It’s a big world out there. A world with lots of things in it. And those things need HUGS. The question is…are you up to the task? Are you a Hug Machine?
We recommend Hug Machine by Scott Campbell (Atheneum, 2014). Prepare yourself world. The Hug Machine (a little boy in a striped shirt and red rain boots) is on a mission to cheer people up, calm people down, and make things right. Tree? Hug! Park bench? Hug! Crying baby? Hug! Even a spiky porcupine gets a special padded hug. It’s impossible to read this book without smiling. Highly recommended!
Today’s simple project was designed by Jennifer Hyde, an ingenious teacher in Logan, Utah. Jennifer’s “Paper Hug” was featured in Family Fun magazine many years ago. I modified it only slightly for today’s post.
You’ll need:
- Poster board
- Scissors
- Markers
Trace your left and right hands at each end of a 5.5″ x 27″ strip of poster board. Keep the hands connected as you cut them out of the poster board.The result is a long “hug.” Decorate the hug with markers (or use color masking tape like we did).
OK, you’re ready to start hugging – and by hugging we mean go forth and find things to wrap your poster board hug around! You can just use the paper hug, or get right in there and use your arms too. Always dedicated to seeing a project through, Katie and I hit the streets on a rainy afternoon to share the love with Princeton.
Hugging John Witherspoon, Founding Father and past President of Princeton University…
The classic tree hug. It was a little damp, but who cares?
A mailbox clearly in need of a hug.
Hugging a roaster and barista pal at our awesome local coffee shop, Small World.
A hug for House of Cupcakes, who sell me donuts and cupcakes. Like, everyday.
Hugging a rainbow narwhal at JaZams, our stupendous local toy store.
No park bench escapes me…
Nor jungle-like foliage…
A super-sweet hug from the folks at the Bent Spoon, best bakery in the world.
An attempted hug of one of Princeton’s famous black squirrels…yeah, no go.
Finally, a hug from a random person who totally rocked the love. Awwwww!
Sending hugs to those experiencing devastation and loss in Florida following Hurricane Michael. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Messy muddy piggy problems? No worries. Just send the gang through the Hogwash! Our patented conveyor belt technology will carry your pigs through a soaking, soaping, scrubbing, rinsing, and drying. We clean everything but the oink!
The conveyor belt is a long, narrow strip of poster board with 3 “seats” attached to it. First, hot glue 3 paper sample cups to the centers of 3 squares of poster board or 
Tape or hot glue each seat to a 1.25″ x 28″ strip of poster board. Note the placement of the seats on the strip. The first seat is placed 12.5″ from the front. Why? You need to be able to load the pigs on the seats, then pull them through the Hogwash smoothly without having to repeatedly reach inside the machine. The long strip allows you to do this (trust me, we tested it!). Here’s what the finished conveyor belt looks like:
Set the pigs and the conveyor belt aside for a moment, it’s time to make the Hogwash! Cut the top and short sides off a large box. Leave .75″ of space at the bottom of the box for the Hogwash’s ramp.
Cut a paper towel tube in half, trim the halves to fit inside the box, then push the halves together and tape them in place. There should be no gap between them.
Slide a strip of poster board or tagboard under the box (our box was 9″ long, so our strip was 2.5″ x 14″).
Lay a matching strip over top of the tubes and tape the ends of the two strips together. This creates the “ramp” for your Hogwash.
Here’s a different angle, You can see the ramp a little more clearly:
Next, arch 3 short strips of poster board or tagboard over the box (our strips were .75″ x 11.5″). Tape them in place. Important! Make sure the arches are high enough for your pigs to easily pass under. Our arches, for example, were 3.25″ above the top of the box.
Next are the 5 cleaning components of the Hogwash: Spray, Soap, Scrub, Rinse, and Dry. In the below image you can see them in order from right to left.
Finish by cutting, coloring, and attaching the different signs from the 
A monkey on a unicycle rolls down a ramp towards a snake. The bar holding the snake drops, which causes a bag of peanuts to fall into a container that sends a cart down a ramp into a tennis racket rigged to a mechanism that touches a match to a cannon fuse and fires an acrobat through a ring of fire!
Intended for ages 8 and up, Wonderology offers 6 different kits that cost between $10 – $20. Each kit contains a plethora of parts and a fully illustrated set of instructions. I purchased the Acrobat Challenge, the Garden Challenge, and the Speeding Car Challenge, then invited 3 kid testers (ages 6, 8, and 10) to try them out.
The kids were very excited as they unpacked the kits. The parts are fun, bright, and nice quality plastic. Here, for example, are the various pieces of the Acrobat Challenge:
Here are the kit’s illustrated instructions. They’re presented in classic Rube Goldberg format (they even use his special font!):
But as soon as construction started on the kits, well…that’s when things started to go wrong. Take the Acrobat Challenge, for example. In one part of the instructions, it clearly shows the yellow “monkey release” flag facing right. In two other sections of the instructions, it’s facing to the left! Also, either way I turned the flag, I never could get the monkey to work quite right.
There was a lot more of this I’m afraid – mechanisms not working like the instructions suggested, confusion with where to place the various pieces, the whole schbang toppling over when you tried to adjust it. Soon, there were shouts of frustration, explosive sounds of exasperation, creative G-rated cursing, and a box kicked across the floor (and it wasn’t just the kids doing all that).
But…see that chicken? It’s supposed to get a feather “plucked” from its tail, which causes it to lay an egg, which triggers the tennis racket, etc. But the egg just wouldn’t stay under the chicken. It just kept dropping and triggering the rest of the mechanism. So you had to skip the chicken all together, which is rather disappointing.
So that just leaves the Garden Challenge. This kit was particularly intriguing to me because it involves real water! Our 10 year-old tester managed to assemble it just fine.
But we soon discovered a fatal manufacturing flaw. See the orange gutter at the top of the mechanism? It’s supposed to tilt downward and let the 8 ball roll down and hit the watering can. But there was a little plastic piece that wouldn’t allow the gutter to tip down far enough! Katie had to saw the piece off with a box cutter in order to get it to finally work.
Then it was test, adjust, retest, adjust, curse quietly under one’s breath, test, adjust, and retest. It took dozens and dozens of attempts, close to an hour of concentration, and Katie’s sheer determination to get it to work. And yes, I did say work. Katie and the kid tester got it to work! Drumroll please…