"G, can you make me a sled?" asked my youngest grandson.
"No, sweetheart, I can't." I answered
"Why not? You've got some wood."
He was right about that. I've always got various pieces of construction type lumber laying around just in case a building project hops in my head. It's hard to explain to a nine year old why 2x4's don't work well for snow sleds.
Finding something else to distract, we decided on the next oldest grandsons' school project. A working volcano.
I was no stranger to this project, having done the oldest grandsons' a couple of years ago. This time though, there was a challenge, at least on my part. Someone had posted a picture of their volcano project, it was huge. I was not to be outdone.
We started with large pieces of cardboard. I showed him how to make a compass with a string and a pencil and we drew a large circle. I found some scissors and put him to work, cutting out the circle. Being a nine year old boy, it was anything but round when he finished. He proudly showed me how he had made a slight adjustment when he was getting close to the end.
We worked until we had our substructure mountain duct taped to another piece of cardboard. I worked, he watched and gave useful bits of advice, he obviously didn't know that duct tape can be used for far sinister things.
Since this project isn't due for awhile, we stopped the construction process. There was sure to be another snow day coming up, we could work on it some more later.
My grandchildren know me well. They know that if they leave it with me, I'll probably finish it. I spent the next day looking at what we had accomplished, something wasn't right. I remembered I had some small sheets of expandable wire mesh, all I had to do was find them. I threw the cardboard structure out the door and ended up with a wire mesh armature waiting for its play dough skin. Grandson number two was quite pleased.
Making homemade play dough was a brilliant idea......if you have seen me cook, you have a visual of what my kitchen looked like after this. My three year old granddaughter helped with this, but was soon back in front of the TV and I was singing "I'm the Map" in the background. By this time I was elbow deep in flour, salt, a little oil and water.
We needed a lot of brown colored dough for Skeleton Mountain so I decided to quadruple the recipe. On the back of the food coloring box is a mixture for the color "toast". It really isn't brown but I figured if I quardrupled it and added a squirt or two more of the colors it called for, it would be close. It turned out to be more of a fleshy color, chicken skin would be a more accurate description.
I rolled the dough into large long sheets and Grandson #2 applied it to Skeleton Mountain. After all the chicken skin colored dough was applied he took some of the green dough and placed it at the base of the mountain making a forest just waiting to be flattened by the lava flow. It was time to stop again because he had to wait for the dough to dry before adding the finishing touches which would be red paint, to represent the flowing lava.
Skeleton Mountain has been transformed into Dead Chicken Mountain because that is exactly what it looks like. A large, headless, plucked raw chicken, wearing a cape. Super Dead Chicken Mountain. If I point this out to him, the red paint will be blood and the idea of blowing the chickens' head off with the vinegar and baking soda mixture will be a boy's dream come true.
Maybe I won't mention it........
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