spoon bugs

This idea came from an art programme the kids watch called Mr Maker. There's a segment on the show called minute makes. These spoon bugs are supposed to take that long to make but M and T spent half an hour on this making and painting their bugs.

The instructions were to use clay and cut up cotton buds but we used plaster of paris and cut up pipe cleaners. An air drying clay like Das would be perfect for this.

1. Pour the plaster into the spoons and poke the legs in, 3 each side for bugs (4 each side for spiders!). We found that we had to prop up the spoon a bit to stop the plaster coming out.

2. Let it dry and once dry push the bug out of the spoon.

3. Turn it over to stand on its  legs, paint and add eyes.

I was going to give ours a spray of clear varnish but as soon as they were dry they were taken out into the garden for adventures.

I thought these would also make fun fridge magnets.

plaster of paris at the beach

We love the beach, especially in the morning when there's less people and it's not as hot. The last time we went we took some plaster of paris with us to experiment with making molds in the sand. It was a bit hit and miss as I don't think I added sea enough water the mixture so it was a bit thick- the hand and foot molds we tried weren't deep enough for the plaster so we ended up making made blobs with shells on. Nice blobs that will always remind me of one of their favourite places.

We dug little holes in the sand, pushed a shell in and added the plaster on top. It took about 25 minutes before the plaster was hard enough to be dug out of the sand and left in open the air to dry fully.

Next time we try it I'll take an old cup and measure the plaster and water out properly. We'll mix the plaster closer to the water and I'll have the kids make their molds in the wetter sand. We were a bit too high up the beach as was worried that the tide coming in would was them away before they were dry enough to move.

At home I sprayed a few coats of polyurethane on them so that the sand didn't come off and go everywhere. I bought the plaster of paris off trade me but I'm sure most hardware places would sell it.

Here's the found blog post that inspired our experiment : )

http://www.danamadeit.com/2012/07/tutorial-sand-and-plaster-beach-molds.html

in its special place on his mantel