Mind Games

Last Monday, when I read the new Unplug Your Kids theme of the week, I was puzzled. Books? That’s how I unplug my kids every day. JediBoy asks, “Can I watch a movie?” and I say, “Sure! Or we could cuddle on the couch and read together.” Every time I throw in me reading to him as an alternative, he chooses me and the printed word over the screen. Every time. Of course, there are still plenty of days when I’m in the middle of something urgent, or BabyGirl is being too demanding, or I have a migraine, and I just say, “Sure!” and he watches a movie.

All the same, I wanted to throw myself into the spirit of the project and choose something project-y to do on the subject of BOOKS. First, JediBoy and I made a board book, similar to one I saw on Instructables. We bought a sheet of white illustration board at the craft store for $3.99. We worked together to use a yardstick to mark the sheet into 5″ squares (24 in all).

I had to cut them apart – it takes a lot of hand strength to cut through 1/16″ thick pressed cardboard!

Then I used my paper cutter to cut a stack of full sheet labels into 5″x11″ strips. (I’m sure we’ll find a use for the leftover 3 1/2″x11″ pieces!) JediBoy peeled the labels and set two squares down at a time, attaching them to each other with the label, and folding over the 1/2″ or so flaps on the ends. I would then “turn the page” and he would put the stack of book-in-progress and a new page down on the next label. Once we had 8 squares attached, we added a cover – putting a strip of the label’s backing twice as wide as the spine back on the sticky side of the label, positioned so it would be behind the spine and a section of the book’s back cover. This is an important step which allows the spine and cover enough flexibility that you can easily open the book and turn the page.

JediBoy decided to illustrate his book with Pokemon – each in a different color – and had me write in the text: “Squirtle is blue. Charmander is red. Bulbasaur is green.” and so on. He had so much fun choosing and drawing the Pokemon, and raced right over to his sister as soon as the book was done.

BabyGirl loves her new book. JediBoy reads it to her with sound effects and she imitates them gleefully. He already has plans for the other 16 squares of cardboard!

Our other BOOKS project this week needed a contribution from PisecoDad. We hunted through his box of I-might-possibly-read-these-again-someday-so-don’t-donate-them-yet books in the basement, and came up with an old library discard that was a good 2 1/2″ thick and happened to be titled Three Thousand Years of Espionage. We decided to make a secret compartment book by carefully cutting a rectangle in each of about 300 pages. We used my Fiskars Ultra Shape Xpress cutter and a stencil rather than the time-honored method of Xacto knife so that JediBoy could do his share of the cutting too!

After all the hard work of cutting through the pages, two or three at a time, we finally had a nice deep hole. We used foam brushes to slather the sides of the book and inside of the hole with Mod Podge (decoupage glue) and set it to dry with wax paper protecting the front cover of the book, and a big stack of coffee table books on top for weight.

The thing I loved about both of these projects was that they were ideas I’d had floating around in my head for things I could make one day. By letting go of my perfectionism and embracing the sheer joy of the work, I was able to make them doable by my wonderful 5 year old, who loved cutting up the book pages and slathering on the glue to make a secret compartment, and loved sticking on the labels and drawing pictures to make a board book for his sister. He feels so proud of the books he’s created!

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I had planned on including about six more pictures showing all the various kids’ bookshelves and bookpiles in the house, and more pictures with the gluing of the book, but WordPress would not let me upload a single photo today (I had to go to Flickr, which is so tedious for adding photos to blogs) – WordPress claims I have used my Upload Quota. What is this? A LIMIT on my photography? Say it ain’t so!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under arts, crafts & activities, books, pictures, unplug, you could call this "school". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.