Unplug Your Kids: Cylinder

This week's Unplugged theme is cylinder. The only project that I came up with that we didn't do this week was to make a drum out of a cylinder shaped oatmeal container. We may still do that in the future, but not as part of this project.

The first project I had Arin do was to paint a cylinder shaped toilet paper roll. She loves to paint, so this was great for her. She's so particular about everything. It was really entertaining to watch her.

While we were waiting for the toilet paper roll to dry, we moved on to the next project. I had Arin "sew" a pasta necklace. We were in luck because we already had cylinder shaped pasta (rigatoni). I was planning on dying the pasta first, but we slept in this morning, so we just went with undyed, unpainted pasta. She still had a blast with this. She was disappointed that she wasn't able to eat the pasta like she could eat the Fruit Loops when we made the cereal necklace, but she wore the necklace until it was naptime.

Arin loves to color and we always have her crayons out so that she can color any time that she wants to, which is quite often. However, I am tired of her not picking up her crayons when she is finished with them. I am tired of finding them all over the place and stepping on them. Last week, I had bought some frozen juice concentrate. Some of the juices come in a plastic cylinder shaped container now, so I had the idea of making a crayon holder out of the container. This is something that I remember doing in kindergarten or first grade. I love that the containers are plastic now. Last week Arin had made three very nice paintings. I love all of her artwork, but it just isn't practical for me to keep everything. Instead of just tossing the paintings into the trash, I decided it would be nice to use them on this project. I cut one of the paintings into a strip that would fit the juice container. Then I cut circles out of the other two paintings. Then, Arin used her glue stick and put glue on the backs of the circles and stuck the circles where she wanted them on the long strip of paper.

When she was done gluing on the circles, I put glue on the back of the strip and started rolling the paper around the juice container. I let Arin finish this once it was started. After it had dried for a little bit, I covered the paper with clear contact paper, to help deter Arin from pulling the circles back off of the paper. So far, Arin has been carrying this cylinder shaped crayon container with her from room to room since it has been finished.

Once the toilet paper cylinder dried, we used it to play hide-and-seek. I would hide the cylinder and Arin would find it. I remember playing this game with my mom when I was about 5. She would hide a button or a penny and tell me if I was hot or cold when I was trying to find it. This was the first time that I had played the game with Arin. She would leave the room while I would hide the cylinder and then she would come back in, all excited, and find it. She loved this game!