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By Mom Unplugged, April 6, 2008 10:28 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was books.

I confess to having had a bit of a hard time with this one. The choices seemed endless. Of course the kids could make books, write books, read books, organize their books (I always like to get them organizing their stuff!), make bookmarks, make bookends… nothing seemed quite right though. So, since the weather today was so lovely (windy, but beautiful), we decided to go for a walk/bike/scooter adventure, during which we collected leaves and other natural things that we might be able to use for a project (when in doubt, nature is always a good place to start).

When we got home my 5 year-old son wanted to make a nature book for his treasures. My 7 year-old daughter wanted to make book marks. I had been vaguely thinking of the old iron-the-wax-paper trick and suggested we try that for the bookmarks. This is what we came up with:

The “nature expedition:”

Bookmarks:

Our materials:

First we cut out rectangles of wax paper:

Then we arranged our nature finds on one half of the wax paper:

Next we folded the wax paper over to make a “sandwich” and I ironed it.

There are no photos of this step since I (the photographer) was doing the ironing. I will say though, that it did not work as smoothly as I remember it as a child. The first try did not stick. Then it seemed there was a sticky side to the wax paper, then it seemed that both sides were sticky. Weird. Is it because our wax paper was “microwave-safe?” Hmm…. I never did figure it out. Next time I would probably use clear contact paper instead.

After the ironing process, we made construction paper frames to hide the edges, punched a hole and looped yarn through the hole for a tassel.

We got off to a rocky start with the wax paper dilemma, but we ended up having a lot of fun and produced four bookmarks!

Nature Book:

My son stapled three sheets of construction paper together and stuck his finds on to the pages with tape, glue, and staples. He was quite happy for at least an hour, just choosing his natural objects, and attaching them.

Here is the final product:

For another book-related idea, please read my post A Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Ear.

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Did you join in our project this week? If so, then thank you! Please leave the link to your project in Mr. Linky as well as a comment, since sometimes Mr. Linky doesn’t work well and I have to take him off.

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme is:

Food

(doesn’t have to be cooking…what else can you do with food?)

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