Comments (7)

By Mom Unplugged, August 23, 2009 7:55 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is people.

Our mixed-up people were fun and very easy to make. Apart from generating child giggles, I plan on using this as a French language teaching tool.

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1) Gather up magazines and catalogs (clothing catalogs are best), scissors, glue sticks, card stock, a three-hole punch, and a 3-ring binder. This was actually a challenge for me since I have gone from unwanted-catalog queen to hardly any catalogs at all thanks to Catalog Choice.

2) Cut out as many photos of complete people that you can. You will be dissecting the photos into heads, torsos and legs. Also look for interesting forward facing heads, torsos and legs. Cut those out too. Don’t really worry about sizes, you can triage the pictures later to pick the best ones. We even found a perfectly sized horse head and threw that in for fun.

NOTE: Heads are easy, full torsos and legs are harder to find.

3) Sort your pictures into heads, middles and bottoms. Count the number you have in each pile. Based on this, you can decide how many of each kind you want. Cut out more of any part you need, throw away any extras that don’t really work. Size doesn’t have to be exact, but it’s best to try and keep things as uniform as possible.

4) Once your pictures are sorted, you’ll know how many sheets of card stock to prepare. Punch holes in the card stock using the 3-hole punch.

Next, cut the card stock into three sections so that there is one hole in each section. I made the leg section the biggest since I thought legs would need the most room. I used a paper cutter and that made it easy to measure and cut to the appropriate size. You could use scissors, but make sure you cut each section to the same size.

5) Glue all the heads on the top part of the card stock. Take care to glue the heads in about the same position on each page. We put a finished page in front of us, and put the stack of empty pages below in order to see where it lined up.

6) Now glue the middles on. Again, make sure you glue them in the same place on each card, and also make sure they are below the heads. Place a head card on the table above the stack of empty torso cards, that way you can make sure that your torso is approximately lined up with the head.

7) Repeat the procedure for the legs.

8) Put your finished cards into the 3-ring binder, and flip them around to make some funny combinations!

To use this for foreign language teaching, simply ask children in the target language to make different combinations of people using vocabulary that they know, or are learning. For example: “A woman with long hair, wearing a red cardigan and a skirt,” or “A child with an orange t-shirt and blue shorts.”

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Did you do a people Unplugged Project this week? If so, then thank you! Please link to your project post in the linky below so we can all find your project. If you didn’t join in with a people-themed project, then please don’t link, but read more about how to join in here. We’d love to have you!

Participation has been down lately, so if you have been merely lurking and thinking about trying it, now’s a great time to join in. The more projects we have to offer, the more fun and interesting it is for all.

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

Geometric

Remember, be creative with the theme and above all, have fun!

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Remember, the linky is for Unplugged people projects only, thanks!

Comments (6)

By Mom Unplugged, August 17, 2009 9:05 pm

This week’s Unplugged Project theme was pocket and we made pocket-sized art, Artist Trading Cards.

Artist Trading Cards are so much fun because:

• There is only a small surface to work with (easy and less intimidating).
• You can really do pretty much anything at all to your cards.
• It’s social - you can trade the finished product with friends (or strangers), just as you might trade a baseball card.

I didn’t invent this, although I wish I had. Artist Trading Cards have been around for a little while (since 1996) and are sort of the art version of baseball cards. They are even the size of baseball cards and can fit in standard trading card protective sleeves.

There is only one real “rule” about Artist Trading Cards, they must be a standard size: 2.5″ x 3.5″ (64mm x 89mm). This ensures that they fit into trading card pockets. Also, it is best that they be made of durable card stock.

The tradition is that these cards are traded among artists, not sold, and many swaps by mail exist.

Like last year, I have been involved in a babysitting coop with some friends for the last two weeks before school starts, and have found myself with seven children at the house. This has given me a great pool of willing “guinea-pigs” for my Unplugged Project!

Creating our cards was a fun and easy group activity which culminated in an exciting swap among friends.

♦ All you need is some card stock to cut to size. I actually used thick, high quality watercolor paper that I cut to size with a paper cutter.

Then - cover your table, get out ALL your craft supplies, and let the kids have at it!

We used paints, markers, pencils, hole punches, magazines, tissue paper, feathers, stencils, stamps, even salt (to sprinkle on the paint or glue for texture) and googly eyes (the most popular element, as you can see from our finished cards).

♦ Finally, the swap. We put the dried cards face down and everyone picked an equal number. Those who ended up with one of their own, traded it with someone else. Once the kids had their final set, everyone signed the backs of the cards they had made, and even added messages. Very fun!

♦ Some of our finished cards:

A few kids deviated a bit from the one and only “official rule” (size) by adding on to their cards or sticking them together with remarkable results! (Since this was just a project for ourselves, I was certainly not going to stifle any creative impulses):

TIPS:

- Paint Modge Podge or watered down white glue over the finished cards if they have papers stuck on them. This makes a nice clear, shiny finish and seals all the edges and corners of the collage.

- If the cards curl when dry, leave them overnight under a very heavy book and they should be flat by morning.

TEACHING IDEA:

Why not incorporate this idea into an art history lesson by having students create cards in the manner of a certain artist, or style of art?

CONTEST:

Artist Trading Card Contest in School Arts Magazine (a great magazine by the way!) for art teachers and their students, kindergarten through college. Click the “Artist Trading Card Contest” link for information, entry form and contest rules. Deadline is December 1st, 2009.

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If you did a pocket Unplugged Project this week, then please link to your post (not just your blog) in the Linky below. I look forward to seeing what you did! If you did not do a pocket project, then please do not link, but read more about 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:

People

Enjoy and be creative!

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Comments (15)

By Mom Unplugged, August 9, 2009 9:39 pm

We’re back from France and finally over the jet lag. Time for the weekly Unplugged Project to resume!

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is photograph so we came up with a super-easy photo project using some of the many photos from our trip.

Inspired by a very old, hand-colored black and white photograph of my mother as a child, I thought it might be fun to turn some of our trip photos into old-fashioned, or maybe even funky-looking colored pictures.

First we each chose a few favorite trip photographs to play with. Since our pictures were all digital, it was easy to transform them into black and white using my photo editor (not exactly “unplugged,” but this is just the first step).

After experimenting a bit, I found that for darker pictures, or those with many dark colors, the result was improved by lightening the exposure slightly (any simple photo editor can do this also).

TIP: Before altering with your photos with the editor, make a duplicate of your photo and use that. You don’t want to permanently change your one and only copy of that favorite picture!

We printed the new black and white pictures onto plain white document paper. Regular paper is easier to color on than photo paper, and even if the picture appears a bit grainier on ordinary paper, that simply adds to the old/artsy effect.

Wait for the ink to dry completely before moving on to the next step. This might take a little while if the picture has lots of dark bits.

When everything is dry, you can start coloring. We used colored pencils since they allow the picture to show through the color.

• You can try to reproduce the real colors (more or less - of course the cat wasn’t really yellow!), such as here:

• Or have fun and do crazy colors for more of a modern art look:

• Experiment with pressing hard, or lightly.

• Keep the colors in the same family, or vary them.

• Try coloring some areas and leaving others black and white.

Whatever you decide to do, the effect is really beautiful, almost luminescent sometimes!

The children and I found this fun and easy, even my 3 year-old. She wanted to color a baby picture of herself. I love that green hair:

Use your pictures for a scrapbook or album, frame them, or make a collage out of them. You could even turn them into cards or family gifts.

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If you joined in this week’s Unplugged Project with your own photograph project, then please put a link to your project post (not just your blog) in Mr. Linky below. Please leave a link in a comment too since Mr. Linky has been having problems lately. If you didn’t do a photograph project, then please don’t link, but read more about 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:

Pocket

Have fun!

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Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, July 12, 2009 9:29 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was fast. This is a fast post because the week went really fast, and we will soon be flying in a fast airplane to France.

We did experiment with some rubber band powered cars, and finally succeeded in making an original prototype from a Knex Set that went very fast…for about 6 inches. I think the axle needs work, as does the length of the rubber band. It was fun, even though our model obviously needs improvements.

If you have budding engineers at your house, try this project and see what you can come up with!

Here are a few links to get you started:

PBS Kids - Rubber Band Car

Easy Propeller-Driven Rubber Band Car

LEGO Rubber Band Car

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If you did a fast-themed Unplugged Project this week then please link to your post below (not just your blog, we always want to be able to find your fast post). If you didn’t do a fast project, then don’t link, but please read more about how to join in the Unplugged Project here. We’d love to have you!

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Since I will be away until August 6th, the Unplugged Project will be on vacation also (although, if anyone is interested, I hope to post a few virtual postcards from France, perhaps even one a day if I can!).

The next Unplugged Project will be Monday August 10th and the theme will be:

Photograph

I bet we’ll have a lot of photos by the time we get home, and you’ll have a lot of time to think about what you will do with your photos!

Enjoy and have fun!

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Comments (27)

By Mom Unplugged, July 5, 2009 5:17 pm

This post is a follow-up to last Sunday’s Tiny - Cool Colored Rice post. The rice coloring was such a fun project in and of itself, that I decided just to focus on that. I chose this week’s Unplugged Project theme of container because it fit nicely with our original reason for making colored rice in the first place: A “Find It” Jar.

For a while now I have eyed these “Find It” games, thinking they would be fun for the car, travel or restaurants. But the the potential fun factor never seemed to justify the price, so I have never bought one.

With a long plane ride to Europe in our near future, I found myself once again considering buying one for the trip (would they let this through security?). But then it occurred to me that this could be fun and easy to make, so we decided to give it a try!

You’ll need a jar (a container!), preferably fairly tall and with a wide mouth. I used a glass spaghetti sauce jar, but I would recommend something plastic for travel or young children (a mayonnaise jar perhaps?).

You’ll also need some colored rice and many small objects to hide. I found that light, flat objects (like Legos) did not work very well since they seemed to stay on the surface of the rice. Another idea would be to choose objects according to a theme: nature objects (pebbles, acorns, twigs, shells), or animals (little toy animals), etc.

Tip: Consider the colors of your rice and how choice of color can increase the level of difficulty. You could hide all green objects in green rice for example, or do as I did and hide a variety of different-colored objects in multicolored rice.

Normally you could just make a list of the hidden objects, but since I wanted my non-reading 3 year-old to be able to play too, I decided to make a picture card instead.

I laid out all the objects on a plain white piece of paper (for clarity) and took a photo of them. Next I printed out the photo so my 3 year-old would know what to find:

The final step is to drop the objects into the jar and pour in the colored rice.

Don’t fill the jar completely, otherwise the rice and the objects won’t be able to move around very well.

Put the lid on (tightly!) and shake it up.

If you are worried about your children opening the jar and making a mess, you could glue the lid on. If you don’t glue the lid on however, you can easily change out the hidden treasures for others to keep it interesting.

I glued a bit of ribbon around the lid to make it prettier, but that’s just me being an over-the-top perfectionist and is absolutely not necessary.

Give the jar and list or photo to your children and let them see how many objects they can find. This is my 3 year-old giving it a go:

For older children,you could even give them a timer to race each other. For solitary play, they can try to top their own best time!

NOTE - Storing the Colored Rice: I finally found a use for the lovely, old-fashioned style French soda bottles that I had packratted away in the back of the pantry for years. I keep them on the kitchen counter now because they look so pretty! What do you think?

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If you did a container-themed Unplugged Project this week then please link to your post below (not just your blog, we always want to be able to find your container post). If you didn’t do a container project, then don’t link, but please read more about how to join in the Unplugged Project here. We’d love to have you!

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

Fast

Be creative and enjoy!

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