Crazy Clay!

Sometimes R11 will just page through an activity book looking for some fun things to do. This time she picked up the Kid Concoctions book by John and Danita Thomas. These two have a neat story which I've heard at the MOPS Convention. Basically, when their children were too involved with video games and TV and they saw how their family was spending time apart, they shut everything down and made up these recipes as part of spending time together as a family. Pretty cool. And we get to benefit from their experimentation! All I need to do is be willing to go along with her inspiration. Enter CraZy Clay!

First we added cornstarch and baking soda to some water and began to heat it.

The recipe...when you make these know that sometimes you need to make a note of how you'd adjust it. In this case, I didn't let the clay cool all the way before kneading it and I think that would make a big difference.

There are four or so Concoctions Books. This one is a bind up of four titles- I think only available at workshops and conventions (at least it used to be that way). They have a lot of great ideas in there.

We added some color!

Just getting started with uniform color...

Lime green and red glitter...oh  yeah...

Now we're cooking!

Here we are...not a bad texture but way to sticky when it's warm.

Just makes you want to put your hands in that, right?

Just too sticky...we added flower.

See the glitter? I didn't add enough I don't think. Glitter comes back on you way too easily so I hardly ever unleash loose glitter. This was an exception to my typical rule of "no loose glitter"!

After this moment, I packed up the leftovers and completely cool it's not nearly as sticky. Live and learn. She made lots of doll house furniture and got her brothers involved the next day.

I wonder what we'll do next. She has an affinity for papier mache so maybe we'll try that. I think she also wants to try some window clings, but not sure I'm not sure I'm up for them going on my window. Sometimes that stuff doesn't come off! What summer adventures are you having so far?