The Unplugged Theme this past week was wax. We did a pretty standard melted crayon/wax paper stained glass project. This was the first time I’ve done this project with the kids so they thought it was pretty cool.
We started with some old Ziplock baggies (you will ruin them so reuse some old ones), crayons left over from restaurants (I always try to remember to pocket the crayons from the restaurants that don’t reuse the crayons), a wooden mallet and a painting board (cutting board, etc). We removed the paper and sorted the crayons by color. We choose to only use leaf colors. We put all the reds, oranges and pinks in one bag – all the yellows and greens in the other. Then the kids got to whack away at the baggies on the board until we got very, very small pieces. You could use a cheese grater but this seemed much safer for the kids… albeit noisy.
Then we sprinkled the wax bits onto a piece of wax paper, wax side up (crayon bits that got too close to the edges did bleed over the edge). Place another sheet of wax paper, wax side down. Sandwich your wax paper between two pieces of scrap fabric (didn’t try it but paper towel might work). Iron until melted. You want that scrap fabric… I had some colors bleed through!
To make frames for widow panes, we folded two sheets of construction paper together and cut out a basic leaf shape… kinda like cutting out a Valentine Heart. Then we cut out the center leaving only about a 1/2″ frame. We traced the shape onto the wax paper sheets and cut out a center panel… slightly smaller that the outside of the frame. We used a glue stick to sandwich one construction paper leaf frame, one wax paper cut out and the other construction paper leaf frame together.
We used double sided tape to stick them up on windows throughout the house. They are quite pretty! One of the things I love about all the crafts we have been doing is how much the house is really being defined by the kids… and not just in that “toys all over” sorta way.
Silver Maple in the Moonlight
Maple trees as a nature study has to be about the easiest thing in the world to locate… at least in these parts! It has been a crazy hectic week and kinda yucky weather but fortunately we can see at least three maples out of every window in the house. We identified 4 different species on our evening walk last night including Silver Maple (tons in our yard and they drop seeds like rain in the spring), Sugar Maple, one that I think is a Black Maple and then some ornamental, non-native Amur Maple bushes. There is one more that I haven’t successfully IDed yet. We didn’t do a formal Nature Journal entry but instead played with different ways to capture the image of the leaf. We did Paint Spraying, Rubbings and Prints. We also made some cool Leaf T-shirts this past spring by making freezer paper stencils from real leaves (fun activity to try).
For our Paint Spray Images, we filled a squirt bottle with water and food coloring. We laid different leaves on a sheet of drawing paper (we were all out of water color paper, which is what I would recommend) and then squirted away. You don’t want it to get too wet or get the squirt bottle too close. We did this one outside.
We did some classic leaf rubbings using our homemade crayon blocks. For the girls, I taped the leaf to the table and then taped the paper down on top of it so it didn’t move around for them. That really helped a lot!
To make our leaf prints we covered the back side of a leaf with water color paints and then pressed it down on the sheet of paper. The Silver Maple Leaves looked really cool with this technique. Camp Creek Press had a nice blog about Water Color Nature Prints.
For our extra credit… of course we had real Maple Syrup. Waffles are the favorite for breakfast here. Do we get double points for having watched the syrup being made this spring? 😉 If you haven’t experienced Sugaring here are a couple photos. Unfortunately there is no way to share the wonderful smell of the sap boiling down over a fire, the sound of the crunch of icy snow underfoot, the feeling of the biting cold on your nose and the general excitement of the woods starting to stir again after a long winter.
