have glitter and/or sprinkles, little candies, etc. that will add to the fun and enhance the realism. I think those little silver balls would have looked fantastic, but unfortunately we didn’t have any.

The first task was sorting the crayons. We dumped them all out and began looking for broken ones. My two year-old enjoyed this tremendously and she was the official color sorter.

Getting the papers off some of them was a difficult task. Why is it that kids can peel off crayon papers all over the house, but when you want the papers off, they stick! We discovered that soaking the stubborn ones in a bowl of water helped, as did peeling them with a knife (my job).

We finally had all our bits unwrapped and sorted into separate colors. Pretty aren’t they!

My daughter put the liners in the muffin tins:

Then we filled the cups with the crayons, one color per cup, taking care to not overfill.

My daughter eagerly loaded them into a 350 degree oven (actually we started at 200, but that was slow so I upped it to 350 and that seemed perfect):

Then came the nervous waiting:

When they seemed about halfway done (15 minutes or so?), we could see where the level of the melted wax was going to be:

We took them out and added a few more crayons to each so as to hopefully bring the wax up to near the top of the cups.

Finally, after about 10 more minutes, they were done. Great excitement ensued!

We had to be patient and let them cool for about 10 or 15 minutes before decorating.

First my daughter found some glitter and decided to put that on:

Then we discovered that if we put a toothpick in one color and swirled it around in another color, we could make pretty patterns:

Finally, after they had cooled a bit more (still squishy but solidifying), my daughter pushed a birthday candle into each one. If you wait until they are cool enough, the candle will stand straight. If they are still too hot, the candle will tip over. If this happens, take it out and wait until they are cooler.

They were also cool enough to decorate with real baking decorations! Totally fun!

After an hour or so, they were completely cool and we could remove them from the pan without squishing the bottoms.

And voilà! We were all so impressed. My 2 year-old wanted to eat one and we had to explain that she would have to eat a pumpkin muffin instead. She was pretty insistent, and even wanted one after dinner. Oh dear!

I’ll post a follow-up tomorrow as to how they held up as candles. Even if they don’t burn for very long, at least they can always be used as…well…crayons.

(By the way: The liners (even the paper ones) kept the wax contained so there was no mess in the muffin tin afterwards. In fact I was able to use it for pumpkin muffins when we were through.)

EDITED TO ADD: In response to questions/concerns about smell, these really didn’t smell bad at all while melting. I did notice a difference in consistency between cheap crayons and the Crayolas as we were peeling them, so my guess is that they are made differently, or of different ingredients. Most of ours were Crayolas. Perhaps the cheap ones are the stinky ones? By the way, the crayon wax did not burn well as a candle, so no danger of odors there!

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Did you do a wax Unplugged Project this week? If so, then please put a link to your wax post in Mr. Linky. If not, then please don’t link, but browse the great posts that are linked below. Also, read more about the Unplugged Project and how to join in here. Perhaps we’ll see you next week?

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Thin

I have no clue what we will do for it, but the word just popped into my head.

Enjoy!

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Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, October 14, 2008 8:59 pm

As a mother, much of my daily existence is very mindless and repetitive. I sometimes feel as though I am repeating the same messages over and over again: “clean your room,” “don’t pick your nose,” “settle down,” or “say please,” are a few favorites of mine. And of course there are also the two that I swore I would NEVER say to my children: “we’ll see” (we all know that really means “no”), and “because I said so.” I say these too.

A tape recorder could accomplish the same job, and a robot could do the laundry, cook the meals, pick up the clutter, etc. Apart from the loving, my daily routine doesn’t take much thought or emotional involvement.

What DOES take intelligence and feeling however, is the effort to instill in our children a sense of our values.

I dislike the term “values.” It is overused nowadays, and often has a politically conservative connotation. For some reason it just rubs me the wrong way, like “empower” and “proactive.”

However, the fact is, that every single one of us on this planet has “values.” We all place emotional or intellectual importance on certain life issues. In other words, we have principles that we hope to pass along to our children. While we might wildly disagree on what our “values” should be, we all hope our children will eventually adopt our particular “values” and thus become “good people” (as interpreted differently by each family).

One of the lessons that I would like my children to learn is that of peace. In my mind peace begins with tolerance and acceptance. But I don’t want my children to simply tolerate and accept, I want them to truly love the differences that exist on this planet. I want them to be excited about other cultures, traditions, races, religions, cuisines, languages…everything that is different from themselves and their lives.

I hope I am not rudely presuming too much by venturing to guess that most of the readers of Unplug Your Kids include some version of peace in their set of “values.” In fact, I believe that most families around the world value peace, even those who we are told are currently “the enemy.”

We as mothers (and fathers of course, but I don’t think many fathers read Unplug Your Kids), have the world’s most important and powerful job. We have a chance to create a peace-loving generation that celebrates differences. If every family on our planet had peace and tolerance (at the very least) as a value and actively worked to pass this along, could we eradicate war in one generation?

This is obviously a Utopian vision, but as mothers, we must remember that no president, prime minister, king, or queen has the power that we do. When I get too caught up in dirty laundry and saying “no,” I must remind myself of this.

Like mothers in every corner of this Earth, I feel that even if my children continue to pick their noses into adulthood, I nonetheless will have done my bit for humanity if I manage to produce three enlightened and thoughtful inhabitants of our plant.

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It is time again for blogger Mimi Lenox’s semi-annual BlogBlast for Peace. Thursday, November 6th is the day when hundreds of bloggers worldwide (40 countries have signed on so far!) will all blog about one topic: PEACE. Every post will be entitled Dona Nobis Pacem (“Grant Us Peace”). This will be my fourth time joining in.

If you hope to contribute to a new generation of peace creators and lovers, please consider joining in. I’d love to read your thoughts on how you help your children understand that they can and should make a difference in this life.

If you want to participate, head over to Mimi’s to design your own Peace Globe (mine is up above) for your blog and Mimi’s Gallery.

I hope to read your thoughts on November 6th!

Comments (26)

By Mom Unplugged, October 13, 2008 2:30 am

This week’s Unplugged Project theme was smooth, and I confess that the choice was premeditated. We are away this weekend for fall break, so I knew a project would be hard to fit in. Instead I chose to write about one that we did in August when we were doing a babysitting coop with some friends.

This particular day about 10 kids were at the house. A friend who was moving brought over some liquid laundry starch that she couldn’t pack (the movers wouldn’t take it).

At her suggestion, we combined it with some white glue and made this wonderful, smooth, shiny, slimy, icky, bizarre goop!

All you need is liquid starch and white (Elmer’s type) glue. Mix glue and starch in a cup or bowl (disposable is best…sorry environment!) in about a 2-1 proportion (in other words: 1/2 cup glue to 1/4 cup starch, vary amounts proportionally as necessary to get the amount you need). Don’t worry too much about accuracy, I just eyeballed it and it was fine. You can add food coloring as we did, or keep it “natural:”

We started mixing in a civilized manner with spoons:

But the children quickly abandoned the spoons for the pleasure of feeling this stuff with their hands:

I wish you could see the expressions on the children’s faces as they mixed and ultimately experimented with the finished goop! Even I found the strange texture fascinating!

They all had a blast, and are still talking about it.

My 2 year-old especially loved this. She sat at the table all alone with her goop for about a half an hour after the other kids had run off to play on the swing set. The sensorial experience for her was totally absorbing:

TIPS:

• The goop is pretty sticky (yet smooth!) in an almost dough-like way once it is mixed. We found that running the finished ball of goop under the tap helped alleviate some of the initial stickyness. It will be very wet and runny at first, but once it dries out you’ll have a nice workable ball.
• Try to keep goop away from carpets, clothes etc. Although it doesn’t really stick to skin, tables, counters, etc., it sticks if left to rest on any fabric surface. It does wash out of clothes well though, as I found out with my 2 year-old’s shirt (after all, it is only washable glue and laundry starch), but carpets would be more of a problem.
• We kept ours in baggies and containers for a few days until I started finding it left out around the house. Then I got sick of it and the baggies began gradually “disappearing.”

EDITED TO ADD: Thanks so much to science teacher Stephanie who left a comment on this post with her alternate recipe that avoids the stickiness:

…make a solution of 50% water and 50% glue in one container and in another take one cup of water and 1 tablespoon of Borax (found in the laundry aisle). Then mix in equal parts of each solution (1/2 cup borax + 1/2 cup glue/water). If you make it in a plastic baggie the stickiness at the beginning in contained. Too sticky add a little more borax.

Thanks Stephanie! Next time we’ll try your version!

AND YET ANOTHER ADDITION: Marta left a comment with some useful information about a fun trick with this, and a cleanup tip:

Just a clean-up note, in regards to Stephanie’s post. Our daycare kids call this mixture flubber. They like to lay it flat on the table and put a straw under one edge. Inflate! Makes great big bubbles. Vinegar seems to work well to get this mess out of clothes, hair, carpets etc…

Thanks very much for the tips Marta. Very useful information!

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If you joined us for this week’s smooth Unplugged Project, then please post a link to your project in Mr. Linky. If you did not do a smooth project, then please do not link, but feel free to browse everyone else’s projects. To find out more about how to participate, please read more here. We’d love to have you!

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I feel like I should make a list of all the themes we have done so far since I am beginning to forget. The wonderful thing about the Unplugged Project is that one theme can generate so many different ideas, so I guess it doesn’t really matter if we repeat.

Next week’s Unplugged Project theme (and I don’t think that we have done it yet) is:

Wax

Have fun with it, and remember any connection to the theme, no matter how slim (the slimmer the better in my mind), “counts!”

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Comments (1)

By Mom Unplugged, October 13, 2008 2:25 am

Reader Dora and her boys joined in this week’s Unplugged Project (theme: smooth). She sent me the following email:

We just joined in your challenge and think it is a wonderful way to stretch the kids imagination. Here is our solutions to this week’s challenge. My oldest, thought of electrical tape and my middle, made smooth chocolate pudding.

She also sent me some photos of their work and gave me permission to post them. Here are the creative smooth projects that her two boys dreamed up:

Thanks for joining us Dora and boys! I hope you had fun!

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Comments (19)

By Mom Unplugged, October 5, 2008 8:32 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was white. This was a really hard one for me!

I spent the whole week thinking: “I pick the themes, so why on Earth did I pick white??” All my kids could think of was white paint or marshmallows, but unfortunately we had neither in the house today when it got down to the wire for doing the project or giving up.

I figured there was bound to be a way to make homemade white paint so I googled “homemade paint.” I came upon this neat web page: Homemade Art Tips - How to Make Paint for Craft Projects.

As I read through the paint recipes, I came across an intriguing one for Crystal Paint that required only hot water and Epsom salt (isn’t salt white?), both of which I had. Further googling for “epsom salt paint” also led to this teacher discussion board post about salt paint.

This Salt Crystal Paint is simply a salt water solution that you brush on paper. After the water dries, the salt crystals remain and produce a glittery effect.

My kids and I were excited to try it and we decided to really experiment. We got out the Epsom salt, construction paper, crayons, scissors and hole punches.

We began by making construction paper “snowflakes” to use as stencils. The idea of glittery snowflakes was quite appealing on this almost wintry day.

We used the shaped hole punches on our stencils too.

We also colored some pictures on the dark construction paper using crayons.

To make the salt solution, mix about 1/2 cup Epsom salt with 1/2 cup hot water. I made mine by stirring the salt in on the stove.

We made one batch this usual way.

We also tried another way by adding LOTS of salt until we could add no more thus making a solution that was supersaturated (I snuck a bit of science in here!).

We stuck our stencils down with tape, trying to keep them flat, but without using so much tape that they would be difficult to remove later.

The first batch of “paint” looked like plain water and I didn’t hold out much hope for success. But we painted it on our stencils and our pictures anyway, then let them dry.

Here we are peeling off the stencils:

The effect was really cool! It is quite difficult to show in a photo, but when you look at the pictures under a light or in the sun, they really sparkle like snow!

We did one picture with the supersaturated solution and it came out thickly crusted with salt. There wasn’t much sparkle, just a flat white effect. In fact the white almost completely hid the crayon:

We preferred the milder 1/2 cup salt and 1/2 cup water version, but the supersaturated one would be great to use as a paint on its own. You could achieve some interesting looking white textures with a bit of experimentation. The brush strokes really showed up well, as you can see in the photo above.

A fun variation that we’ll have to try another day, is to add food coloring to the solution. This will create colored crystals!

[NOTE: In case you are unfamiliar with it, Epsom salt is the common name for magnesium sulfate. It can be found in most pharmacies since it is often sold as a soak for feet or for adding to a bath. I have also seen it in the garden section of Walmart since it can be used as a fertilizer. Roses love it and that is how I use mine! It is usually in a milk carton-type container, but I have also bought it in a resealable plastic bag.]

I imagine that this project works better with Epsom salt than table salt since the crystals are much larger. I wonder if Kosher salt or sea salt would work too? That would probably cost a lot more though.

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Did you do a white Unplugged Project with us this week? If so, then please put a link to your white project in Mr. Linky below. Please remember, this week’s Mr. Linky is only for white projects.

If you didn’t do a white project but are interested in future Unplugged Projects, then please DO NOT link, but read how to join in here. We’d love to have you!

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

Smooth

Enjoy!

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