After the paper mache dried completely, I cut off the balloon tails. The balloons pulled away from the inside of the egg. You could try to remove the balloon if you wish, I didn’t bother. Then I made a little paper mache to patch over the holes.
Once that dried, the kids painted their dino eggs. You could try to paint the eggs camouflage colors, but I let the kids pick the colors they wanted. Pixie completely covered hers, Bug went with a speckled theme and Fairy’s was more patchy – using all the colors.
These eggs could be used as fun Easter decorations. Fill a large egg with treats and use it as a pinata or maybe use smaller balloons and fill the eggs with little treats… instead of using plastic eggs.
Bug is totally getting into the whole "My Project" thing. We have recently moved into the world of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. While pouring over some prehistoric ZooBook Magazines my mom lent him… Bug came up to me with a activity guide (which I didn’t know was in the set) saying "this is what I’M doing next for my project." He wanted to make a Boxasaurus. Sure, sounds like fun!
We spent several days collecting boxes of various sizes. We raided the garage, basement, recycling bin, etc. Once we had a decent collection it was time to start designing the dinosaur. Bug spent some time just stacking and sorting until he decided to make a T-Rex (not surprising).
I helped him assemble the boxes. He did the glue and I taped the pieces in place to help hold them until the glue set. At this point his Boxasaurus project serendipitously tied in with this week’s Unplugged Challenge theme Balance. The T-Rex was very front heavy and had to lean against the wall until we got the tail in place. What a great lesson in balance and a perfect hands on lesson as to one of the reasons why many animals have tails! He wanted a longer tail on his Boxasuarus but that in turn made him back heavy. In the end we found the perfect balance of tail length to support the head and arms.
Next came the whole family production (and I do mean PRODUCTION) of painting the Boxasaurus. Since painting outside was out of the question (neg 10 not factoring wind chill), we cleared the furniture from the kitchen, set down some plastic bags (lol) and set up shop to paint. Good fun was had by all. AND Thank goodness it was a weekend and Daddy was home to carry the kids directly up to the tub while I cleaned up. The floor was a showcase that would have done Pollock proud. Fortunately Bamaboo cleans up so well!
Once dry, eyes, teeth and glitter (hehe, a well dressed Boxasaurus) were added.
Even though it has been on the back burner in my mind, Bug has not lost any interest in his Inside the Body project. I thought I would share some recent images on the topic.
We went to a Kid’s Hands On Science Museum with some homeschooling friends right before Thanksgiving. My kids were thrilled with the human anatomy exhibits. They really liked the floor model heart where you could walk through the valves.
Bug is frequently found curled up with his favorite anatomy book. Hmm… is there something funny about him being curled up in his Blankie and asking about DNA?
After spending quite a bit of time looking at skeletons Bug wanted to make his own with play dough. I made him up a batch of white salt dough and he ended up focusing just on the skull.
I want to introduce the self guided project Bug has started recently. This has been an interesting adventure for me as well. I love the idea of a project approach to learning and can totally ‘picture it’ with older kiddos but an early reader? How on earth was that going to work? If you are looking for tips on it I would recommend stopping by Camp Creek Blog for a bit. Some great food for thought there.
Anyway, we choose a theme together. I think any Magic School Bus covered topic would have worked. Bug decided on Inside the Body. Ok, so off to the library we went. I had him talk to the librarian about what he wanted. She showed him to the anatomy section in the kids department and recommended a DVD to him. So he grabbed that and a stack of books.
Now what? I let him browse the books and choose what he wanted me to read to him. He saw a big diagram in the back of the Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body book and thought that was pretty cool and wanted to make one. I suggested we trace him for the outline. He then asked for coloring pages “like maybe the heart.” So I printed one off for him and he matched the colors to a diagram in one of his books. After we put it up on his body he wanted another one of “the guts.” I went off to print something up for him and came back and GASP – he was drawing all over the body and the bulletin board. I caught myself in the middle of a “What are you doing?!” (thinking he was ruining it).
Bug – “Just drawing all my red blood cells. And look see here are some white blood cells eating these germs. And here are some blue blood cells that are out of oxygen so they are going back into the heart.”
Eureka! We talked about it for a few more minutes, I handed his the digestive track coloring page and then left him to it. Then next day while he was working on it he showed me a cut he drew on his finger and the blood dripping out. “But don’t worry mom, I’ve got lots of platelets here, here and here.”
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.
Instead of working with wool roving like I had initially intended this week (to go with our Wool Unit) we ended up starting a weaving project. We have not finished them yet but I wanted to share some photos. I will be leaving them out for the next week or two so they can sit down and work at it when they like.
First I cut out approximately a 4″x8″ rectangle of card board (the flaps of an Amazon box actually). I then cut seven 1/4″ deep notches along both the top and bottom… about 1/4″ apart. I taped a piece of yarn to the back and then wrap the yarn from bottom to top through the notches. I cut the yarn and taped down the end to the back as well.
Then I let the kids pull out a bunch of yarn from my stash and cut about 8″ long pieces. I think this is their favorite part… getting to take scissors to my yarn (I did lock away the really good stuff). They love the fuzzy fun furs and the nubby yarns that I have left over from making our farm mat.
Bug and Fairy had no problem figuring out the weaving process. I thought it was going to take a lot more demonstration then it did. One quick example and they were at it.
I will post an update when we finish them.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was white. I’m sure I’m not the only one who took the theme white and combined it with upcoming Halloween and thought… hmmm ghosts. We did a stiff fabric technique to make our ghosts. I have seen this done before with gauze but thought that might be too difficult for the kids to handle so we used light weight muslin.
First we built a base to drape our fabric ghosts over. I cut the tops off pop bottles, blew up a balloon, taped the balloon over the opening and slide a skewer though to give some arm definition.
We ripped the fabric (wanted a torn, frayed edge) into squares big enough to cover our forms. Then we filled a large bowl with equal parts Elmer’s Glue and water. We soaked the fabric in the glue mixture, wrung it out and then draped it over the form. There was lots of “ewws and yucks”… it was very sticky! They spread out the fabric over the form (I had to help hold the form up – it was top heavy, maybe a can or a rock in the bottom of the pop bottle would have helped). After the fabric was spread out nicely, we left it to dry over night.
A couple days later we added googly eyes with tacky glue, removed the ghosts from the frames, and threaded string in the center of the head for hanging (fishing line would have been nice but I just had white thread on hand).
I was afraid they might not hold their form since we used such a large piece of fabric but they really did. One was a little bit limp, but it was the last one in the glue bath and just didn’t get enough coverage. I made a little more of the glue mixture and brushed it on the following morning, let it set up and all was well. I think they make great, spooky ghost decorations on the front porch. I hope they stay dry enough!
LOL – Just after the outdoor photo was taken and I typed the above post, it started to rain. The kids were really worried about their ghosts getting wet so we decided to move them indoors. They are currently haunting the pass through from our dining room to living room.
