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By Mom Unplugged, March 1, 2010 8:46 pm

The Unplugged Project theme for the month of March will be:  Sphere

The linky is below and will remain open until April 1st.  On April 1st I will post a new Unplugged Project theme.

If you are wondering what the Unplugged Project is, then please read more about it here.  We’d love to have you join in!

The basics are the following:

• Please only link if you have done a project that is related to the theme.  Don’t just put your website in there because you like the idea of the project.  I appreciate the support, but if I don’t see a project, then I’ll have to delete your link.

• Please don’t link until you actually have a post to link to.  The post should not simply describe an intention, but document an actual completed project.

• When you link, please link to your POST, not just your blog.  I am trying to build a library of project ideas, so we want people to always be able to find your project in the future.  If you link simply to your blog, they won’t be able to find your post later on.  (Feel free to email me if you have a question about this.)

• Don’t worry about the “accuracy” of your connection to the theme.  Be creative, have fun, and think “outside the box” if you wish.  For example, the theme was once soft and we made moth feeders out of soft cotton balls.  Another time the theme was kitchen and we made Oobleck because it was made with cornstarch which is a substance you find in the kitchen, right?  If you think about it, you can find a connection with almost anything and that is what is really fun!

• If you have the time, energy, and inspiration to come up with more than one project for sphere that’s great!  Feel free to link to each sphere project separately in the linky.

• If you have no blog, then please leave a comment on this post with a description of what you did.  The more ideas we get, the better!

• It takes a lot of time and energy to put this project together and I would greatly appreciate a link to Unplug Your Kids in your project post.  Thank you and enjoy!

Photo is from Wikipedia, by Andrzej Barabasz.

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By Mom Unplugged, February 14, 2010 6:54 pm

The theme for this month’s Unplugged Project is spiral.  All along I had been thinking Spirograph and dug out my old Spirograph sets (yes, I am a packrat!), but we haven’t had a chance to play with those yet.

Coincidentally, my husband gave each of the kids a gift bag full of Valentine’s Day goodies, including a very cute, small, heart-shaped Spirograph-type toy!  They pulled those out this afternoon and had a blast with them.  It was their first time playing with such a thing (although the results reminded the kids of our very fun string art project).

It is still a bit hard for my 4 year-old to manage on her own (holding frame still and keeping the gear tracking along the teeth), but she loved it and it seems like a great exercise in fine motor skills.

When I was a child, the classic Kenner Spirograph was as ubiquitous as Crayola Crayons or Play-Doh.  Everyone had one!  But nowadays, as far as I can tell, this is considered a “vintage toy” that can only be found at places like Ebay.  Am I vintage too??  Feeling a little old here…

Anyhow, I have lots of not-so-vintage ideas of things to do with our Spirograph creations.  Hopefully we’ll get to try them and post about it before the end of the month.

LINKS:

• There are still Spirograph-like sets out there.

• Here’s a simple one that looks pretty good to me: Hypotrochoid Art Set.

• The mathematics and history of Spirograph.

• Find a real Spirograph set on Ebay!

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Do you have a spiral-themed project to share?  Then please consider joining our Monthly Unplugged Project and link to your post here.  Read more about the Monthly Unplugged Project here!

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By Mom Unplugged, October 19, 2009 1:25 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was “The Letter B.” We made treasure jars.  What is the relationship between treasure jars and “B”?  The children decorated their jars with dried beans and barley (and some of our colored rice, not “B,” but pretty!).  The Unplugged Project is as flexible as you need it to be.

I just gave the kids some white glue and the beans, barley and rice.  Then they chose jars from my packrat collection of “Useful Looking Jars” and went happily to work on their own while I made dinner.

By the way, this is a good toddler project too (great for exercising fine motor skills), as long as you don’t mind mess.  I recommend using a vinyl craft tablecloth and having a wet washcloth and a vacuum cleaner nearby.

Here are the results. My 3 year-old made the jar on the left, and my 9 year-old made the one on the right.  My 7 year-old son just made a big mess mixing things together, but he enjoyed himself.

I finished by spraying them with an acrylic coating to help keep things in place.

Remember, projects don’t have to be fancy or complicated to be fun!

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If you did a “Letter B” Unplugged Project with us this week, then please link to your project post in the Linky below.  If you don’t have a blog, you can leave a comment with a description of what you did.  If you didn’t do a “Letter B” project, then please read about how to join in here, we’d love to have you!

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

Change

See you then!

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Comments (2)

By Mom Unplugged, September 24, 2009 8:12 pm

9 year-old daughter using the turkey quill pen and sepia ink.

Comments (18)

By Mom Unplugged, September 22, 2009 2:33 pm

Feather was the theme of this week’s Unplugged Project.  We decided to try making a quill pen out of some big, beautiful turkey feathers that a friend gave us.

I found very detailed instructions here: Cutting Quill Pens from Feathers. This project involves sharp knives, so unless you have older children, you will probably end up doing most of the work like I did.

First temper the quill to toughen it up.  We filled a small, all metal pan with sand from our giant sand pile (you can use a tin can for this part too) and heated it in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Next we stuck our feather tip into the hot sand and left it there until the sand was cool.

Use a sharp kitchen knife to scrape off some of the feathers near the end in order to make a feather-free area to grip.

Find the orientation of your feather.  This will determine which side you are going to cut.  Feathers curve and you want the pen to curve back in your hand as you write.  The feather is top side up in this photo.

The first cut is actually made opposite the way you would think.  Hold the feather pointed away from you and top side up.  Using scissors, cut the tip off the feather at an angle slanting away from you (so more of the top side is gone than the bottom).

The second cut is a long shallow cut along the bottom of the feather.  It should be centered along the top cut and should remove about half the tube.  This opens up the feather and you can dig out any membranes that are inside using tweezers.

The next part is making the slit.  I didn’t really understand this step until I saw how my cuts had shaped the tip, but you will see two little points (the website calls them “horns”) that are formed by the intersection of the two cuts.

Squash the tip of the feather flat so the two points/horns are flat one against the other.  Press hard and this should make a crack in your feather tip halfway between the points.  Ideally it should only be about 1/4″ long.

The final step (and the one I found the most difficult) is shaping the nib.  Look closely at the instructions to determine the proper shape.  I used scissors for my first cuts, and then a sharp kitchen knife to gradually shave the nib to hopefully something like the proper shape!

Clip off any teeny tiny rough bits, dip your nib in some good ink and test your quill on high-quality paper. I used sepia non-waterproof (ie. washable) ink. Obviously washable ink is preferable if kids are going to use it!

I must say, while not perfect, the quill actually did hold ink in the shaft and wrote much better than I expected.  Not too bad for a first try at a lost skill that really requires much practice and patience to learn properly.

If you decide to try this, I urge you to read the much more complete, knowledgeable and well-photographed instructions at Cutting Quill Pens from Feathers.

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If you did a feather Unplugged Project this week, then please link to your project post in the linky below.  If you didn’t join in, please do not link, but read more about how to get involved in the Weekly Unplugged Project here.  We’d love to have you!

By the way, sorry I am late with the post this week, but life comes before blogging!

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be very open-ended:

The Letter J

Enjoy!

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