Nesting Supplies

This is a good use for your dryer lint and yarn scraps. We filled up one of those cages you get that holds suet blocks with dryer lint and lots of yarn and hung it outside where the birds and squirrels can get to it. They can pull out supplies for their nests.

Toddler Pizza

We read "Pete's A Pizza" by William Steig and then made pizzas. The pizzas are round pieces of paper (or a paper plate), painted with red paint tomato sauce, with lots of toppings. There were little yellow rectangles to represent the cheese, red circles for pepperoni or tomatos, little black olives, mushrooms cut out of a crinkly paper bag etc. If your child can cut encourage her to make other toppings. Then i had a shaker with green sand (sand with green paint in it) and they could shake on their spices at the very end. Then you bake the pizza in a sunny window! The book is about a dad who turns his son into a pizza by covering him with checkers, shredded paper, talcolm powder. etc. After they make the pizzas you can turn them into pizza or have them turn you into a pizza.

sand clay

1 cup sifted beach sand (or sand from sandbox)
1/2 tsp alum (look at a pharmacy)
1/4 cup corn starch
1 cup water

Your kids can help gather the sand and measure and stir ahead of time, then you should take over. Heat on a medium burner and stir it a lot until it gets thick. (Use an old pan for this.) Let it cool enough to use. You can store it in a sealed container pretty well for an hour or so if yu want to prepare it in advance. Spoon some out on a paper plate or a regular plate covered with foil so it doesn't stick. Your children can mold it into a paper weight or castle or whatever you want. It doesn't actually hold a shape as well as real wet sand so you can't get too detailed with your structure. You can press shells, rocks, other beachy stuff in (put glue under them. Just apply it right on top of the wet sand clay to make sure the stuff sticks well.) or shape it more like a mounded castle and make little toothpick flags to put on top. I saw an idea on thriftyfun.com to cover a picture frame with the sand clay and then press shells and stuff in to make a nice beachy frame. I have also thought about filling lots of ice cube trays with the clay and when it dried you would have these nice uniform sand building blocks to glue together to make a larger structure. It doesn't dry completely for a few days so try to leave your creation out of the way until your children can handle it with no risks. Once your sand clay is dry it is very strong.

marshmallow and toothpick sculpture

You need toothpicks and mini marshmallows (or gum drops. jelly beans, etc.)

Using the toothpicks and marshmallows, your child can build virtually anything. The younger ones do better if you make some barbells with toothpick in the middle and marshmallows on either side that they can attach to one another. Older kids can make really nice structures. The key is to use triangles for strength. Squares will flop around and triangles are just more stable. This is adapted from a traditional Kindergarten craft called peas and sticks where children used soaked dried peas and small sticks to build stuff. I have tried the soaked peas without much luck but it would eliminate the problem of having all your art materials getting eaten. Buckminster Fuller, the creator of the Geodesic Dome (think Epcot Center) and Dymaxion car (think 3 wheeled car that got 100 mpg) said in an interview that he first understood the importance of using triangles for strength when completing the peas and sticks exercise in school. So maybe this will guide your child towards great future building projects. The marshmallows dry out in a day or so and make the structures stronger.