Unplug Your Kids: Tiny

For this week's Unplug Your Kids project, the focus was "tiny." I looked at the blog of This Girl Loves To Talk and followed her link to the Filth Wizadry blog. This blog is aimed at preschoolers, but I found some wonderful ideas! In fact, there are a lot of ideas I'm planning on trying. You should hop over to her blog and take a look!



We used her origami post to make "tiny" baskets (and also a couple of boats) and then used them for Alex's huge collection of Littlest Pet Shop toys. I'm sure Alex spent over an hour making these little boxes. I made 6 boxes and Alex made TEN!!! It was just a lot of fun and something we both enjoyed. (The actual link for the tutorial to make the baskets is at oragami-instructions.com.)

Unplug Your Kids: Slippery

This week's Unplug Your Kids challenge was "SLIPPERY." I had trouble thinking of anything except for slippery soap. I remembered I had bought some Ivory soap quite a while ago as we were studying whales for our Swimming Creatures co-op. We were hoping to use it to make some scrimshaw like the whalers used to do.

When we went to Maui a year and a half ago, Alex and I spent quite a bit of time at a whaling museum. At the museum, we bought some scrimshaw Christmas ornaments (which I couldn't find this Christmas!) Whalers would carve into bone and teeth of whales (and sometimes other body parts) to make beautiful etchings. Well, I read that you can try to do your own "scrimshaw" using Ivory soap.

Ivory has its own site, with patterns, showing you how to carve the soap. We really enjoyed it and it was challenging, but I thought it turned out well. I used one of the patterns while Alex created her own design.

BOOK REVIEW: I've also been meaning to mention a book I read about whaling while in Maui. The book is In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. (He also has a juvenile version titled Revenge of the Whale: The True Story of the Whaleship Essex, which is also available on CD.)

The book tells the amazing story of the whaleship Essex which was attacked by an angry whale. It sunk and the crew did everything they could to survive, even taking the most drastic meaures. In the end, only a few of the crew survive the 90 days at sea. The book is indeed intense and mezmerizing and this true story inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick.

Unplug Your Kids: Homemade

Our last day of school was Thursday and we started our day by doing our Unplug Your Kids Challenge for the week: Homemade. I called my mom and got her recipe for whole wheat pancakes - a healthier alternative to regular pancakes! And, they're yummy!


Ingredients for my mom's Wheat Pancakes (we halved the ingredients as we were only cooking for two):

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup white flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 4 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

You mix the dry ingredients separate from the wet ingredients and then mix together.

(By the way, I thought my camera was broke this morning or I would have took more photos. It turned out I'd hit a button and finally got everything working OK. Whew!)

Summer Learning Fun

We have 2 more days of school left. :-) We don't do any formal school during summer, but I still want to do some fun projects.

Last summer, we participated in Unplug Your Kids and I plan on doing it as often as possible this summer. Each week, there is a theme and you create some kind of project based on that theme. For example, this week's theme is: HOMEMADE. It's supposed to be a "surprise" but I'm thinking about making homemade noodles like my mom makes. Or, some kind of homemade food that we've never tried before.

I also plan on doing Barb's Outdoor Hour Challenges like we used to do. This week's challenge is to study woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches or towhees. We see the first two in our yard fairly often, so we'll pick one of those.

And, we'd like to start doing the Think! challenges again, also. We were enjoying these, but we just got too busy I guess. I think the "new" challenge will be up in a day or 2 and I'll wait for it.

So, those are 3 weekly activities we will do when we aren't on the road. I think we're going to have a great summer!

Oh, and if you know of any other weekly challenges, let me know! I'd really like one about cooking with kids - something like a weekly recipe to try.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #27 & Unplug Your Kids: Insects

(I decided to use this post for double duty as the Unplug Your Kids topic this week was: insects! So, instead of reposting these photos, I'll just link to this post from a few days ago.)

This week's challenge for Outdoor Hour was to study and look for bees. Sadly, we haven't seen many bees in our backyard for the past few years. We have 2 different types of plants that used to be covered in them, but we rarely see them now. So, we were outside and I was sure we wouldn't find any...

but, we found this one... she was dead. But, it was a great opportunity to study it close up and get a few photos.

We spent lots of time in the backyard this week. Alexandra saved this milkweed bug from the pool - he's drying off his wings.

I found this katydid on our sago palm. I love this photo! You might try to enlarge it. I think it is one of my best insect photos ever. And, I actually wasn't sure if this was a katydid or a grasshopper of some kind when I found it. I did some research and found that you can usually tell a katydid by its LONG antenna. They are sometimes even called longhorned grasshoppers, though they are more closely related the cricket.

And, this was just an incredible gift from God! My dog actually "found" it. This was right outside our back door. I actually thought this poor cicada was deformed... and dead. His coloring was so strange! So, I didn't even wake Alexandra to see it. About 30 minutes later, I took her outside to see it...And, he was out and letting his wings dry! Aren't those incredibly colored wings!!! I thought he was a most unusual colored cicada.

But, once again, I hadn't waited long enough... he is actually just an "ordinary" (but beautiful) cicada. Isn't that just amazing???

Having Fun with Andy Warhol

This week's Unplug Your Kid's theme was cylinders. I'd been planning on studying Andy Warhol and when I saw the theme I thought - "soup cans!" So, today we started a study of Warhol by reading 2 books about him and creating 2 pieces of art.


Our first "assignment" was to draw something that is a part of our every day life. Alexandra chose to draw Ovaltine (a cylinder) - something her and her cousin love to drink when they go to Grandma's.


I drew a modern "Healthy Request" can of Campbell's Soup... just like Andy.


We also tried to make some of his strangely colored portrait collages. We tried several mediums and couldn't find anything we could use to color ON Alexandra's face. So, we ended up coloring the background with markers. I still thought these turned out very neat looking.

If anyone's ever tried this (or knows of a way I can do it on my computer), I'd love to make these more colorful. I'd like to buy some watercolors and see if that would work.

We plan on studying more about Warhol this week... and making more masterpieces! So, if you have any ideas, please let me know!

Next week's theme: INSECTS

Unplug Your Kids - Flat

This week's theme at Unplug Your Kids was "flat." I had trouble coming up with an activity, and then ran across this neat art project which is done on paper... so it is FLAT.

I found the project at The Crafty Crow which is an incredibly great, crafty site for projects to do with kids. She links back to the site where she found the idea, at MollyCoddle. So, here is how we made our FLAT, watercolor blog drawings.


To do this project, you use watercolor paints and paint different colored "blobs" on your paper. You don't try to make them look like anything - just a strange blob. And, I wish we would have done more with 2 or more colors.

Then, you look at each blob, kind of like looking at clouds, and see what it looks like to you. You use a sharpie, and complete the drawing.

A's large-nosed man

A's helicopter

my butterfly

my lady with a bow

Please join us for next week's Unplug Your Kids' theme: ROUGH. We're having so much fun with these challenges!

Unplug Your Kids: Stones (or rocks)

For this week's challenge on Unplug Your Kids, the theme was STONES (or rocks). I found this idea for Hot Rocks at Wise Craft.

To make Hot Rocks, you put some rocks in the oven (we used a toaster oven) for 15 minutes at 350 degrees on a foil lined cookie sheet. Then carefully remove the rocks with oven mitts and place on a work surface - we used a cutting board. Using peeled crayons, you just touch the crayon to the surface and the crayon melts and "paints" the rock.

Though we liked how the rocks turned out, I think we enjoyed the process even more. It was so neat to watch the crayons melt! And, the finished product feels very waxy.

Unplug Your Kids: Garden

This is my 3rd post today as I'm trying to play "catch up" after our trip. I missed posting last week's "unplug your kids" challenge, though we did part of it before we left. So, here is last week's theme: garden.
We made the above origami flower which I found online. It uses 20 pieces of paper (actually 10 cut in half), so it turns out pretty large. You can find the instructions by googling for "simple 20 unit origami flower."

I'd also picked up a pack of 4 "friendship pin" kits for a dollar at Michaels. There were 2 dragonflies and 2 butterflies. You can find all of those in your garden, right? While I was at my mom's, I sat outside with Alexandra and 3 other kids in the driveway (ages 5, 7, 9 and 10) and we worked until 9 pm when it got too dark and we were getting too bit up. It was a wonderful way to spend a summer evening!

Unplug Your Kids: Clouds (or Sky)

This week's theme at Unplug Your Kids was "clouds." We got home last night from our 10 day trip, so I had to think fast. I think shaving cream looks a lot like clouds, so I thought I'd find something to do with shaving cream.

This was a fun and easy project. I found LOTS of versions on this craft and found this one at ZOOM today.
You basically squeeze some shaving cream onto a baking sheet (or piece of cardboard). Then you flatten it out and add a few drops of food coloring and mix them slightly. I like ZOOM's idea of using a plastic fork, but we used toothpicks, popsicle sticks, and a spatula.
Then you kind of squish a piece of cardstock on the shaving cream/food coloring mixture. Then, take a flat spatula and scrape off the excess.


I think I'm going to use this marbelized paper to make cards and/or bookmarks. I was disappointed how it curled up, but LOVE the effect!!! I think I made about 15 pieces of paper while Alexandra only made 3.

I think this looks best using only 2 colors or possibly 3. And, when it got too "mixed up", I would finish mixing it (like I mixed all of my yellow and green together to get a new base color) and then added another color (like blue).

I also wanted to point out that this project dries really quickly and you could easily use the pieces of paper for another project. I was using scrap pieces of cardstock, so they're pretty small. But, you could use this to make stationary. Let me know if you try this out!

Please join us for next week's theme: STONE

P.S. Oops! I just checked out Unplug Your Kids to submit my post and realized it was supposed to be "sky", not "clouds." Well, I guess my post is a stretch - about the clouds in the sky represented by shaving cream. :-)

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!"