Food noodle/rice crafting

Unplugged group project-food
I wasn't going to post this because I didn't get time to look at all the unplug projects others did last week, I was having a bad day today, and three my project is not what I had planned.

I have decided that I am going to post this and I will check out people's unplugged projects tonight or tomorrow. If I get busy and run short on computer time I will catch up on my husbands day off this week (I think that is Wed).

Pasta and rice art.

Homemade paste, dyed pasta, and rice.
Cardboard from cereal box and 2 children to craft.
Yes that is tons of tiny rice and glue all over the table.



The one below Travis did. I thought it turned out nice.below is one of many Demi made.


We then came up with the idea to make some noodle critters with pipe cleaners.


We made many strange critters below is a picture of several of a few of them. The baby started fussing so I didn't get a picture of them all.

The how and why of what we did.

This week I wanted to do some potato prints shirts or cards, baking cookies, food ABC's, ice-cream making, bean mosaics, and tons of other fun ideas. I didn't have supplies or time to do any of the projects I wanted to do. I dug around in our food shelves. All I found in food supplies to craft with is pasta and rice. I have this huge bag of white rice that is just for crafting. I use it to make beanbags, sensory play, writing trays, and other school/play stuff but I couldn't think of anything to do with rice at first. After finding several boxes of pasta I decided to dye pasta so we colored some of it by tossing a few handfuls in a small coffee can and add a splash of rubbing alcohol and some food color. We then shook the containers to color all the noodles. I was worried that the noodles might be a bit large for art on paper so I decided to give coloring rice a try. I wasn't sure that dyeing rice would work because I had never heard of anyone doing it but in a panic for a fun craft I felt I should give it a try. We put some rice (1 or 2 cups) in a coffee can, added a small splash of rubbing alcohol (about 1 or 2 tsp), and a few drops of food coloring (about 5-10. Then shook it up. I ended up with very wet looking rice. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to do the project so I turned my oven on and once it was preheated to 250-350 I shut OFF the oven, dumped our wet rice on a cookie sheet and stuck my rice in the warm oven (I did the same with the pasta). I was worried that I might start a fire putting rice covered in alcohol in the oven if the oven was on so I made sure it was turned off. Putting it in a warm oven worked out perfect. In a very short time (under 15 minutes) we had dry colored rice to craft with. My next problem was how to attach them to paper. I was worried that Elmer's glue wouldn't be thick enough to hold pasta to paper. I decided to make up some homemade flour paste. I just tossed a few cups of flour in a bowl, added a little water, mixed with a whisk to make a thick paste. It looked like a thick pancake mix when I finished. I then was worried that paper would be to thin to hold this paste and pasta. I decided to cut up food boxes to do our art on. Travis and Demi covered the box pieces with paste by spreading it on thick with a spoon. Then they decorated with noodles and rice. It turned out a lot better than I would have ever guessed. My children don't know I didn't plan this craft. They had so much fun the crankiness went away and we had a fun afternoon.

OH! After the noodle/rice mosaic we cut some pipe cleaners and used the noodles to design some critters. We just stuck noodles on pipe cleaners and bent them to make strange looking pets. Demi had fun playing with her little critters after we finished making them all. Travis made some but I didn't get any pictures. He joined in the critter making late and the baby was fussing so I didn't get to take pictures of his.

Letter A-make your own colored sand

A is for art.

Our art project this time is making our own colored sand.

A few weeks ago I saw on TV a lady color sand (maybe it was salt) in a glass and then stuck a tiny candle in it to make a decoration for the house. At the time this show was on I was trying to put the baby down for a nap so I wasn't watching it close enough to know if it was sand or salt she was coloring. I didn't hear what she used to color it. I am trying to remember, I think she might have put a spoon of paint in the cup of sand and stirred it with a spoon. It was a show on the DIY channel but I am not sure what show it was. I know it must have been one on in the late afternoon (after out school day is over) because I don't watch TV early in the day. Anyway, after seeing that I decided to give a try at coloring sand . I figured I had nothing to loose I have lots of sand (2 sandboxes full). I have food colors and paints. I use food colors to dye things a lot so I thought first I would try food colors and if that didn't work I would try paint. We poured some sand in bottles and added some food coloring. We used about 1/2 cup of sand and 10 drops of food color but I am sure less food color or more sand in the bottles would give lighter colors and more food color will give darker colors. I used 1/2 cup because that is the first measuring cup I found and I used 10 drops because it sounded like an easy number to remember. LOL! After adding sand and food color in the bottles we put the lids on and shook. We ended up with some very colorful sand. Our sand was NOT white sand. It was natural tan colored play sand and I had no problems getting it to change color. I was very happy with how simple this project was!


Here is Travis making yellow sand.

Demi making purple sand (we used neon purple food coloring).

Zee always looks so interested in what her brother and sister are doing.

Picture of our sand. We made pink, blue, yellow, green, and purple so far.

Poor Zee! I wouldn't give her sand because I knew she would try to eat it. Next time we do this I will make sure to have an extra bottle of sand for her to shake. |We did this late at night and I never did this before so I didn't take the time to think of including Zee.

Here is a picture of them all at the table crafting nicely together. OK Zee is playing with baby toys but soon she will be involved with all our projects. Can you see Travis holding up his project? I think Travis caught the crafting bug (maybe he is a bit like his mom)!I was brave and took video of us trying this project. I thought it would be neat if it worked and my children responded with a WOW. The WOW response didn't happen but it will show family and friends a small clip of our day. It will take me most of tomorrow to upload the video clips. I will share them soon as I get them uploaded to you tube.

Letter A

A is for Art
and Amazing friends!

A friend stopped over to visit today. The children all did some sand art together. I put some colored sand (stuff I got from the dollar store) in a container and gave the children caps with some glue in them and q-tips to paint the glue on small cards (card stock cut in quarters). They painted with the glue then sprinkled color sand over the glue and shook over the tray to take off the extra sand.

Vicky gave me permission to post picture of all our children crafting together. I am so excited about this! I think it is wonderful that I can share some pictures of my children doing things with other children that are around the same age they are. I worry our family members that live out of the area might think our children are never with other children because they are homeschooled. Vicky is also a homeschooling mom she has 4 beautiful, kind, and wonderful children.

Aren't her children cute?





This one below reminds me of when I was in elementary school. I remember my art class having short round tables, glue, and colored sand to work with. See it is just like school only it is in our living room. LOL! LOOK! in this picture every child is working hard on this project.
Below is a picture of some of the finished projects. Vicky if you are reading this I have your children's pages. I put them up on the kitchen table to dry and keep Demi from messing with them but then I forgot to give them to you before you left.
I love it when my children get to do things with other homeschoolers! I took the camera outside when we all when out to play but I enjoyed sitting on the porch visiting with Vicky so much I forgot to take any pictures.

This sand craft looked like it worked well for all the children. I like crafts that can be used for little and older children. If you don't like sand in your house you might want to do this outside. I never care if we have sand on the floor so it isn't a problem for me but I thought I should write to let everyone know some sand will spread out on the table and floor.

letter A

WATCH OUT! The letter A ants are hungry!

I left the room to give Travis a quick grammar lesson this morning. When I came back in the living room I saw this!

WOW! Our ants are BIG eaters! Demi has such a good imagination! She went into her playroom and gathered a bunch of her play food and staged her ants to be eating the food. Travis and I both laughed when we saw this,


Here is something else I wanted to share. Last night I gave Travis a wallpaper book. I told him it was his and he could use it however he wanted. He spent an hour or so before bed cutting, pasting, creating, and painting. Below is one of his creations. In the last 24 hours I think he has made around 10 pieces of art. He told me today that he likes creating crafts with wallpaper books. He made up a bunch of cute cards with the golf theme wallpaper pages (for his poppy who plays golf) but I am too lazy to go take pictures of them right now. I just wanted to share with you all that Travis is starting to like "crafts".

Letter A

Unplug-books

We are happy we (Demi and I) got to do the unplug project this week!
This weeks project is Books. I noticed last week that Demi forgot the sound of the letter A. She was making an eh sound instead of an ah sound for the letter a. I decided to spend some time with her reviewing letter sounds. My idea to use the unplug book project and review letter sounds was to make her a giant letter book. We used an old wallpaper book to create a special letter book.

I tore out all of the small sheets to get to the first large page. I used the small pages to cut out some letters. She decorated the letters with markers. Then I gave her a cap of glue and a paintbrush to glue the letters to the book
Here is her A page. We will add more to it all week. I will try to share a picture at the end of the week.

Collage

I have to admit when I read that this unplug project was making a collage I was thinking about skipping this one. I never enjoyed doing collages. I have to say now after 2 weeks of off and on cutting, adding glue, and layering several textures (giving collages a fair try) I have changed my opinion on collages. They are fun! I think my children had more fun that I did.

How we got going with this was I was sorting out some of our school supplies before Christmas and I came across a tiny laminating machine. I have never even used it. I got it as some kind of free give away 5 years ago. I already had a larger one before I got the free tiny one so I never tried it out. When I found it I thought it was broke and I almost tossed it out. I put a tiny strip of paper in and it came out with a thin plastic on the front that slid right off!!! I was thinking this is a piece of junk. I then remembered AmySue saying that you can make stickers with them. I picked up the paper scrap I had just tried to laminate and I noticed a strange looking sheet on the back side. When I picked off the back sheet sure enough it was sticky. I no longer thought this was a broken piece of junk. Right then it became my favorite toy in the house! I got all excited and started dancing around singing Yay! I have a sticker maker! I have a sticker maker! I can make some stickers! I was so excited. I ran to the computer to look for things to print to make some stickers for the children. That is when I got the thought of printing pictures of them. I thought they could make some little personal gifts for family to put with Christmas gifts. I didn't want to waste my sticker roll because I know I will not get another roll for a long time so I decided to print out some tiny heads of my children for them to use for silly crafting. I was going to show them how to make stick people and add heads on top. Travis and I together came up with making snowmen with the heads. That is how our collage project got its start.

First we took some blue paper. I used white card stock and printed a blue print on it from a clip art site. I wrote down what site but I lost my paper because we made them almost 2 weeks ago. Below you can see Demi putting the paper snowman on the blue paper (we used 1/2 sheets).

We then stuck on the sticker heads and added some snow (finger painted). We finished it off with some glitter.

Demi and I made the one below together.

I made this one. I added fabric scraps to make hats and scarves.
The one below Demi did. She is only 2 years old so that is why her brother's and baby sister's heads are not on straight. Notice she put her own on straight and centered. LOL! I did draw on scarves and arms. I helped her with the glitter glue because the bottle is almost empty by this time and it was hard to squeeze out.
This is the one Travis made. He used a full sheet of paper and made lots of snowmen.
We tried doing a more traditional collage project yesterday. We used magazine clippings.

Travis decided to make a body part flip book. I thought that was very creative. It was better than my cut off the heads of people and put them in windows of a paper house idea. lol!
Below is a picture of a man's head, a baby's tummy, and a child's legs. I took the picture side ways and forgot to rotate it. The head does go at the top of the book.


He got even more creative part way into his flip book. He put a ladies head on a flower for the head.
By the end he got VERY creative. He realized that magazines have more heads than body parts. He ended up making his own body parts to finish the book. This one is an baby head (with wings) with a flower tummy, and a flower and I think 2 hot peppers for pants (I had a seed magazine in the pile ). Demi made a picture book. Travis and I cut out the things she wanted. She then added glue with a glue stick on the backs and stuck them how she wanted. I had to keep an eye on her because she got confused several times what side to glue. Magazines have pictures on both sides and that confused her. If she was younger I would have added the glue and then let her stick the way she wanted.


We did a large if your happy and you know it clap your hands collage. We put it on wallpaper. I have a collection of old wallpaper books and we used a sheet from it to put our collage on and another page of it to cut out as a frame for our words. The wallpaper and the magazines together make it fun to touch. I never thought I would be saying that but the texture is fun and interesting.

Travis started one similar to this one. He was making up what looked like a advertisement for something but he got tired with it and quit.

Do you want to do a collage with our children but short on time because of New Years? I found a collage cheat (but a great resource) the National Gallery of Art has a collage machine 1 and collage machine 2 if you do them online I guess you are not unplugged because you are using a computer but it is a way of doing a fun collage AND you don't have the mess of paper slivers and glue. I found lots of other art things I want to go back and check out on this site. I think this site is wonderful to add into our art appreciation class. Below is a print out of the collage I made on the collage machine 1 page. I printed it and then took a picture of it because I am too tired to look for another way to share it. I just found this site tonight so I haven't shown the children it yet. I will let Travis and Demi both make one tomorrow.

We made some tree ornaments with our sticker heads and foam snowflakes.... I can't find a picture of them so I might have to take a new one. I will try to share that in the next few days.

OH! Remember that beautiful pink sweater that was made for Zee? It was made by Kcaarin and she does have a blog. I got part of her blog to load on my slow dial up computer (enough to see her son's head in a picture) lol. I haven't had a chance to see what she has been up to lately but I plan to go read in the next few days. I just need to hit the refresh button a few times to get it all to load for me (joys of dial up). Things have been so busy with the holidays I haven't had much free computer time but I should be able to do this sometime next week. Anyway, she knits some beautiful things and sometimes shows them on her blog. She is a homeschooling mom to 4 VERY cute children.

I have a few more collage things started (trying to use all of our sticker heads up). I will try to remember to take pictures of them all and share with you all this week. I will try to share everything about our Christmas so our family who doesn't live near us can see. I have been uploading holiday pictures for a week and I hope to have that done in the next few days. I have several videos I want to upload still and I will keep trying to do that (might be next Christmas before I get that finished). Videos with dial up is a very S L O W moving thing. I need hours to get up a 20 second clip and 1/2 the time the computer will lock up and not upload. I will keep trying to get them up to share. I also want to upload pictures of our yarn crafts. I was so moved with the unplug yarn project we have gone yarn crazy. We are spinning yarn on the wheel, spinning on a drop spindle, grooming bunny (spinning angora from our bunny into yarn), making pompoms, making yarn flowers, we are braiding, knotting,playing cats cradle, weaving, knitting, crocheting, finger knitting, and more. I LOVE yarn! I am so happy to see my children also enjoy working with yarn. I want to teach Travis to knit with needles but he is putting up a fight. I will let you all know how that goes. I have a secret plan to make knitting seem more manly to him. I think it might convince him into trying it. I will let you know how it goes.

It is after 12 pm so it is now my birthday. We do celebrate New Years Eve and Day (with my little children) so I might not get to share much with you until later in the week. I am very tired and I don't have time to read this over. I hope you can all figure out what all I am trying to say.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yarn

We did the Unplug Your Kids project this week. I have wanted to join in with the unplug projects for weeks now but I wasn't sure how it worked. I hope I am doing this right. Kate and Heather made it look like so much fun I wanted to join in. Some of you know I spin yarn both on a wheel and on a drop spindle so yarn is something I LOVE to play with! I am very happy my children also like yarn. Someday I need to learn to knit so I can use up all the yarn I spin. We have many yarn projects going on right now. I guess you can say we have gone a bit yarn crazy at my house. I am going to try and get several of them uploaded for you to see. I will start with the ones my children liked the best.

Snow man ornaments
At first I planned to make pompom snowmen but when I started wrapping the yarn to show Travis and Demi how to make the pompoms I got this idea of just tying them and not cutting the strings to make pompoms. This one is a big hit with my children! Simple enough that I didn't need to help them much.

We used a small lid to wrap our yarn around. I chose a small lid because it was the first sturdy thing I found when I looked around in the kitchen for something that would work. We tied (I tied Demi's) at the top and bottom then slipped it off the lid. We used a red yarn to tie a scarf on and that is our snowman ornament.

We made lots of different ones and they are still making them right now so I may end up with a tree full of snowmen. This one we didn't tie in the middle.

A 3 piece snowman none of us liked this type. Travis decided that 2 section snowmen looked the best.Travis and Demi liked adding this kind of eyes on them.


Another thing we did was made ornaments by dipping yarn in glue and making pictures on wax paper with the yarn. They are still wet so I will have to update you later on how they turn out




I will add other yarn crafts we have done on Monday's post.

More paper crafts

We made a bunch of birds for out Christmas tree. They are VERY simple to make my son has no problem making them. Even a toddler can glue on the head and tail if you cut it and glue the head together first.

The same site has some tubbies.



You can find the cute little critter below here.


Science/history
If you are learning about Dino's you can build some paper ones.

Boy dolls?
Need some football player paper dolls?How about a dancing monkey?And if you still need something (like I often do) to keep the children busy so you can wrap gifts, feed the baby, make dinner, or just a moment of peace. This site has everything from Santa to the Great Pyramid to build. School age children can build them but I doubt a preschooler could. An adult can build then have a toddler or preschooler paint and play with them. I have my school age son builds them. My toddler and him paint, color, and decorate. Then my toddler can play with them as toys.

If you click on the Santa it should take you right to the printable Santa page.