How to Make a Paper Airplane

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Have you ever made a paper airplane? Did you learn how to make it from a book? Or maybe it was from the kid you shared a desk with in the third grade? I fall into the second camp, learning from my friends in school. And for all of the hundreds of airplanes we made, [...]

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Inspired by Nature: Four Easy Steps to Follow a Child’s Interests

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Do you have bees, birds, squirrels, deer, possum, or other creatures milling around your neighborhood? It’s been wild animal week here at Casa Tinkerlab. We had two big discoveries at our house: a wasp nest in the eaves by our back door and a bird nest tucked into a hole along the siding of our [...]

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The Creative Table Project

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Highlights from The Creative Table Project If you’re not familiar with the Creative Table Project, it’s an Instagram treasure trove of real world inspiration for any parent, caregiver, or teacher who’s looking for ideas that boost kids’ creativity or who wants to share snippets of their life experiences as inspiration to others. This week’s post [...]

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Creative Table: A Sticker Composition with Frames

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Setting up Creative Invitations like this is one of my very favorite ways to encourage children to explore new ideas and develop a visual language. Here’s the basic premise: Clear the table of anything that won’t be used in the invitation Artfully arrange the materials to provoke ideas Limit the choice of materials to just a [...]

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50 Earth Day Activities

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Earth Day is our annual reminder to slow down and appreciate the bounty of the earth and all of the blessings it gives to our lives. As an avid recycler and upcycler, I’ve always loved Earth Day (April 22 this year), and I wanted to mark it with a round up of activities from some of my favorite [...]

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Make a Sketch: A sketch a day keeps the dullness away

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Do you draw? If so, how do you create time to make a sketch? I try to make a habit of sketching something every day. When I get really busy, which seems like a lot lately, I’m terrible at keeping this promise to myself. If you know my blog, you might remember that I started the [...]

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Red Ted Art: Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids

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I love arts and crafts books and often dream of opening a maker space where I can share shelves and shelves of inspiring books full of hands-on goodness with my friends and readers. Wouldn’t that be fun? I just added a new book to my library that I love, and I’m excited to share it with [...]

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Make a Simple Room Fort

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Hello Tinker-firends! I’ve been busy with some family business and book edits that are taking a toll on my late-night blogging time. How are you doing? Until I get a better handle on these details I thought I’d share some quick snippets of tinkering inspiration from our days at home and out-and-about. Today we have [...]

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Jellybean Matzo House

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 This article was first shared in April 2011. We had more than our fair share of Easter sweets this weekend, but I had a plan all along to purge our house of all that extra sugar by “gluing” it to some sort of base, like a paper plate, and calling it art. As I talked [...]

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