Whenever anyone asked Fairy Girl what she wanted for Christmas the answer was always… A Marm-o-set. "A Marmoset?" everyone was puzzled… except me. LOL. No she did not want a pet monkey, thank goodness, she wanted a MARBLE SET.
She was of course delighted when Santa brought her one. It has become a family favorite… although marbles in a house with a 2 year old is a bit of a challenge. Fortunately Pixie seems to be a bit beyond her age in terms of her play. Survival skills of a third child I guess… ’cause once Legos are brought into the house there is no such thing as a baby safe room. Those little pieces get everywhere!
I thought I would share one of Fairy’s Marble Runs (yes I helped) for this week’s Unplugged Challenge theme Ball.
For this week’s Unplugged Theme ‘square’ each of the kids made their own memory game. I printed out a sheet with 20 2″ wide squares (click here to download a template) on a piece of card stock.
The kids colored a picture in each square. I then photo copied the page onto another sheet of card stock and we cut out all the squares.
The girls have really enjoyed playing Memory lately and playing with their own cards has been extra fun!
I know it is a bit early for me to be posting my Unplugged Challenge for the week since I normally wait until Monday morning but I am planning to take the next week or two off from blogging. Anyway, just thought I would share before I signed off for the holidays.
For the Unplugged Challenge theme Light/Dark we spent some time making stars on the ceiling. Bug got this fun constellation guide (Seeing Stars: Shining Star Light) for Christmas that came with a light and constellation cards. You can hold the light under the cards to display the stars on the ceiling. After bath one evening, we all curled up on the floor of the kids’ room to watch the stars by the light of their little Christmas tree.
Bug loves the movie Clash of the Titans so he really enjoyed using the cards of the characters he knew (Perseus, Andromeda, Pegasus, etc).
Here is our second project inspired by the Unplugged Challenge theme Fluffy… Waldorf Inspired Baby Dolls. We used super snuggly, fluffy fleece and the kids were in charge of the FLUFF. They completely stuffed their own dolls… even the Pixie girl. I posted more about them, my pattern and step by step instructions over on my other blog Wee Folk Art. Stop on by if you would like to make your own!
We have been working really hard on our Spoon Dolls which is this month’s Wee Folk Art Crafting Club free pattern. I figured since the base of the dolls was a Wooden Kitchen Utensil it would work nicely for our Unplugged Challenge kitchen theme tie in as well.
For the body pattern and step by step directions, visit Wee Folk Art.
We started by drawing what we wanted our spoon dolls to look like. I made photo copies of a spoon outline and the kids made several renditions. After several tries on the girls’ parts I ended up having them dictate what they wanted and jotted down the sketch for them. Bug wanted a knight with a helmet, Fairy a princess with a crown and Pixie pink with hearts. I decided to make a Native American inspired doll.
We took our drawings to the fabric store and everyone got to pick out their base fabric.
The following day we raided Gammy’s craft room for trims, laces and buttons.
I cut out the fabric from the pattern and ironed under the hems. Then each kid got a turn to sit on my lap and helped me sew their doll (even the Pixie girl). They love getting to “use” my sewing machine and learned some key safety rules.
Once the base of the dolls were sewn we picked out and added the final trim.
Now for the faces… I had the kids tell me what they wanted. They were very specific. Fairy wanted pink checks, gold hair and big, red lips. Bug wanted angry eyebrows and a Not-Smiling but Not-frowning face… very serious.
We used yarn to make the hair.
They aren’t 100% done yet. Bug’s still needs a better sword, helmet and shield and Fairy’s needs a crown but I wanted to share them anyway. These are going to make great puppets for their puppets shows.
I wasn’t sure if we were going to squeeze in the Unplugged ‘Thin’ Challenge this week but I managed to come up with something super quick and easy. We made collages by cutting old magazines and catalogs into thin strips. The older two kiddos enjoyed the cutting process and the youngest the gluing. They were only willing to spend about 10-15 minutes on the project though… wanting to get back to playing cards with Grandma and Grandpa.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was Smooth. The first thing that came to mind was finger paints. I decided to do something different though and we made our own bath tub finger paints. We ended up with very slippery, smooth kiddos ;). You know the old expression… Smooth as a baby’s bottom!
I googled bath tub paints and ended up combining a few directions to accommodate what we had in the house. No shaving cream and I wasn’t about to use up our California Baby shampoo (although if we do this again in the future I will definitely use a tear-free clear shampoo instead of the dish soap – we got some bubbles in the eyes!).
Ingredients:
1 cup mild clear dish washing soap or baby shampoo
5 TBSP cornstarch
food coloring
Directions:
Mix slowly mix in corn starch to dish washing soap until you get the right finger paint texture. It should be thick enough to not be drippy. Divide into separate containers (you can use ice cub tray for small amounts of lots of colors). Add food coloring to get desired colors.
Before we cleaned up we took some prints of the kids work. I think the tile pattern looks pretty cool. The food coloring cleaned up with no problems… my grout looks better than before. We used some store bought bath crayons before and they left color in the grout. Please note: This does produce a lot of bubbles when you start cleaning it up.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was Sand. We made sand candles using the kids hand/foot prints. They were really easy and we used recycled materials… so it was a free craft too.
First I collected up a bunch of random votive candles. I seem to have them in mass, but seldom actually use them. I pulled the stickers off the bottom, then pulled out the wicks and set those aside. I put 2 votives at a time into my potpourri crock pot to melt.
Then the kids and I filled a Pyrex baking dish with sand from the sand box (I would recommend using clean craft sand, but this is what we had on hand). We dampened the sand and each kid got a turn to make an impression. The older kiddos used their hands (I had to help push them down far enough) and for B we did her footprint. I poured the melted wax into the impression (each candle took about 2 votives worth of wax) and set in one of the wicks in the deepest part. Once the candle cooled to the touch, we removed it from the sand, rinsed off the excess sand with cool water and set up the sand for the next impression.
I think we ended up with some really cool Halloween candles.
This week’s Unplugged Theme was Soft. When I was picking up a few art supplies last week I ran across some magic sponge kits. I remember thinking that they were fun as a child. I choose the farm kit to tie in with our harvest activities we are doing for school.
The kids had fun watching the magic unfold, as the sponges came to life in the bowl of warm water. They were squealing and trying to guess what each one was before it opened all the way and I believe there were some sponge races going on…. “Look, look, mine’s opening first!”
After all the sponges were freed from the capsules, we dipped them in finger paint to make farm animal prints. The images turned out fuzzy at best but it was a fun and easy activity.
Unplugged Guests, I know I’m supposed to be linking directly to the post, not my home page but I am in the middle of moving my blog from free hosting to self hosting and I am having a few issues. One is that the domain name is masked due to the transfer. For now, you can use my Unplugged Category link on the side and I have made it where you no longer need a wordpress account to comment.