I had much grander ideas for this week’s Unplugged Challenge Theme Change but we an extremely busy schedule last week, including two parties and out of town company that left us with no time to for anything fancy. Instead, today we took advantage of the glorious sunshine and the kids spent at least an hour raking "COLOR CHANGED" leaves into piles and then of course spent even more time jumping in them and spreading them all over the yard again. Simple joy!
Amongst the leaves, Fairy found a Wooly Bear Caterpillar.
It has been a couple months since we have participated in an Unplugged Challenge and we finally got back into it this week with the theme Sun. We have been working on recognizing syllables in words to help with spelling so we used the theme as a basis for writing a Haiku poem together. We brainstormed adjectives on the white board and then Bug and Fairy took turns turning them into sentences. We counted the syllables in each line and then put together the sentences in a way that fits the Haiku format. We then copied the poem onto journal pages and the kids illustrated their poem.
A Haiku poem does not have to rhyme. Instead, the structure is made up of three lines with set syllable counts; 5, 7, 5.
Sun Haiku
The Sun is yellow. (5)
It is a star far in space. (7)
It can make plants grow. (5)
Yesterday we played a fun game of Color I SPY, inspired by the Unplugged Challenge theme Color. Each of the kids chose their target color. Then we spread out a play silk of that color on the floor to serve as their home base. Once set, I gave the kids a subject to find… dinosaur, book, train, puzzle piece, food, etc. They had to search around to retrieve an object in their color. The older kiddos helped Pixie who, surprisingly, wasn’t as into it as I would have imagined. The older two had a blast though and strangely enough seemed to enjoy putting the pieces back one by one as much as finding them. Go figure!
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.
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.
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!
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme Fluffy inspired us to do two different crafts. Here is the first one… Wet Felted Wool Gingerbread Men Ornaments. I will be sharing the second activity later this week.
We started by digging through some of Gammy’s large bags of Wool Roving. We then tracked down some gingerbread men cookie cutters, flat bottom containers and a poky object (wooden kitchen skewers in our case… knitting needles, chop sticks, etc would work).
We placed the cookie cutter in the bottom of the container. Then we pulled off small bits of the wool roving and filled in the cookie cutter. Try not to let any of the wool escapse under the edge of the cutter. Be sure to get in all the corners.
Once the cookie cutter was full to the top edge with wool, we add very warm water to the container and dish soap.
Then we needed to agitate the wool for several minutes. This is where the poky object came in to play. Be sure to poke straight up and down.
The younger two seemed to want to STIR the wool rather than using a straight up and down motion. So I ended up just having them use their fingers to poke the wool. That seemed to work just fine.
It does take several minutes of constant agitation to set up. Once they were set, we rinse them, patted them dry on a towel and then I set them over a vent to dry. When they were dry I added a simple piece of embroidery floss for hanging.
You could definitely embellish these ornaments if you would like. Try blanket stitching the edge, adding buttons, embroidery, glitter, etc. You could add a wool design on the front before felting if you wanted. We decided to just keep ours simple this time around but I can imagine making a bunch of these next year and stringing them together to make a cute garland.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge was Junk. For this activity we dug into the recycling bin and the box I keep in the back of the craft shelf filled with “useful junk” like toilet paper rolls and old magazines. We didn’t do anything fancy… definitely an all about the process sort of project but the kids had fun.
An hour and a half later… the older two had finished, bathed and moved on to other activities but the Pixie girl was still going strong. I don’t know if she was cleverly avoiding bed time or what but she was quite intent on gluing fuzzy pompoms to her favorite cereal box. I only removed her from the activity when I realized that she was no longer content gluing the pompoms to the box and had moved on to gluing them to her chair. 😉
