3 drawing games- for while you wait

We just got back from a fun weekend out of town.  It meant a few hours in the car and hubby and I decided to go technology free, rather, force the kids to go technology free.

I made some new seat sacks a few weeks ago for the car and packed them full of paper, mazes, books, crayons, stickers, etc.   (These pictures are a different weekend road trip, obviously not the technology free weekend.)

 I tried to take pictures of the construction of these sacks, however, it was night time-basement pictures and those are never good.  It didn't work out so much.   

 I had them loop over the seat with an elastic band at the bottom.

I used some repurposed belts for the attachment at the top.  

It's hard to argue with this quietness from the backseat, but we did go tech free this most recent trip. 

Amongst other things, we played three different drawing games that I thought I'd share.  These games could work for anytime you are waiting, seems we do that more than I would like.

Partner drawing game:

This produced a lot of giggles.

Bee and Lou both drew a part of a picture and then switched clipboards.  The other person finished the first person's picture.  Here, Lou drew a turtle being flown by balloons hooked to a harness.

Then, Bee added something.  This was the favorite.  She added it peeing.  We're classy like that.

Sticker picture/sticker story:

They each started with a blank piece of paper, then added a few stickers.  Sometimes we played where I handed them a few random stickers, other times, they handed each other random stickers.  Then they completed the picture and made up a story of what was going on.  I used to have my second and third graders use this as a story starter and write out their story.  Our stickers are from those themed sticker books you can get at aldi's for under $5.  They come with hundreds of pictures.

Here's Bee's:  Two woodland rodents found a piece of cheese in the woods.

Here's Lou's:  a plan crashed into a tractor.  Nice. 

Existing Lines:

I drew a line or squiggle on a paper and they finished the picture.  Here, I drew the arch (we were on our way to St. Louis!).

Bee turned it into ice-cream cake. 

Here's another from Bee.  I drew the curvy line and she turned it into a hill and drew our family.  

Here are a few cute ones from Lou:  

I drew the triangles at the bottom and he drew a tree with Charlotte's spider web in it and and a barn with Wilbur in it.

I drew the flower petal shape and he drew Bee holding a flower. 

I drew four small circles on the right side of his drawing and he turned it into a smoke stack with lights. 

 

Luckily, we had a large amount of scrap paper, rescued from the recycling place, because we went through a lot of paper.  Either way, we successfully occupied three hours each way without screens.

DIY Lightboard

We made our own lightboard!  It wasn't that hard and comes in at about $30 if you have to buy the wood.  Often we have scrap, but not enough this time.   I looked at several DIY light boards, or light tables, but sort of combined ideas and made it up as I went. Something that works, sometimes not so much.

Here's what you need:  (My lightboard is 18x24)

wood to make the frame-  I bought a 10 foot 1x6 board.  I bought pine and it was $5.50ish

wood for the bottom- luckily I had scrap- it's thin, lightweight wood

plexiglass- I bought mine already cut 24x18 (that's what determined my lightboard size).  It was $9.75 ish

lightsource-  I've seen people use those rope lights and push button lights. I wanted lots of light.  I went with a $9.90ish under the counter light.  It has a cord. It was the biggest and brightest I could get within budget.  

Screws and nails

I decided to have my plexiglass fit down in the frame so there was a little lip around the edge.  I bought a bag of those shelf holders, like that come with bookshelves you put together yourself.  The bag of 12 was $1.80ish. I used 10. I also saw you could purchase them individually for 49 cents each, which would have been silly.  

something reflective- I've seen people use silver spray paint or foil, but I went with a mylar emergency blanket. I used just a corner and have more left for other projects.  Oddly enough, this is the second project where I've used this product.  This was $2.25 ish in the camping department. 

Also, not pictured:  clear packing tape, wax paper, and colored tape

Tools needed were a drill, screw driver, saw, hammer, little snips (not the appropriate tool but it worked) 

 Now, I've seen a lot of lightboards made out of plastic tubs, but I wanted something bigger and sturdier, for 3 or 4 little ones to work at, at one time.  I went with wood.  It's sturdy but not too heavy.  I drilled some small pilot holes and then screwed the box together.

I marked a line 1/2 inch from the top edge and drilled holes for the shelf holder things.  That's their official name. I needed a bigger drill bit for that one.  I just tried until I got the right size.

The little shelf holders are where I ran into trouble.  I didn't account for the extra room they took up.  The plexiglass fit on one side, but not the other.  I was off by 1/8 an inch or so. 

I decided to think about it and keep on going.  I traced the size I needed for the bottom and cut it out and nailed it on. I ended up using a pair of siding snips to chip away at the plexiglass until it was 1/8 inch smaller on both the length and width.  It was messy and left sharp pieces of hard plastic for out feet to find later. 

I hot glued the mylar blanket in the box. I also used some clear packing tape to help attach at the edges.

Here's where I went to work by the pool while the kids were swimming.  There are no pictures of these steps:

-I taped wax paper to the back side of the plexiglass (I used 1 piece of clear packing tape to connect the two pieces it took to cover it. 

-I taped a border of colored tape around the edge of the plexiglass.  This was to take care of any sharp or jagged edges and also to help hold on the wax paper.

A large hole was needed for the cord to poke through.  It was the first time I used the drill bits that does holes that big.

I positioned the light in the center and placed the plexiglass on top of the little shelf holders.  It was ready to play!  I found these colored stones in the fish tank accessories section of our big box store. The clear dishes are from Joanns in the jewelry making area.

We added the water beads and were very glad to have that little wooden lip. These beads are from Joanns, in the floral department.  We've also purchased them from the dollar tree before.

I finished this at night after the kids were in bed, but I heard Bee still up in her room so I went and got her.  I let her play a few minutes.

We got out the glass beads and clear bingo chips.

Then Bee asked to go get her new rocks.  Some of them were pretty neat with the light. They were clear enough to let some light through.  She got these from Holiday World.  They had a bin and you got the fill up certain sized bags for different prices.

Then I sent her back to bed and had to clean up.   Lou can see it in the morning. Good thing we get to play with it all summer before I have to share with the kiddos at preschool.  My kids get jealous occasionally!

end of school- Bee

Here are a few old things I'm cleaning up out of my draft pile.  Thanks to bible school this week I'm getting a few odds and ends done!  Love it.  Now I see what mom's who stay home full time even when their kids are in school are doing. They are getting things done!  Sorry I judged in the past.

Anyway, here are a few fun things from the last week of school.  I seriously felt like it was the busiest week of school this year.  

Bee had an awards program at school that I wasn't going to go it, but her teacher sent me an email and said that Bee was getting an award and she didn't know yet.  Hello, she won three awards!  She got the Presidential fitness award (that's the photo above, only those few girls won it out of the whole school!)  National is when you exceed 50% of the criteria, Presidential is when you exceed 85% of the criteria.  

She also got highest honor roll for a GPA or 3.75 or higher and and award for being the top AR reader in her class.  

I'm currently reading a book about the newest scientific research in the past few years concerning child development and parenting.  We aren't supposed to praise kids for how smart they are anymore, but WOW!  She got a big high five for being super.  Smart and all.  I tried to get her to dress up a bit for the program but without telling her why I didn't have a lot of leverage.  She chose her most comfortable clothes as usual.

They also had a field day.  It was the most well organized field day I've ever been to.  I appreciated that since I was asked to be a judge.  Bee won the 50 yard dash for the first grade girls and her team won the leap frog.  A dad judge who was working the lane next to me tried to argue that Bee's team was taking too long of jumps at the end of each string of crouching kids, thus cheating.  I'm sure that's how the first grade girls at our Christin school roll... cheating at leapfrog.   He argued several little things like that.  It's a good thing this was just first grade field day or I would have gotten all crazy with him.  Well, probably not.

last week in the garden

This is last week. I'm about a week behind with a lot of things. The kids are going to bible school this week, so I hope to get mostly caught up.

Here's what I had typed last week and it seems to have been pretty much right:  

The logan berries are in. Yum!  I think we'll get @ 3 cups a day for the next  week or so and then they'll trickle in for another week. Here's two separate days harvest (in the white bowl and the green bowl)  If anyone local wants a start from this plant, let me know!  It's spreading faster than I know what to do with.   The strawberries are just a trickle now too.

I had enough to make a crisp!  It was tasty, but the seeds were annoying.  I won't use this recipe again with these berries.   I did eat all of the yummy crunchy topping though.

Bee has a special interest in the sweet peas.  They are starting to come in and she's excited to get picking.

Delicious!

Bee picks, I eat.  Then I have to pay her a quarter for her picking.  I'm not sure how this arrangement was figured out.  She's a natural entrepreneur. 

I don't think I've shown our ghetto netting system for the berries.  The logan berries grow along our side fence. The strawberries grow below.  It was a poor plan in some ways, but we inherited this set up.   The former home owners planted these plants the summer before they moved, they never even got to enjoy them.  The netting is our old trampoline netting.  It's worked great to keep out the bunnies and birds. The netting can be pulled up over the logan berries, but the thorns make it hard to pull back to pick, so we're leaving it slightly back right now.

Also, the spinach season has come to a close for us.  It's all gone to seed.  It and the lettuce are just pretty much gross right now.

photo booth strips

 I must tell you about this great feature I found on a website.  It lets you turn any photos you want into photo booth strips.  Perfect for my photo booth pictures from the graduation party!

 

You can choose any 4 shots and upload them (after signing up for free) at Huge Blue Labs.   It looks like they are other photo fun tools, but I only have played with the photo booth strips.  You load them up, select a few options and then download the strip as a picture file.   If you sign up with them through facebook, you can share right away on facebook, or tweet them or whatever.   If I can figure it out, you can too! 

(although whenever hubby walks by and I am working on my blog, I quickly switch the format to html and it looks like I write in html code.  He asked me once if I was writing in html code and I was like, "well, yeah... why?"  He said, "Oh, I just didn't know you knew how to do that."  He's very impressed!)

The above strips have been made black and white and antiqued by checking a box with that option.  

There's the option to do color, but I love the b&w.  This is not a paid shout our to Huge Blue Labs or anything, just me saying I found this cool thing and I thing you should spend an hour or two having fun with it too.  Sleep is highly overrated. 

(Note though, that it does better with pictures where the action is in the center- or it cuts people off.  There is no tool to scoot the view box around or anything like that.)