Comments (5)

By Mom Unplugged, March 1, 2010 8:46 pm

The Unplugged Project theme for the month of March will be: Sphere

The linky is below and will remain open until April 1st. On April 1st I will post a new Unplugged Project theme.

If you are wondering what the Unplugged Project is, then please read more about it here. We’d love to have you join in!

The basics are the following:

• Please only link if you have done a project that is related to the theme. Don’t just put your website in there because you like the idea of the project. I appreciate the support, but if I don’t see a project, then I’ll have to delete your link.

• Please don’t link until you actually have a post to link to. The post should not simply describe an intention, but document an actual completed project.

• When you link, please link to your POST, not just your blog. I am trying to build a library of project ideas, so we want people to always be able to find your project in the future. If you link simply to your blog, they won’t be able to find your post later on. (Feel free to email me if you have a question about this.)

• Don’t worry about the “accuracy” of your connection to the theme. Be creative, have fun, and think “outside the box” if you wish. For example, the theme was once soft and we made moth feeders out of soft cotton balls. Another time the theme was kitchen and we made Oobleck because it was made with cornstarch which is a substance you find in the kitchen, right? If you think about it, you can find a connection with almost anything and that is what is really fun!

• If you have the time, energy, and inspiration to come up with more than one project for sphere that’s great! Feel free to link to each sphere project separately in the linky.

• If you have no blog, then please leave a comment on this post with a description of what you did. The more ideas we get, the better!

• It takes a lot of time and energy to put this project together and I would greatly appreciate a link to Unplug Your Kids in your project post. Thank you and enjoy!

Photo is from Wikipedia, by Andrzej Barabasz.

Comments (7)

By Mom Unplugged, August 30, 2009 9:55 pm

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

Inspired by this article from Family Fun we made geometric string patterns. However, not being able to resist changing instructions, we did it a little bit differently.

The article uses painted wood panels and nails. While this would certainly produce a sturdier and probably more striking result, I didn’t want to mess with sawing and painting, so I came up with a simpler alternative: foam board and straight pins.

You’ll need foam board, colored yarn, scissors, and pins.

Cut the foam board into a 12 inch square. The edges were messy so I bound them with red duct tape which actually made a nice frame.

Trace around a dinner plate onto a piece of paper to get a perfect circle. Cut out the circle. This will be your pattern for placing the pins.

Fold the paper circle in half four times and unfold. You should have 16 evenly spaced creases. Lightly tape the circle to the center of the foam board.

Stick a pin in at the top of each crease touching the edge of the circle. The pins will be sticking out pretty far, but that will give you lots of room to wrap the yarn. (NOTE: We experimented with cutting the pins in half to make them shorter, but they kept falling out and didn’t leave enough room for multiple strands of yarn.)

Remove your paper pattern and choose your yarn.

Tie the end of the yarn onto the top pin (the “12 o’clock pin”, let’s call it number 1). Create a repeating pattern and wrap your yarn. For example, moving clockwise, skip two pins and wrap around number 4, then go back to the next pin over from the “12 o’clock pin” (number 2) and wrap, moving clockwise, skip two more pins and wrap, etc. This pattern would be: 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6, 4, 7, etc. (NOTE: Pattern in the photo below is different, don’t get confused!)

Work all the way around the circle. When you are finished you should have a nice design. Cut the yarn and tie the end onto the last pin (should be the 12 o’clock pin).

Tie a new color onto the 12 o’clock pin and proceed with a different pattern. Any pattern at all is fine as long as it repeats itself all the way around the circle of pins. We found that three different patterns were all the pins would hold comfortably.

The article suggests putting a dab of glue on the knots. We didn’t bother, but probably would have if we had gone all out and done the wood and nails method.

My 9 year-old daughter loved this so much that she made two other little ones in the corners of her board:

My 3 and a half year-old enjoyed it too. I gave her a small piece of foam board, stuck pins in for her, and told her to do whatever she wanted.

This was the result:

She was very proud and couldn’t wait for me to take a photo!

USEFUL TIP: Remove all cats from the room. Much to everyone’s aggravation, Pita The Adventure Cat enjoyed this project tremendously:

OTHER IDEAS: You don’t have to use a circle. Try triangles, squares or rectangles. Try different numbers of pins. If you really want to get fancy, you can even make these in three dimensions!

LINKS:

• This is a fun project for math teachers to use with their classes to teach points, lines, segments, circles, and tangents.

• Math Cats-String Art - Patterns and ideas

• Who Invented String Art? - History of string art

• Bézier Curve - “String art takes into account the mathematical ability to create a curve from set points using a series of straight lines. When straight lines are put through at least two points in a pattern, Bezier curves emerge, giving the illusion of rounded shapes, when in fact no curved lines are used.” If you are really into math (or computer animation), Google “Bézier Curve” for lots of technical information on this string art-related topic!

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As always, if you did a geometric Unplugged Project, then please leave the link to your actual post below. If you didn’t do a geometric project, then please do not link. You can read more about how to join in here. We’d love to have more participants!

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

Ocean

Have fun and please join us!

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