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By Mom Unplugged, July 6, 2008 9:02 pm

For this week’s Unplugged Project, sky, I was inspired by my Uncle’s very detailed star charts. He used to create charts of the constellations using thick black paper, a white pencil, and a pin to put holes where the stars were. The bigger the pinhole, the brighter the star. When you hold his charts up to the light, they are a very accurate representation of the night sky. I tried to photograph one of his charts here, but they are much easier to appreciate in person:

We gathered together astronomy books, construction paper (although dark blue was the closest we had to black), colored pencils, a ruler, and pins:

First we studied the books to find constellations that we liked. My oldest chose Leo since that is her “sign.” My 3 year-old nephew made up his own constellation, as you shall see.

Then we cut some dark blue construction paper in half. We transferred the dots to the paper as best we could by eye (if you have a simple constellation book with large drawings such as H.A. Rey’s excellent classic: The Stars: A New Way to See Them , it might be easier to trace them on tracing paper and then transfer them over to the construction paper).

The younger astronomers just drew a bunch of dots or “stars” randomly on their paper, as my 2 year-old is doing here:

They then drew lines between the stars, connecting the dots, to show the constellation forms as they do in books:

The really fun part was poking holes through each star (dot) with a pin so the light would shine through. We were not as accurate as my Uncle and did not worry about star intensities!

My 3 year-old nephew decided that his constellation was a sea horse and I can really see that! Here are the finished star charts:

And when held up to a window or light, they look like this:

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If you joined us for sky this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky and leave a comment so we can find you. If you didn’t, you can read about how to join here.

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

Stone

I hope to see you then!

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By Mom Unplugged, June 30, 2008 7:26 am

We have had a Wee Enchanted Garden kit in the closet for several years, but had not yet put it together. So that’s what we did this week for the Unplugged Project theme of garden.

The Wee Enchanted Garden is a mini fairy garden in a box. Since we love fairies, it was a fun project, but I think it would be even more fun and very easy to create your own fairy garden without a kit.

This is what came in the kit: a plastic plant saucer, paints in the three primary colors, a paint brush, soil (it feels like a very light seed mix), grass seed, assorted beans (to grow into the “trees”), stones, gravel, little plastic figures (a frog and a rat), some seashells, and a lovely little fairy house made of wood and bark!

First my two oldest children painted the saucer. Since the paints were just yellow, blue, and red, it was a good exercise in color mixing too.

My youngest happily painted with some water colors and, in typical 2 year-old fashion, refused all colors but blue:

Pita, our assistant:

After the paint dried, the real fun began: the planting and arranging.

The children wanted to add a few other treasures to the garden. They disappeared into their rooms and returned with a penny, a marble, and a plastic snake (to eat the fairies?).

One tip: be careful when you water. We used a watering can and flooded it a bit. There is no drainage and the seed soil is very light. Next time we will water by spraying with a spray bottle.

This would be a very easy project to replicate without the kit, although I think that lovely little house makes the kit really wonderful.

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Here’s one more garden project idea. This one is more ambitious, but very worthwhile!:

The Children’s Garden

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If you joined in this week for garden, then please leave your link in Mr. Linky and a comment so we can all find your project. If you didn’t join us, read about how to play and consider doing next week’s theme.

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Since we will be flying on a plane soon, the theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

sky

Hope to see you next week!

Comments (21)

By Mom Unplugged, June 22, 2008 10:48 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is “old.” It was a hard choice for me since I thought of many fun options, but…

My now 6 year-old son has always been somewhat obsessed with maps. Since, at the moment, he really enjoys drawing “treasure maps,” I ultimately decided that he might enjoy making a treasure map that really looked old.

When I was a child, in art class once we antiqued cards by burning the edges with a candle, gluing them onto wood, and then coating them with shellac to make them look yellowed and ancient. For some reason I LOVED this project. In fact I loved it enough to remember it to this day, and trust me, it was quite a while ago!

Well, I didn’t have any shellac on hand, but I have heard that similar results can be obtained with coffee or tea. So, we gave it a go. I followed the basic instructions for How to Antique Paper from Curbly blogger, DIY Maven. We then embellished a bit. Here’s what we did:

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We needed brewed coffee or tea, instant coffee granules, a Sharpie (permanent marker), some plain white paper (I used computer printer paper), a baking sheet with a rim, some paper towels, and an oven:

First we drew our maps with the Sharpie. The kids loved this of course, and each made several:

Then we crumpled the maps and flattened them out again to create wrinkles:

Next came the really fun part. We laid the maps side by side on the rimmed baking sheets and poured coffee on them. You don’t need much, a cup probably would have sufficed. I don’t know what I was thinking when I made a whole 4 cup Pyrex jug full! Too bad instant coffee is too disgusting to drink or I could have a few cups while we worked.

We poured on a little (don’t flood it) and then smeared it around with a paint brush to completely cover the paper without drowning it too much:

The coffee is what stains the paper that yellow-brown tone. If you want “age spots” then sprinkle on some instant coffee granules and let them dissolve a bit:

Once the granules have dissolved a little, blot up all the excess liquid on the paper and the baking sheet with some paper towels. Tip - blotting with a dabbing motion seemed to work better than wiping:

Here they are before going into the oven. The oven dries them off quickly and gives them a slightly parched, brittle, old texture:

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees (93 Celsius - “low heat”) and put the baking sheet in the oven. It took about 5 minutes or so for ours to dry out. Keep an eye on it. When the edges start to curl up a bit, it is probably done.

They will come out looking hundreds of years old! But, if that’s not enough for you, you can take it a step further and burn the edges too. Obviously, this is an activity for adults only.

Light a candle and place it in the kitchen sink. The dry paper burns very well, so you’ll want water right there. You can also just drop the paper into the sink if the flame spreads too quickly. I was a bit overly-enthusiastic on my first go and burned a few apparently crucial areas of one of my daughter’s maps (sorry!):

I eventually got the hang of it and was able to produce just a lightly ragged burned effect instead of giant, blackened blotches.

Tip - gently slide the edge of the paper back and forth through the flame. Keep it moving and try not to really let it actually catch on fire. After a few passes through the flame, take it out. The edge will be glowing. Put the edge under some running water to extinguish the glow. Afterwards you can let the paper dry on its own, or if you are impatient as we were, then simply pop it back into the oven for a few more minutes to dry off.

Our finished maps:

The final touch was rolling them up and tying them with string:

~THE HUNT FOR TREASURE~

While we were making the maps, my daughter asked if I would make a “real” treasure map for them, and then hide some treasure somewhere for them to find using the map.

I thought that sounded fun, so I did.

The map is revealed (they hadn’t looked at it while I was making it):

After a false start in the wrong location (perhaps Mom is a poor map draftsman?), they finally got their bearings and were hot on the trail of the pirate treasure:

And the treasure is finally found!

We had a great time on the treasure hunt and surprisingly, it actually taught some map-reading skills!

The treasure hunt is a fun activity to try anytime. It only takes a minute or two to draw a map and hide the “treasure.” You don’t have to get fancy and “antique” your map unless you want to.

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We had a lot of fun this week. This project was easy enough for them to do on their own (apart from the burning of course), and we all enjoyed it

What did you do for old? If you joined in this week’s Unplugged Project, please put a link to your project in Mr. Linky. Also leave a comment so your project link will be forever immortalized should Mr. Linky fail, as he does from time to time.

If you didn’t join us, please think about trying to next week. You can read all about how the Unplugged Project works here.

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In honor of summer (here in the Northern Hemisphere anyway), the theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Garden

Please note that I did not say “garden-ing” (although that would be a fine project to share). It could involve pictures of gardens, something to do with plants, seeds, bugs, colors, dirt, butterflies … anything! Be creative, I look forward to being inspired by you all!

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By Mom Unplugged, June 15, 2008 9:15 pm

Again, I had nothing in mind last week when I picked the Unplugged Project theme of plastic. I had saved a few yogurt cups, and a mayonnaise jar hoping for inspiration, but then I suddenly remembered a really cool project that I had come across once on StumbleUpon: genuine, DIY Shrinky Dinks (by Curbly blogger Chrisjob).

I grew up in the 1970′s, the era of Shrinky Dinks, so I was probably more excited about this project than my kids were (although they were pretty eager once I explained what would happen).

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1) In order to do this project, you’ll have to find some number 6 plastic containers. Grocery stores often use number 6 plastic boxes at their salad bars, or for their baked goods. I must have looked like a bit of an oddball at my local grocery picking up all the containers and raising them over my head to examine the bottoms! Be careful, because there were a few out there that looked like 6′s, but they were 5′s just lying in wait to trick me. Chrisjob suggests asking for a few free ones. I just decided it was a good excuse to buy some bran muffins…and strawberries (yes, they are number 6 too!).

20/20 hindsight advice - Try to choose containers that do not have stickers on them. The glue was very hard to remove and a few of our finished pieces were a little sticky on the back from residual glue.

2) You’ll also need colored Sharpies (permanent markers), scissors, and foil. As you see here, we bought a few key chain rings at the local art supply store since I thought the Shrinky Dinks might make a neat Fathers’ Day key chain:

3) First we cut the boxes up to create rectangles that were as large as possible. The plastic will shrink to about 30%-40% it’s original size, so keep that in mind when you cut.

4) Then we drew on them with the Sharpies. My kids did two each, one for their Dad, and one for their Pop Pop (my Dad). I did one for my Dad too!

5) I punched a hole in each piece with a hole puncher. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I thought it might be easier to put the hole in now, rather than later.

6) We arranged the plastic pictures on a sheet of foil:

and put it in a preheated, 350 degree oven (177 celsius). Be sure to put the foil directly on the oven rack, with the rack at the bottom of the oven.

The shrinking is very quick. Chrisjobs says total time for a large, 5″to 6″ piece would be about 3 1/2 minutes. Ours was done in more like two, but it was also smaller to begin with, about 3 to 4″x 2 to 3″. He recommends opening the oven after about 90 seconds if you don’t have a window so as not to overcook.

We “oohed” and “aahed” in unison! It was quite spectacular. First the pieces move and curl up. Then they get smaller and smaller and eventually flatten out again.

7) When you remove them they are still soft for a very short period (10-15 seconds) if you want to bend them or shape them somehow. But be careful, they are hot. They quickly cool and become hard. You’ll notice that they are thicker too, about the thickness of a coin:

The pre-punched hole worked well. It shrank too, but remained large enough for the key chain. If there are any rough or sharp edges you can easily sand them off.

Here is the finished Daddy key chain:

And the Pop Pop key chain:

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Some other Shrinky Dink links and projects/ideas:

• Make gorgeous, funky rings: Shrink Plastic Ring Tutorial from PlanetJune

• Cute Shrinky Dink Pins from Wee Wonderfuls

• 14 kids’ shrink art projects

• Shrinky Dink Wine Glass Charms

• Shrinky Dink Mobile

• If you don’t want to scour the grocery store, then you can buy shrink plastic sheets online, or at your local craft store (they come in clear or frosted). You can also buy shrink plastic sheets for inkjet printers so you can print words or clipart, then shrink.

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If you did a plastic Weekly Unplugged Project, then please put your link in Mr. Linky so that I, and others, can easily find you to gain a little inspiration. Please leave a comment too, in case Mr. Linky malfunctions.

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Since I enjoyed the week where we just had a simple adjective as a theme (sticky), for next week’s Unplugged Project I thought we would try that again. The theme will be:

old

(Remember, the association can be very loose, so use your imagination!)

Hope to see you here for old!

Comments (13)

By Mom Unplugged, June 11, 2008 12:11 pm

Are you tired of birthday parties at the pool, Chuck E. Cheese’s, or the local bowling alley? But perhaps the thought of entertaining a large group of over-excited kids at your house fills you with dread? The solution: Think outside the birthday box.

My good friend Wishy‘s daughter recently had an original and totally fun party at a local knitting store! Her daughter had become fascinated with the idea of learning to knit after watching her aunt knit, and announced that for her 8th birthday she wanted to have a “Knitting Party.”

Wishy was understandably perplexed, but gets a Mom of the Year Award for researching the possibilities instead of just saying with a sinking heart: ” But wouldn’t you rather just go to the pool like last year?” (Like I probably would have done).

She called up our one, tiny local knitting store and asked them if they ever did birthday parties. Well, no they had never done a birthday party, but they said that they thought it sounded fun and would be willing to give it a try.

Ten 7 and 8 year-old girls (including my oldest daughter) went to the party and learned how to knit a book mark. The shop gave each girl needles and yarn and they had three instructors on hand to help the girls. All Wishy had to do was bring the cake, plates, napkins, and drinks.

The girls had a ball and each went home with a completed book mark plus a goody bag put together by the shop containing more needles, two more balls of yarn, the directions for the book mark, and instructions for a pot holder to try at home.

The girls had fun, even the shop-owner claims to have enjoyed it (and hopefully has gained a few future customers), and now ten little girls (and Wishy) know how to knit.

That beats Chuck E. Cheese’s any day!

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Other unusual birthday party ideas:

• A visit to a fire station
• Visit a zoo, petting zoo, or alpaca farm
• See if you can tour a movie theater (many will allow school groups to tour, why not a birthday group?)
• Horse birthday: See if a local riding school or club might allow your group to come and give each child a short, guided ride on a horse around the arena
• Airport birthday: Visit your local small airport (I’m not talking O’Hare or JFK here). Picnic on the grass and watch the planes take off and land. Better yet, if you know someone who owns a plane, see if your friend would allow the kids to take turns sitting in the pilot’s seat. If your pilot friend has a handheld aviation radio, borrow it and tune it to the local airport frequency (the airport employees or your friend can help you with this) then the kids will be able to hear the pilots talk.
• Go Geocaching: Pick an easy one and give each child a small object to leave in the cache in exchange for taking one out. (You should probably try finding it on your own first to make sure it is easy enough and to avoid disappointments if it can’t be found).
• Go Letterboxing: Perhaps the kids could each create their own stamp before heading out to find the box. Be sure to pick an easy one. (Again, better do a trial run on your own first).
• See if your local pizza parlor would let you bring some kids in for a tour and to make their own pizzas. My daughter’s Brownie Troop did this and the girls loved it.

I’ll post more ideas as I think of them. Do you have any easy but unusual party ideas?

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For a charity party idea, please read about my daughter’s Humane Society birthday party.

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Cool knitting cake designed, baked and decorated by Wishy’s talented husband! Photo courtesy of Wishy.