The enormous gelato saddened the gregarious thundercloud, or Unplugged: Words.

The theme for this week's Unplugged project is "words," so after seeing this post at Maya Made, I decided to make word rings for Corey, who has been asking me nonstop how to spell various words. He started carrying them around as soon as I gave them to him and now, in addition to asking me how to spell, he's saying things like, "Mommy, do you know how to spell off? O-f-f!" Here's what he made tonight:



I've been asked to make one with all the states on it, so I guess that's next...

For both boys, I wanted to make some story dice, like the ones at The Toby Show, but I don't have any wooden cubes on me and I don't know when I'll get them. So in the meantime, I made a paper die. I found a template online and glued the tabs using a toothpick:





Here is the story Zachary came up with:

One time there was a lion. He met a vet. The vet fell down. But the vet was okay. Then Corey came. He said, "What's wrong?" And then the pig came, juggling around the savanna. And the pig said, "What's wrong?" "Well, I hurt my toe and the lion was hurt too because he fell down with me." And then the pig said, "Hey, I think I see something...Oh, I think I know what it is. Pie!" And then the pie said, "Eat me! That'll make you feel better." And then they ate the pie.

So now Zachary wants to draw the pictures and write the words, as long as I fold the die...

Next, we used a letter die from our Scattergories game. I had Zachary roll a letter and make a sentence using as many words as possible starting with that letter. Here are a few of his:

The hippo ate the hamburger.
Fat flames are furry.
The toasty toad took the timer.

And he helped Corey with: The monkey munched the marshmallows. Corey also rolled the die and thought of words that started with whichever letters he rolled.

Zachary's favorite game involved the six-sided die with pips. He and I took turns rolling and contributed to our story the number of words we rolled. Here's our story:

Once upon a time there was a hippopotamus and a rhino. Then a scary tiger came. When the scary tiger came, he said to the others, "I am hungry for animals." The hippo and the rhino hit the tree and down came some coconuts. Then the coconuts hit the tiger on the back because he was right under the coconut tree. When he found out, Crush! The tiger was very hurt, but he got to go to the store and buy some cake, and they had a celebration together and were happy.

I think soon I'll add another die so we can add up to 12 words at a time...