Comments (21)

By Mom Unplugged, August 31, 2008 9:08 pm

My stepmother, who always enjoys our projects, recently sent my children a subscription to Family Fun magazine because she thought they might find some fun ideas there. Well, we did find an idea that sounded pretty cool for this week’s insect Unplugged Project: Cricket Chirpers.

Supplies: 1/2″ wooden beads, wooden skewers, and glue (the article called for “tacky glue” but not being crafty enough to know what that was, I used carpenter’s wood glue):

First, as suggested by the magazine, I cut the pointy ends off the skewers to reduce the chance of injury.

Next, the children threaded 15 beads onto the skewers in any pattern they wished.

My 2 year-old had fun threading beads too. For her, I stuck a lump of playdough onto one end of the skewer so she wouldn’t get frustrated by beads falling off:

She eventually tired of threading and unthreading beads and branched out into sticking the beads onto the lump of playdough:

This turned into an all-out playdough session (one of her favorite things):

After each child had made two sticks, I glued the two end beads with the carpenter’s glue. It turned out to be a bit fiddly and messy, so I think it was a good thing that I decided to do this step myself.

We let the glue dry for several hours, and this was the result:

When rubbed together, the sticks are supposed to sound like crickets. Well, they didn’t sound much like crickets to me. My husband agreed. I thought maybe they sounded more like cicadas on a night full of general, random insect noises. I asked my husband…he closed his eyes, concentrated, and said…”No.”

They do however make cool instruments to add to any musical instrument collection. Sorry about the crickets though.

Why don’t you try it (very easy project) and let me know what you think!

++++++++++

What did you do this week for the Unplugged Project theme of insect? If you did an insect project this week, then please put a link to your project in Mr. Linky.

A few linking pointers:

• It is best if you link to the actual project post, not just your blog in general, that way people will always be able to find your specific project easily.

• Also, if you did not do the project, please don’t link. Mr. Linky is for project participants only, not for general links to blogs or stores, etc.

• Finally, I have decided that I will leave a Mr. Linky open for only two weeks. After two weeks I will disable it so that no new links can be added, but all the existing links can still be followed. This will give everyone two weeks to add their link, but will guard against spam links being added to old Linkys that I no longer monitor.

++++++++++

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Soft

Have fun!