The Fast and Easy Way to Learn
Visit our house any given day and one of the kiddos is bound to be cutting, gluing or creating something somewhere in the house. I love the exploration of mediums as they launch their imagination and capture it all in a project.
I’m a visual learner. I like hands on and I need to SEE something for it to register completely. Jennifer Casa has a new book Teach Yourself VISUALLY Crafting with Kids (Teach Yourself VISUALLY Consumer) that is perfect for me and even the kiddo that hasn’t quite captured the art of reading, but still wants to “help”. It is a book that is filled with fun and discovery and projects that entertain.
Inside there are 75 projects all with step-by-step instructions and hundreds of color photos. I love the the materials needed are typically materials we have on hand so there’s no having to make a list an hunt it down. To make crafting even more simple, the book is divided into chapters that make it easy to target something to create: game playing, gift giving, seasonal making, party celebrating, back to school, …it’s all here.
We have a Summer Craft To Do List and the first thing from this book we started with was the Easiest Playdough Ever recipe (page 176).
Following the directions in the book, we mixed together:
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
The kiddos stirred this mixture for five minutes so the salt would disolve.
Next we added 1/2 cup flour to the mixture and continued to stir until we had a smooth paste.
The kiddos thought this was interesting and continued to stir for one minute.
Another 1/2 cup of flour and some more stirring power and we had a smooth sticky dough.
Sprinkling some more flour onto the table we kneaded the dough until it was no longer sticky.
Then we added our favorite food coloring to the dough and kneaded it until the color was well-blended.
It was really that easy and the kiddos sat at the table for an hour and a half playing with it. They even tasted it! Eeewww!
Teach Yourself VISUALLY Crafting with Kids (Teach Yourself VISUALLY Consumer) is a great book that doesn’t disappoint. It has just enough projects to do one a day all summer long and bust boredom!
We’re looking forward to making the Stamped Garden Markers on page 52 for our garden and discovering so many other fun projects!
