June 2012

Easy Art: Air Dry Clay

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Material: Air Dry Clay Have you ever noticed that kids don’t need a lot of bells and whistles and fancy stuff to get creative, have fun, and feel on top of the world? Yesterday we foraged some cardboard boxes from a neighbor’s move because 4-year old Nutmeg has a vision of building a space station. [...]

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How to Make Paint: Sweetened Condensed Milk

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This recipe is a keeper because it comes together quickly, uses ingredients you probably have on hand, and it expands the way children think about art supplies. When children have the opportunity to invent things and imagine new possibilities (in this case, making their own paint, inventing colors, and imagining what they can create with [...]

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Camp Sunny Patch Honor Counselor

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Hey friends…Guess what? I’ve been asked to partner with the well-loved toy company, Melissa & Doug, as an Honor Counselor during their virtual summer camp, Camp Sunny Patch. How fun! I’m a fan of M&D and I get to put my camp counselor skills to work (no surprise that I was once a camp counselor, is there?). [...]

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Circular Patterns + Creative Thinking

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Despite the thousands of ideas you’ve seen floating around the internet, do you ever feel like you’re at a loss for an art activity that your kids will enjoy, while also challenging them to think? Children get excited about solving real problems, and the problem in this project lies in figuring out how to circumnavigate [...]

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21 Ways to Get Creative

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Do you consider yourself creative? Here’s a list of 21 ways to get creative, and you may be surprised to see that you’ve done at least one thing from this list today. Think of these as creativity-boosters; things that you can do to get out of a brain-blocked rut. Think of how you came up with [...]

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Plant a Garden with Kids

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Do you have a little spot of dirt for your kids to garden in? If not, today I’d like to challenge you to think about your outdoor spaces and see if you can come up with a spot that’s just for the kids. It can be anything from a large plot to a couple of [...]

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Thrifting for the Garden

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Is it warm in your part of the world? Are your kids spending lots of time outdoors? Summer is here and our garden is getting so much attention. My kids are happy when they’re outside, so I’ve been thinking up ways to turn our outdoor spaces into play pockets and learning laboratories. In addition to [...]

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Tinker Tots: How to Take a Plush Toy Apart

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Tinkerer: one who experiments with materials and ideas to fully understand their capacities, and who further iterates on their learning to find better solutions to current problems.  Tinker Tots is a series of projects where I  share tinkering materials or tools that can be safely introduced as open invitations for children to explore and tinker. Materials Toy or [...]

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Why is Tinkering Important?

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I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. -Thomas Edison True to the name of this blog, Tinkerlab, I’m excited to start a new series called “Tinker With…” where I’ll introduce new tinker with materials, categories of materials, or tools that can be introduced as open invitations for children to explore. The first Tinker With… will [...]

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