Unplug Your Kids: OLD

Last week, I found a new blog called Unplug Your Kids. The goal is to "unplug" your kids and do something fun instead. Each week, she is giving a theme and you are to try to do something with that theme. We participated this weekend for the first time and had so much fun! I believe we'll continue doing this weekly - at least as often as we can.


The new posts are given on Monday and last week's theme (which you would post today) was "old." So, we pulled out a kit about "old", actually ANCIENT, Egypt. (The kit is a "Tresure Chests" called "Ancient Egypt" by "Running Press" which we bought used a couple of years ago.)


Here Alexandra is working with some of the hieroglyph stamps. She also worked on a necklace.

I worked on this grid drawing. It was harder than I thought it would be. We worked on this kit for about 30 minutes and it was so much better than watching TV or playing video games.

We also looked through some of the archives and tried some of their projects this weekend. This project was on the Unplug Your Kids blog under "sticky." We found some old containers and tore little pieces of masking tape and covered the containers. Then, we used shoe polish to "paint" it and give it this faux leather appearance. She found the original instructions here.

Morningstar Green Time had a project under "sticky" to make necklaces and Polly Pocket plates out of Elmer's glue.

You can use any container and use WASHABLE markers to color the bottom of it. (We used a mini muffin tin.) Then, you add a layer of Elmer's glue and let it set about 24 hours. It should be CLEAR when they're done. We LOVED watching the colors change!

Then, we pulled out our finished projects. Alexandra thinks she'll use them as plates, though we might make some of them into necklaces.

Morningstar Green Time also had a terrific post under METAL. You use tinfoil and "draw" on it. We used a very dull pencil, but pushed pretty hard on it. This dinosaur was my favorite creation. I drew it by looking at one of Alexandra's old coloring books. These pieces look a lot better (I think) if you use some texture - like the polka dots and stripes on his "hair."

I also tried using a little color with a Sharpie. Morningstar had a lot more colors of Sharpies than we do and I LOVE the look of their projects.

We'd love to have you all join us as we "Unplug Our Kids!"