Comments (10)

By Mom Unplugged, November 2, 2008 10:02 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was flag. I had a few ideas of my own, but left this one totally up to the kids.

They chose to make their own personal flags.

My 8 year-old daughter made a flag that represented herself (and hung it on her bedroom door). Each item and color represented something, just like in a real flag. My favorite were the glasses (yellow - middle of right hand side) which apparently is the symbol for herself. She has had glasses since age 1 so I guess they are very much a part of who she is:

My 6 year-old son drew a picture of a country that he invented, and made a flag to go with it. The country is called “Cat World.” Considering the name, I’m not sure why there are no cats on the flag or the picture!:

They drew and used construction paper to create their flags. You could get fancier and cut pictures out of magazines, or do “mixed media” flags if you want.

We kept it simple this week though, and spent the rest of our afternoon flying a kite in the fall wind and playing Triominos.

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Did you do a flag project this week? If so, then please link to your project (specific project post please, rather than blog in general) in Mr. Linky below. If not, then read more about the Unplugged Project and consider joining in next week!

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Kitchen

Have fun!

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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 (14)

By Mom Unplugged, September 21, 2008 8:57 pm

Last week for our sand Unplugged Project, I had an idea for making permanent sand castles which I had seen as a proofreading exercise in my daughter’s spelling workbook! (Spelling Workout, Level D, Modern Curriculum Press, p. 12)

Hey, you never know where you might find inspiration, right? My kids vetoed me last week for this particular sand project, and chose to do something else instead, but I figured we’d get to try it for this week’s theme of hard. Plus, since it was recently my sister’s birthday and she loves Hawaii, we made sand sculptures for her.

We followed the instructions in the spelling book. We needed sand, cornstarch, and water. The recipe called for 2 cups sand, and 1 cup each of cornstarch and water. We doubled it.

Sand was easy. We went out to our big sand pile and scooped up 4 cups of sand and put it in a big cooking pot. We then poured in 2 cups of cornstarch:

And 2 cups of water:

And stirred over low heat.

We stirred for a while. It was very runny, but looked yummy, like melted chocolate ice cream.

After about 10 minutes we got bored and left it alone for another 5 minutes or so. When we rechecked it, it had transformed into a solid, stiff lump! I had to trade in my plastic spoon for a sturdy metal one or it would have snapped in two! It was so stiff that in this photo, the spoon is standing up on its own:

I had prepared the kitchen table with our craft tablecloth as well as a plastic garbage bag for easier clean-up. We dumped the mixture out on the garbage bag to cool.

It cooled quickly and soon we were all playing with the warm, squishy, sand playdough. It felt really nice.

Eventually, it started to dry and get a bit crumbly so I put out a bowl of water to sprinkle on it. A spray bottle of water turned out to be even better, and more entertaining.

We shaped it and poked it with sharp pencils, toothpicks, even a funnel.

Afterwards we put our creations on plates to dry. Here are the results:

The next day, we unfortunately discovered that my 2 year-old’s hand print and the starfish were breaking apart. The two sand castles however, were fine. I would recommend this project only for larger, 3-D sculptures, but the thinner, flat ones were disappointing. But…in case you were wondering, the pot cleaned up fine!

PS: In reviewing last week’s projects, I saw that Meg had made something similar as part of her sand project, but used sand and glue instead of cornstarch. She used molds to make starfish and they turned out really well! Consider experimenting with molds for extra fun if you try this. Karen B. also made “sand clay” similar to our recipe and added salt to hers to slow spoiling.

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Did you join in this week’s Unplugged Project themed hard? If so, then please add a link to your project in Mr. Linky below. If you didn’t join us this week, then feel free to browse the links below and read about how to join in for next week!

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Fruit

Enjoy!

Comments (19)

By Mom Unplugged, August 31, 2008 9:08 pm

My stepmother, who always enjoys our projects, recently sent my children a subscription to Family Fun magazine because she thought they might find some fun ideas there. Well, we did find an idea that sounded pretty cool for this week’s insect Unplugged Project: Cricket Chirpers.

Supplies: 1/2″ wooden beads, wooden skewers, and glue (the article called for “tacky glue” but not being crafty enough to know what that was, I used carpenter’s wood glue):

First, as suggested by the magazine, I cut the pointy ends off the skewers to reduce the chance of injury.

Next, the children threaded 15 beads onto the skewers in any pattern they wished.

My 2 year-old had fun threading beads too. For her, I stuck a lump of playdough onto one end of the skewer so she wouldn’t get frustrated by beads falling off:

She eventually tired of threading and unthreading beads and branched out into sticking the beads onto the lump of playdough:

This turned into an all-out playdough session (one of her favorite things):

After each child had made two sticks, I glued the two end beads with the carpenter’s glue. It turned out to be a bit fiddly and messy, so I think it was a good thing that I decided to do this step myself.

We let the glue dry for several hours, and this was the result:

When rubbed together, the sticks are supposed to sound like crickets. Well, they didn’t sound much like crickets to me. My husband agreed. I thought maybe they sounded more like cicadas on a night full of general, random insect noises. I asked my husband…he closed his eyes, concentrated, and said…”No.”

They do however make cool instruments to add to any musical instrument collection. Sorry about the crickets though.

Why don’t you try it (very easy project) and let me know what you think!

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What did you do this week for the Unplugged Project theme of insect? If you did an insect project this week, then please put a link to your project in Mr. Linky.

A few linking pointers:

• It is best if you link to the actual project post, not just your blog in general, that way people will always be able to find your specific project easily.

• Also, if you did not do the project, please don’t link. Mr. Linky is for project participants only, not for general links to blogs or stores, etc.

• Finally, I have decided that I will leave a Mr. Linky open for only two weeks. After two weeks I will disable it so that no new links can be added, but all the existing links can still be followed. This will give everyone two weeks to add their link, but will guard against spam links being added to old Linkys that I no longer monitor.

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

Soft

Have fun!

Comments (18)

By Mom Unplugged, August 24, 2008 9:51 pm

My camera cable is back so I can join in again, hooray!!!

When I picked the theme of cylinder for this week’s Unplugged Project, I was thinking of all the toilet paper we usually seem to go through so quickly. Guess what: this week, not one empty roll of toilet paper. How did that happen? And I was counting on it!!

I did finish a roll of wrapping paper though, so we used that for our cylinder. Have you noticed that they don’t make those wrapping paper rolls like they used to? Instead of being like long paper towel rolls, they are now simply curled up, thin cardboard.

Anyhow, we made it work for the Surprise Packages that I had in mind. My 8 year-old daughter’s best friend is moving far away to Washington State next week, so she wanted to make something special to give to her. It turned out that this project was perfect.

For this, you’ll need a cardboard cylinder (toilet or paper towel tubes would work best, but as you can see here, wrapping paper inserts can work too). Also, wrapping paper, or plain paper decorated by your children with markers, stickers, etc. Plus scissors, a hole punch (fancy or plain), and either ribbon or yarn.

Since we used the flimsy wrapping paper cardboard, we had to tape it into a cylinder:

Next, if your cylinder is long (ie. paper towel or wrapping paper length), cut it to the desired length. Be sure to consider that you will be making 1″- 2″ closing flaps at both ends, so please take that into account when calculating your desired length (add about 2″- 4″ to the overall length for the closing flaps).

Wrap the cylinder in wrapping paper (or paper decorated by the kids, or newspaper, magazine pictures, anything!!). Cut four slits on each end, all opposite one another:

You will end up with four tabs on each end, like this:

Punch one hole in each tab (large enough to put the string or ribbon through). I would recommend a normal single hole punch, that way you can make the tabs shorter so they will close better. I couldn’t find mine, so I used a fancy punch which made nice heart shapes, but required a longer tab to work:

Once the holes are punched in each tab, thread the ribbon/yarn through the holes on one side to tie the flaps up. First pass the yarn through two opposite holes from the inside out, like this:

Do the start of a bow to tie up the first two flaps (an extra set of fingers to hold everything down while you tie is recommended!):

Thread the ribbon/yarn through the remaining two opposing holes in a similar fashion. Pull tight, then tie a full bow:

Fill the surprise package with whatever you like. My daughter used leftover candy from a friend’s birthday party (that hadn’t yet made it to the Candy Bank), the punched-out hearts, some “special rocks,” and a note that she wrote:

Actually, one advantage of a fancy hole punch is the punched-out confetti that you can make to put inside your surprise tube. My daughter had fun making lots of hearts from the extra wrapping paper scraps:

Once filled, tie the other end the same way as the first end. And…the final product:

I think that these could be fun to make for any holiday, or birthdays. They are also wonderful everyday storage containers for special treasures.

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What did you create for the Unplugged Project theme of cylinder? I’d love to see, and so would many other people. So if you did a cylinder project this week, please put the link to your project in Mr. Linky below. If you are merely stopping by to check it all out, please do not link, but read about the Unplugged Project here to see if it is something you might want to do.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project is:

Insect

Enjoy!!!

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