This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly Unplugged Project is Stone. I was a little stumped at first *grin* What in the world could I come up with that would use a stone!? Luckily I had an aha moment and thought of 'stepping' stones :)
What we used
One 18kg bag of Ready Mix Cement
3 Cardboard boxes
Assortment of colored ceramic dishes
1 large garbage bag
Scissors
Tape
Hammer
Rubber Gloves
We started by getting our boxes ready since they were going to be the forms for our stepping stones. Bulk cereal boxes (cut off the lower portion about 3 inches from the bottom) work well for this or yogurt flats, basically any box that has good sturdy sides to hold up to the weight of the cement. Next take your garbage bag, cut it open and fit it inside of your box to create a liner.
Using your tape secure all of the sides so that the plastic won't slip down later when you add your cement to the box.
Here are our 3 boxes all lined and ready for our cement :)
Now came the fun part! Smashing up all of the bowls and mugs to create a colorful array of chunks for our mosaic designs we were going to be creating :) We picked up all of our dishes at a garage sale for less than $5. The kids absolutely loved this part. *Warning* Make sure that the children and yourself are wearing sunglasses or some other form of eye protection, little bits of ceramic do fly up into the air when they are hit with the hammer so you want to make sure you don't get hurt.
After a good 10 minutes of smashing and crashing we had a rainbow of colors :)
Next we called in our master cement mixer aka Daddy *grin*. Using a large 5 gallon bucket he poured in the Ready Mix cement, added the appropriate amount of water per the bag instructions and mixed it thoroughly. The beauty of the Ready Mix cement is that you don't need to add sand or fine gravel to the mix like you do with regular cement!
With our cement ready it was time to fill our forms with it...
and K put on some rubber gloves so that he could press the cement down into the boxes really well so that it filled the corners evenly and smoothed the top.
Now you just let your creativity flow or as my 4 yr. old daughter did just plunk them in by how pretty the colors are *grin*
Here's her finished stone, multi colored and very eye catching!
My son found a neat lid that had 3 Spaniards on it which he thought looked like pirates. He loves pirates so they formed the centerpiece of his stone :)
And here's mine. As I look at it next to theirs I think I'm lacking severely in the color department!! But I was having fun using the top of a creamer as the circle for my flower and I managed to get the handle of a tea cup in one piece for one of the leaves and little rosettes off another piece as my accent pieces *grin* I was trying to make a picture with mine :)
They're still in the garage drying since we made them this evening and we are going to give them to Omi for her garden since she loves making stepping stones. They can't wait to add theirs to her collection :) Hope you have fun making some of your own!
I thought about doing a stepping stone, but I was going to go to the store and buy a kit - I'm so impressed by how you did yours "from scratch." The colors are beautiful!
We love making stepping stones - tip for others: we save any plastic lids that come on store bought pies, bakery items and such.. they make good circle and square shaped stepping stones. We even have a heart shaped plastic cake cover my son brought home from a school moms day project. The concrete just slides right out.
They are gorgeous. I really like the lid your kids used in the center. We've found lots of beach glass we'd like to use for this sometime. I'm impressed that you took on such a big project! :)
That's really cool using the brightly colored ceramic items. The next time I go to a garage/yard sale I'll be sure to check out all those cups, mugs, plates, and whatnots that I see for only $.10 - $.25. Never thought of breaking them to use them in something like this.
Just wanted to let you know the stones are not rock solid. we used "tools" just for the fun of it. :)
You can actually break them apart with your hands. It was a really simple and fun craft. I plan on using it again. Thanks for the nice comments!
Oh, I forgot to say...I loved how your stepping stones turned out. I made some garden stones with the kids hand prints last year and they turned out really cute...need to do another one though because we have had added to our family since then. :)
Wow! What a great project. And, it looks like the whole family got involved. I could see us doing this with grandma and my daughter's cousin. :-)
Dana, www.alexml.blogspot.com
