The kids and I have been enjoying our little feathered visitors to our feeders and I thought that it would be fun to make a new treat for them to munch on during these cold snowy months. So we raided our pinecone stash picking out some nice large ones and coated them with peanut butter and then rolled them in birdseed. For a more nutrituous touch we added sliced rounds from apples and oranges and strung them onto the string to. They are so pretty to look at and they are a big hit. The smaller Juncoes and Sparrows land right on them and spin around wildly while eating and the Stellar's Jays dive bomb them *grin*, ripping of whatever they can catch as they swoop past :) Great entertainment!!
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is all about Rough. I was completely stumped at first! I'm usually pretty good at thinking outside the box when it comes to crafty projects but it took me all week to get a real 'lightbulb' moment *grin* and at last our pinecone art project was created! There are tons of pinecones all around us here and we actually have scads of them in bags in our garage as well for such an occasion as this. They're rough and prickly to the touch so I think they fit perfectly into the 'rough' category :)
We started by picking out the nicest cones we had in a variety of sizes and colors. I wanted ones that had nice sturdy scales that would hold up to some rough and tough twisting as we pulled them apart for our project. You'll know which ones are not good for this project because as you pull at the scales on the cone they crumble and split, you don't want to use those :)
We laid down a layer of newspaper over the kitchen table before we started to catch all of the dust, dirt, and pinecone bits that dropped or flew in some cases all over :) and sorted them into small, medium & large categories. This made it easier to find the right sizes later when we started working with them on our paper as we didn't have to do a lot of searching through a big pile looking for the right ones :)
When I thought of pinecones and their rough textural appearance I immediately thought of an owl, so I sketched out a nice fat owl on each of our papers so that we had an outline to follow :) Using a fair amount of regular white glue we started to fill in sections of our owls with it and then placed layers of pinecones into the glue.
You can get really creative with your pinecone pieces to by defining different areas of your picture by changing the direction of the pinecone scales in different sections or by using half pinecones like I did for the eyes in the above photo so you get a 3D effect as well :)
Here's another one of our 'rough' pinecone owls :) I just love them! I can't wait until the glue is completely dry so we can hang them on the wall in our nature corner :) Have fun making your own pinecone creatures!
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is Flat. Well, a lot of things are flat or can be flattened so we decided to do painted flower prints that we pressed 'flat' on our 'flat' paper. *grin*
We raided Omi's garden for a fun assortment of roses, daisies, geraniums, chive blooms, yarrow, ladies mantle leaves, primrose leaves, allium seed heads and then collected our painting supplies. We have an old burl coffee table in the backyard that works perfectly for crafting on that we covered with newspaper and used some of our rock creatures to hold our painting paper 'flat' :)
L started with a pretty rose and brushed on the paint. You don't want to put the paint on to thick if you can help it. The thinner the paint the clearer the print of your flower will be, thick paint just prints a big blob :)
And that's it, just paint and press 'flat'.
Primrose leaves create a really neat looking texture because all of the veins show up really well....
and the allium seed heads make a fireworks effect that is super neat :)
Get crazy with your colors to, mix and match them in a tye dye effect for even more fun. When the centers of the daisies are pressed 'flat' they make a really cool stipple effect. So when you've worn out your daisy and the petals just can't take another coat of paint, pluck them off and keep on printing the centers :)
You can even use this project to teach a little color blending lesson *grin* by watching how your rinse water changes color each time you add a new paint to it :)
Here are some of our 'flattened' flower prints :) Hope you have fun making some of your own.
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!
With summertime officially started as of June 20th and the call of the beach beckoning for you to come and play how can you say no!? I can't, and I've never heard any protest from the children either *grin* With every beach visit (unless it is clearly posted not to remove any shells, wildlife etc. from that beach) we come home with a slew of shells, rocks, colorful kelp pieces, the occasional crab and and bunch of odds and sods :) We've even been known to coil up those HUGE bull kelp and stuff them in the car to make kelp dolls with later. LOL. But what do you do with all of those shells?? They really do tend to pile up by the end of the season! I've come up with a fantastic idea.... we're making music makers this year, sort of similar to morrocas but without handles :)
This is a great 'seek & find' game to play at the beach because you need to find completely intact clam shells that fit together nicely without to much of a gap around their edges when they close and you can use this as a little learning exercise with the little ones to because you can get them to sort them into piles of smooth and rough textured shells and big and little shells. Older children can even go further by grouping them by their different species by sight and then check how well they did with the help of a good seashell handbook. After you get home let the children raid the pantry and craft drawers for items to hide away inside your shells to create musical sounds. Above you can see what we found for ours. Personally I love the sound that the large jingle bells made the best :)
Be gentle when you open your clam shells because as they dry their hinges tend to become a little brittle, so don't force them open to wide or you'll end up with a broken shell. Don't worry though they can take some pressure :)
My 4 year old picked all of the smallest items to fill her shells with so that she cold transfer everything from the bowls piece by piece.
It takes quite a while to fill a large clam shell one grain of rice at a time *grin*.
After we got our shells all filled I pulled out my trusty LePage speed set epoxy. Use a thick piece of cardboard or some heavy tinfoil to mix your epoxy on. Craft popsicle sticks work fantastic for mixing and applying your glue with to.
Spread a layer of your glue along the open edge of your clam shell and then hold firmly shut until it starts to firm up. This only takes a minute or so and is completely hard in about 5 minutes.
We had a few shells that had some larger gaps on the sides that needed filling so that we didn't lose our fillings :) The easiest way to do this is to wait until your epoxy is starting to set on your work surface. It will get really thick and stretchy and now you can use it like gum and stretch it over top of the large openings without worrying about it running inside of the shell and gluing your music making items to.
And that's it! They can shake until their hearts content :) We made a little video of what ours sounded like. You may need to turn off the bird sounds on my left hand sidebar so you can hear them better. Have fun making some of your own!
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly Unplugged Project was to do something crafty with rocks. So what better way to spend an afternoon nature walk by searching for the perfect rocks to make creatures with! Once we had a substantial stash we returned home, scrubbed them up with soap and water and then placed them in the oven to dry off really well so that they would be ready for gluing the next day.
At first I wasn't sure how we were going to glue our rocks together and actually get them to stay that way *grin* but I ran across an epoxy cement glue at our local grocery store that would set masonry. Woohoo, we're in business :) I covered a magazine with tinfoil, got out some popsicle sticks and set to work mixing the glue.
The popsicle sticks were perfect for mixing the glue and hardeners togther. I worked in front of the kitchen window which I opened a bit to disperse the fumes from the glue. It was a wee bit stinky. With all of the warnings on the glue package I did all of the gluing for the kids...
and got K to help out with a few of the bigger rocks that wanted to slip around and wouldn't stay put once the glue was on them.
I pulled out some wire for them to play around with for making antennae and other body parts :)
It was a little tricky to set some of the stones and wire but we had lots of little bitty rocks left over that we used as rests and stabilizers while the glue set which only took about 10 minutes to firm up enough that we cold set them aside to really get hard, about 2 hours which we used as a lunch break *grin*
Then it was on to the really fun stuff, painting! I made work stations for each of them at the kitchen table by covering it with strips of butcher's wrapping paper with the waxy side up for easy clean up and taped them down with masking tape, gave each of them a palette for paint, a mason jar full of water, blotting paper, paintbrushes and a rainbow of colors :)
The rest was up to them :)
K created a rather inventive seascape with a sailboat and orca complete with a coppery spout of water coming out of it's 'blow hole' on a giant blue rock of water. Nobody said we only had to make animals *grin*
There were snails and frogs with wonky eyes and very big lips....
butterflies and kites flying high in the air....
and of course I just couldn't resist having some fun to and created myself a flock of birds. LOL. If you decide to make some rock creatures my son would love to see them, please stop back and let us know :)
This week is our first time participating in Unplug Your Kids' weekly Unplugged Project, and this weeks theme is eggs. With it being Easter weekend I thought it would be a perfect time to jump in since there are so many egg related projects associated with this time of year! The kids and I have been saving our Araucana chicken eggs because they are such beautiful green and blue colors for planting in :)
To get a good egg shell for planting in try to crack them really close to the top of the shell so that you leave behind a nice deep cavity for placing your dirt and seeds in. We used a store bought all purpose soil mix and filled up a measuring cup with it....
and mixed in a really generous amount of water so that it was good and wet, not just damp.
With our egg shells all set up in a carton to keep them upright we started to spoon in little bits of the potting soil at a time until they were about a centimeter from the top of the shell.
Then using some of the hard red spring wheat I had on hand for bread making we put in a solid layer of the grain completely covering up the potting soil.
And the last step was to cover them again with just enough wet potting soil to cover the wheat. You don't want to put to much on or it will take longer for the wheat shoots to come through :) We placed the eggs right in the egg carton in the stereo cabinet where it was guaranteed to be warm all the time from all of the electronics, on an empty shelf of course not to close to anything *grin*. Now we wait, not very patiently I might add. Do you know how many times I was asked if they were sprouted yet.... on the first day!! LOL.
The results were fantastic!! The wheat sprouted on the 2nd day, and by the 4th day it was well on its way :) I made some funky little egg cup holders for them with copper wire and we placed them on our bright yellow chicky plates for Easter brunch today. Maybe we'll try juicing the grass next and see who will drink it. It's supposed to be super healthy *grin*
Nature Activity ~ Build Your Own Fruit Bowl Bird Feeder
I have been wanting to make this bird feeder with the kids for some time now but we just never seem to have enough hours in a day to do all of the projects we want to do *grin* But today was the day and I thought that I would share with you how to make your own bird feeder using a Pomelo as the bowl to hold your bird seed in :)
Start by finding your self the largest pomelo you can at the grocery store. They look just like a grapefruit but MUCH larger and cut the top of it. Cut a very shallow piece off the top and if you don't cut enough you can cut another thin piece off again until you can see the top of the fruit inside.
Now comes the fun part :) Start working your fingers in going around the fruit slowly pulling it away from the sides of the rind until you can get all the way to the bottom of it and pop the fruit right out of the rind. The pomelo has a really thick and spongy rind which is quite flexible. We made two of them and neither of them ripped or tore at all.
I wanted to show you just how big the hollowed rind and fruit are. They dwarf my tennis ball!
Time to get your peanut butter suet ready.
Melt:
1 pound of lard
2 cups of peanut butter
in a large pot until liquefied. Remove from heat.
Stir in:
4 cups of bird seed
2 cups of course ground hard wheat (consistency of chunky cornmeal)
or substitute cornmeal for the wheat
Mix together. You want it the consistency of soft chocolate chip cookie dough :) If it is to thin add more bird seed to it and then set aside to cool and firm up again.
While your bird feed is cooling you can get your cranberry strings attached to the pomelo. We threaded a large darning needle with butcher's twine and then pulled it through the side of the pomelo about 1 inch from the top and then knotted it in place. I put the twine down that far so that if the weight of the bird seed and birds landing on it started to stress the rind it would be quite a while before the twine pulled all the way to the top.
With your darning needle still attached you can start to string on fresh cranberries to the desired height you would like them.
If you are going to be hanging your feeder somewhere that would require a lot of string then you might want to make your strings of cranberries very long :)
As soon as you have your cranberry strings finished you can heap your bowl full of your yummy peanut butter suet. It smells so good! K really wanted to try it but I managed to talk him out of it *grin*
All that's left to do now is hang your fruity bird feeder outside and enjoy.
Have fun making yours!
For more show & tells or to join in check out Canadagirl's blog.
And now the much anticipated results of our spore printing experiment *grin* They turned out awesome!
This mushroom is the one that left the above spore print and I thought that I might have had 2 names that if might have been: Common Laccaria (Laccaria laccata) or the Bleeding Mycena (Mycena haematopus) but both of these leave a white spore print and as you can see the one I have left me a lovely brown spore print so I'm back at square one!
Here is a different spore print that we got and again it was a brown print. Do you see the lines running horizontally along it? There were teeny tiny little worms in the cap when we lifted it and the must have been traveling around and left behind those interesting trails :)
And this is our last print which unfortunately left a white spore print on my white paper instead of on the black paper where it would have shown up much better :( I actually thought that this mushroom and the one above this one were the same but again the spore print doesn't lie so I have got 2 different mushrooms indeed!
In our mushroom guide it said that many mushrooms are so similar that the only way to correctly identify them is by their spore prints so we have proved that theory to be correct since nothing I thought we had was right *grin* Now you can see why it is never a good idea to eat any mushrooms even when you think you have correctly identified them unless you have been shown by an expert that truly knows their stuff!!!
If you do your own spore prints please let me know so that we can come and check yours out :)
This afternoon on our nature walk we went hunting for some of the mushrooms we had spotted the other afternoon growing out in the lawn.
So armed with a rubber glove (in case they were poisonous) and a paper bag I collected some specimens for our spore printing project that is shown in our mushroom guide.
The first step was to get out a black piece of construction paper and a white piece of paper for placing the mushroom caps on.
The reason that I used two different colors of paper is because different mushrooms have different colored spores which can be light or white, pink, brown or dark colors. If you have a mushroom that leaves a light colored spore print you will want to use black paper so that you can see it and if you have a mushroom that leaves a dark colored spore print you will want to use a white colored paper to insure the spore print is visible. I'm not exactly sure what mushrooms we have here so I put one of each mushroom on each color of paper to make sure I get a spore printing that will show up : ) I'm hoping that when we see the spore prints it will help us to identify the mushrooms.
Once you have your paper set up in a spot where they won't be disturbed, separate the mushroom caps from their stems and place them gills down on your papers. Now place a glass jar over top of each of the mushroom caps so that they are free from drafts. You don't want any air movement around them or it will scatter the spores and you won't get the desired pattern :)
Now we wait. It says to leave them overnight and then you can lift the jars and mushroom caps to reveal their spore prints. I can't wait to see if it works since I'm not sure what the best time to try this experiment would be :)
