Unplugged Project: Change

I created some posters to help us get started with our mornings. Although I was the one that made these posters, the boys will be the ones using them and changing out the different options.

The first chart holds our options used to "fill in" the second chart. It has a full calendar with days, date, and months. The seasons are lined on the left side. Daily chores and weather options are below the pink calendar. Below that is a plastic envelope containing pictures for special days, ie Valentines Day, Birthdays, Independence Day, etc. On the bottom left are the different subjects Will is/will be learning about. (click to enlarge pictures)

We will gather each morning to change out the date, weather, and daily responsibility.

All of the options from the first chart are on velcro tabs and have a corresponding place on our second chart, the "Today" chart:

The pink section holds the day, month, date, year, and a spot if it is a special day. This is also where the season and today's weather will go. The blue section is like a vertical "clock". The times are listed down the side with our daily activities out to the side of the time. The flag is a reminder for us to say the Pledge of Allegiance. :) The Responsibilities section is a picture list of what we need to do each morning (get dressed, make bed, put clothes away, stretch, etc.) The extra Daily Chore will be placed over the sunshine on the bottom right hand corner.

As for the vertical clock, my plans are to show Will the subjects that need to be accomplished for the day and allow him to place them next to the times in which he wants to do them.

I am NOT keeping this as a rigid schedule, it's just a way for him to have some control over his school day and add some structure as well. When he completes the subject, he'll remove it from the vertical clock and place it back with the list. Once all of the subjects are back on the list, he will know his school day is complete and will be rewarded with some computer time. (He likes to watch Thomas the Train YouTube videos, play on pbskids.org, and watch shows through Netflix.)

Hopefully these charts will change our days from "extremely-relaxed-might-not-get-it-all-done" into "Hey-we-accomplished-everything-and-learned-a lot!"

For more Unplugged Projects on Change, visit Unplug Your Kids.

Unplugged Project: "J"

I love that the Unplugged Projects are so flexible!! This week's "assignment" was the Letter J. We painted this week "J"ust because I wanted to!

My inspiration came from Heart of the Matter Online: Paint It Like Pollock.

Basically, I gave the boys a small wooden ball, some paint, and a piece of paper inside a box. They dipped the ball in paint, dropped it on the paper, and rolled the ball around inside the box.


Forgive the dim pictures; it was a bright and windy day. We were under the carport and the shadows were not very forgiving... :)


Step 1: Pose for mommy while you are all clean. Start with colors red, yellow, blue, and white.



Step 2: Dip the little ball in as many colors as possible. :)



Step 3: Shake the box to roll the ball around.



Step 4: Show off pretty picture.



Step 5: Continue to mix paint until mommy says it's time to stop.


The boys really enjoyed this. It was a beautiful day and we needed to do something outside!

Visit Unplug Your Kids for more on the Letter J!

Unplugged Project: Feathers

Well, we were not completely tv/screen free today, but I am happy that we were able to keep everything off until after afternoon naps. Last week, while we were sick, the boys went on tv overload so the Turnoff Week came at a good time to at least help us get back into our routine of not watching so much tv.

I wanted to keep the boys busy and knew we still needed to do this week's Unplugged Project so I asked Will what he thought we could do with feathers. He said, "Well, we could always put a feather in a hat." So I went with the idea, grabbed some colored legal sized paper, a stapler, glue sticks and feathers.

We went from this:

to this:

This was a really fun project that we all enjoyed. Cleanup really was just the sweep of a broom and the boys enjoyed their feathered hats for the day!

Unplugged Project: OCEAN

YAY! We finally got around to another Unplugged Project! It's been forever since our last one!!

This week's project is entitled Ocean. If you aren't familiar with unplugged projects, let me tell you one of my favorite parts... it can be absolutely anything related to the topic. You and your kids decided which direction to go with the topic. It's really so much fun!

Since Will had so much fun making a book from a folder and white paper, I thought we'd make a book with a cover and let him do the binding of the pages himself.

First, we read through Explore and Learn the Natural World.
Note: We purchased these books for a door-to-door seller (college age). I highly recommend these books! They are fantastic!

Anyway, we read through the ocean part of the book: discussing vertebrates and invertebrates, under the water life, shoreline life, what they eat, etc. Will really enjoyed talking about the different animals!

Then we started making his book. I explained how he'd need to draw the pictures since the folded white paper in half and that we'd bind it and put cardstock paper on for the cover.

Once he drew all his pictures, he chose green thread for the binding and I showed him where to sew the papers together. It was a little slow going at first, but he eventually got the hang of it and did a fine job!




So without further ado... here is Will's book about the Ocean. Ummmm... I mean the Aquarium (I'll tell you why he chose that title instead in a minute...)



A blue whale; the largest animal.

Me: If you came across a blue whale would it want to eat you?

Will: No. It eats tiny, little shrimp-like animals.



An eel: (Ewww!)

Me: Is this a turtle or a tortoise?


Will: A turtle!
Me: Well, how would I know?
Will: Because it is swimming under water and tortoises live on land!



A giant squid! (Note the good sewing job in green down the center!)



Will: Does my ray look like a badger to you?

Me, laughing: Well, yes, I suppose it does.
Will: I drew it like that because his stinger was removed... like at the AQUARIUM. :)
I colored it blue because blue is close to gray and I didn't have a gray.

(He made me draw the shark... don't laugh too hard!)


A lone jelly fish to end the book.

After we finished the book, we looked through pictures from our 10 Year Anniversary trip and let the boys play with the shells that we brought home with us.

Glad to be back doing the Unplugged Projects! Check out the other Ocean projects HERE and join us next week for "Sound".... there is plenty of noise around my house, this should be fairly easy! LOL!

Thankful

We were in charge of decorations for our church visitation meeting and I decided we'd do a little turkey craft for some centerpieces. We then combined this week's Unplugged Project, Thankful, by adding some cut-out leaves with thankful thoughts written on them.

The turkey really isn't a hard craft, but the youngest boys just wanted to eat the gum drops. Then Will poked himself with the toothpick and that was then end of it for him. I should have gotten rounded toothpicks. Hind sight...


Will did complete one turkey, but Jeff and I finished the rest by ourselves.


I was thankful when it was over. :)

For more Thankful projects, head over to Unplug Your Kids.

What's Smoother than a Smoothie?

After the fiasco with my first attempt at the Unplugged Project Smooth, Jeff came up with what now seems like an obvious project: Ice Cream Smoothies!



I do believe this is the most money I've spent on an Unplugged Project, but the whole thing was a family effort. First, we all went to the grocery store together (don't let me do that again, though!).

At home, we supervised the boys while they cut the fruit:



Will made the first smoothie. He chose vanilla ice cream, bananas and strawberries.


Nathan was next. He chose chocolate ice cream, banana, peach, strawberry and spinach. Yes, spinach. :)


(Jeff and I made some, too, in different variations.)

S M o o o o o o T H

White - Unplugged Project

This week's Unplugged Project was White.

Will also had a themed week at school; one day was Crazy Sock Day. We didn't have any "crazy" socks and I wasn't going to go out and buy some, so we made some for him from a pair of white ones.



He used permanent markers to make them all crazy-like. ;)


He asked me to do one while he did the other and I was happy to help. See how happy I was in my self-portrait? LOL!




No longer simply white socks. They're CRaZy!

Fruit - Unplugged Project

This week's unplugged project is Fruit. After a quick search on google, I found this idea at almost every click, so I figured we give it a try!

The two types of fruit we used were a grapefruit and some raisins:



Remove the insides of the grapefruit (but be sure to save it for some taste-testing!)


We used pipe cleaners to turn it into a "hanging basket".


Add some bird seed and raisins:



Find a good place to hang it:




And don't forget the taste-testing! Witt loved it (with some added sugar!)


When Nathan woke up from his extra-long nap, we gave him one to fill and hang, too. Unfortunately , he decided to swing it instead! :)


We haven't seen any birds feasting from our feeders, but it was still a fun and easy project to do with the boys.

Join us at Unplug Your Kids for next week's project: White.