Unplug Your Kids: White

Have you ever seen the IceHotel in Sweden? Well we watched a documentary on Discovery channel about it a few weeks ago, and everyone thought it was so cool. So along with our study of the polar biome, we tried to make own Ice Hotel out of sugar cubes and cream cheese. Of course the Master Builder loooovvveeedd this, and the Princess was feeling it too. I had to make sure they didn't eat too many, and they would have been bouncing off the walls even more than usual.


I know the penguins are kind of random, so just imagine it in Antarctica instead of Sweden. LOL

Unplug Your Kids: Fruit

For some strange reason we have never tried apple printing. How did we miss that? Anywho, the Unplug project for last week was fruit so the opportunity presented itself and we took it. The children liked it alot. I think I'll use the farbic to either make some pillows or bean bags.
I let Sana try and all she did was eat the painted apple, so I gave her a fresh one. Can you see the painted mouth?! LOL

Unplug Your Kids: Catch Up!

OMG, I'm so behind on our projects. These two ideas were taken shamelessly from the Unplug Your Kids blog. They were so cool, I had to try them.


Plastic--Shrinky Dinks
This was so fun! We took some #6 plastic (usually produce containers or you can buy it from the craft store), cut it up, and drew on it with a Sharpie. Then I put it in a oven at around 225 degrees for a hour or so. It probably doesn't take that long, but I forgot about them. And they shrank to about a 1/4 of thier size! How cool is that? The plastic we used was from a strawberry container.
I hole punched them beforehand and now they are on my keychain.

Stone--Hot Rocks

I heated some rocks we used to build pyramids a few months ago in the oven at 300 for about 30-40 mins. I warned the children repeatedly to not touch the rocks with thier hands. I touched them just to see how hot they were, The rocks were extremely warm, but would only burn if you actually held them in your hand. Anywho, in my opinion this would only be for the more mature crowd. Once the rock is hot, use crayons to "paint" on them. The heat just melts the wax.




The twins loved this. We've made more since these and will probably do it again.

I just need to think of something fun to do with the rocks now.

Unplug Your Kids: Gardening

The container garden was a flop! Our poor little tomato, squash, and parsley plants just couldn't take 110 degree weather. It seems like they dried up overnight. Oh well, no fresh picked veggies for us. We'll try again next year. Or maybe this winter?

Unplug Your Kids: Sticky

We used Nature Bracelets on our last nature walk. Amir really enjoyed this. It was fun watching them experiment with what would stick and what didn't. They quickly realized that the heavier objects would not work. Who knew a piece of tape could be so much fun?

Unplug Your Kids: Paint

The Twins had a blast painting with marbles. Babygirl was ready to get in on the action.

Shake, Shake, Shake!
Not with your fingers, MirMir. Use the marble, silly boy
Shake, Shake, Shake
Amir's finish product
Fit for a Princess.

Unplug Your Kids Projects: Ribbon, Metal

I've decided to start doing the Unplug Your Kids project each week to inspire us artistically and have some fun of course. Basically this blog owner picks a material/theme to use each week for an arts & crafts project to do with your children. If you participate, you are to post pictures of your project on your blog each Monday and link them at her blog. Since I will always be perpetually behind, I may never get to link mine, but here is the last two weeks. Well, actuallly last week was paint (I'll do that one later). (smile)

This project was to use ribbon. So I gathered all we had in the house and decided to make a bow for Yasina's hair. I couldn't think of anything boyish to do with pink ribbon, so the Master had to sit this one out. I cut the ribbon in equal parts, and Princess and I tied each piece around a elastic ponytail holder. The results are above. She got a lot of compliments on her work. She would say, "Me and Mama made it." So sweet.
Metal was the theme for this craft. I cut out Amir and Yasina's handprint from an old aluminum pie pan. They were to make a design on their hand with a nail and toy hammer. I would have let them use a real hammer, but we only have one and that would have been a fight.

They came out pretty cute.

I haven't done Babygirl's little hand yet, but I'll post it when I do.