Here in Columbus we often skip Spring. It seems to go from cold to hot almost overnight. But not this year. We have had chilly nights and 60 degree days and lots of sun and a good bit of rain. But not today. Today was another beautifully breezy day. Only warmer. Which is fine by me. I am a girl of summer!

We filled the baby pool with water and added blue food coloring, shiny star marbles, jewels and a fishing pole and fish.

And after lunch we tried to make bracelets out of old tooth brushes. It didn’t work, at all! I hate when there are directions for a project and it fails.

First we tried to pull out the bristles with tweezers. Ha-If you didn’t have carpel tunnel before you started this project You certainly will when your finished .

Ginger enjoyed trying to do this, but Molly turned to scissors!

So that was the first hint that this project was going to be tough.

Next we boiled a pot of water, added the tooth brushes.

We carefully removed one and with a towel wrapped around the HOT tooth brush, we tried to bend it around the bottom of a glass.

It barely bent, we re-boiled several times. Dancing on chairs and stools seemed to help the time pass.

tried different brands of tooth brushes…. Failure #1

Failure #2, after boiling and bending several times:

Then we Threw in the towel. Actually I threw the now germ free tooth brushes into the stack of cake pans still on the counter from the metal tooling project and headed out to drop the kids at my Mom’s for some cable TV while I grocery shopped.

So my advice is Don’t Try This At Home!!!

But I like the photos from this-they are so unexpected.

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This weeks Unplugged Project is Metal. The long weekend threw me off a bit so I am posting a day late-but better late then never! This Mexican Metal Tooling project is super easy, no mess.

You will need some heavy aluminum-we cut cake pans apart-scissors, stack of newspapers, paint brushes, permanent markers. Optional materials list to follow.

Place your aluminum square on your newspaper stack and use the back of a paintbrush to draw a picture/design. You can flip your square over and draw on the other side too so that some of your drawing sticks out and some is concave.

Now use your permanent markers to color in your picture.

The next part took longer than anything. I punched holes in the corners and used jewelry wire to string the tiles together and tied them to a dowel rod. We hung some beads off the bottom for weight. This is optional but I think it really looks great. Because we used permanent markers I plan to hang this on our back patio but tonight could not find a single place to hang it to get a good photo. This was the best I could do.

Note–after cutting the pans up the edges are a bit sharp, you may want to use masking tape and tape the square down to the newspaper while working on it. Be careful!

Here is a photo I took this morning outside-looks a bit better!

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OK this is an easy idea! Bring some snow inside to play in. No huge, under the bed, rubbermaid, tubby to use, you say? Use a pot or a dish pan or a bucket. Just put down a plastic tablecloth and you can add any type of accessories you think your kids may want to play with in the snow. We used ice cream scoopers and muffin tins, some cars and trucks. Although with mittens on it was hard to play with small items.
This is a great activity if you have a little one that you don’t want to suit up to go out to play. I remember doing this with Jake when he was about 9 months old on our kitchen floor. They will love to eat it too!!

Now on to lunch. What stretchs, bounces and rolls? FLUBBER!! This is sure to be a hit with almost any age. It is a little messy. You probobly don’t want to use this in a room with carpet. This sort of like silly putty but a bit more fluid. It will wash out. Use another bigger piece to pick up smaller pieces.

It is a non-Newtonian (quarter word) substance-it appears to be a liquid and a solid at the same time. I have more recipes like this that I can post some day when I find them! But you can google non-newtonian substances too and see what you come up with!

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 cups white glue
1 1/3 cups warm water
3 tsp borax detergent
food coloring
mixing bowl and spoon
Helps to make it in a pail or bucket

In pail combine food coloring, glue and 1 1/2 cups warm water
In second, smaller container (I used a mason jar) combine 1 1/3 cups warm water with borax. mix till dissoloved
Pour contents of mason jar into glue mixture.
Gently lift and turn the mixture with a metal spoon until only about a tablespoon of liquid is left.
FLUBBER will be sticky for a moment or two. Let the excess liquid drip off, then the FLUBBER is ready.

It is fun to use scissors to cut this up and use washable markers to color on it. But beware you will probobly have to throw the markers away when you are finished.

And just so I am not misleading you into thinking I do all these crafty things WITH my kids. Today I set these up so they would stay busy while I got some other things done! It was a win win situation

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