Unplugged Project - Color

The theme for this weeks Unplugged Project was Color. I let Reece do something simple and he played with colorful wooden puzzles. However, I set about with something a little more complicated for Wyatt and Seth.
We did color arranging from lightest to darkest. I had made these a while back using paint cards that I got for free at Home Depot. I just cut them into little squares. I numbered the backs so that the boys could self check once they lined them up. We have several colors that I keep separated in little bags.


I also did this color matching game that I made from paint cards that I got at Home Depot. I cut the words off one card, but left the rest of it intact. Then on the matching card I cut little one inch squares and glued them to clothes pins. The boys have to clip the clothes pin to the color that it matches. It can be a little difficult because some of the colors on the card are so similar. They did each project and then switched and did the other one. They really liked it.

Unplugged Project - Ball

The theme for this weeks Unplugged Project was Ball. So, I pulled out three different sized "balls" and we got busy with a little art project. We used marbles, golf balls, and mini-basketballs. First, we rolled the marbles in blue paint and then rolled them around the big sheet of paper, then we rolled the golf balls in red paint and rolled them around the paper and finally we rolled the basketballs in green paint and rolled them on the paper. The boys had so much fun rolling the balls and seeing the patterns that the golf balls and basketballs made on the paper. It was really messy, but well worth it.

Unplugged Project - Orange

The theme for this week's Unplug Your Kids Project was Orange. For Christmas the boys got The Very Hungry Caterpillar book, puppet, and board game. In the book the little caterpillar eats 5 oranges, so I decided that we could use that for our project. First we read the book and then we played the game. It's a really easy game (perfect for our boys ages), so I highly suggest it if your looking for games for your preschoolers.

Reece WON the game

Unplug Your Kids-Weather

The theme for this weeks Unplugged project was weather. It was a busy week with Thanksgiving, but we did get around to doing one "unplugged project" that had to do weather. I pulled out one of my favorite books from when I was a kid to read to them, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. I've read it to the boys before, but it was a long time ago and I don't think they remembered it. They thought it was great and kept pointing out little details in the pictures. Wyatt liked the boats built from huge pieces of stale bread and Seth like the pancake on the little boy's face.

Unplug Your Kids- Thankful

It's been a little while since we've done the weekly Unplugged Projects, but we jumped back in this week with the Thankful project. Originally I intended to do this as a turkey project. You know, the one where you put what you're thankful for on the the turkey feathers. However, since we made Cereal Box Turkeys just a couple of days ago I decided to go with something else. I cut big circles out of construction paper and had the boys tell me what they were thankful for, I wrote it in Sharpie on the circles and then we taped them to the back door. We had all sorts of things to be thankful for: that daddy is Spiderman, that Uncle John is the Hulk, and that mommy is Spidergirl (these are all great family secrets by the way); David from school, the guinea pigs, that Jesus died on the cross (Wyatt thought of that one), Transformer toys, driving race cars, that we went to a Veggie Tales Concert, that Miss Robin had a baby, for all the little tiny babies, and Seth listed everyone in our extended family.

Unplug Your Kids-Fruit

This weeks theme for Unplug Your Kids was Fruit. After last weeks failed attempt I was bound and determined to be successful. So, we did two projects.

The first one was a matching game with fresh fruit and dried fruit. I used muffin tins and put the fresh fruit on one side and the dried fruit on the other side. I explained to the boys that when you take the water out of the fresh fruit you dry it and it ends up like the dried fruit. So then I had them match up the dried fruit to what it used to be. They did really well. I only had to help them once (with the raisens). We had grapes/raisens, bananas, strawberries, apples, and pineapples. After the game they enjoyed the food for a snack.







Our second project was butterfly feeders (thanks Unplugged Mom for this inspiration). I let the boys get busy cutting strawberries (butterflies are supposed to be attracted to red) and they were really excited about using knives. I never let them use knives and I think my sweet husband was utterly appauled when he found out. We also put out some old plums and oranges. From what I read several internet sites the more rotted and nasty the fruit the better, so that's what we went with: nasty old plums, strawberries and oranges.

We hung the strawberries from a latern over a bush that I see a lot over butterflies hovering around.
I placed the plate of plums and oranges in the small bush.
We watched and watched and only saw one small yellow butterfly on the orange. I was surprised because we see butterflies in the backyard ALL the time. HMMMM....oh well, the boys had a lot of fun with the project anyway.

Unplug Your Kids-Hard

The theme for the Unplug Your Kids Project was Hard and for us it should have been Unplug Your Kids Gone Wrong. I had been wanting to do project from this book for a while where you make your own dino bone fossil. I knew the boys would love it and bones are hard so I thought it would go with the theme. First we went to our local dino dig park so the boys could dig up a dino fossil and get the idea of what we were going to be making on a larger scale. I decided to do the project at the park, so I hauled everything we needed in our wagon down to the dino pit (foil pans, potting soil, tons of different shapes macaroni, and glue). Once we got to the dino pit the boys played for about 15 minutes and Wyatt announced that he was done. He wanted to go for a walk to the water. How could he be DONE?? What boy doesn't like digging in the dirt? I asked him to play for a little while longer while his brothers played and he did, but he kept coming up and asking to leave. Finally we went for a quick walk and then headed to the picnic tables to do our project. The directions said to mix one cup of potting soil with enough glue to make the make the potting soil stick together in a ball and then mash it down in the bottom of the foil pan. Then you were supposed to press the macaroni shapes into the sticky potting soil and make it look like a dinosaur fossil. You let it sit out and dry out for a few days and it would harden and you could keep it. Well, it didn't matter how much glue I put in the potting soil. It never stuck together. The dirty glue just stuck to my hands making a huge nasty mess. The only good thing was that I hadn't let the boys touch it. They were disappointed, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Hopefully we will have better luck with next weeks theme: FRUIT (I've already got some ideas for that)!!

Seth liked walking up and down the dino spine

Unplug Your Kids-Soft

For this weeks Unplug Your Kids project the theme was soft. I have been needing to make some playdoh for Seth's speech class so I decided now was the perfect time to do that. Hey, playdoh is definitely soft : ) We used the recipe I found at Kiddio for playdoh made with Jello for the coloring so it not only looked good, but it smelled great too. We only got through two colors (I bought 5 colors) because I ran out of Cream of Tarter. So, I'm going to the store today to buy more so that we can finish up. The boys loved it. We doubled the recipe so that we could send half to school and keep half at home for the boys.

Seth helped make the purple Grape Jello Playdoh, which he said looked like yogurt while we were cooking it.

Wyatt helped with the Yellow Lemon Jello Playhoh and he said it smelled like Ranch Tacos. I just smiled and said okay. I have no idea what the boy is talking about, but okay.
The two colors cooling off after I finished kneading them.

I didn't have enough rolling pins for all three boys so I gave them jars to roll out the playdoh.

Wyatt used the slotted spoon to make impressions in his playdoh.

Seth used the slotted splatula to make some impressions.

I rolled up balls for Reece and then he stuck his thumb in them. He also enjoyed sticking plastic utensils in them.

Wyatt was very proud of his playdoh covered jar.

Unplug Your Kids-Trees

The theme for this weeks Unplug Your Kids project was Trees. We went to Zilker Botanical Gardens and after walking around and looking at all the fun exhibits we settled in the Oriental Garden and talked about Bamboo Trees. I told the boys about how bamboo grows very fast and so it's a good tree to use if you need to cut it down and build something with it. I explained to them that their Uncle Joel's floor in his house is made out of bamboo and they thought that was pretty cool. After we talked about bamboo I had them draw pictures of bamboo and then we did rubbings of the bamboo poles in the room that we were in. We just wrapped paper around the poles and then rubbed our crayons on the paper. The notches in the bamboo made some neat designs on the paper. I didn't get a picture, but the boys could see a lot of live bamboo through the window of this room.

They boys drawing their bamboo pictures

Seth's Bamboo Rubbing

Wyatt's Bamboo Rubbing
Seth's Drawing of Bamboo
Wyatt's Drawing of Bamboo
Wyatt drew another picture of his "favorite" tree when he was done with his bamboo drawing. He said the leaves went all the way to the ground.

More pictures from our trip to the Garden

I decided not to take the stroller (something I've never done before) because I wasn't sure if there would be a path to push it on. So instead each boy got a backpack to carry. It worked really well and there were no complaints.

Wyatt loves looking at maps and here he was mapping out our walk through the garden.

Reece heading off alone down a path. He's definitely Mr. Independent.
Aren't they cute?

I love this picture. My bridal portrait was taken in this "window".
I told Wyatt not to let go of Reece, so he was holding on with all he had.
The boys enjoyed the Dino part of the gardens.
Seth loved the waterfall


They saw a lizard run across the path and up a tree and got SO excited!!


Cooling off with some water I brought in the bamboo hut.